The avatar life

Yep, I have been out. The Katie Couric thing bummed me out, I must admit. She can't take responsibility for her mistakes, so my impression of her zipped down quickly. Even Dan Rather has not been saying nice things about how the CBS Evening News is turning out, even tho he was trying hard to be nice to Couric.

Just to note, why does it continue to be perfectly plausible to keep calling Couric 'perky,' but Rather can't say that his old show has been 'tarted up' without being called a sexist? Maybe Couric is 'perky,' but the constant use of the term is a insulting. Maybe that is the point, she can't rise above the cheery morning wake-up chick.

Instead, I have been spending too much time in virtual worlds. First, we started out going that route through Nicktropolis, which we found interesting but a tad boring. So I researched lots of kid options for online. We could not find a webkinz in our town, even tho we saw them a few places around Christmas time. So we couldn't go that route.

I thought imbee.com would be a good option. It offers in-world imbee email, imbee blogging, groups, and picture posting. It's probably great for slightly older kids than the ones in our house. But, I do think that imbee.com has lots of great aspects to it, including a high degree of parental involvement and overview.

Instead, the hit of the household has been ClubPenguin. Who would have thought that being a penguin online would be so filled with so much fun? After only a few days we went the membership route, because it actually is more fun. I am rationalizing this because it does help writing skills. And it is a good way to learn how to interact with other kids. Curiously, it's based on Flash, which I used to be able to do pretty well.

Completely jealous, I decided to join Second Life.

For GDAEman, who kindly chided me for not posting, I will mention that I haven't found too much political stuff. Check out his cool photo. I am not quite sure what Deviant Art is, but I found it intriguing on my short visit there. I have heard that John Edwards has a spot somewhere on Second Life, but I have not been there yet. So far, though, it hasn't been quite has cool as I had hoped. But I do have a wonderful cabin on a beach, with a fireplace and radio, in Great Spaces. It's a great place to rent.

We did have a nice dinner last weekend with some of our good friends. They told a good anecdote about meeting Barack Obama in Hawaii where he was having an enjoyable dinner at a fancy restaurant. They said he was very pleasant. I always like hearing about politicians in the off politico theater in positive terms.

In researching stuff for this, I found it funny that the Northwestern U winning lacrosse team did not wear flipflops to meet the President. No matter what people think, fashion makes lots of statements, even when you think you're not saying anything at all.