May Cause Arguments Among Wagon Wheel Owners

I forgot that interspersed with the plot in When Harry Met Sally are vignettes of elderly couples on a couch recounting how they met. For example:

Her: “We fell in love in high school.”
Him: “Yeah, we were high school sweethearts.”

Her: “But then after our Junior year his parents moved away.”
Him: “But I never forgot her.”
Her: (smirking) “He never forgot me.”

Him: “Her face was burned on my brain. And it was 34 years later that I was walking down Broadway and I saw her come out of Toffenetti’s.”
Her: “We both looked at each other and it was just as though not a single day had gone by.”
Him: “She was just as beautiful as she was at 16.”
Her: “He was just the same. He looked exactly the same!”

This is just reminiscent of the scene in Gilmore Girls (Say Something, episode 5.14) where Sookie tries to soothe Lorelai by recounting a romantic story.

Sookie: “I heard about this couple on one of those morning show, similar to you guys – all lovey-dovey, perfect for each other, you know, headed for marriage – and something happened, and they broke up in their senior year of college, even though they were madly in love with each other. They moved to different parts of the country. They married different people. Oh, had kids, grandkids. Then their spouses died, oh, and they were available again, and they talked and they hooked up, and now they’re together and they’re happily in love after forty years apart.”

Lorelai: “That’s a horrible story!”

And finally, Common Sense Media cautions parents about these clips. Besides the obvious warning about the famous orgasm scene, they also note:

The short vignettes highlight long-lasting, loving relationships. May create unrealistic romantic expectations for teens.

Imagined Perfection

A gallery of pictures of phone sex operators with short interviews:

“To the caller, when I first answer, I am the inanimate Barbie. They do not know what I look like, who I am or how I feel. They can only imagine. It is my job to indulge their fantasies, to convince them that I am not a doll. I am their dream turned real. I view every question the caller asks me as a command for me to transform. If they ask if I am blonde, I become a blonde. … I breathe life into their fantasy, I carve the doll out of flesh.”

(via Kottke)

Are You the Gatekeeper?

I maintain an application whose data gets updated once a year from a FileMaker Pro file that’s edited throughout the year on local computers.  This admittedly makes very little sense, but it is nonetheless so.

Every year the import process produces new and unexpected strangeness.  This year, attempting to open the file produces this error:

Microsoft Office is not able to run FileMaker Pro at this time. Verify that FileMaker Pro has been installed correctly on this machine.

First of all, FileMaker Pro is correctly installed, as evidenced by the fact that I used it last year successfully.  Moreover, though, why exactly is it necessary for Microsoft Office to run the application for me?  Is Microsoft Office running my other applications, like an elevator attendant who adopts the laborious task of pressing buttons for passengers?  If so, could Microsoft Office kindly let my other applications run themselves?