In Search of a Title which expresses the meaning of t his post...

...which is actually a compendium of topics, or--as I prefer to think of it--a bunch of shit that has occurred to me which I am sure you need to know.

• Award for the Dumbest Name of A Business: a local massage/spa type business called Massage Envy. This is not a massage parlor in some seedy backwater stripmall whose offerings are euphemisms for blow jobs and the like. Which is definitely what the name references for anyone in the Western world who has heard of penis envy. But maybe that's the problem. Maybe the owners are not of the Western world. A lot of the businesses in our area are small operations run by Asian immigrants grabbing onto the American dream, and that, at times, has led to some strange names for businesses. Like ChopSuey ChopSuey Bar. Or Get Your Hair Cut Beauty Shop. I imagine, when I come across such names, that the owners have translated from their own language to English and aren't comfortable enough (a euphemism of my own) with American vernacular to know that their well-thought-out business name is just, well, dumb. Or, as in the case of Massage Envy, is a really loaded piece of language, a word bomb of sorts.

• AP reported today that the CBS Evening News last week had its lowest audience since at least 1987. ABC's World News is, as Nielson likes to put it, the ratings winner. The AP report that the numbers "add to the sense that Charles Gibson is eclipsing Brian Williams as the nation's favorite network news anchor." My kneejerk construction of the results was--and listen to all of the pundits who fling their legs in the air with me--that Americans prefer an older male giving them their news. But then I thought of what Evening News I watch and why: ABC, because (and I'm about to shout now) I CANNOT STAND the local news leadins on my NBC and CBS affiliates. The NBC affiliate in Sacramento has a news reporter who has clearly gone to the Geraldo Rivera School of Journalism, and this would seem to be the same place that spawned the entire news-team of the CBS affiliate in Sacramento. They so offend me that I want to throw sharp objects at my flat screen television, and that has only ever happened before when Cheney is on the tube. I can't afford to kill my TV, so I simple refuse to watch these two local news programs. And I'm wondering if there are others in other cities who feel the same about their local news? Is there a Sense of The News vibe that is ordained by the networks? Is the local CBS news so inane because it is following in the Katie Couric happy news programming?

In the past I have called these kinds of posts "Potpourri", but really, that's pretty lame, not to mention dumb and etc. Some people call them "This and That", which is equally ditto, IMHO. I tag these posts as Yadayada, which really says it to me--but what about you? Can you come up with a snappy title for posts of this ilk? There is a prize in it for the best entry....