FOOFARAW

Here's a few more matters of little importance.

The following is an actual conversation with an apartment owner:

Me: Hi, I'm calling about the apartment on West 69th street.

Owner: Which one?

Me: It says 19 West 69th Street apt 3.

Owner: which one?

Me: What do you mean?

Owner: For how much?

Me: Oh, it says $1475.

Owner: Oh. Actually it's $2500. That's a typo. Sorry.

Me: It's a typo?

Owner: Yes.

Me: That's a pretty big typo.

Owner: Sorry.

Me: Thank you.

HANG UP

Me: Who the hell is typing that? That's not even close.

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From this week's Police Blotter in The Princeton Packet:

A West Windsor man called the police to report that his golf clubs and bag had been stolen from his garage sometime between December and April.

(I'm sure the police will get right on that case by Halloween)
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Keith Olberman is the king of reporting stories while at the same time clearly showing that he doesn't care at all about them. Any time he talks about Anna Nicole or American Idol it is in an irreverent, clearly disgusted tone, yet he keeps reporting the stories. The journalistic integrity of this is fantastic. It's "I report, I decide, You decide."

I don't care about Anna Nicole one bit, but by watching Keith I know what's going on so that I can participate in a discussion of the issue if I need to for whatever reason, like if my job forces me to do it. At the same time Keith rejects the notion that anyone should care about dumb stories, he acknowledges that people do care, therefore eschewing ignorance.

Good luck untangling that one.

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AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION:

I want YOU to tell me, if possible, about the most random person you have on Facebook or MySpace and how you think he/she became your friend. Here are my top three:

Geoff Marsh - I think Geoff is a member of the Syracuse University a cappella group Orange Appeal. I think I know what he looks like, but his facebook profile picture right now is just a car. He's a conservative Christian, and I'm pretty certain I've never had an actual conversation with him. But he updates his profile almost daily.

Russell Schneider - I have no idea who this is. He has no picture on his profile. Russell is from Long Island, we have 25 friends in common and they're all my friends from Camp. So it would make sense to say the Russell went to camp. But I don't remember Russell being at camp. He might still be in High School. And he might know who I am, but I certainly have no freaking clue who Russell Schneider is.

BJ Smith - BJ Smith is from Huntsville, Alabama. BJ thinks he was on my Israel trip this past December, but he wasn't. Even so, he remains Facebook friends with me and a number of others from my trip, and he remains a part of our Facebook group "Israel Experts Bus 2" or whatever it's called. To top it all off, he filled in the "friend details" for us (and I accepted) which say "you were in a group together" even though we weren't.

I can only assume you all have similar stories. Post them here!

And that is Foofaraw for today.