Yesterday, the owners of the oldest TV station in Syracuse – Channel 5 – called its employees together, told ’em they were great, and then told them to pack up their shit and hit the road. Well, 40 of them, anyway. After more than 60 years on the air, Channel 5 will now be run and operated out of the studios of another station, owned by Granite Broadcasting, which already operates two local channels and owns another 20 or so in the US. Network TV won’t be affected of course, but it’s one more blow for diversity in local news. And a pretty sad day, really.

Today is the day that geeks have been anticipating since 2/2/04: a day when the month and day are both the square root of the year (well, the last two-digits of the year, but who could possible need a four-digit year, anyway). Yep, 3/3/09. And if you think it’s no big deal, just remember this – it won’t happen again until April 4, 2016. How can this possible not be a national holiday? Oh, that’s right. We honor magical fat guys in red suits that fly around handing out presents (sounds like a goddamn socialist to me; NORAD ought to shoot the bastid down), old dead white guys, magic (socialist) rabbits, and genocidal Italians who “discovered” a place where millions of people were already living, but math and science? Pshaw.

Speaking of square roots, I believe my retirement money is now the square root of what it was a year ago. The market took another dump yesterday, closing below 7,000 (way below), and at a 12-year low. I’m getting pretty tired of the whiny friggin’ “market,” personally. “Wah, wah, we don’t want regulation. We want taxpayer money.”

Well, screw you, you whiny pieces of crap. It’s just too bad you seem determined to take me down with you. But I got you fooled; with my blood pressure, I’ll be dead long before I could ever retire. I was watching a couple of minutes of the Today Show yesterday, and Matt “the rat” was grilling the CEO of AIG pretty hard. I thought, gee, Matt, you rich fuckers sure get touchy when the market drops. Too bad you didn’t give a crap when Bush was invading Iraq for no good reason.

Another cold day here. It’s in the single digits, but with the wind it feels like twenty below. This is the time of year when winter really starts getting old. Oh well, at least we set the clocks ahead this weekend (which always seems to irritate Granny). I hate to lose an hour, but the more daylight at the end of the day, the better. Now if it would just get a little warmer.