Sunday, September 30
Davezilla has been a veritable funfest lately. Today it pointed me to Switcheroo Zoo, which through the miracle of Flash animation allows you to combine animals into new and disturbing variations -- the head of a pig, say, on the body of a dog. Let the nightmares begin!
(PS: His name's "Snorty.")
Saturday, September 29
From Reuters: "Half of New Jersey residents say they have no objections to authorities monitoring their phone conversations or e-mail in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack on neighboring New York City, a survey said on Friday. Fifty percent of respondents said 'yes' when asked if they themselves would be willing to have their e-mail read or telephone tapped without a warrant, said Cliff Zukin, director of the Star-Ledger/Eagleton-Rutgers poll. 'That struck me as high,' he said."
Thanks to Matt at Scrubbles for the pointer to Jerry Beck's Cartoon Research Co. Beck is the co-author, with Will Friedwald, of "The Warner Brothers Cartoons" and "Loonie Tunes and Merrie Melodies," essential guides to the world of WB cartoons.
Wallabies are running wild in southeastern Pennsylvania. We have no desire to irresponsibly inflame an already tense situation, but if you're reading this in or near Ambler, PA, please be aware that the description of the animals in this wire story is partially inaccurate. Wallabies are not 30-35 lbs and docile. Rather, they stand between nine and eleven stories tall, weigh anywhere up to sixteen tons, have huge steel teeth, shoot laser death rays from their eyes, and are irredeemably vicious. If you live in the Ambler area you might want to consider running, running for your very life. And don't forget the pancake breakfast at the volunteer firehouse next Saturday, Oct. 6!
Friday, September 28
New at halfbakery: the Outshoutable Alarm Clock. If I had any money and a rudimentary understanding of how stocks work and I wasn't so tired and listless all the time, I would buy stock in this.
Man, if there's one thing I hate it's waiting for the Swedish Elvis's page to Laddar Siddan. (Via Davezilla.)
"You know, honey, I've been pretty bored since the XFL folded, and the radio show and the guest shots on the WWF just aren't filling my days, so I'm gonna go do an acting gig on 'The Young and The Restless.' But I tell you what, if that doesn't give me enough to do I might have to go out and get a job or something."
...Saponification, by the way, is not unheard of in modern times.
Words you don't want to hear a medical researcher say after looking at a CT scan of your long-dead body: "There's tons of stuff in there!" Granted, the "Soap Lady" is morbidly fascinating -- the 19th-century victim of a process called saponification, in which the fat layer changes into a waxy, soapy substance called adipocere ("Now with 62% more lanolin!"). But still, if I could offer just one bit of advice to Gerald Conlogue, a professor of diagnostic imaging at Quinnipiac University, it would be this: Wipe your chin and back away from the dead lady, pal.
Thursday, September 27
This is AP's account of Ari Fleischer's comment on Bill Maher's "cowards" remark. (See yesterday's Blather.) This is the official transcript of Fleischer's briefing. The difference? The transcript does not include the phrase "need to watch what they say," which is clearly audible on the White House's own sound recording. (Requires RealAudio -- skip ahead to 32:25). I can think of two possible interpretations for this, and only one is that it was an honest mistake. (Via Slate's Timothy Noah and MediaNews's Jim Romenesko).
Years after the fact, the Nixon White House tapes continue to fascinate, amuse and repel. Here's a new excerpt, as quoted by Watergate figure John Dean in his book "The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court":"I don't think a woman should be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don't. The reason why... is mainly because they are erratic. And emotional. Men are erratic and emotional, too, but the point is a woman is more likely to be.... I'm not for women in any job. I don't want any of them around. Thank God we don't have any in the cabinet."
Wait, it gets better. The subject of this conversation was the possibility of putting a woman on the Supreme Court in the hope of picking up one to two additional points in the 1972 election. So let's get this straight: Women in the Cabinet are bad. Women on the Supreme Court, where one would sit for life and mold legal precepts for generations to come, that's okay (as long as there was a payoff in it for the Prez, and he didn't have to -- ewwww! -- sit next to her). That's governance, baby. By the way, dig Dean's creepy, halfhearted apologia for Nixon -- who is, remember, dead, and presumably beyond any ability to exact vengeance: "It's the real Nixon. He's rolling up his sleeves. He's enjoying being president." (Requires free New York Times login and password.)
Homeland Security... Civil Defense. Hmm. Homeland Security... Civil Defense. (Via Memepool.)
It's all so simple when you explain it to me: The Commerce Commissioner of Minnesota, the Hon. Jim Bernstein, told state legislators on Tuesday that consumers were to blame for $5-a-gallon price gouging on the night of September 11th. According to AP, Bernstein said "The truth of the matter is, all too many consumers on September 11th said, 'Mr. Retailer, gouge me'... Bernstein added that some station owners believed raising prices was the only way they could prevent themselves from running out of gas. 'They sincerely thought they were doing the right thing,' he said." Bernstein then left the state capitol, climbed into a brand-new Cadillac Escalade and drove away, stopping only to top off his tank with a "Free Gas For Life" card he "found in the locker room at my gym."
The Library of Congress and the Internet Archive are joining forces to produce a digital snapshot of the Web in the hours immediately after the September 11th attacks.
Here's great news: The Mercury News reports that gun sales have surged in California since September 11th. Which is good, because, you know, 1) there aren't enough cheap handguns on the street in California, and 2) if Osama bin Laden decides to launch an anthrax attack during the Rose Parade, people can shoot the hell out of the anthrax with their 9mm Smith & Wessons.
Poorly-made, big-eyed shredded-paper-stuffed ragdolls... for victory!
(NOTE: I plan to do one item per day with the "[insert joke here]... for victory!" formulation until the War on Terrorism is won. Cheap gags... for victory! Oh wait, that's two.)
Wednesday, September 26
Get your pimp freak on, via the players at Boing Boing.
Uh oh: White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, commenting on "Politically Incorrect" host Bill Maher's remarks after the attacks: "There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is."
The New York Times on the debate over what to do with the WTC site. A huge battle is shaping up over who will actually control whatever reconstruction occurs. But -- a hopeful sign, maybe -- a few people are beginning to talk about the process as an opportunity, not just a challenge. (Requires free login and password.)
Gee thanks, fellow Americans: It was probably predictable, but still seems awfully sad, that the old email hoax about the Klingerman Virus has resurfaced in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
Todd McFarlane, the Canadian cartoonist who paid a little over $3 million for Mark McGwire's 70th-home-run ball, shows how it's possible to mix self-promotion, shrewd investment and misguided patriotism into one loathesome package.
The Gate's Mark Morford, who I am proud to steal from almost each and every morning, on why small acts of random viciousness feel especially painful right now (and why mandatory lobotomies for some people might not be a bad idea).
Annals of Discredited Transportation: David Grant, who co-piloted the Hughes Flying Boat with Howard Hughes, has died at 84. The eccentric zillionaire apparently picked him for the other seat because Grant, then an engineer at Hughes Aircraft, didn't know much about piloting (he didn't even have a pilot's license), and Hughes didn't want anybody giving him any backtalk during the 70-second flight. Footnote: Both Grant and Hughes hated the name which has come down through history for the aircraft: The Spruce Goose. Elsewhere (well, in Detroit), General Motors has announced that its Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird, two legendary American muscle cars, will go out of production next year. Age at death: 35. Reason for demise: too well-muscled. The basic formula for both cars -- a big honkin' V8 in what amounts to a cheap steel giftwrapping -- has never varied; while Mustang, the car Camaro and Firebird were invented to knock off, now sells over 70% of its units in a stripped-down and fuel-efficient V6.
Tuesday, September 25
The promise of the future is here today -- Satellite radio, broadcasting with digital clarity coast to coast! (Only available in San Diego and Dallas-Ft.Worth.)
With everything that's going on the world these days, it seems worth taking just a moment to note that Liz Smith has lost her mind. (Thanks to Ron Givens for the link.)
Jane Farries of the excellent Not My Dog passes along this cartoon by Brian Gable of The Toronto Globe & Mail, on the topic of celebrities and war fever. (Select the image for 9/21.) Via Slate.
Economic ripples, Pt. 2: The take at Atlantic City casinos is way down since the attacks. A 73-year-old Philadelphian joked that he had been dragged to the Trump Marina casino "kicking and screaming. It's my birthday, and my daughter insisted that we come down despite the turmoil. We all have to go on." Slots and shrimp cocktails... for victory!
Man, the war coverage is getting good. On CNN this morning, Miles O'Brien could be seen gingerly backing down the ladder of an F-15 as if a misstep, and the 24-inch fall to follow, would kill him. And over on MSNBC, Ashleigh ("I'm on TV! I'm on TV!") Banfield apparently did such a good job covering Ground Zero that the network has sent her to... Islamabad. Hey, thanks, fellas. Concomitantly, she's lost her kicky blonde gal-on-the-town hairdo for a short, slicked-back and very brunette kind of fashion statement, a statement that practically screams "Take me seriously! And also, please don't stone me to death!" Keep watching...
Monday, September 24
Swedish medical researchers report that women who have used hair dye for more than 20 years may be at increased risk of rheumatoid arthritis. Reached for comment, author and editor Helen Gurley Brown said "Owww."
If you haven't stopped by there lately, World New York is doing an excellent job of gathering up reportage, pro and otherwise, from and about New York City.
A study at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health found that teenage African-American girls who live with their mothers may be less likely to engage in sexually risky behaviors. The risky behavior that's most likely to be reduced: Having sex in your mother's house.
"Oh, look, honey, how patriotic! Somebody stuck a couple of flags on thatAAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH!!!!" (This item and the previous one via Obscure Store.)
It isn't surprising that a Baltimore developer has scrapped plans to build first one, then a chain of disaster-themed Crash Cafes. The surprising part is that anybody ever thought this was a good idea.
Webvan founder Louis Borders is offering $2.5 million for the back-end technology that controlled his former company's long, slow slide onto the ash heap of history. The sale must be approved by the bankruptcy court, which managed to keep a straight face long enough to hear the formal bid before walking, then running into chambers and erupting into uncontrollable giggles.
RealNetworks is introducing RealOne Player, an integrated application that will seize control of all media files on your computer at once, instead of piecemeal as in the past. "We felt it was inefficient to gum up MP3s with one application and WAVs with another," a RealNetworks spokescreature said this morning as he stole a reporter's watch. "No," he continued when questioned, "this is my watch. Yes it is. Oh yes it is. It is too."
@Home is, well, not at home right now. With any luck Blather will return this afternoon.
Sunday, September 23
Victory Blog on the Americathon -- "Surprisingly not annoying: Mariah Carey. Her performance left me with an odd desire not to have her dropped from a tremendous height." More here.
Here's a RealVideo stream of Jon Stewart's remarks on the first Daily Show after the attacks. Stewart is a professional smartypants and, as I've remarked in this space before, one of the quickest-witted people on TV. What makes this clip so moving is how unquick, how halting and human he is here. Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.
Friday, September 21
Alert reader Ron Givens, who is all over Blather like a cheap suit today, passes along a Washington Post piece which details guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter's credentials on missile defense. FoxNews offers this. And John Schwartz of The New York Times sends this, from June (I didn't feel like paying for it, but you certainly may if you want). I stand corrected, and ashamed, although the "What a Fool Believes" joke still makes me giggle.
I'm all for a yeasty, eclectic, comprehensive approach to the war news. But can anybody tell me why (I am not making this up) Jeff "Skunk" Baxter of Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers is a guest on CNN's "Talkback Live" right now, identified as a "musician/defense analyst"? Are we getting ready to send The Doobie Brothers into Afghanistan? Get ready, Taliban... we're gonna get all "What A Fool Believes" on your ass.
Once again, as I have so often, I find myself saying: This ain't right. I mean, you got cats, and you got Oktoberfest. But a cat's guide to Oktoberfest spells cognitive dissonance to me. (Thanks to Ron Givens for the link.)
Paileontology -- everything you ever wanted to know about lunchboxes.
It seems we're all beginning the long, slow, delicate process of considering what this "war on terrorism" will mean to civil liberties at home. On the minus side, there's the uncomfortable clanging sound made by the phrase "Office of Homeland Security"; an administration that's trying to be exquisitely sensitive to the nuances of language could have done better. On the plus side, knuckleheads like this will do jail time.
Thursday, September 20
Via Boing Boing, the world's first remote-controlled cockroach. I'm sure there must be all sorts of useful real-world applications for this technology, but the picture so thoroughly grosses me out that I can't bear to think about them.
Stunning satellite images of Lower Manhattan, via Spaceimaging.com.
John Boudreau of The Mercury News on the possibility that there may be too much money raised for disaster relief.
Signs of life -- From The Industry Standard's Media Grok: "It's no Monty Python sketch, but good, old-fashioned corporate weirdness has started to resurface." Among the bellwethers, a soon-to-go-national TV spot in which Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos hawks the "hottest new hand-held" -- Taco Bell's new chicken quesadilla.
Okay, let me broaden the question posed yesterday. A celebrity announces, through his publicist, that he intends to donate a large sum of money to disaster relief. On the one hand, generosity; on the other, publicity. Possible response: "You may have missed it last week, but when my wife and I donated to the New York firefighters' fund, the first thing we did, in the spirit of healing and altruism, was have our publicist put out a press release." Smack This Celebrity -- Yes or No?
Discuss
The economic ripples from last week's attacks continue to spread. The FAA isn't allowing anything to fly unless it has a transponder, which sends identifying information to air-traffic controllers. That leaves this hot-air ballooning company, among others, grounded and hurting.
Via Morning Fix, an item about vintner Robert Mondavi's $35 million gift to the University of California for a wine science institute. The chancellor thanked Mondavi for the donation, and publicly appealed for a matching gift to help set up a tenured chair in cheese. (Heh. Wine and cheese, get it? I am really back in the groove now, baby.)
Wednesday, September 19
Thousands of people have seized on the notion that the 16th-century French mystic Nostradamus predicted last week's attacks. I was prepared to be snippy about this. Then I came across another, unrelated prediction that is absolutely chilling in its specificity and prescience:" ...In the East a man will do a thing
And tie an object up with yellow string
Some guy with -- a red face, let's say
Will lose his keys that very day... "I mean, wow. Scary.
We're all kind of stumbling our way through these days, and nobody knows for sure where the lines of propriety are. An example: I just decided to spike a snarky item about a TV celebrity's dopey comment to an awards-banquet audience because the celebrity in question was expressing (albeit clumsily) a patriotic sentiment. And I honestly don't know if that's fair game right now. So I'm going to open it up to the floor. Based on the situation I've sketched: Smack This Celebrity -- Yes or No?
Discuss
What, no batteries?
...And for a sensitive, sophisticated, and far-ranging reaction to last week's events, look no further than the comments made by Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher: "I ain't... going to New York again. I'm never going to America again, man," the singer, who is also known as "The Slightly More Obnoxious Gallagher Brother," told New Musical Express. So there's a little bit of good news.
Noted geopolitical strategist Woody Allen on potential U.S. responses to the terrorist attacks. (All right, I know, I'm cranky today. This kind of thing just raises a question for me: If you're famous enough that somebody sticks a microphone under your snout and asks you to comment on something way beyond the scope of the thing you're famous for, should you exercise restraint, show humility and demur? Or are you simply exercising your inalienable right as a citizen of a free country to comment? I tend to believe the former, and have since at least April, when Barbra Streisand took it upon herself to lecture the Dems on the dangers posed by the right wing of the GOP. For the record, though, I do have a sentimental weakness for the song "Stoney End," and think "Manhattan" is one of the best American movies of recent years. And nobody's going to silence me on that.)
Samuel Z. Arkoff died on Sunday. (Obits here and here.) Arkoff, 83, was one of the great trashmongers of this century, and regular readers of Blather will know that I say that with nothing but admiration. Under the banner of his American International Pictures, Arkoff produced 463 of the least ambitious B pictures ever made, including 13 beach movies, "Panic in Year Zero!" and "I Was a Teen-Age Werewolf." He made 'em fast and he made 'em cheap ("Werewolf" cost $100,000 and was shot in six days), he had his finger on the Zeitgeist like few people before or since, and he gave critical early jobs to a generation of our best filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. And if late in life he received accolades including a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, Arkoff was simply bemused. "I suppose time can dignify anything," he told the LA Times in 1982.
Tuesday, September 18
Fun with Blogger! See if YOU can spot the place where Blogger went nuts and cut me off in the middle of a sentence, and then rigged it so I couldn't fix the post no matter what I tried, including blundering around on my webserver in a foolish, ill-conceived attempt to hand-edit! (HINT: It's in the item below!) That's FUN WITH BLOGGER!
Adam Nagourney of the New York Times on the differences between uptown and downtown Manhattan -- once cultural, now literal. "Uptown, business returned to near-normal by Thursday. People are out and about the way they normally would be... Downtown, it is nearly impossible to walk out a door, or glance up a street, without being reminded of the attack by the sheer emptiness in the sky." (Requires free 10:51 AM
I don't really care if a sociopath like Dennis Rodman wants to blast his powerboat across Newport Harbor at four times the speed limit. You know what I care about? The fact that he has actually named his boat "Sexual Chocolate."
Stressful times make strange bedfellows: Me and animated GIFs, for example (see below). Anybody besides me get a dull throb behind the eyeballs after looking at that thing for more than a second? My plan is to post as much as I can today in the hope of pushing the item right off the bottom of my screen. After that, anybody who feels the need to scroll down is on their own. In other News of The Current Situation, Asian Bastard, which became Thicke of the Night, has now morphed into Victory Blog. Same snappy commentary, new graphics, still a good read.
Sunday, September 16
Ahem. Well.
Things remain disturbingly out-of-kilter in the Zeitgeist, which is where this site lives. And I've been wrestling with the question of when it would be appropriate to resume regular posts. I sure haven't felt funny these last few days.
Maybe the answer lies in a variation on the old Catholic maxim "Act as if you have faith and faith will be given to you" -- "Act as if you feel funny and comedy will be given to you."
Maybe it's a start, anyway.
Blather returns Tuesday.
Friday, September 14
No Blather today, except this:Jerry Falwell on this week's events --
News report.
Hear it for yourself.
"Clarification."Question: In what "context" are these remarks anything but loathsome?
Thursday, September 13
No Blather today, except:
Three more ways to make fast, easy donations to disaster relief.
United Way of New York
The Salvation Army
New York City Firefighter, EMS, and Rescue Workers Relief Fund
Wednesday, September 12
No new posts today except this one:
Amazon.com, Paypal and Yahoo PayDirect have set up easy ways to donate to Red Cross disaster relief.
Tuesday, September 11
Hard day to be funny. Blather will be back soon.
Monday, September 10
As predicted in this space back in June -- and man oh man, do I hate being right about this -- the British TV show "Banzai!" has crossed the sea and now airs, in a slightly altered form, on USA Network. If, as the USA web site has it, "YOU NOT KNOW WHAT USA'S BANZAI MOVIE FRIDAY IS?", you're in for a treat. Oh, wait. Not a treat. What's the word... Oh yeah: A nightmare of xenophobic shrillness. USA Network, in typically craven American fashion, offers a half-assed disclaimer about how the show is not intended to insult or offend. Which at least Channel4, the British originator of the show, never felt the need to do. Score one point for them. And enjoy!
Strange Brew links to this site, which makes custom paper dolls to look like you or your children, and calls it "either vaguely creepy or just old-fashioned fun." I know which side I come down on.
Reuters reports that the 101-year-old Queen Mother is "amused" by rumors of her demise. "Absolutely marvelous," she chuckled when an assistant showed her one such recent report. Then, still smiling, she moved with the quickness of a cat to seize the hapless aide in an iron throat-grip, the chuckle never fading from her lips as she squeezed, squeezed, squeezed his miserable life away. Then it was over. The aide's lifeless body hit the floor with a sickening Thud. "Someone clean this mess up," the beloved centenarian snarled, turning smartly on her heel and marching from the room.
Lileks.com has fallen victim to its own success, in the form of crushingly high bandwidth charges. Owner James Lileks has taken down most of the site while he casts around for a solution. (See "The Bleat" for a fuller explanation.) Lileks promises he'll be back at full strength by January, or maybe earlier. In the meantime, buy the book and help support the best pop-culture site on the Web.
Gap executives profess bafflement at much worse-than-expected August sales for the company, which also includes Old Navy and Banana Republic. Investors were likewise perturbed, sending the retailer's shares down 21 percent on Thursday. When stockholders demanded answers, CEO Millard Drexler responded: "Wait. Hang on. I know what it is."
"Mmmmm.... Adrenalizing... " Here's an update on the story about how Starbucks is NOT putting ephedrine in its gloppy, disturbing, sticky-sweet Chai Tea things. The National Football League has just banned the use of ephedra, the herb from which the drug is derived, as a performance enhancer, citing its link to heart attacks, strokes and seizures in otherwise healthy young people. A spokesman for the NFL Players Association was unavailable for comment, as he was carpooling to Starbucks.
"Attention K-Mart shoppers! There's a Blue Light Special... coming RIGHT AT YOU! RUN! RUN! OH, THE HUMANITY!!!"
Sunday, September 9
A suit filed late last week in Los Angeles Superior Court charges that Starbucks has been secretly doping its Chai tea with ephedrine, an amphetamine-like drug that stimulates the heart and central nervous system, since at least 1996. Starbucks, now entering its fourth decade of charging Americans $3.05 for a nickel's worth of espresso and a dime's worth of milk froth, denies the charge: "We put massive doses of anabolic steroids in our Frappuccinos and nobody's ever said a word," according to a company spokesman, speaking from the Starbucks Crisis Bunker deep in a Washington hillside. "There's LSD in every single latte we sell -- nothing. We stick enough ketamine in just one of our iced coffees to kill a good-sized horse -- nothing. And the lethal levels of slugbait in every one of our Pesto/Mozzarella sandwiches... ? Nobody's ever bitched about that. Honestly, this Chai thing has us baffled. We always figured if anybody came for us on the Chais, it'd be because they're sweet enough to make your fillings melt. Which'd be the arsenic, by the way. But ephedrine? Our hands are clean on this one."
Saturday, September 8
I'm only disappointed Goran Ivanisevic didn't reach the U.S. Open finals so we could settle the age-old question: Who plays better, a racist or a homophobe?
I don't know much, but I know this ain't right.
Friday, September 7
From Reuters: "Thai transvestite volleyball players hit the big screen Friday... " Oh man. Again?
If, in a careless moment, you're tempted to blithely refer to the 20 northernmost counties of California as "Northern California" -- which many people apparently do, because they're lazy and sloppy and careless and wrong -- halt right there and reprogram your brain. It's "Upstate California," thank you very much. Regional development officials want you to know this because apparently the latter is good while the former is bad, so shamefully shamefully bad, and not because they are shysters in expensive suits who have to do something to justify their hideously inflated salaries.
Happy 30th birthday to Starbucks.
"Wisconsin -- Come For The Brats; Stay For The Stem Cells!"
Our Federal Government has doubled down to the tune of $2.3 million for a Nevada School of Medicine study on how secondhand smoke affects casino dealers. Next up: a $1.7 million study on how bad string ties affect casino dealers, a $3.6 million dollar study on how loud lounge music affects casino dealers, and a $28.75 million study on how high heels affect Keno girls.
In weird science news, researchers at the University of Wisconsin are working on a way to transmit visual information via the tongue, which is apparently second only to the eye as an efficient receptor of visual stimulus. The lead to this Science News piece tells the story of Marie-Laure Martin, blind since birth, who "had always thought that candle flames were big balls of fire. The 39-year-old woman couldn't see the flames themselves, but she could sense the candle's aura of heat. Last October, she saw a candle flame for the first time. She was stunned by how small it actually was and how it danced. There's a second marvel here: She saw it all with her tongue." Science News also obtained a transcript of Martin's actual remarks, which were as follows:
"AAAAAUUUUUGGGGHHH!!! IT BURNS!!! GET THIS FLAME OFF MY TONGUE!!!!! AAAAAHHHH!!! YES, I CAN SEE IT, BUT MORE TO THE POINT IT IS BURNING MY TONGUE SEVERELY!!!! HELP!!! AAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH!!!! HELP!!!"
In a brutal act of violence, USA Today has summarily cancelled the most brilliant weekly newspaper column in the history of journalism. I'm talking, of course, about Larry King's "It's My Two Cents," the column that gave rise to actual, not-made-up observations like this one: "Dr. Grip's ballpoint pen is the best I've ever used." USAT was apparently so anxious to expunge King's memory that they've even flushed the archive of his columns. They've disappeared him. It's like he never existed. This is a major, major blow to those of us who love and appreciate ego-tripping cluelessness. I just thank God they haven't put the axe to "Whitney Matheson."
Thursday, September 6
The promo for this month's pay-per-view broadcast of WWF "Divas in Hedonism" invites viewers to "let your inhibitions run wild." And man, doesn't that sound good. I can see it now: my shyness out of control, my uneasiness around new people running amok, my lack of adventurousness just going CRAZY!!! Yow! Where do I sign up, baby? Owwwooooo!
Rapper Jay Z. shares some of the ups and downs of hip-hop stardom in Thicke of the Night.
More fun with nuclear waste!: Residents of southern Nevada voiced objections yesterday to a Deparment of Energy proposal to bury 77,000 tons of nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas. A Carson City engineer argued that leaving the waste scattered at 100 sites around the country would be safer, apparently on the theory that it's better to make a lot of people a little sick than it is to make a few people really sick. There was some support for the Yucca Mountain plan, though. A Teamster said "Yucca Mountain is a project that's going to bring jobs," and he wasn't even talking about the health-care industry.
Investors started dumping Amazon.com yesterday like it was going out of style, which maybe it is, handing the giant e-tailer a 20% dip at one point. Analysts are scratching their heads over this, but I think they're over-analyzing. Isn't it possible that folks just had a nice long lazy holiday weekend, returned to their computers all rested and relaxed, and suddenly realized: "I put all my money in what???"
Wednesday, September 5
Fans of Irwin Chusid and Michelle Boule's splendid "Incorrect Music" show on New Jersey's irreplaceable WFMU already know about "Princess Diana, The Musical." The rest of you -- how I envy you the treat you're about to have. Here's a link to a page at CD Baby where you can enjoy some samples and order this extra-special musical tribute for yourself.
Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, who is all about keeping it real, went 1-for-2 today against a repressive legal system. In Miami, charges that he passed illegally while motor-scootering on trendy Ocean Drive were dismissed; on Long Island, though, he was fined an outrageous $350 for chopping down protected sea-grass and blueberry bushes around his $2.5 million Hamptons estate. And they call this justice? You stay strong, young man.
Kind of a slow day around the Reuters offices, I guess.
"Does nuclear waste go with that shake?" A new plan from the Department of Energy ("Squandering America's Future Since 1977") proposes recycling trace amounts of nuclear waste into a variety of consumer products including dental braces, lawn chairs, hip replacements and zippers, the last of which frankly suggests more jokes than I have space for here. The plan, which an anti-nuclear activist describes as, quote, "cockamamie," unquote, will undergo 12 to 18 months of departmental scrutiny before a final decision is made. Hmmm, let's see. On the one hand, we have burial deep in the deepest recesses of a Utah salt mine; on the other hand, the stuff goes into Grandma's hip and little Tiffany's mouth. Yes, these are titanic questions. Let's pray for wisdom at the DOE.
The Mercury News's Jon Fortt uncovers one likely consequence of a Compaq/HP merger -- the end of the PC price war, at least as it exists in retail stores, where most people still buy computers. There's a contrarian argument to be made here, which is that a public that puts up with the lousy selection, ignorant sales help and spotty support record of big brick-and-mortar retailers deserves what they get... But that's probably unkind. In any event, Fortt writes, "Without the HP-Compaq rivalry, the resulting retail store climate might not leave much flexibility for consumers, or for electronics retailers who rely on PC deals to lure shoppers into stores." Dell and Gateway were unavailable for comment, as they were too busy giggling and punching each other in the shoulders.
This is the way a census should be conducted. None of this namby-pamby whining about "Oh, maybe I'll fill out the questionnaire, maybe I won't, it's all so hard and confusing." The Bolivians got it all together, baby, believe you me. It's "Stay in your homes and wait for El Censadero. Violators will be punished." And they know how to do it, too. They got secret Bolivian chokeholds you and I never even seen. And they got a little thing called the "La Paz Lasso"... Well, all I can say is, we could use a little more of that kind of national purpose in this country. We're gettin' soft. Yeah, soft. But you wait. Oh, you just wait. I got a little something in the shed out back for census slackers. Mmm hmm. And that's all I got to say about it right now.
Tuesday, September 4
If Manhattan Timeformations proves anything, it's this: Using advanced cartography and computer animation, you can reduce the most fascinating urban landscape on the planet to a series of indecipherable blips.
According to a study released today by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a majority of middle-school kids prefer the Internet to the library for help with homework. Several reasons were cited, most prominent among them libraries' relatively poor access to vast quantities of free pornography.
Several NATO countries are developing "green bombs," which kill people without unsettling their azaleas. Several more are reported to be working on a successor to the "smart bomb" called the "polite bomb," which not only has the pinpoint accuracy necessary to pilot itself through a targeted door, but will actually knock first.
Web god James Lileks's "Gallery of Regrettable Food" is available for pre-order at Amazon, and it looks to be just bursting with cheesy badness. For a taste, if "taste" is the word I want, here's the online version -- new v.3 for fall!
If it's true that "the quest for light and air... defines life in the modern city," as an historian for the New-York Historical Society has it, then where's Valhalla, Camelot, Oz? Up on the roof. (Requires free New York Times login and password.)
By terrible coincidence, one of the movie channels ran a "Jaws" marathon last night, on the concluding night of a holiday weekend that saw two people killed and one mauled by sharks along the Atlantic coast. At least I think it was a marat
