Say It Ain't So, Floyd

So over the weekend, American cyclist Floyd Landis pulled off a great comeback in Stage 17 of the Tour de France, and then went on to win the race. It was one of those great sports stories where an athlete battles through a painful injury to victory. Or so we thought.

Today, the news has broken that Landis failed a drug test after Stage 17, testing positive for high levels of testosterone. They're going to do a test on another sample, and it could theoretically just be a false positive, but it looks like Landis may soon join the ranks of disgraced cheaters like Rosie Ruiz and the 1919 Black Sox.

What's really amazing is how Landis thought he could get away with it, assuming that he's guilty. I mean, they test these guys' urine samples almost every time they unzip their pants, and they freeze it to test later in case a new "gotcha" test comes up ten years from now. Ask Lance Armstrong. The cycling federation probably has a full freezer of his samples at their headquarters. If you ever go there and they offer you a popsicle, don't take one of the lemon ones.

Well, they never could get Lance, so I'm sure they'll be happy to nail another American to their cross in his place. One of the Europeans will win instead and all will be right with the world.

Say it ain't so, Floyd...

"I'm sorry, kid, I'm afraid it is."

Cool/Not Cool

Cool: Could this be YOUR next car? A Tesla Roadster, an electric sports car that can go up to 250 miles on a single charge and achieve speeds of 130 miles per hour! What's the catch? The price tag (estimated at $100,000+, according to the CBS News story I saw about it the other day) and the fact that you will have to live in California or the New York City, Chicago or Miami metropolitan areas in order to buy one, since that's where the service centers will be, at least initially. But if you're a high roller and live in the right place...

Not Cool: Maybe you saw that snarky MSNBC moonbat Keith Olbermann pulled a juvenile stunt at some TV critics dinner over the weekend, donning a paper mask of FOX News host Bill O'Reilly and then giving the crowd a Nazi salute. Well, Ace at Ace of Spades HQ has Olbermann's number, and that number is "ten":

Top Ten Ways In Which Keith Olbermann Alleges Bill O'Reilly Is Just Like Hitler

Perfect, Ace!

Kiwis to Cop: Don't Give Up Your Day Job, Honey

Funny story of the day:

Cop's Night Job As Hooker Is Nixed

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A New Zealand policewoman has been censured for some unauthorized "undercover" work - a stint moonlighting as a prostitute - but is being allowed to keep her day job after giving up the night duties.

While prostitution is legal in New Zealand and police are allowed to take approved second jobs, a top officer said sex work and police work don't mix.

...

A spokeswoman for the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective said that depending on the brothel in which she worked, the police officer could have earned 500 New Zealand dollars (US$312) on a busy night.

Had she heard of other police officers moonlighting as sex workers?

"We have law students that are sex workers, we have doctors that are sex workers, I mean anyone can be a sex worker," the woman said, asking that she not be named due to the sensitive nature of her job.

The "New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective"? Brings a whole new meaning to the jingle "Look For the Union Label", doesn't it?

The Long View

I'm annoyed, because this post has gotten munched twice, either by Blogger or more likely by Internet Explorer. I've REALLY got to download Firefox and give IE the heave-ho.

I'm reading Collapse by Jared Diamond, which is about "how societies choose to fail or succeed" in dealing with environmental issues like climate change, deforestation, soil and water depletion, pollution, etc. One recurring theme in the book is how societies settle in places where they can thrive when the climate is optimal, but where they may not be able to survive when the climate changes.

The Norse settlements in Greenland are a perfect example of this. The Norse settled there around 1000 A.D. when the climate was warmer than it is now, but died out when the climate became much colder in the 1300s. Another example is the Anasazi tribes of the American Southwest, who thrived when rain was plentiful, but died out during a prolonged drought, which recurred in that area on a multi-decadal cycle.

We are not well-equipped to discern those kind of long-term patterns. We see things as they are and we believe, deep down in our gut, that they have always been that way and more importantly, should always remain that way. We see the coastline and see it as something permanent, never mind the occasional hurricane that rearranges a barrier island or two. We see the continents and think of them as fixed and immutable, not as drifting around and even bumping into each other.

But the Himalayas continue to grow higher, and the northern portion of the North American continent also rises a little bit every year, because it is still rebounding from the crushing weight of the ice sheets that melted away more than ten-thousand years ago. The world is not in a state of stasis, nor has it ever been. The climate is always constantly changing between warm and cold, wet and dry. Nothing stays the same; everything is cyclical.

This all crystallized for me yesterday when I read a comment on another blog about the Middle East situation, which noted "After all, we are in a 'Fourth Turning' now." That brought to mind that book, The Fourth Turning, which I read back in 1996. It was eerily prescient:

The Fourth Turning offers this bold prophecy:

Just after the millennium, America will enter a new era that will culminate with a crisis comparable to the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II. The survival of the nation will almost certainly be at stake.

Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history as a series of recurring 80- to 100-year cycles. Each cycle has four "turnings"-a High, an Awakening, an Unraveling, and a Crisis. The authors locate today's America as midway through an Unraveling, roughly a decade away from the next Crisis (or Fourth Turning). And they recommend ways Americans can prepare for what's ahead, as a nation and as individuals

You might find their web site interesting, since it has several excerpts from the book. And again, nothing stays the same. Everything is cyclical.

This and That

Name spotted in the mail last night: Jo King. And no, I'm not...

I watched the Shuttle land on television a little while ago. I was hoping to be able to see it come in over us from the southwest, but all we got was the loud double sonic boom as it crossed overhead. I went outside and looked, but not so much as a contrail. I was just glad that it made it down okay.

Fox News has a new musical theme for their "Mideast Turmoil" graphic. It's more ominous and foreboding than the martial drumbeat music they have been using whenever the Israelis and the Arabs are in conflict, although that's just my impression from one hearing. (Update: It might have been a one-off thing. They're back to the martial drumbeat music now.)

Yeah, it's a slow news day here.

I'm just watching the news to see what's going on with the war. I read an analysis on OPFOR called "Prepping the Battlespace," and it's well worth reading for anyone who wants to understand what is really going on. The comments on that post are also interesting to any would-be military analysts.

Hell In A Handbasket

I was going to write at length about the scourge of Muslim terrorism, but you probably already know how I feel about it and I've already vented in the comments of several other blogs. Short and sweet: Israel needs to kick some serious ass, going all the way to Damascus and Tehran, since that's the source of the current shitstorm swirling around the Middle East. As Machiavelli said, it's better to be feared than loved, and since nobody is going to love Israel (or the United States), then it's best that their enemies know that attacks on their citizens will be met with overwhelming punishment. Go get 'em, Israel. Mazel tov!

Be Careful What You Wish For

I saw in the news that a Texas judge has denied the Republican party's request to replace former Rep. Tom DeLay, who resigned his seat in June, on the ballot for November's Texas 22nd congressional district election, since DeLay won the Republican primary earlier in the year. The Democrats wanted his name to remain on the ballot, thinking it would give them an easy win in November. They should think again.

They think they've driven the stake through the vampire's heart. They think they've slain the dragon. They should think again.

All they've done is rile up the Republicans who make up the majority of the voters in the Texas 22nd district. A lot of them are going to resent the Democrats' tactics here, and they'll go out and vote for DeLay just to spit in the eye of those who say they should vote for the Democrat or not vote at all. The man in that article who says that he would have been undecided until the judge's ruling but will now vote for DeLay is a perfect example of pure Texas orneriness.

I think it's going to come back and bite the Democrats in the butt. They were rid of DeLay, he'd already moved out of state, and all they needed to do was run their candidate against an unknown Republican without the advantages of incumbency. Instead, it looks like they'll get a reinvigorated Tom DeLay who will be cast as a sympathetic figure, not as an ethically-challenged career politician. And truth to tell, he's certainly no worse than Senator Harry "Fight Club" Reid (D-Nevada), the minority leader of the Senate, or Representative William "Cold Hard Cash" Jefferson (D-Louisiana) or Representative Alan "Ethics, Shmethics" Mollohan (D-West Virginia). And I won't even mention the latest Pardongate allegations involving the Rodham and Clinton families (although I will say the Latin phrase "quid pro quo").

The dragon wasn't dead, only wounded, and the would-be dragonslayers capering around what they thought was a corpse may be about to get a very nasty surprise. I hope that DeLay roasts them good, just so that I can listen to the Democrats scream.

At the Movies

I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest yesterday, like a lot of people did over the weekend. I went to an 11:15 a.m. showing, and our theater was probably about 3/4 full.

If you've read the reviews, you probably know that they're mixed. Some reviewers thought it was too long, some didn't like the cliffhanger ending that requires you to go back next year and plunk down more money, and some though the movie was hard to follow, especially some of the dialogue and plot points. I thought the movie was pretty good, and if you saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl and liked it, then you're probably already planning to see it.

Warning: If you didn't see the first movie, don't make the same mistake as Slate movie reviewer Dana Stevens, who went to PotC: DMC and didn't like it, and freely admits in her review that she didn't see the first one.

Man, it's too bad that there's no way to have movies on DVD or something like that, so you could watch them at home. Oh, wait, there is such a thing, isn't there? C'mon, Dana, you're a journalist. How about doing a little background research and watching PotC: CotBP first, so that you actually understood what was going on in the second movie?

It's kind of like going to see The Empire Strikes Back without seeing Star Wars first. And indeed, it's a similar situation, because it was only the success of the first movie of each trilogy that led to the second and third movies being made. You can't start a trilogy by watching the middle part first, if you want to understand who the characters are and why they are doing what they are doing. So see PotC: CotBP first, if you haven't already, or don't waste your money.

Anyway, back to PotC: DMC: It is, indeed, rather long at 2 hours, 30 minutes run time, but it's such a thrill ride that the time passes quickly. Be sure to take care of any necessary restroom visit before the movie starts, and don't order the super-jumbo sized drink, even though it's only 50 cents more than the small drink. Your bladder will thank you.

All of your favorite characters from the first movie appear in this sequel, including one at the very end that I was not expecting to see. Spoiler warning: Highlight white area to reveal hidden text, if you want to know who it is. Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), the villain who apparently was killed at the end of the first movie, but shows up in the final scene of PotC: DMC.

The verdict: It succeeds as a summer action/adventure movie, and it sets the stage for what will likely be my next visit to the movie theater to see the next part of the story around Memorial Day weekend, 2007. I don't really like going to the movies, since people's heads are in the way, etc. I've been spoiled by DVDs, which allow me to see the whole screen, pause the movie if I want to deal with something else momentarily, etc. There are, however, some movies you really do want to experience on the big screen, and this is one of them.

By Their Steps Shall Ye Know Them

You can generally tell how evil a nation's government is by the way their soldiers march while on parade. If their soldiers are goose-stepping, the odds are pretty good that they are also oppressing and killing their own people, as well as anyone else they can. North Korea, the former regime in Iraq, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany... All goose-steppers. American soldiers, by contrast, don't goose-step.

There are exceptions to the rule, of course. I saw some footage on television of Palestinian terrorists marching down the street, and not only were they not goose-stepping, most of them were completely out of step, which was hilarious to watch. They're not military professionals, just thugs and goons, and they have to use bombs to kill people because they usually can't hit anything with rifle fire. Well, they can hit the air when they fire their guns up in the air to celebrate a terrorist attack, but that's about it.

So that's the corollary to the "Goose-steppers are evil" rule: "People in pseudo-military uniforms (and ski masks! Don't forget the ski masks!) who can't march in step are evil, too."

Short and Sweet

North Korean Missiles: Looks like Kim Jong Il needs some of Rush Limbaugh's Viagra. When you can't keep it up for longer than 40 seconds, you have a problem.

Islamists in Somalia Shoot, Kill Two Soccer Fans: You know a country is a real armpit of the world when the anarchist warlords they used to have are a better, kinder form of government than what they have now.

Turning 60 Today: President Bush and Sylvester Stallone. Really! They both share the same birthday. July 6, 1946 was a good day for the cowboy-Rambo types.

Not Peachy Keen

Offered without comment:

Little Mr. Apricot Flips Off Crowd, Loses Title

It was another weekend of royalty in Patterson, and the parade queens were on their best behavior.

“I would never do it, it’s not queen worthy,” said one of the queens.

What she's talking about is what happened last month at the Apricot festival, when the newly-crowned Little Mr. Apricot, 4-year old Matthew Burgos, raised his middle finger to the crowd!

One For the Ladies

I called my mom yesterday afternoon and we had a nice conversation. She mentioned that she had gone to Boston recently for a Microsoft conference, and then she regaled me with an anecdote which I know that my female readers will probably appreciate. This isn't word-for-word, but it's close enough:

"You might not find this amusing, but I did," she told me. "Most of the people attending the conference were men, probably between 80-90%, which reflects the ratio of men to women in the IT field. Well, during the breaks, when people would head to the restrooms, there were long lines coming out the door of the men's restroom but no lines at all for the women's! In fact, I probably never saw more than a couple of other women in the restroom at all. It was an interesting turnabout from the usual situation."

The Road Not Taken

The road to Titusville, to be exact. I had been planning to drive up there yesterday for the possible shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Center, but when I read the weather reports on Friday, I realized that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to go. The weather predictions were for a 60% chance of thunderstorms and anvil clouds in the vicinity, which would scrub the launch. Given that it's a 200-mile drive each way, a seven-hour drive round trip, and about a dozen gallons of gas, those odds just weren't good enough. I'm willing to invest all of that for a couple of minutes of close-up sound and fury if the shuttle actually goes up, but for a scrubbed launch...

Anyway, sure enough, the launch was postponed by the weather, so I felt vindicated for making the right decision. I still want to see a shuttle launch, though. It just needs to be in the winter or spring when the weather is more pleasant and predictable, and on one of my days off. Maybe someday.

Not Ready To Make Nice With the Dixie Chicks

When my dad and I got together for lunch a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the new Dixie Chicks CD, as well as the challenges they are facing in getting their fans to show up for concerts in "red states" after their recent comments. I made pretty clear my disdain for Natalie Maines' airheaded "Why do we need to be patriotic?" buffoonery. My dad likes their music, however, even if he doesn't necessarily agree with their Bush-hating political views.

I mentioned that I had a gift picked out for him for Fathers' Day, but that it wouldn't come out until July 4th, and that if there was a book or a DVD or a CD that he would like, to let me know. He said he'd think about it.

I called him a few days later on his birthday and asked him if he'd decided on anything he wanted, and he then told me that he would like the new Dixie Chicks CD.

"Okay," I told him evenly, "if that's what you want, that's what I'll get for you."

I called him again a few days after that to set up a lunch date for this past Friday. I told him that I'd gotten the CD for him and would bring it with me.

"Did it bother you to buy it?" he asked. "I mean, I didn't really mean it to be some sort of test or anything like that. I only realized it might sound that way after I asked for it."

"Dad, it was no problem," I told him. "I love my dad more than I loathe their politics. I didn't really think of it as financially supporting them as much as getting something for you that you wanted. And I bought it at Wal-Mart, which I'm sure that the Dixie Chicks would disapprove of."

He chuckled and offered to let me listen to the CD if I wanted. I told him that I'd pass.

"Yo Ho, Yo Ho..."

"...A pirate's life for me!"

Spotted some advertising postcards in the mail from a company in Pennsylvania named Channel Craft, which sells American-made toys and games. Surprisingly enough, there still are some out there.

Anyway, this flyer was going to a gift shop in Naples and offered pirate-themed merchandise, which is going to be very timely and very hot in about a week when Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest comes out in theaters. That's the only movie that I absolutely must see this summer. I like the Pirate Flags, and told my partner on the machine that we needed the "Pirates For Hire" one for our machine.

"When the Going Gets Weird...

...the weird turn pro," to quote the late Hunter S. Thompson. And it doesn't get much weirder than this:

Axl Rose Allegedly Bites Security Guard

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose was arrested in Stockholm early Tuesday after allegedly biting a security guard in the leg outside his hotel, police said.

Rose _ who performed in the Swedish capital on Monday evening _ was being held on suspicion of attacking and threatening the guard, as well as causing damage to the Berns Hotel where the alleged scuffle took place, police spokeswoman Towe Hagg said.

Hagg told The Associated Press that Rose was intoxicated during the confrontation, which broke out around 8 a.m., and would face questioning after he sobers up.

"He was deemed too intoxicated to be questioned right away," she said.

I'm shocked, shocked! Well, no, not really. But I thought Axl was in Guns N' Roses, not the Fine Young Cannibals! Although "She Drives Me Crazy" seems to fit as the background music, since Axl was said to have had an altercation with a woman at the hotel before the security guard became involved, according to another news story I read. I went to the Aftonbladet site, but unless you can read Swedish, you're outta luck there. No English language site, unlike those nice folks at the Norwegian paper in Oslo.

Not Politically Correct

I saw a postcard at work on Monday that was sheer marketing genius. It was for a restaurant that's trying to become a restaurant chain. At present, they are only in Tempe, Arizona, but their goal is to go national. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Heart Attack Grill.

The concept: A simple menu of hamburgers (up to Quadruple Bypass Burger size!), Flatliner Fries (fried in pure lard) and either soda or beer, served in a pseudo-medical setting by personnel dressed as doctors and sexy nurses. Their target demographic: The Alpha Male. Now that is a great T-shirt, isn't it?

Now, the PC food Nazis would hate this whole concept. "Red meat! Bad for you! Fried food! Bad for you! Alchohol! Bad for you! Smirking at political correctness! REALLY bad for you! Off to the re-education camps with you!" That alone would be reason enough to eat there if you ever made it to Tempe, or if the Heart Attack Grill expands to your area.

I'll say it again: Sheer marketing genius. I wish these guys good luck.

And She Didn't Look A Day Over 150!

In the news, Harriet the tortoise has died at about age 176. Now, 176 years is a good long run, far longer than you or I will likely get, even with the advances in medicine and longevity therapies. However, the drawbacks are that to live that long, you have to eat a monotonous diet of leaves and you never get to move faster than about 0.01 miles per hour under your own power. And there's that shell. (Long) life is full of little trade-offs.

Still, it's interesting to think about all of the history that tortoise saw (or didn't see) in her long lifetime. It's believed that she was studied by Charles Darwin himself, before being taken to Australia. In 1830, about the time when Harriet was hatched, Andrew Jackson wasn't on the $20 bill, he was in the White House. The U.S. population in 1830 was less than 13 million; today, we're closing in on 300 million. Harriet lived through a lot of changes.

Spotted In the Mail

A name addressed on a letter: Pamela Phillipe. Off by one letter. Barbara will understand. The rest of you won't, unless you've read Ken Grimwood's novel Replay. Considering that I just re-read that book last weekend, it seemed a trifle odd.

(And if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. Get thee to thy local library or to Amazon.com!)

Tea and Artwork

First things first: I am not a tea drinker. It's a taste that I've never acquired. However, on the off chance that tea is one of your drinks of choice, I will tell you about an advertising postcard I spotted in the mail last night for The Republic of Tea. It announced the availability of the Darjeeling Nouveau, a prized tea "plucked on April 2, 2006 from the famed Thurbo Garden, which is set amongst the rolling, verdant hills of the Nepalese Darjeeling border." Since I'm not familiar with the nuances of gourmet tea, I probably wouldn't be able to tell it from Lipton Instant Tea mix. It's not cheap; it runs $19 for a 3.5 ounce tin, or $77 per pound. It was the poster artwork on the tin that caught my eye, however. If you click on the "View Larger" window on that second link, you can get a better view of it. What's the woman's name? I'm guessing Eleanor Rigby, and that her face is still in the jar by the door.

If you are a tea fancier, then by all means take a look at their web site. Alas, it's wasted on me. I'll just have a Cherry Diet Coke instead.

"Someone's Been Eating MY Porridge..."

And there he is! Bear Eats Oatmeal in Woman's Kitchen

WEST VANCOUVER, British Columbia - It was a real-life version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears - only in reverse - when a woman came home to find a young bear eating oatmeal in her kitchen.

The bear apparently entered through an open sliding glass door, broke a ceramic food container and started eating, West Vancouver police Sgt. Paul Skelton said.

The bear was allowed to finish his meal and then he left. I found the final paragraph interesting as well:

Skelton said bears in the suburbs north of Vancouver have been coming out of hibernation as hungry as ever but later than usual but this spring because of a heavier than normal snowpack from the winter. The report Thursday was one of six complaints police said they received about bears in the area that day.

Um... I thought Al Gore told us that we were all going to die from global warming. How can there be "heaver than normal snowpack" if global warming is actually occurring? Inquiring minds want to know.

Another Instant Karma Story

After having lunch with my dad yesterday, I was driving home along the back streets. There were a couple of pickup trucks in front of me, and all three of us turned right onto an intersecting street. A motorcyclist coming from the opposite direction turned in behind us. He wasn't wearing a helmet, but did have on a black billed sun visor.

Well, you know how some motorcyclists are: They have no regard for silly traffic rules like speed limits, lanes, stuff like that. And even though we all were going a few miles over the speed limit in front of him, by God, he was in a HURRY and he was going to whip past us. So he did, roaring away noisily.

"Not too smart, dude," I said aloud, knowing that people who drive like that are an accident waiting to happen. Of course, I don't have a high regard for the intelligence of a cyclist riding without a helmet anyway. They don't call it a "brain bucket" for nothing.

And then it happened: I saw something small and black fly up in the air, then tumble to the ground, skittering on the road between the wheels of the truck in front of me. The speeding motorcyclist's visor had blown off his head! I laughed aloud and quickly resisted the split-second impulse to "accidentally" run over it. A couple of blocks ahead, the now headgear-less biker turned in on a side street and was turning around to go back and retrieve his cap. I chuckled as I drove past him.

Although it was mild, it was still "instant karma." I suspect, however, that the cyclist learned nothing from the incident, other than to keep his head down so the bill of his visor didn't catch the wind.

Friday, Friday

"Can't trust that day..." Usually Friday is a pretty good day, but today was the Friday from Hell. It was a Murphy's Law kind of day, when nothing went right, and in the end, it just showed that Murphy was an optimist. Between equipment malfunctions, poor quality mail and general time-wasting required activities, it was a bad day. Fortunately, it is over now, and I can enjoy my weekend. I'm getting together with my dad for lunch tomorrow to celebrate Father's Day a day early. We originally were going to have lunch on Sunday, but decided that the wait at the restaurant would likely be shorter tomorrow, rather than on Sunday when everyone and their father will be out there. And we don't like to wait...

Slogging Through the Week

Thursday: Done. Four down, one to go. I was kind of surprised that my regular partner was back from his vacation. I wasn't sure if he had one more week or not. We had a chance to catch up on all of the recent good news (Zarqawi's demise, the Rove non-indictment, etc.). We disagreed on the news story from Texas about the 25-year-old female teacher who faces up to 20 years in prison for having sex with an 18-year-old male student. I felt that while it was unethical, and probably a fireable offense, it should not be a crime because both participants were consenting adults. He thought that she had abused her situation of authority and should serve jail time, although much less than 20 years.

He also told me an interesting story about his trip through the coastal area of the Carolinas, where he saw a bunch of stands along the side of the road (Highway 17 north of Charleston) where elderly black women were weaving baskets from the local grasses. My helpful search engine pointed me to articles about Gullah sweetgrass basket weaving, which told me that the baskets are among the oldest forms of African-American art, and the tradition has been passed down through generations. Whole families often take part, with the men and boys obtaining the sweetgrass from the coastal areas, while the women and girls weave the baskets. The Gullah people of South Carolina (and some areas of Georgia) are direct descendents of African slaves brought to the area to grow rice, and still speak their own language which combines English and African words. The basketmaking is threatened by urban development, which makes it much more difficult to obtain the sweetgrass necessary to make the baskets.

You learn something new every day.

Some Days...

...you have a lot to say. Some days you don't. Some days you're just happy thinking about someone else reading the news and gritting her teeth when she sees that Karl Rove won't be indicted for anything.

Mmmmmmmmm, schadenfreude!

Zarqawi's Dead, Third Draft

I got the good news at 4:00 a.m. while I was at lunch: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, aka "The Zarkster," was killed in an overnight bombing raid. My response was a loud "Woohoo!" that echoed through the nearly-empty break room. Normally I'm not the sort of person who would take pleasure in the death of others, but in the case of an evil terrorist like the Zarkster, I'm willing to make an exception, much as I did for Yasser Arafat when he died. Some people actively work to make the world a better place, but others can only do so by leaving it.

Good riddance, and I hope that all 72 of his virgins look like Helen Thomas.

By the way, if I was responsible for the Zarkster's final arrangements, I'd put his corpse in a cage in Firdos Square in Baghdad, with the bars wide enough to piss through, and I'd let everyone in Iraq who wants to piss on his body come and do so. After about three days or so, I'd send someone in with a mask and gloves to remove the body from the cage, then sew it up in the untanned hide of a freshly slaughtered hog. I'd then wrap the body with about a hundred pounds or so of chains, then take it up in a helicopter and fly over the Persian Gulf and dump it at sea so that there would be no shrine for the Islamists to visit.

Zarqawi's Dead, Second Draft

No, he's not "pining for the fjords..." Zarqawi is definitely an ex-parrot!

"It's not pinin', it's passed on! This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace, if you hadn't nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies! It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!"

Zarqawi's Dead, First Draft

"I love the smell of dead terrorists in the morning; it smells like victory!"

One More Thought For Today

I've got the latest version of Windows XP, with the new Media Player. There's a new visualization for the music player called G-Force, and it's better than any of the old ones. I mean, this is seriously cool looking. I imagine that the Haight-Ashbury stoners of the '60s would have given their right arms to be able to watch something like this gyrating to the music. Well, maybe not, but stoned people are easily fooled.

Nothing From Nothing

If you recognize that song title, you probably already know that Billy Preston died yesterday of kidney failure after being in a coma for several months. He was 59. You'd probably also recognize "Will It Go Round In Circles" if you heard it. Preston played some with the Beatles on "Abbey Road" and "Let It Be." He also appeared in the campy Bee Gees/Peter Frampton movie "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," singing "Get Back" in a gold suit. Hey, it was the '70s. Be kind. I liked his music and I think it's sad that he died so young. Rest in peace, Billy.

Thought for the day: If it's raining hard enough, it doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference whether you have an umbrella or not. Well, your head and shoulders will stay dry, anyway. And hey, you're not made of sugar candy, so you won't melt. The rest of you will dry off in time. Wet shoes and pant legs: This too shall pass.

Saw a letter last night with the return addressee being "Jesse James." It was going to someone else with the last name James in one of our local jails. Funny; you'd think that Jesse would have been the one in stir. I mean, what were his parents thinking?! Giving a kid a name like that is just setting him up for a life of crime. It's kind of like naming your daughter "Chastity," and then being surprised when she ends up being either a stripper, a nun or a lesbian.

Strip-Mining Psychedelia

You have a Target commercial and Alice Cooper's late night radio show to thank for this post. It's about psychedelic music from the 1960s and the power of the Internet. Let's begin.

The other night, I was watching television and a Target commercial came on, and like many commercials these days, it had a clip of retro music for those of us old enough to remember it. For the young, it's all new, of course. The song was "The Shape of Things to Come," and I was pretty sure that it was from the period of about 1967-69, because of the psychedelic sound. Now, I had no idea who the singer was, but through the magic of Google, I quickly found out that while the song had been covered by the Ramones and Slade, the original version, which was used in the commercial, was by Max Frost and the Troopers. Even more interesting, the song came from the 1968 movie "Wild in the Streets"; it was one of those kooky movies that was kind of like "Logan's Run" on magic mushrooms, without the groovy uniforms. The voting age gets lowered to 15, the squares get "retired" at 30 and sent off to camps for perpetual acid trips. Really.

Later that night, I was listening to Alice's radio show on the way to work. Every night, he digs something classic out of the vaults. This particular night, it was a song I recognized, but not the version I heard. Now, if you listened to rock music in the 1980s, you're probably familiar with the Hooters, and might even have a copy of their "Nervous Night" CD stashed away someplace. One of the songs on it was "She Comes In Colors." That was the song that Alice was playing, but not their version. Instead, this was obviously a late '60s psychedelic version featuring a singer with a weedy voice and a some kind of weirdly annoying pipe/flute accompaniment. It was one of those songs that you listen to it and think, "Man, it must have sounded a lot better to them when they were stoned." An Amazon search told me that this was probably the version of the song by the band Love.

The amazing thing about both of these songs is the amount of information I could find on them via the Internet. All you need is an identifiable line from the lyrics and you have a pretty good chance of finding out what the song is and who sang it. We live in interesting times, if you can survive the information overload.

More This & That

Funniest thing I read yesterday: An interview in Britain's left-wing newspaper The Independent with an American rocker, hunter and firearms enthusiast: Ted Nugent: Off his rocker? The interviewer was a typical left-wing vegetarian type, and not surprisingly, they didn't see eye-to-eye. Best line:

"What do these deer think when they see you coming?" I ask him. "Here comes the nice guy who puts out our dinner? Or, there's the man that shot my brother?"

"I don't think they're capable of either of those thoughts, you Limey asshole. They're only interested in three things: the best place to eat, having sex and how quickly they can run away. Much like the French."

Bwahahahaha!

Then there's this somewhat related story I spotted in yesterday's USA Today: Amnesty program takes stab at UK's 'knife culture'

"When knives are outlawed, only outlaws will have knives." Then they'll take away those dangerous forks ("You could put somebody's eye out with that!"), then figure out that spoons can be sharpened into shanks and thus must also be banned, and then Bob's your uncle, everyone in Britain will be back to eating Henry the VIIIth style, with their hands. Really, it sounds almost like something that Monty Python would have come up with.

We had a mailing today from a Florida Democrat politician. I won't name him, since I don't want to give him any kind of plug, but his initials are R.S. The odd thing about this large-sized postcard mailing is that while it extols how much he has fought against "right-wing Republicans" and "right-wing extremists" and for "Democratic priorities" (code for "electing our people so that WE can divvy up the political spoils instead of those nasssty Republicansses! We hatess them, Precioussss! We hatess them forever!"), at no point on either side of the postcard does he tell us what office he is running for! Congress? Governor? Dogcatcher? We don't know, he doesn't say! He's just offering "Democratic leadership for Florida." No thanks, R.S. I don't trust a fellow who won't even tell me what he's running for.

Also, he claims credit for "spearheading the closing the notorious Florida boot camps and opposing physical abuse or psychological intimidation of juveniles." Sorry, R.S., but you are way wrong on this one. This isn't little Bobby or Suzy from the middle school who didn't turn in his homework or forgot to return her library book. These are BAD kids, on the road to a life of adult crime, and I don't have ANY problem with a little psychological intimidation of the little darlings (although killing them is going over the line). It's called "scared straight," R.S. Get with the program.

Early Morning Movie Time

Sometimes I'm a bit late to the party. In this case, we're talking about "Walk the Line," the 2005 Johnny Cash/June Carter biopic. I borrowed the DVD from my dad the other day and finally got around to watching it this morning, along with the extra material on the second disc. All I can say is that Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon sold me. I think they really captured the spirit of Johnny and June. I liked the movie and I thought their musical performances were top-notch as well. Well worth watching.

What I'm Reading

I could write about what an irritating day it was at work, but we'll just take that as having been read into the record and let it go at that. The folly of unrealistic expectations on dispatch times and the reality of high volumes of mail had a ugly collision. You know what they say about "shit in one hand, wish in the other, see which one fills up first." Hint: It wasn't the "wish" hand.

I'm currently reading S.M. Stirling's "The Protector's War," which I picked up at the library on Friday. I only have if for two weeks, since it's a new book, so I'll have to read it quickly. I also got John M. Barry's "The Great Influenza," which is about the flu pandemic of 1918. Given all the talk about bird flu, it's a topical book. I'd spotted it at the book store a while back and put it on hold at the library. Fortunately, I got it for four weeks, so I can wait to start it until I finish the book I'm reading now.

I also recently read "Pox Americana" by Elizabeth A. Fenn, which is about the smallpox pandemic of 1775-1782. You've probably never heard anything about it, but then, there were other things happening during those years. Probably the most interesting thing in reading about smallpox was how common (and deadly) it was, and how those who'd already been exposed to it were at a distinct advantage to those who hadn't. Smallpox was endemic in Britain, and most British soldiers and sailors had already had the disease. In the colonies, however, smallpox had a tendency to crop up in epidemics spaced about twenty years apart. The previous epidemic was during the French and Indian war in the 1750s. Mortality from smallpox was very high in the Continental Army until George Washington had all of his men inoculated with the disease, which was a process that gave them a milder form of the malady. Smallpox also killed large numbers of Loyalists who fought alongside the British, including many escaped black slaves who died in appalling numbers from the disease.

I guess it shows how postmodern we are, in that we worry about dying from causes like heart disease or stroke rather than from infectious diseases. It's not that such diseases aren't a threat to us, because new ones crop up every so often, but we personally have never witnessed a pandemic that puts the whole population at risk. We don't worry about smallpox or cholera or typhus or the Black Death or tuberculosis, and certainly not about the measles or mumps. And yet, when the Spaniards came to the New World in the early 1500s, all of those diseases burned through the Indian population of the Americas like fire through dry grass. The smallpox epidemic of 1775-1782 went a long way toward depopulating North America and setting the stage for American (and Canadian) expansion to the west. It was a fascinating, morbid read.

He's Baaaaaaack!

My new computer arrived Tuesday afternoon. I'm still in the process of getting things set up properly. It's going to be a time-consuming task, I'm afraid. My new XPS 600 is a behemoth; its footprint is much larger than my old desktop computer, in all three dimensions. It's very fast, it runs "Oblivion" beautifully, and the black-and-silver case looks cool (I can change the jewel-tone color of the light on the front; the default is Sapphire blue, but there's also Ruby, Emerald, Amber, Amethyst, Topaz (a light blue) and Diamond -- Current setting is Emerald). It's all new except for my old 18" flat panel digital monitor. I really don't have room on my computer desk for a larger one anyway, and they start getting pricier when they get bigger. It does mean that I'm limited to a 1280 x 1024 screen resolution, even though my graphics card could go even higher. However, when I run "Oblivion" at 1280 x 1024 with all of the bells and whistles turned on, it looks great!

More thoughts later. Just thought I'd let you know that I'm back in business here.

Twenty-Five Years Ago Today...

I was on a flight to Philadelphia, en route to basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey. On the landing, we came through a thick dark layer of clouds into a steady rain. Depressing. That summed up my next six weeks. It's hard to believe that it's been that long ago, but the calendar doesn't lie.

I can't say that I have fond memories of New Jersey. Fort Dix was a rough place; even the chaplains snarled at you. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one. Ironically, my military career also ended at Fort Dix, where I outprocessed on my way home from Berlin in 1989. It was much nicer being there as a sergeant than it was as a buck-private.

My memories of basic training aren't that sharp, since it isn't something I've thought much about in a long time. That's human nature, of course. We don't dwell on unpleasant experiences. Mostly, I remember that several of the guys in my platoon were screw-ups, and so we never got an off-post pass while I was there, unlike some other platoons. I never got to experience the pleasures of fabled Wrightstown, alas. The worst screw-up was a guy from Panama named Laguna, who spent a lot of time pumping out pushups while saying, "One drill saryen', two drill saryen', three drill saryen'..."

Anyway, today I'll raise a glass to the memory of my younger self, setting out on what seemed like a great adventure...

What I'm Reading

Since I'm currently between gaming computers, I have a lot of time to read. I didn't read yesterday, though; instead, I caught up on my sleep. I have almost finished Scott Turow's latest novel (from 2005), "Ordinary Heroes." Most of Turow's books are legal dramas that take place in courtrooms. This one, however, is more of a World War II novel, and it's a fascinating story. The big plot twist at the end didn't surprise me; I saw it coming. I won't tell you what it is here, since you might choose to read the book and I wouldn't want to spoil it for you.

My next project, once I finish this book, will be to find a copy of S.M. Stirling's "The Protector's War" at the library. That book is the sequel to "Dies the Fire", and is the second book of a trilogy, with the third book due out this fall. I bought "Dies the Fire" on my birthday when I had some time to kill at a book store before meeting my dad for lunch. I saw "The Protector's War" (in hardback) and thought it looked interesting, then noted that it was a sequel. I wondered if I could find the first book, turned around and looked at the paperbacks across the aisle and lo and behold, there it was. "Dies the Fire" is an apocalyptic book with a very interesting premise: What happens to the world if electricity, internal combustion and explosives suddenly stop working, permanently? The answer is, a lot of people die, and the few survivors live in a new dark age. It was one of those books that was hard to put down. I stopped at the library last Friday to check on the sequel, but it wasn't on the shelf. However, there were about a dozen copies of Turow's book. Having read most of his other novels, that looked like an adequate substitute.

Disaster Strikes

I'm blogging from my ancient laptop computer, which I haven't used in about three years. Why? Because my desktop computer's hard drive crashed and burned yesterday. The computer doesn't even recognize it as being present. This is a very bad thing. I had seriously considered getting a new computer a few weeks back. Today, I ordered one, but it will take about ten days to two weeks for me to get it. Until then, I have this underpowered POS.

The new computer is a Dell XPS 600, with an Intel Pentium D 95o 3.4 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, an Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX 512 MB 3D graphics card, a 5.1 Dolby surround sound speaker set... You get the idea. This thing is gonna be one screamer of a gaming rig. The only thing I didn't get was a new monitor, since my old 18.1" digital flat panel was just fine. That saved me a hundred bucks, but it still set me back a pretty penny. You get what you pay for.

He's Running for WHAT?

The other day, I got an e-mail from Steve Beren, one of the guys in my Strat-O-Matic computer baseball league. He was telling the league that he might need someone to manage his games for him for a while, because he is running for Congress! He's running as the Republican candidate against a Democrat incumbent in Washington state's 7th District, which includes King County (Seattle). The incumbent, Jim McDermott, is a real loony-left liberal type, and unfortunately for Steve, Rep. McDermott probably represents the views of most of his constituents fairly accurately, since King County is only marginally more conservative than Berkeley, California. I wished him good luck, but told him that I was a bit pessimistic, since King County was the place that kept adding dead people and homeless people to the voter rolls in the Democrats' successful series of recounts that finally "elected" Christine Gregoire as Washington's governor in 2004. Yes, the dead vote in places other than Chicago!

On the off chance that any of my readers happen to reside in western Washington, here is the link to Steve's web site, so you can see his positions on the issues.

Steve Beren for Congress

Fire News

Two of the five big fires in Lehigh Acres yesterday were about three miles south of me. The fires combined burned about 2000 acres and 25 homes. They've arrested a couple of stupid 10-year-old boys for arson, and they're going to arrest a third kid. I hope they throw the book at them. I'd sure hate to be their parents, because they'll probably be sued into bankruptcy.

The winds have died down today. Yesterday was really, really windy. That and the dryness of the vegetation are the main reasons that the fires got so big. April is usually our driest month, and most places haven't gotten more than a trace of rainfall all month. May is the transition into the rainy season, and it really can't get here soon enough.

Intense Dark

The latest trendy item on the candy aisle at the store is gourmet dark chocolate. It is, after all, a health food, high in anti-oxidants and other things that are good for you. Like dark beer, dark chocolate is an acquired taste; I've picked them both up over the years.

The bars are large and segmented, meant to be broken into pieces and savored over more than one sitting. They brag about their high percentage of cacao; Ghirardelli's Twilight Delight crows about its 72% cacao content. Other Ghirardelli dark chocolate flavors include Espresso Escape, Citrus Sunset and Toffee Interlude. Hershey offers a more pedestrian bar with dried cranberries and macadamia nuts. I tried one of those, but barely noticed the cranberries, since they were overwhelmed by the dark chocolate. The toffee in the Ghirardelli Toffee Interlude bar is a bit more noticeable. And the chocolate? Robust. Very robust.

If you're not into dark chocolate, there's always Peeps. Yes, 'tis the season. There was an article about them in our local paper today, noting that they're almost a cult candy. They make Bunnies, too, but I think that's probably heretical to any true Peeps aficionado.

Oblivion: Wow!

"Oblivion" arrived on Friday afternoon. I have no idea what happened to Saturday. All of a sudden, it's Sunday morning and I'm surfacing briefly to write about this game. All I can say is "Wow!" The Tamriel game world is amazing, the graphics are beautiful and the game itself is totally absorbing. The game's physics and lighting effects are fantastic. "Morrowind" was good. "Oblivion" is much, much better.

There are a few minor bugs that have cropped up occasionally, although those might be because I haven't yet downloaded the latest driver for my graphics card. I was afraid that I would have problems running the game, but it runs smoothly on my machine. I'm going to add a few links for screenshots that I've taken within the game so you can see what it looks like. There are four pictures of my character Bjarki Darknoon, a Nord (Tamriel's equivalent of Vikings) warrior, and one of Cyranis, a Breton mage. Note that all of the trees and grasses move with the wind; also look at the water effects on the fourth picture! Amazing!

Bjarki01 - Under a Bad Moon

Bjarki 02 - Imperial City in the Background

Bjarki03 - Scenery Shot in 3rd Person

Bjarki04 - Water Effects in 1st Person

Cyranis01 - Wildflowers in the Grass

The FaceGen technology allows players to create just about any look for their character. With Bjarki, I set all of the sliders for the various parts of the face to as close to the center as I could. It's possible to easily spend an hour or more getting your character's face just right. After all, you're going to be spending a lot of time with him (or her) so you'd better get it right!

King of the Idiots?

More stupid than someone sticking his arm into a tiger's cage while drunk? You decide (from the Tampa Tribune):

Man Asks Police To Test Crack Pipe

TAMPA - One minute a pair of Tampa police officers were trying to catch a couple of loose dogs Tuesday morning, the next they were fielding a unique request from a man.

Would they test his crack pipe to make sure he was getting the real thing? According to an arrest affidavit, Phillip Williams wasn't convinced he was being sold actual crack cocaine. So about 11:15 a.m., he approached Officers Wayne Easley and Gary Filippone to verify he was getting real drugs.

He was.

The officers tested the pipe, which, sure enough, had cocaine residue. Williams, who is listed on jail records as a security worker at MacDill Air Force Base, was arrested.

I think we can get the crown and scepter ready for Mr. Williams. God Save the King!

We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off (To Have A Good Time)

But we almost did at work last night. Here's the chronology:

2:00 a.m. I take a tray of rejects back to Manual Letters for the Naples clerk to work, but I'm turned back by a supervisor, who tells me to take the mail back to my machine because Manual has been closed down due to a clerk finding a suspicious white powder. Uh-oh.

2:02 a.m. I return to my machine and tell my partner what has occurred. I decide to go to the locker room and get my wallet out of my locker and take it out to my car, in case they decide to clear the building and seal it. If that happens, nobody may be able to re-enter the building for a long time, maybe days.

2:05 a.m I take my wallet out to my car. I also take advantage of the opportunity to move my car closer to the building. Second row!

2:10 a.m. As I feared, the alarm starts going off. We are herded out to the dock, and then out into the truck parking lot on the west side of the building by I-75. This is definitely not amusing. My lunch box was still in my locker. Unlike my wallet, I could survive without it for a few days if I had to. We were told to stay back from the building. A couple of supervisors eventually made their way around and gave us the minimal amount of information. Most of us had already figured out that this wasn't a drill.

We knew that we could potentially be stuck outside for hours. Fortunately, this is Florida in March, and the weather was fine. Some people complained about being cold, but it was probably in the mid-60s and it wasn't raining, so I was fine. It was no more uncomfortable for me than it normally is on my machine.

2:50 a.m. We stand around chatting and joking about the situation, including the possibility of having to be decontaminated and driving home in a paper dress. We are faced with the choice of standing on hard concrete or sitting on hard concrete. I sit for awhile, then stand back up. A few people sprawl on the ground and sleep. We ask a supervisor about the possibility of bringing some nearby wooden pallets over to sit on, but are told we must stay away from the building. About this time, we see a firetruck with lights flashing moving along the access road to the plant. No, this doesn't look good at all.

3:30 a.m. Some of the Tour 3 people have already racked up an hour of overtime. About this time, the supervisors have us gather at the fence at the south end of the truck parking lot. We are told that they are waiting for the "all-clear" to return to the building. The powder was supposed to be tested this morning and those who were possibly exposed to it would be notified what it was. The crowd mills around a bit.

3:40 a.m. The "all-clear" is given and we return to the building. We find that the ventilation system in the building wasn't shut off, so if there was anything airborne, it would have circulated throughout the building. Automation clerks are told to go to the Marco Room, where the supervisor tells us that everyone, list and non-list, will have overtime until the dispatches are out.

Well, it didn't go too badly after that. My partner went straight to lunch, for which he was about an hour and fifteen minutes later than normal. I ran all of our small run and started turning it around. My partner returned, and when we had everything under control, I went to lunch at 4:50 a.m., more than an hour later than normal and only 10 minutes before the mandatory six-hour mark by which I was required to go to lunch. In the end, that run went out about 40 minutes late, and then we got the other run out by the normal 7:00 a.m. dispatch time. I didn't even end up having to stay for overtime.

While at lunch, I learned that they had called the addressee on the envelope where the powder originated and found out that it was pesticide for killing insects. Not anthrax or anything like that, to everyone's relief.

Other stuff: I'm still waiting for my "Oblivion" game, which shipped yesterday and will arrive via UPS on Friday. When I stopped off at Wal-Mart to get a few things this morning after work, I looked in the Electronics section, and sure enough, they have it in stock. It was the plain version of the game, however, not the Collector's Edition, which comes with a "making of Oblivion" DVD, a special guidebook for the game, and a "Septim" gold-colored coin. I've been patiently waiting for this game for months, so a couple more days won't kill me.

Castro's Gotta Be Unhappy...

Because the Japanese national baseball team beat the Cuban national team last night, 10-6, to win the inaugural World Baseball Classic series. Fidel Castro is probably beside himself. The Cubans, after all, are in the middle of their baseball season and were in mid-season form. The Japanese, by contrast, were only 3-3 in the first two rounds, and lost 2 out of three in their second round bracket, only advancing because the Mexicans knocked off Team USA the other night. But they then played the Koreans for the third time in the series, and finally beat them after having lost to them the first two times. Talk about a rivalry with some bad blood; Japan-Korea makes Yankees-Red Sox or Cowboys-Redskins look like a love-in. Those people genuinely dislike each other.

So the Cubans were probably feeling pretty good about facing a Japan team that was only 4-3. The Koreans, after all, had been 6-0 before losing to the Japanese. But in a single elimination final, it doesn't matter how many games you win in the first two rounds, only who wins the last game. And since it would give Fidel Castro heartburn, I'm glad the Japanese won the game. I just hope the Cuban baseball team doesn't end up on bread and water in the Cuban version of Guantanamo, which would be much less opulent than the American version.

Animal Crackers

It's Not a Feature, It's a Bug:
Six-Legged Lamb Born In Belgium

(Picture and video on link)

The lamb can't walk; the farmer says he'll wait until the lamb is stronger and then attempt to amputate two of the legs.

Cat Bites Man:
Tiger Bites (Drunken) Worker at Putnam County Fair

No comment necessary. The tiger's probably needing something to get the taste of the carnie out of its mouth.

The Wait Is Almost Over

Oblivion ships today. Amazon.com says that the estimated delivery date is March 22nd. I pre-ordered the game back in January. The long wait for the game is almost over. My computer is better than the required minimum specs, so I should be able to run the game. The only question will be how well it will run. I'll find out Wednesday if all goes as scheduled...

Oh, the anticipation!

Another World Out There

Sometimes when I'm channel-surfing the numerous choices I have courtesy of DirecTV, I find something that is totally outside of my own experience. For instance, today I found a movie on one of the Encore movie channels that starred Aishwarya Rai. "Who?" you may ask? Aishwarya Rai is one of the most popular actresses in Bollywood, and is well-known across south Asia. She also was Miss World 1994, and has been noted as one of the world's most beautiful women. She has striking blue-green (or blue-gray, depending on whom you read) eyes, most unexpected in someone from India. Then again, the various groups in India are very ethnically diverse.

Anyway, the move was "Bride and Prejudice", a Bollywood film based on Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." If you've never seen Indian movies, you should know that they are usually musicals with lavish dance numbers. There is often (chaste) romance, but no nudity or kissing, which would violate Indian cultural taboos. For instance, in this movie, there was a wedding scene where an Indian couple gets married in Los Angeles, and at the end of the ceremony, the minister says, "You may kiss." The groom held the bride's hands and kissed them, and then she hugged him. Apparently this passes for a racy scene in Bollywood.

Still, it was an interesting and exotic movie from an American standpoint. It was a window into a different culture.

Slobo Has the Last Laugh

File this one under "European ineptitude." Slobodan Milosevic, the alleged Serbian war criminal who was responsible for deaths of tens of thousands in the ethnic cleansing of Yugoslavia back in the 1990s, has died in his prison cell, apparently of natural causes. He was 64.

The reason I wrote "alleged Serbian war criminal" is that despite the fact that his war crimes trial began in 2002, it STILL had not reached a conclusion. This is typical European efficiency. More than three years on, and Milosevic was still just running out the clock with delaying tactics. Despite the fact that he allegedly was responsible for numerous war crimes, the worst sentence the Europeans could have given him was life in prison. Well, he got it. But unfortunately, they never got the conviction, and now it's kind of a moot point.

Compare the European dithering with the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II. It took just under 11 months to try 24 Nazi leaders. But then, that trial was held by the victorious Allies (the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and honorary member France), rather than the European Union. The judges didn't put up with any foolishness, and we were willing to hang the bastards.

I suspect that Saddam Hussein plans to continue to conduct his defense on the Milosevic model. After all, unlike Slobo, the death penalty actually is an option in his case, since his own people are trying him rather than a bunch of spineless Eurocrats.

Correction: Milosevic was being tried by the United Nations, not the European Union. The trial was taking place in the Hague, which is the capital of the E.U., which is what confused me. And let's face it, when it comes to fecklessness, there's nobody (and I mean NOBODY) more feckless than the United Nations. If the U.N. was running Saddam's trial, he'd undoubtedly die of old age in prison before they finished it.

Reality Sets In

You might have heard that alleged steroid abuser Barry Bonds has a reality TV show in production. Really. I think he's got the right idea, but he's only half of the story. He needs to add O.J. Simpson. The working title would be "Juice and Juiced." Or you could bill it as "The Basher and The Slasher," as one of my co-workers quipped last night.

Or they could just be honest and call it "Dude, Where's My 'Roids?"

Serious About the Funnies

One advantage to being on the same machine at work every day is that I know what to expect. Most of the time, the mail falls fairly evenly on the first pass; it's unusual for us to have more than a tray of mail for any of the stackers. Sometimes, though, we get several trays for one particular stacker, and it stands out like a pig moving through a python. Last week, we had three or four trays of mail fall in stacker #15, and the mystery was solved when we looked at the mail: Almost all of it was going to the Naples Daily News (henceforth, the NDN). They were doing their annual "Best of Naples" survey, and some companies were trying to flood their mailbox with votes in order to be able to brag about winning the award in their advertising.

Well, yesterday, we got five full trays of stacker #15, almost all of it going to the NDN. I didn't look at it closely, figuring that that the "Best of Naples" survey was still going on. Today, we got SEVEN full trays for stacker #15, and I happened to notice something different: Most of the letters were coming from individuals, not on company stationery, and they were addressed to the NDN Comics Survey. Aha!

This is the most mail I can remember going to the NDN at one time. And it's not over the "Best of Naples" or a Letters to the Editor controversy or anything like that. Nope, it's over comic strips. Ironically, people take their funnies seriously. Evidently the NDN is either replacing a retiring strip or auditioning for adding one. Well, the people have spoken, "twelve trays worth of mail over two days" spoken, although I don't know exactly what they're saying. But obviously, people have strong enough opinions about the comics that they will fill out an envelope and fork over 39 cents for a stamp to send it. The pig in the python agrees.

So, what comics do I like? "Dilbert," "Get Fuzzy" and "Mallard Fillmore," these days. The last strip appears on the editorial page in my newspaper, along with "Doonesbury," since both usually have strong (and diametrically opposite) political points of view. My favorite defunct comics are "Bloom County" and "Calvin and Hobbes."

Those last two are kind of unusual, with both Berke Breathed and Bill Watterson going out while they were still on top. The secret, of course, is to leave while your readers will still wail, "But that's my favorite comic strip!" rather than snarking "It's about time." I often wonder how someone can draw a strip like "Garfield" or "Beetle Bailey" or "Blondie" and still come up with something new. When you've been drawing the same strip with the same characters for many years, you start running out of things you can do with them that you haven't already done before. How many times can Sarge pound Beetle into a pulp? One more, apparently.

Also, comic strips are often artifacts of a specific period of time that don't wear well with the passage of time. "Doonesbury," for instance, is still stuck in the Vietnam/Watergate era. Garry Trudeau was relevant in the early 1970s, but that was a long time ago. I haven't found much to laugh about in his strip since 9/11. I used to like "Doonesbury," but that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, when the Twin Towers still stood. Today, I just find it tiresome.

And then there are the undead comic strips like "Peanuts," "Blondie," "Hi and Lois," and "Hagar the Horrible." In the first case, "Peanuts" has been in reruns since the death of Charles Schulz a few years back. The strips are old, but if you haven't seen them before, they're new to you. The other strips I mentioned are being drawn by the sons of the original cartoonists. They've become franchises. In the old days, when the cartoonist died, his strip died with him. Today, if there's enough merchandising involved, the strip can outlive its creator. I'm sure that Schulz's heirs said, "Hey, if it's good enough for Elvis Presley's heirs, it's good enough for us."

Rest In Peace, Kirby

It's a sad night for baseball fans everywhere:

Kirby Puckett dies day after suffering stroke

Since I live in the Fort Myers area, where the Minnesota Twins train, I saw Kirby play in a lot of spring training games back in the 1990s. He always gave a full 100% effort all the time, and he always had a smile on his face. It was a damn shame when his career ended early due to an eye injury, but this is an even worse break. My deepest sympathies to his family and friends.

You Learn Something New Every Day

Here's what I learned yesterday.

I hang out on the Elder Scrolls message board quite a bit, mostly looking for news about when their new game "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" is coming out. I also chat about "TES III: Morrowind," the current game. One of the topics I was on yesterday was about "What music do you listen to with Morrowind?" One nice thing about the game is that you can drop your own choices of .mp3 music files into the music folders and it becomes part of the game's soundtrack. Well, one thing I mentioned in the conversation was that I was considering using some of the .mp3 music files from my "Civilization IV" game for "Morrowind," but that the problem was that there was so much music to choose from in the CIV IV soundtrack.

So I was listening to the .mp3 files, looking for music that would fit for exploring and other up-tempo music that would be suitable for combat music. And that was when I learned something I didn't know before. I was listening to a track from the "Industrial" era music file titled "DvorakSlavonic7." As soon as I heard it, I smacked my forehead and said, "So, THAT is where it came from!" The music, which was from Dvorak's Slavonic Dances, was used for the 1985 computer game "The Bard's Tale," which I was playing twenty years ago on my little Commodore 64 computer. I already knew that tune by heart, although the orchestral arrangement in the .mp3 file was light-years ahead of the primitive version that played on my computer game two decades ago.

And yes, that file has been copied to my adventuring music, along with several other Industrial era tracks from Brahms and Dvorak. For some reason, the Medieval era music, which is mostly chants and religious choral music, doesn't fit as well with the game's ambience, and the Renaissance era music, which is heavy on Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, also isn't quite right. I may change my mind and add some of those later, though. If I don't like the result, I can always just remove the files that don't fit from the folder.

Signs of the Apocalypse

Anna Nicole Smith is appearing before the Supreme Court today (Yes, that Supreme Court). Look out, Justice Stevens, she's partial to octogenarians! Let's hope that the fabric of reality can withstand this one.

And if there was ever a Supreme Court case you'd like to see televised, this would have to be the one. None of those dry, boring lists of legal precedents that make the eyes of normal folk like you and me glaze over; no, this would be more like an Oprah! episode breaking out in the staid chambers of the highest court in the land. Actually, I think they missed an opportunity here: Think of what they could have made with a pay-per-view special! They might have made substantial inroads into the national debt.

Old Movies (1941 Edition)

I watched two old movies today from 1941. The first, "Here Comes Mister Jordan," was remade in 1978 as "Heaven Can Wait," with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in the starring roles. For anyone familiar with the remake, it was recognizably the same movie, with the main difference being that in the original movie, Joe Pendleton was a boxer, but in the remake, he was the quarterback on the Los Angeles Rams. I really liked "Heaven Can Wait," and I'd never seen "Here Comes Mister Jordan" before, but I liked it as well.

The second movie, which just finished, was "Sergeant York," a biopic about a man from the backwoods of Tennessee who finds religion, then is drafted into the Army in World War I. At first he tries to claim conscientious objector status, but after talking with his unit's commanding officer and some serious soul-searching, he decides that sometimes it's necessary to fight to defend your country. Sergeant Alvin York is played by Gary Cooper, and he won an Oscar for his portrayal. The high point of the picture is when Sergeant York and a handful of men capture a bunch of Germans in the trenches, and then when another group of Germans turns their machine gun on Sergeant York's men, he single-handedly kills about 20 of them and captures the rest, a total of 132 of the enemy. For his valor in charging the machine gun nest, Sergeant York received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Spotted in the credits: A very young (15- or 16-year-old) June Lockhart played Alvin York's younger sister, Rosie.

Gee Whiz!

In the news, from Whizconsin:

Urine Samples Taken From Probation Office

Whoever broke into a state probation and parole office left with items that can be key evidence - urine samples of those under court orders not to use alcohol or illegal drugs.

Agents who work out of the state Department of Corrections Probation and Parole office periodically require people under the court orders to submit the samples for testing.

Police Capt. Mike Babe said someone broke into the Waukesha office Monday night or early Tuesday and took all the urine samples that had been stored in the office.

Ain't that a pisser?!

"Stuck On You" by Elvis Presley

Well, THAT makes me feel incredibly middle-aged, being as how ol' Elvis is almost thirty years in the grave.

What was the #1 song in the U.S.A. the day you were born?

Thanks to Josh Hosler. Found via Mary Katharine Ham at HughHewitt.com.

Wow, It HAS Been a While, Hasn't It?

I went back to work last Wednesday. Except for a lingering cough, I feel fine.

I wasted my best writing of the weekend in the comments of someone else's blog, so I'll just plagiarize myself here with my take on the press reaction to the Cheney kerfuffle:

"I was recovering from the flu while watching those [White House] press conferences last Monday and Tuesday, and for a moment, in my feverish state, I thought I was watching an out-take blooper reel from the Westminster Dog Show, seeing a pack of pampered poodles and chihuahuas yapping and snarling at their handler and then lining up and lifting their legs en masse to use him as a fire hydrant. Then my vision cleared and I saw that the pooches were actually the ink-stained wretches and talking heads of the Washington press corps going berserk on poor Scott McClellan. I just shook my head. What more needs to be said?"

I watched a bunch of old movies over the weekend: "Joe vs. the Volcano" (a critically panned but underrated Tom Hanks movie, with Meg Ryan chewing up the scenery in a triple role), "The Terminator" (vintage Ahnold, although Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton were great in their roles), the 1967 classic "The Taming of the Shrew" (with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the starring roles) and finally, "The Silence of the Lambs." For me, Jodie Foster was the perfect Clarice Starling, and I thought it was a shame they didn't get her back for the Clarice role in "Hannibal."

Getting Better All the Time

I think this must have been that "California Flu" that they were talking about last month. All I know is that I haven't been that sick in a long time, maybe ever. I think my fever is pretty much gone (I don't have a thermometer here at home), and the exhaustion and the aches and pains are ebbing. Of course, I slept another 12 hours or so yesterday, so that could be part of it. I figured that in the 72-hour period starting Tuesday morning at 8:00, I slept for a total of about 44 hours, which is more than I usually sleep in a whole week. I've even eaten some solid food today, so I'm slowly getting back to normal. For now, it's plenty of water and more rest. Hopefully I'll be okay to go back to work on Monday.

Man, it sucks being sick.

My theory is that I probably picked up the germs at the Tut exhibition. With that many people from all over the place packed in so closely, it was a virtual incubator for disease. Bekki told me that it was Tut's curse. I think she was kidding.

The Flu, Day 2

I don't remember much about yesterday. I went to sleep around 8:15 in the morning, and slept on and off for about 20 hours or so. I haven't eaten anything since yesterday morning around 4 a.m. I'm not really hungry. I'm feeling marginally better today than yesterday, although I'm still feverish and achy. I'm drinking lots of water and getting plenty of rest. It looks like I'm out of commission for the rest of the week.

I'm watching the "Flight 93" docudrama on A&E. I saw another one last year called "The Flight That Fought Back." It's probably not good for me to watch something like that, because it brings back all the sorrow and anger I felt on that horrible day. And yet, it's important not to forget, not to sweep it under the rug. Our enemies are still out there.

Feeling Like Shit

I think I'm coming down with the flu. Last night at work, I noticed a slight barking cough, followed by body aches, chills, fever, headache and that "stretched-out" feeling your head gets when you're running a fever. I was feeling worse and worse as the night wore on. When I got home, I took a three-hour nap, waking up about three times. I think I might be slightly dehydrated, too.

Did I mention that I feel like shit today?

I think I'll go back to bed now.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I went to the "Treasures of Tutankhamun" exhitibiton in Fort Lauderdale yesterday. As the title of this post suggests, the experience was a mixed bag. The original plan was for me to take my dad to the exhibition as a Christmas present. I had talked with my ex-wife, Bekki, over the holidays and she said that it sounded like something she'd like to see, too. I told her that she was welcome to come along. I ordered tickets for the three of us last week, including a Senior ticket for my dad, since he's over 65.

Well, on Friday, my dad called me and told me that he had bronchitis and was as sick as a dog. He wasn't able to go, which was disappointing. I called Bekki and told her that we had an extra ticket if she knew someone 65 or older who wanted to go. Alas, she didn't, so I ended up eating the cost of the ticket.

We met up as arranged at 10:00 yesterday morning and drove across Alligator Alley to Fort Lauderdale. I'd gotten the driving instructions off the Ticketmaster web site, and I also pulled the map up on Mapquest. I knew exactly where I was going, and we had no problems at all finding the parking garage across the street from the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, where the exhibition is taking place.

The weather was ugly, very ugly. It rained hard most of the drive across the state. Fortunately, we both brought umbrellas. By the time we arrived, it was only drizzling in downtown Fort Lauderdale. We got there around 12:30, about two hours early, and the plan was to have some lunch and then look around the trendy Riverfront area, which has cafes, restaurants and shops.

We went into the Museum box office to get our tickets at Will Call, and then I discovered that I'd left the paper on which I'd written down the ticket order number in the car. I had to go back across the street to get it. As I went out the door, the skies opened up and it began to pour down rain. Having an umbrella doesn't help much when the rain is blowing in diagonally. I went back to the car and got the paper, then went back across the street. In that short period of time, puddles about two inches deep had formed along the curbs by the crosswalks. By time I got back inside, my legs and shoes were soaked from the driving rain and puddles.

I got our tickets and then we went back out into the deluge to find lunch. We ended up having subs at Quizno's. Well, I had a sub; Bekki had a salad and one of those SoBe energy drinks in a pastel purple flavor. I think it was raspberry-blueberry, but I wouldn't swear to it. Then we went and looked around a couple of the eclectic shops nearby, before going to the Museum's gift shop to look for souvenirs.

Finally, the time for our entrance approached. Bekki didn't want to go up the stairs (she broke a leg a dozen years ago and doesn't like stairs), so she took the elevator. I took the stairs and waited in the line that snaked up to the door. I made it inside a little after 2:30. She was waiting inside, wondering what had taken so long.

A word of advice: If you go to see this exhibition in Fort Lauderdale (or Chicago or Philadelphia, when it comes to those cities), be sure to pay the extra $7 per person to get the audio tour headset. The narration goes into a lot of detail about many of the objects on display. Bekki told me that she felt bad for the people who didn't have the headsets, because they were missing out on a lot of information.

The other bad thing, besides my dad not being able to go, was how crowded the exhibition was. There were a LOT of people moving through the halls, and it took us about and hour and a half to make it through. I would have liked to have gone through on a day when there perhaps half as many people in order to be able to move from item to item more quickly.

The Treasures themselves, however, were dazzling. The Boy King got a splendid send-0ff into the afterlife. Who says "You can't take it with you"? Tutankhamun did. It would be hard to go into a lot of detail about all of the items I saw, or rather, it would take too long. One of the most amazing items a saw was a child's chair, with a woven seat that looked like it was made of something similar to cane. It was more than three thousand years old and still intact due to the dry climate of Egypt.

The most visually stunning item was probably the golden mummy case. This one didn't belong to Tutankhamun, however. Also dazzling was a golden dagger which was found on Tutankhamun's body, as well as the golden crook and flail (with detail in faience, carnelian and glass) that were his symbols of authority, and the golden head-dress with the heads of a cobra and a vulture at its crown. There was a large ointment jar showing Tutankhamun trampling on the heads of Nubians and Syrians. There was a little game board for him to use in the afterlife, which was engraved with hieroglyphs telling how powerful he was (slightly intimidating if you were playing against him, as the narration pointed out).

There were many little shabti statues, which were engraved with spells from the Book of the Dead so that they would stand in for their maker in the afterlife if the gods demanded difficult labor. The shabtis were made from a variety of different substances, including clay, stone, copper, faience and gold.

"What is faience?" you ask. Faience is a glazed non-clay ceramic material, typically made from quartz, and the characteristic bright blue-green color comes from copper used in the glazing process. There were numerous faience items on display; especially common were the large ankhs which were the symbol for "life."

Also interesting were a number of symbolic model items that were expected to magically become real in the afterlife, including jars, toy boats and even a non-working camp chair. There was a glass headrest of the type that Egyptians wrapped with cloth and used instead of pillows when they slept. This one had a spell from the Book of the Dead to protect the mummy's head.

There were also several alabaster canopic jars, which held the entrails of the body when it was mummified. One of Tutankhamun's canopic jars bore a disturbing resemblence to Michael Jackson, which I pointed out to Bekki. Maybe it's the other way around, though; perhaps Michael Jackson was using it for his model for plastic surgery. Either way, it was kind of creepy.

All in all, we had a good time. My pants had even dried out by the time I finally got home. My shoes were still damp.

The Weekend is Here

The weather's supposed to be cloudy and rainy for the next couple of days, but I should still have a good time this weekend. Tomorrow, I'll be going over to Fort Lauderdale to see the "Treasures of Tutankhamen" exhibition, which should be really interesting; I'll blog about it when I get back. And Sunday is the Super Bowl (Go Seahawks!) so I have plenty of things to do, all of which will disrupt my normal sleep schedule. But sometimes you just have to say, "What the heck."

Time for some breakfast. More later...

More Weirdness

The buzz at work last night was about the shootings at the postal facility in California. I didn't really get much detail on it until I got home and turned on the cable news. They reported that the killer shot seven people, killing six, and then took her own life. The shocking word in that sentence was "her," of course. Most of the psycho killers are male. Chalk another one up for equal opportunity, I guess. Word is that the woman was an ex-Postal employee.

Didja see ol' Ayman al- Zawahiri is back with a new videotape in which he taunts President Bush, trying to out-Cindy Sheehan Cindy Sheehan? Maybe he wants to run for Diane Feinstein's Senate seat this year, too. He claims that Al Qaeda is winning the war on terror. Tell that to your dead lieutenants in Damadola, Diaperhead.

Speaking of which, what's the difference between Punxsutawny Phil (the groundhog) and Zawahiri? Punxsutawny Phil can stick his head out of his hole, see his shadow and not have to worry about being blown up by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone. Just sayin'. Turban-boy's looking mighty pasty in his latest video. He's probably holed up so far back in the mountains that they have to pack sunlight in by mule team. If that's winning, Ayman, I'd hate to see what losing looks like.

Clyde Reads the News (So You Don't Have To)

Sometimes you read two news stories and you just say, "Hmmmm."

Story #1: Tampa Bay Devil Rays baseball team could change team name for 2007

Seems the new ownership is looking to make as many changes as possible, both on and off the field, to try to improve the perennial last-place team. Which brings us to:

Story #2: Humuhumunukunukuapuaa Dethroned in Hawaii

The Aloha State's official state fish may be in the unemployment line, since its designation back in 1984 was only supposed to be for five years. And if it's willing to relocate?

The Tampa Bay Humuhumunukunukuapuaa? In the name of all that is holy, no! They'd need two lines to get it all across the front of their jerseys!

Elsewhere in the world, Uzbekistan has banned fur-lined underwear as "too sexy." No, really!

Uzbekistan gives fur-lined undies the slip

Authorities [in Uzbekistan], citing the "unbridled fantasy" that the newfangled thermal undergarments could spark if left unchecked, have ordered an immediate halt to sales of men's and women's underwear lined on the inside with animal fur, apparently the brainchild of a local entrepreneur.

Oh, you crazy kinky Uzbeks! If taken to its logical conclusion, it won't be long until the Uzbeks are only allowed to wear scratchy burlap long-johns. That'll teach 'em!

The Uzbeks aren't the only ones with a strong sense of decency, however. From Zimbabwe, we get this story:

Twins detained for loincloth outrage

Zimbabwean twins who became media celebrities for appearing in public wearing nothing but traditional African goatskin loincloths have been detained pending trial for indecent exposure.

The men, Tafadzwanashe and Tapiwanashe Fichani, raised eyebrows last month when they went to an upscale Harare shopping mall clad only in brief loincloths -- leading several shocked shoppers to call the police.

The twins said they were making a statement by appearing in traditional African clothing dating back to pre-colonial times.

I guess that Afro-centric stuff doesn't go over well in Africa. Go figure!

Bucking the CW on Hamas

Okay, time for a little politics. Like just about everyone else, I was surprised to see the Hamas party win the majority of seats in the Palestinian parliamentary election. Unlike a lot of people, I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. That bucks the conventional wisdom, of course, but hear me out.

First of all, the Palestinians didn't have really have much of a choice: They could choose between the kleptocratic Fatah party (which had impoverished the Palestinians for decades under Yasser Arafat while the Fatah party functionaries stole the aid money sent by the foolish Europeans) or the terrorist Hamas party (known mostly for its suicide bombing attacks in Israel). Corrupt kleptocrats or Jew-killing terrorists. Some choice.

But it was a choice, and it makes it clear that the so-called "peace process" is as dead as Arafat.

Now, instead of a situation where Fatah runs the Palestinian territories while the Hamas terrorists blow up Israelis, Hamas itself will be the government. Before, when a Hamas terrorist attack would occur, the Fatah government would say, "Hey, we can't control what they do, we're not in charge of Hamas." But now, with Hamas running the government, an attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists would not just be a terrorist attack, it would be a state-sanctioned act of war. Anyone want to guess how that war would come out, given the Arabs' history of wars against Israel since 1948?

Then there's the question of whether Hamas is capable of changing from a terrorist organization or not. Can the leopard change its spots? Probably not. Now, Israel itself was founded by people who engaged in terrorism (Menachem Begin's Irgun), but those Jewish terrorists only attacked British military targets, not civilians. Their goal was only to have a state of their own. Hamas' goal, on the other hand, is the complete destruction of Israel. Expecting that to change is about like expecting Fidel Castro to give up communism.

Some critics of the Bush administration will be quick to say, "See, here's a case of democracy where the new democracy isn't peaceful. Bush was wrong!" But of course, the Palestinians won't have a real democracy. They may have had a free election, but none of the candidates were democrats. It was like a choice between neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen: Nothing but evil on both sides.

It's going to be interesting to see how it all plays out. The Palestinians have chosen the path of further conflict with Israel. I suspect that they will rue this day in the future.

Going Up!

Here's the view from my front yard of the launch of the New Horizons spacecraft a few minutes ago. Next stop: Pluto, July, 2015...

Stamps and Stuff

I've noticed that when there's a postage rate increase, old oddball stamps come out of the woodwork. Today, for instance, I saw a letter with five old stamps whose face value added up to 39 cents, but were probably worth at least a couple of bucks to a collector. Three of the five stamps are older than I am: 1948 3-cent stamp - Moina Michael, Founder of Memorial Poppy; 1957 3-cent stamp - America and Steel, Growing Together -- Steel Centennial 1957; 1948 3-cent stamp - 100th Anniversary of the American Turners - 1848-1948 - A Century of Health. The other two were a 10-cent Bicentennial Era stamp from 1976 showing Carpenters Hall, and a 20-cent McGruff the Crime Dog stamp from 1984. I later saw a 1957 3-cent stamp honoring those who fought polio.

The other day, I saw one of "those" names on a letter that was being returned to the sender. The name: Mrs. Yu Suk. No, I'm not kidding. I guess it lost (or gained!) something in the translation.

Round Two, Ding-Ding!

I've been watching the Senate's confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito the last couple of days, and have found them to be rather entertaining. Now, all of the legalese mumbo-jumbo might seem to be a bit boring and dry, but it's been quite instructive to watch the Senators at work. To listen to the Democrats and the Republicans, you'd almost think they were talking about two different men. I've found it especially droll to listen to Senator Joe "Kinnock" Biden and Senator Ted "Splash" Kennedy sitting in judgement of anyone else's ethics or morality.

And then there was the spectacle of Senators Patrick Leahy and Kennedy, both "men of pallor," decrying the fact that the President didn't nominate someone who would make the Supreme Court more "diverse." This despite the fact that they are members in an exclusive club that has exactly one black, one Hispanic, and only a handful of women among their 100 members. If Sens. Leahy and Kennedy are THAT concerned about "diversity" in our society, I'd recommend that they immediately announce that they will not run for re-election the next time around, and instead will throw their support behind a candidate who is a "person of color," preferably a woman, since they are more "diverse" than men. Fat chance, eh?

In any case, the Senators appear to be almost as overmatched by Judge Alito as they were by Chief Justice Roberts during his confirmation hearings. The judge obviously knows what he is talking about, and several of the Senators have come off poorly by comparison. Today should be fun to watch.