Bad Influence: I've published a new article over blogcritics about the Most Influential Movies Ever. Take a look. I've also got plenty of interesting links to throw at you but it'll take me until later in the week to get them in some semblance of order. I remain unreasonably busy. So sorry.

Engine Checked: So I contact Toyota about my check engine light being on and the first thing out of the woman's mouth was, "Is your gas cap on tight? The check engine light will come on when the gas cap is loose."

Toyota employs tens of thousands of people, many of whom have vast experience in the auto industry, but apparently not a single one of them grasps the obvious fact that the gas cap is NOT PART OF THE ENGINE!

The gas cap wasn't the problem for me, but to make things even more irrational, the light went off just a randomly as it went on. Throw me a bone, people.

A New Theory of Laundry: I have, in the past, been subject to no small amount of ridicule for my method of doing laundry. People tend to get all freaky if you don't separate whites from colors. Well, in reality, whenever I have seen people do this I have been confused. It's not actually pure whites they are separating from colors. The definition of "white" can vary to include white-ish, really-light-colors, and mostly-white-but-with-colorful-patterns. This, to me, exposes the arbitrary nature of laundry segregation and, frankly, puts the entire theory under suspicion.

We are told that whites, by whatever definition, must be washed in hot water, separately, or they will come out "dingy". I don't really understand why that is the case; I expect the chemistry behind it is debatable. But the fact of the matter is, the only clothes I have that are truly white are my underwear. Let me state for the record that the day I become concerned about the albedo of my underwear is the day you have my permission to call the Cuckoo's Nest and set me up next door to Jack Nicholson.

And let's not even start on fabric softener. The purpose of fabric softener is to remove static cling. Exactly what does that have to do with softness? Besides, fabric softener does this by covering your clothes with an extremely thin chemical film. If you think the greedy chemical companies aren't in bed with the military-industrial complex and using this thin chemical film to perform bio-weapon experiments on the unsuspecting population, then you haven't been reading the web closely enough.

No, my friends, as usual I am not bound by traditional thinking and conventional wisdom. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. I cannot blindly accept the standard precepts of laundry dogma. I must question. I must contradict. I must agitate (so to speak).

Here's what you do. First, wash everything in cold water. Any self-respecting laundry detergent is valid to use in any temperature of water (they all say "all-temperature" on the box, and cold is a temperature) so it makes no sense waste energy and money heating the water. You will be grateful the first time you decide to shower while the washing machine is going.

Second, separate clothes not by color, but by weight and texture. Jeans, corduroys, thick towels, etc. go in one load; shirts, shorts, socks, unmentionables in another. The reason for this is two-fold. 1) These two groups tend to have very different drying times. By grouping them together you don't have to constantly get up, open the dryer, and remove the dry stuff from the stuff that is still damp, thereby allowing you to remain slouched on the couch for that much longer. 2) I cannot imagine it is good for your thin cotton t-shirts to be commingled with you heavy denim pants. The constant tumbling of the light shirt against the coarse denim has got to be like rubbing it with sandpaper. This means your clothes will last longer. (For you guys, that means your girlfriend will have to let up on you about wearing torn and beat-up clothes all the time and stop trying to drag you to the Gap. You can thank me later.)

So there you have it; a soundly reasoned and flawlessly logical approach to laundry. I am not close-minded, though. I am willing to entertain conflicting theories, but they must be well thought out and argued on the basis of something other than what "everybody knows".

And no fair pointing out that I am a bachelor and therefore incapable of understanding.

Here's to the Winners: I spent the weekend in DC scurrying about the city with HRH Miss Anna trying to keep up with Miss Kate (Anna's mom) and Aunt Molly (Anna's aunt) who were also scurrying about the city, but with a purpose. They were competing with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training in the Marine Corps Marathon.

There is a point in running a marathon where it ceases to be an athletic challenge. It becomes a question of enduring the pain from the constant impact on the feet, the stress on the joints, the searing blisters. Of the estimated 18,000 runners who started the 26.2 mile race a little less than 16,000 finished, among them Kate and Molly, both of whom had the fortitude for a sprint to the finish.

Their race was rife with symbolism -- the impetus for undertaking the marathon to begin with was a show of support for their brother Brian, a marathoner and Lymphoma survivor, and the finish line was in Arlington cemetery under the memorial to the Marines who fought on Iwo Jima, one of whom was Anna's grandfather. The marathoners voluntarily accepted the pain and struggle of the race to honor those who suffered before them.

The race was followed by celebrations and radio interviews and a decadent dinner. The following day, would be when the pain and injury revealed themselves. But those will pass. The achievement, the admiration and the memory will endure. Now, others must live up to them.

Road Rant: I have a question. What, in the name of all that is Holy, is the purpose of the check engine light on your dashboard? If you are 600 miles away from home and it goes off, what are you supposed to do? As instructed, I opened the hood and checked the engine. Sure enough, it was still there.

I don’t mind a warning light when the car detects some suspicious goings-on under the hood, but the technology designer in me says -- out loud, waving my hands, terrifying other drivers -- "How STUPID is this?"

There are two classes of things that can go wrong with your car. One is something that can be quickly addressed with some routine maintenance, like low fluid levels. The other is something that must be dealt with by a mechanic. So which is "check engine"? You don’t know. All you know is that something undiscoverable is wrong with your car. Or maybe not, people I know who have had the check engine light come on have told me it comes on for no apparent reason sometimes and the dealer just turns it off. So actually, all you know is that something undiscoverable may or may not be wrong with your car. To quote Bill Murray, "I want to thank you. You could have helped me, but you've done so much more." (Bonus points if you can name the movie.)

Sorry to get all tech-designy on you, but let's think this through for a moment. Inside your car there is a little chip that gets signals from sensors at various positions in your engine. When one of these sensors detects a problem is sends a signal to the chip informing it that is has detected a problem. Rather than report the location the problem was detected - fuel injectors, coolant system, blown fuse, whatever -- the chip just triggers a "check engine" light, effectively narrowing the problem down to the front half of your car.

Auto Industry, pay attention here. Instead of "check engine" why not tell me what problem was detected or at least where in the car it was detected and how dangerous it would be to try to drive the 600 miles from DC to Ann Arbor before getting it fixed. Here's the design in a nutshell. An unobtrusive two digit LED instead of a "check engine" light. The two digit numbers correspond to a list that is in driver's manual indicating what the actual problem is. You can't tell me that technology doesn’t exist. Frankly, I would prefer that to such things voice response. What kind of loser wants to talk to his car?

And while we are on the issue of stupid car tricks, let me just say that I am disturbed by the trend toward auto-nannying of late. The last car I rented was a Buick. I could not -- as far as I could tell -- control the headlights. They went on at off at the car's whim. I found that truly annoying. Popping open the trunk from the driver's seat was not controlled by a little lever next to the seat, like it is in virtually every other car; you had to remove the key from the ignition and insert it into a keyhole on the door. Presumably that was some sort of safety measure, but it was a pain when I pulled up to a hotel and had to pop the trunk to get my bags before letting the valet take the car. We also have the phenomena of windshield wipers that go on automatically. And you've seen the commercials where the guy asks his dashboard for directions to a Chinese restaurant. Stop doing that kind of stuff and give me better 'check engine' diagnostics.

And another thing. If you want to do something really useful, how about giving me some warning when my tire is about to blow-out? I had the wonderful experience of having a blow-out on the Ohio turnpike. Not just a flat tire, a full-on, tire-shredding blow-out that left me riding the rim at freeway speeds until I could pull on to the shoulder where I had to change the tire with triple trailer semis flying by about four feet from my nose. Lucky for me my check engine light was on.

And speaking of the turnpike, I hereby declare the Pennsylvania turnpike to be the most irritating road in America. First off, I loathe toll roads. Maybe this is because I live in Michigan where there are no toll roads so I believe free access to highways is a God-given right. Second, there are long stretches where the speed limit is 55. You are led to believe this is because of construction, but there is no evidence of construction -- workers, no equipment, no orange cones. Seriously, has anyone except a hamster like Jimmy Carter ever really believed the speed limit should be 55? I am convinced the 55 speed limit is an attempt to manipulate you, which PA has a policy of doing. To wit, and thirdly, they have a policy of posting strange statements on big orange signs get you to slow down. According to the PA DOT:

The Safe Driver Advisory sign sequence delivers six messages to passing motorists:
AGGRESSIVE DRIVER HIGH CRASH AREA
SLOW DOWN, SAVE A LIFE
DON'T TAILGATE
BUCKLE UP NEXT MILLION MILES
TARGETED ENFORCEMENT AREA
DUI: YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT

A couple of those are really strange. "Aggressive driver in high crash area" for instance. That could be an accusation that you are an aggressive driver in a high crash area, but I am not an aggressive driver and it seems they put these things just about anywhere they feel like it which undercuts the notion that you are in a warning that you are in some sort of high crash area. So that's just confusing. The fifth one, TARGETED ENFORCEMENT AREA, is insulting. Assuming that means "speed trap", then exactly how chuckleheaded would I have to be to believe that they were not only going to have a defined, permanent speed trap, but they were also going to warn you about it? Well, I'm not that chuckleheaded, but the PA DOT may be.

And then, there's this whole business of having two separate tolls. It used to be that as you entered or exited through the western border of PA, you stopped at a toll booth and got a ticket which stood you for the duration of your trip. That, apparently, wasn't annoying enough. So they moved the ticketing booth 10 or 15 miles east and added a tollbooth on the border where you have to pay $1 cash on the spot. Now, instead of getting a ticket when you enter PA and paying when you exit the turnpike, you stop at one tollbooth and pay a dollar cash, then you stop at another tollbooth some miles up the turnpike and get a ticket that carries you the rest of the way. What is the possible advantage of having an extra cash stop instead of adjusting the ticket fees so an exit in at the right place would cost a dollar? This is the slippery slope of irrationality that starts with toll roads and Targeted Enforcement Areas.

And what about Breezewood? Anyone who has had to get to DC via road from any point northwest of approximately Pittsburgh (including Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago…) is familiar with Breezewood, a city of hotels. When you exit the PA turnpike and head south towards DC, you don’t just exit on to another freeway like in a state with a relatively sane DOT. You exit the turnpike and are squeezed and hustled through Breezewood for, oh, maybe a mile, including a stoplight or two, then you get on a different freeway for the journey south. If you do this on off times it's not so bad. If you hit an inopportune time of day/week/month/year correctly you will find traffic backed up a couple of miles back on the turnpike to get through this bottleneck.

It has been this way since before I was born and PA has never gotten around to building a freeway-to-freeway exit to bypass Breezewood. It's a particularly ugly stretch of road –- fast food, truck stops, motels – yet everybody gets hustled through it. It's just the price you pay for driving to DC.

OK. I'm done now. I'm back home in Michigan where the roads are free, and the speed traps are hidden.

Football Blues: I'm having trouble getting into football season. Part of the reason that I got caught up in the utterly engrossing baseball League Championship Series. Even without the Red Sox or Cubs, the World series was pretty good. Another reason is all the football news this year has been essentially political.

The biggest story so far has been Rush Limbaugh, on ESPN Game Day, claiming that Donovan McNabb is overrated and is essentially graded on a curve because he is black. Donovan McNabb is almost certainly overrated (he is about as good a quarterback as Brad Johnson of the Buccaneers, who is in the top five on nobody's list). On the other hand Titans quarterback, Steve McNair, who is black, is almost certainly underrated (should probably be on the top of everyone's list). That would suggest race is not a key in ratings, but what Limbaugh said was not implausible. Everyone went wacky over it and accusations of racism were proffered which were generally based on Limbaugh's track record. I wouldn’t know as I've never listened to Limbaugh, but examined on their face, the reaction to his comments was grossly overheated. He resigns from, or possibly is sacked by ESPN, which originally hired him to add an edge to their show. Gutsy.

Next came Warren Sapp behaving like a boor –- taunting opposing players during warm-ups, intimidating referees, etc. Sapp is an ass, for which he is rewarded through the standard mechanisms of celebrity, but the NFL is brutally strict about everything from violent behavior to dress codes, and so hit Sapp with a hefty 50K fine (nothing that would disrupt his lifestyle, but still...). Sapp responded by comparing life in the NFL to slavery – obviously he meant that odd form of slavery that involves fame, fortune, and glory beyond most people's dreams. OK, Warren – whatever. But naturally, we had to have a big to-do about his comment which dominated sports news for much longer than it should have.

The worst came when my favorite football columnist, Gregg Easterbrook aka Tuesday Morning Quarterback, got fired from ESPN. Easterbrook writes on innumerable topics besides football and has published a number of books on everything from religion to technology. In one of his non-sporting venues, specifically the New Republic magazine, Easterbrook published a review of the new Tarantino movie Kill Bill which he trashed as ultra-violent in these terms:

Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice. But history is hardly the only concern. Films made in Hollywood are now shown all over the world, to audiences that may not understand the dialogue or even look at the subtitles, but can't possibly miss the message--now Disney's message--that hearing the screams of the innocent is a really fun way to express yourself.

A heartfelt apology followed almost instantly but this quickly swept the world as a horrible piece of anti-Semitism – the old money-grubbing Jews stereotype. Frankly, I don’t see it. He's criticising in the producers of Kill Bill for being insensitive to violence and that, as Jews, they should know better. That's silly, of course, they shouldn’t know better any more than anyone else and Easterbrook is certainly employing a stereotype (what might be considered a politically correct stereotype) but it's hardly a virulent piece of Jew-baiting. But one person behind Kill Bill is Michael Eisner, who happens to be behind Disney, which happens to be behind ESPN, which is where Easterbrook published Tuesday Morning Quarterback. Bottom line: ESPN drops TMQ and, like a revisionist historian, wipes out all evidence that it ever existed from its archives and I am left with one less minor escape every Tuesday afternoon. Here's a third-party summary of the situation. Whatever happened to handling things gently, outside the spotlight, or just taking a deep breath and counting to ten before you do anything stupid?

This one, at least, may have a happy ending. The delightful site I just found called Football Outsiders, where they try to track football as statistically as has been done since forever in baseball, decided to run a temporary TMQ contest to see who could write the best fake Tuesday Morning Quarterback column. In a letter from Easterbrook, we see that he is actually preparing an entry himself and plans to find a new venue for TMQ. Mazel Tov!

If we can get back to football now, I may get interested again.

Cheaters Never Prosper: ESPN recently ran a competition to see what sports uniforms were the best looking. They picked 64 unis from various sports and ran an NCAA like elimination tournament based on reader voting. Here are the brackets and the final four. At the end it was down to the Denver Broncos vs. the Michigan Wolverines (football). According to the final report:

Trailing badly in the final round last Thursday, Denver received 20,000 consecutive overnight votes and 42,500 of the final 50,000 e-ballots cast… [snip] When the polls finally closed, the Broncos had rallied to post 137,257 votes, easily outdistancing Michigan's 88,743. However, ESPN.com has discovered that 71,465 of those votes came from one IP address.

So those clever guys at ESPN sought out an expert to find out what was going on -- specifically a guy named Chris Nandor, who is infamous for fixing on-line baseball all-star balloting. His expert opinion:

"My guess (is) someone from Denver."

Insightful. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to just place a call to Captain Obvious? Anyway, in the end, they threw out the bad votes and we can all safely Hail the Victors. ESPN goes on to wax eloquent about the Denver uniforms:

In retrospect, Denver's mere presence in the championship round should have been a tip-off. First, the Broncos barely made it to the finals, beating the Atlanta Falcons by a mere 0.3 percent in Round 1 and never earning more than 53 percent of the vote in a single contest.

Second, the club's monochromatic unis give them the look of human popsicles. Or perhaps Regis Philbin, in his blue shirt, blue tie, Van Heusen endorsin' heyday.

"Be careful with the thick burnt-orange accent on the trouble-spot buttocks and thighs," added Victoria, one of Page 2's fashion experts. "You don't want to call attention to an unsightly entity. Spandex is a privilege, not a right."

Chortle. If I ever get back to doing football picks I shall only refer to that team from Denver as the Popsicles.

Making a Splash: The story of the guy who went over Niagara Falls and emerged unscathed amazes me. Of the 15 daredevils that went over the falls with some form of protection, 1/3 of them died. With one exception -- a child who accidentally went over with a life vest on -- every other person who just jumped in is classified as a successful suicide attempt (although, oddly the province of Ontario won't release numbers). Despite all that, this guy not only survives but he comes out pretty much unscathed, as if it were a big water slide. Here's the scoop; turns out this guy lived just east of Ann Arbor.

Frankly I hope this guy gets a lot of fame and notoriety. He's earned it. There's talk of fining him (10 grand -- yikes!) but he's claiming he was suffering from depression. I'm guessing that claim is just to get him out of the fine. What he's actually done is invent a new extreme sport - Fallsdiving or Watercrashing or something. Turn the Horseshoe Falls into the world's biggest water park -- that would be too cool. Somebody call Disney.

Read All About It: The first review of Business As Usual is up, courtesy of the good dogs over at blogcritics. I hope everyone feels that way. By the way, if you have read Business As Usual and would like to write up a quick paragraph of two, both Amazon and Barnes and Noble are accepting reviews. You have our gwatitude.

Low Lying Fruit: It easy pickins in this link harvest.

• What web surfing would be like if you were drunk. I am not speaking from personal experience. Really.


• As you may have heard, using implants, monkeys can move robot arms with their thoughts. I betting the first practical application of this is a TV remote.


• I have stopped paying attention to the patron saint of lard-asses, Michael Moore. But luckily, for the sake of truth, justice and the American way, others haven't.


• This site is called Awful Plastic Surgery. That's pretty self-explanatory. Track your favorite celebrity.


• If one were to translate a certain song into Latin and then back to proper English, one would find oneself saying Large buttocks are pleasing to me, nor am I able to lie concerning this matter.


• I would love to have this clock on my desktop. Very cool.


• Some call it pop, some call it soda. People who call it soda are wrong, but I can accept their innocuous ignorance. I simply cannot abide people who call all pop coke. What kind of lunacy is that. Do they not see the absurdity of calling Pepsi coke? Here is your guide to where people are right, wrong, or insane.


• It's hard for me to imagine a job more grinding than sitting in a tollbooth making change. No wonder they occasionally wig out.


• Crayola is pointlessly messing with crayon colors. In what circumstances would you describe something as inchworm colored? "The seasonal rains transform the straw brown plains of the Serengeti to a vibrant inchworm." Um, no.


• How not to run an eBay scam. Roberts…sent his customers a cut-out picture of the high-definition plasma TV that he sold in eBay's electronics section… We have a new candidate for Stupidest Person Ever.


• These are a crack-up. They sat some kids in front of old school games like Pong and Donkey Kong and recorded their comments. Regarding playing Pong: I'd sooner jump up and down on one foot. You tell 'em, dude.

Not Bad: You know, I have been reviewing Apple Pie again in preparation for its triumphant return and I must say I'm impressed. I hadn’t read it straight through in what must be four or five years (of course, I read it about 900 times before it came out) and there is some good writing in there. If you haven’t read it, I promise you will get an opportunity.

Meanwhile Business As Usual is starting to come available in most places. I am sure you can order it in a brick and mortar Barnes & Noble. I have heard you can order it at Border's, although I have no verified reports. It remains discounted at Amazon. I also know for a fact that there is at least a small bit of marketing behind it in an effort to get it on shelves. No idea if that will work out; I know if you walk into bookstores it seems like they must have every book imaginable available, but in fact it is just a small portion -- there are over 300,000 new books published each year. (How did get myself into this oversaturated industry?)

In case you're interested, here is the official press release (it looks much better as an actual document with proper margins).

National Pastime: You know, I watched that wild Yankees-Red Sox game and I simply cannot fault Pedro Martinez for flinging Don Zimmer to the ground. Frankly, I have no idea how I would handle being violently rushed by a goblinesque senior citizen with a metal plate in his head. It's just something I don’t have an explicit policy on.

What I can fault is the behavior of the Yankees towards the Red Sox employee in the bullpen. Like everyone else, I thought it was a fan assault incident. Nope. It's the players who are getting hauled up on charges. Boston.com has the official report.

Look Out Below: A fascinating article at the New Yorker about the Golden Gate Bridge as a suicide magnet. Apparently, it is the in place to kill yourself, should you be so inclined. It is no laughing matter, I suppose, but the article is pure black comedy in some parts. Sample quotes:

Many jumpers wrap suicide notes in plastic and tuck them into their pockets. [One] wrote, “Absolutely no reason except I have a toothache.”

And where else but San Francisco would somebody say something like this:

The idea of building a barrier was first proposed in the nineteen-fifties, and it has provoked controversy ever since. “The battle over a barrier is actually a battle of ideas,” Eve Meyer, the executive director of San Francisco Suicide Prevention, told me. “And some of the ideas are very old, ideas about whether suicidal people are people to fear and hate.”

Huh? And as usual, everybody has an angle:

The coverage intensified in 1973, when the Chronicle and the Examiner initiated countdowns to the five-hundredth recorded jumper. Bridge officials turned back fourteen aspirants to the title, including one man who had “500” chalked on a cardboard sign pinned to his T-shirt. The eventual “winner,” who eluded both bridge personnel and local-television crews, was a commune-dweller tripping on LSD.
 
In 1995, as No. 1,000 approached, the frenzy was even greater. A local disk jockey went so far as to promise a case of Snapple to the family of the victim.

And then there's this:

In 1970, the board of the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District began studying eighteen suicide-barrier proposals, including a nine-foot wire fence, a nylon safety net, and even high-voltage laser beams. The board’s criteria were cost, aesthetics, and effectiveness. In 1973, the nineteen-member board, most of them political appointees, declared that none of the options were “acceptable to the public.” (The laser-beam proposal was vetoed because of the likelihood of “severe burns, possibly fatal, to pedestrians and personnel.”)

Am I the only one picturing Dr. Evil at a conference table crying, "Throw me a bone, people!" And lastly, Captain Obvious makes an appearance:

Survivors often regret their decision in midair…

Ya think?

Semi-Quasi Pointless: I just can’t let this short biography of a very rich chick name Paris Hilton (who I had never heard of, but is famous for some undiscoverable reason) pass without pointing out this remarkable description:

...she is also known for being a high-society party girl, part-time model, and quasi-actress.

In case you were wondering, in the pantheon of idiocy, quasi-actress comes right after demi-bimbo.

Sport of the Future: You can still make it to the Rock-Paper-Scissors International Championship. I've been needing something to hold my interest now that World Cup Tic-Tac-Toe is over.

The Southeast Corner: As promised, my latest travel essay, Babylon on the Make, the story of my recent week in southeast Florida, is up. In cased you missed the first one, The Gold Plated Swamp, it might be worth taking a look.

Busy, busy week. I'll try to get more up before the weekend is over.

No Excuses: I ended up spending the better part of last week in the Annapolis-Baltimore area for my day job. So the bottom line is, I got big ole wad of nothing done. I really gotta get some semblence of order going in my life. Ah, well -- no excuses. Give me a day or three to get myself back in the swing, as usual.

In the meantime, did you have the slightest notion that Business as Usual is available -- and on sale! -- at Amazon? Were you even vaguely aware that you can read the first few chapters on-line? Did you have even a minor awareness that you can order Business As Usual at Barnes and Noble bookstores everywhere? Now you do. No excuses.

(Bloggers and other journalists who are interested in reviewing Business As Usual should send me a note.)

Status Memo: I don’t know why, but the permanent links aren’t working. Lucky me, because I was just thinking how much I wanted one more annoyance to sort out. I'm sure it's something stupid I'm doing, but jeez. A break, please.

I've been working on my Florida essay, shouldn’t be too far off. I'm also prepping Apple Pie for its second edition. And I'm making grudging progress on Misspent Youth (novel 3) -- a long way to go on that one.

Amazon still seems to be the only place carrying Business As Usual for the moment -- it's heavily discounted, less than $13.00. Buy it. Now. Do not fear, it will be worth it. Apparently, the rest of the book selling industry is stuck in the '70s and still has little old ladies filling out forms on manual typewriters and making calls on rotary dial phones. That's my guess anyway.

I'm about halfway through a book called Hokkaido Highway Blues, by Will Ferguson. Ferguson, a Canadian English teacher (that's an English teacher from Canada, not a teacher of Canadian English, ya hoser) in Japan, took it upon himself to hitchhike the entire length of Japan, south to north, following the sakura -- the blossoming of the cherry blossoms. Sounds like the perfect opportunity for some deeply sincere, weepy-eyed treacle about the natural beauty and culture of Japan, but Ferguson is not the type. He is wry, droll and loaded for bear with an ironic, purely Western sense of humor. I'm sure I'll have a review to post once I'm done.

And I have once again become addicted to an HBO series – Carnivale. It is a very dark and stylish drama, set at the time of the Great Depression and the Oklahoma dust bowl, with religious and mystical themes. It has survived on its sense of atmosphere and the slow building of the overall plot which, after three episodes, we have only been teased with bits and pieces. If it holds up and doesn't descend into to cliche it could become a classic.

Links-a-Plenty: All these poor wittle sites just lying around hoping to be linked to.

• A lively interview of P.J. O'Rourke at the Onion. Always worth reading. And don’t miss his latest Diary of a Country Gentleman in Forbes.


• Another interview, this one with Joe Bob Briggs, the king of B-movie hosts. One of the few people who appreciate the difference between high quality trash cinema and plain old trash cinema.
  
• This is a wicked optical illusion. In fact I'm not sure I would have believed it if I hadn't used my color checker on it.


• Take this job and…give it to someone else. The Worst Jobs in Science. I didn’t get past Flatus Odor Judge (aka professional fart-sniffer). "…refuses to divulge the remuneration, but it would seem safe to characterize it thusly: Not enough." Uh-huh.


• For the Pixie, who is a Monopoly maven, the Probabilities in the Game of Monopoly. And here I thought is was just a matter of evicting widows and orphans.


• Economists at work.


• Are the Detroit Tigers the worst ever? Nope. They came through in the end and dodged the record. They even failed at being the worst.


• Idiots like this EBay scammer should be peeled and rolled in salt.


• These kids with their Maxims and their FHMs. Didn’t have no silicon or airbrushing in my day. All we had was swanky prose and cheesey graphics. And we were grateful.


• I'm Greg Brady, the real Greg Brady, all the other Greg Bradys are just imitating…


• Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny imropetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

Banking Off of the Northeast Wind: For the last couple of weeks real life has owned me – I touched no web browser and only checked my email once. For my next trick, I'll give up caffeine, chocolate, and bourbon. Or not.

Part of the reason I was able to do this is because I have spent the last ten days scurrying about south-east Florida – South Beach, Key West, Palm Beach. Hot and sunny. I head to south Florida and a hurricane veers north. There's something to be read into that, but I'm not sure what.

In general a good trip, I'll have more to say about it in an essay. The only really annoying thing about the whole trip was that I had to deal with renting a car. Auto rental is one of the only travel industries that continues to treat customers like easy marks, feeding you half truths and hard sell to get you to sign up for insurance or pay for a full tank of gas up front. It's like haggling with a third world street vendor. Anyway, like I said, more later. I shall be righteously brutal.

I hope to have more material for you this weekend. In the meantime, I should note that Business As Usual is already discounted to $12.57 at Amazon. Get it. You won’t be sorry.

Outhouse, the Second Story: Hat tip to Bob C. for pointing out that my comments (6/11/03 and 6/13/03 -- stupid archives not working) regarding Outhouse Springs bottled water qualify me for the Miss Cleo Award as this article indicates and this article verifies.

“We had woman who wanted us to dump the water out and just send the bottle,” he says. “She wrote back to us once she’d received it, and she told us she now wears the empty bottle on a rope around her neck. I’m not really sure what to make of that.”

I don’t even want to think about in what venues that would be appropriate dress. Truly tasteless. More info is available at OuthouseSprings.com. We should now begin a campaign to ask for it by name in better restaurants.

Buy This Book, Or the Blog Gets It!: Just a quick note to let you know that Business As Usual is available for purchase at Amazon. The full entry is not there yet, no picture or description, but you already know all about that. So if you REALLY love me you know what you must do.

Now I simply must go back to dealing with that annoying abstract concept called reality for a couple of weeks. Adios, Caiman!

Frog in a Blender: That's how I feel, like a frog in a blender. Except that I'm not getting chopped up into tiny pieces. And I could get out if I wanted to, technically speaking. And I'm not an amphibian really, although I do like the water. Other than that -- Frog in a Blender.

I remain quite busy with Business As Usual, which I have now actually held a copy of in my grimey little paws. Still a week or so away from commercial availability. And as of now, I do not have a publisher for Apple Pie anymore. Do not weep, though. I have been at odds with the Apple Pie's publisher from the get go and am actually pleased that it's over. The downside is that I have to get a new publisher for Apple Pie, which won't be that difficult, just time consuming. So in all likelyhood Apple Pie will slip out of print briefly, but will come back faster, stronger, better than before. (Cue Six Million Dollar Man theme music.)

It also means less time for this place and more begging for your patience. Starting now. It will probably be a couple of weeks before I get anything posted here again. All I have to offer for now is my book review of Bangkok 8 over at Blogcritics.

Peruse some of the existing links, or better yet go read the Business As Usual preview. I'll have more material before you know it.

Great Reading: You can now read the first eight chapters of Business as Usual online in your browser – no charge, no ads, no strings whatsoever. The site is rather basic, but it should grow as reviews and sale info comes in. Commercial availability should come in the next 2-3 weeks. If you want to be notified as soon as it's available, just drop me a note

Web Gems: The usual odds and ends that have struck my fancy of late.

• The good folks in Bermuda (one very cool place) are getting slammed by Hurricane Fabian – what a wussy name for a hurricane, by the way. It may be an excuse for me to go back when it's all over – gotta be charitable and help them with my business, now don’t you know. They've been through it before and are likely to come through this one OK, especially with comments like, "We've got gin, we've got white wine, we've got red wine and someone's got beer so we are well stocked up as long as the ice machine keeps going."


• When people decry the state of scientific journalism, I shall remind them of the brilliant innovation of using elephants as a unit of measure.


• I've never had any great desire to see Europe. Perhaps I'm just not romantic enough. But the Daily Telegraph has no illusions about living in Italy. And the New Yorker has little good to say about the prevailing zeitgeist in the City of Light. Maybe I'm right.


• On the other hand, the new national symbol of France was chosen because her breasts are "flush, freewheeling, insolently raised in protest or subdued in a state of heraldic order." Yeesh. It's enough to make one yearn for simple prose of Maxim.


• Excuse me, I really have to take this call…


• Webheads like me can feel nostalgic for these reminders of web culture past (anyone remember the Dancing Baby?). Maybe this is a head start on VH1's I Love the '90s.


• M.I.T -- yes, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – is putting all it's coursework online. "Every lecture, every handout, every quiz. All online. For free." Talk about a free education. Of course, since anyone can claim to be MIT educated, that makes the sheepskin all that much more valuable as proof.


• Haven’t had a music industry bashing article for a while, so here you go. CD sales are down not because of pirating, but because the music is sucky (that's a technical term - sucky).


• There's nothing I appreciate more than an article that includes the line, "A breakaway flotilla of ducks is expected to make landfall in Britain soon…", unless it's an article that contains the line, "Nineteen Beavers then rushed into the stands and got into a scrum with [a fan] on a concourse."

Scrambling and Rambling: The lion's share of my time is being devoted to getting www.ReadBusinessAsUsual.com going. Once complete, you will be able to read the first eight chapters of Business As Usual right there on-line -- no charge, no registration, no pop-ups, no ads. Naturally, I hope it will suck you in and you'll buy it. It won’t hurt that I believe there will actually be some promotion done for this book, which will be a first.

Anyway, I have been very jaded about writing and publishing since shortly after the release of Apple Pie; now I actually getting a bit more enthusiastic.

Once that settles down, more work on this place - I have some ideas for change. More articles. And a redesign to de-emphasize the weblog and highlight the writings.

And then, maybe, if I'm really lucky, I can spend some time on writing more fiction.

The Stupid Decade: Back in the '70s there were a lot of great movies released. I have only come to appreciate them as I've gotten older. From Annie Hall, to The Godfather, to Patton, to Monty Python and the Holy Grail - a killer decade. Of course, that's about all the '70s had going for them, as a viewing of any episode of I Love the '70s on VH1 will quickly demonstrate. I used to wonder whether my hatred of the '70s stemmed not from their inherent abject stupidity, but from my personal memories of my awkward, pathetic adolescent years. Nope, they were stupid. Profoundly, existentially stupid. And not just stupid, they were UGLY -- the hairstyles, the clothes, the music. Worse, there was the pervasive ignorance to how thoroughly stupid they were being.

And then there was the whole drug thing. Nowadays you have a decent stratification of drugs. There are the good-time, happy feeling drugs like Ecstasy, or Prozac for that matter. There are the grimey, slow-suicide drugs, like Heroin and Crack. And of course there's Pot for the folks who never quite made it out of their parent's basement. Civilized people now know what drug is appropriate for how they want to mess themselves up. (In my case, Maker's Mark Bourbon is my drug of choice.) But back in the '70s it didn’t matter -- if there was a drug placed in front of you, you used it. Otherwise reasonable people felt it was appropriate to behave like raging crackheads.

If anything, VH1 missed the enduring lesson of the '70s: Given the proper pharmaceuticals, people will do just about anything.

Broken Bones: Football season is shaping up well. Still no idea how I am going to follow it. I may just track the hometown Lions, since they appear to be fielding something resembling a professional football team this year, and my sentimental favorite Dolphins who have so much talent it is ridiculous. If they don’t make the Super Bowl this year, they will find they have officially become the Boston Red Sox of the NFL and will be cursed to heart-wrenching failure for eternity.

The big story this pre-season has been injuries to marquee players. That, and the Raider's Bill Romanowski punching a teammate and ending his season. For those of you who don’t know, Romanowski is essentially an unfrozen Neanderthal with severe schizophrenic tendencies. Here's a good summary of his existence. I may have to spend the season hating him and calling him names. Too bad, because I like the Raiders otherwise.

The other thing I want to do is get to Vegas and do some betting on the games. They say the best Sports Book is at the Hilton, but that's off strip. I've heard Mandalay Bay is also very good. I could do it right here from my laptop, but I don’t trust on-line gambling houses (note that on-line gambling is illegal in the US -- wrongly in my opinion). Betting on the games makes them a lot more interesting. And Vegas makes everything a lot more interesting.

Those Morons at Burger King: So I'm on the way home the other night and I stop at Burger King for dinner. I ordered one of those Chicken Caesar Club sandwiches. So I'm waiting and waiting and waiting. A good solid ten minutes passes before they notice that I'm still waiting. The counter chick and the manager begin discussing whether the guy working the grill knows about the order. They have a nice long discussion about it and then walk away, never bothering to actually ask the guy if he knows about it or not.

Another five minutes pass, so I ask them if grill boy knows to make my sandwich. They shrug and say something like "I think so." Really, you think so? Well I'll just wait here all night and by the time you close I guess we'll know, won’t we? So I call back to the guy in a rather loud voice, asking him myself if he's making the order. He claims he already made it. I ask him to come out and show the counter chick where it is so she can hand to me.

So he strolls out to the front, grabs one of the sandwiches, unwraps it, takes off the top bun, shows it to me and asks, "Is this it?" No -– that's a Chicken Whopper. He then repeats the performance with another sandwich and asks the same question. Wrong again –- that one's not even Chicken. So I point to the big flashy sign for the Chicken Caesar Club and say, "That's what I ordered." He gives it momentary blank stare and then ambles back to make it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: This is the reason people go into places like this and SPRAY THEM WITH UZI FIRE.

And actually, it's not such a bad reaction. You see, these are not sentient beings. They do not qualify as human in any legally binding way. The worst rap they can pin on you is animal cruelty.

Sadly, I wasn't carrying my Uzi. So I used about thirty napkins to wipe my face and I didn’t bus my own table. That hosed 'em right and proper.

Progressing Slowly: I've been working diligently behind the scenes on www.ReadBusinessAsUsual.com, where you can see my under construction note. More to come, including a good long teaser. I'll keep you all in the loop.

I wish I could tell you that is the only reason, but I've also been working my way through the previously described Bangkok 8 by John Burdett. I'm hooked; I'll probably have to review it when things slow down.

Gotta Have Drama: Speaking of things I'lll have more to say on, it's Sunday night but it's debatable whether I'll get this done in time to post it because the season finale of The Wire is about to come on. It will figure prominently in my next HBO essay, which by habit, will appear upon the season end of The Sopranos sometime later this year

At the other end of the spectrum, you could watch Good Clean Porn, an examination of the dramatic qualities of porn movies with the sex cut out. I''ll be sure to watch just as soon as I'm done listening my new CD, The Best of Fingernails on a Chalkboard.

Winning at Losing: Well this is what happens to journalists when they have some free cash and nothing to write about. The folks at ESPN paid a statistical service to simulate a seven game series between the '62 Mets – generally considered the worst baseball team ever, they lost 120 games – and this year's edition of the Tigers - who are on track to match them in the loss column – to determine the worst baseball team ever. The Tigers won by losing in seven ineptly played games.

Rising from the depression of the Tigers season, the Lions actually appear to be fielding an actual professional grade football team this year. Will wonders never cease? Still haven’t decided if/how I'm going to cover pro football this year. Whatever I do I won’t do it until about half way through the season because you just can’t make any intelligent prediction until the teams reveal themselves in real life. Of course, the more important event is that the always clever Gregg Easterbrook is back with Tuesday Morning Quarterback. Even if you only have a passing interest in pro football (passing – get it?) Gregg "that's two gees, three total" Easterbrook is a must read.

Letters, We Get Letters: Check out this one:

From: mac@bahn.de
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2003 6:33 AM
To: dzot@usa.net
Subject: Dimensional Warp Generator Needed
Importance: High

Hello,

I'm a time traveler stuck here in 2003.
Upon arriving here my dimensional warp generator stopped working. I trusted a company here by the name of LLC Lasers to repair my Generation 3 52 4350A watch unit, and they fled on me.

Since nobody in this timeline seems to be able to deliver what I need (safely here to me), I will have to build a simple time travel circuit to get where I need myself. While it might be hard to find parts in this time to build anything decent, I need easy to follow schematics from the future to build one which is safe and accurate that will not disrupt the time space continuum with both forward and backward capability accounting for temporal location settings (X, Y, Z, n), which can be built out of (readily available) parts here in 2003. Please email me any plans you have. I will pay good money for anything you send me I can use. Or if you have a dimensional warp generator available, and are 100% certain you have a (safe, secure) means of delivering it to me please also reply with a secure way to contact you. Send a separate email to me at: [[omitted]]

Do not reply back directly to this email as it will only be bounced back to you.

Thank You
Brian Appel

Sorry Brian, I can’t help you out. You may have to just relax and enjoy this retro world. If you do get your time machine built, I suggest you first go back to the point where you cut the deal with LLC lasers and get your money back. That way you won’t have to spam us and we'll know you're OK because this post will disappear.

Or maybe it will have never been here to begin with.

Doh! Stupid temporal paradox. Now my head hurts.

More of the Same: Still in slo-mo regarding posting, maybe something later this week. Still a lot to do for Business As Usual, lots of other writing to do -- no idea when things will get back to normal; maybe in fall for Back-to-School 'blog season.

I don’t know what I mean by that, either.

Lights On: So I was in Pittsburgh. It started out to be a disaster: I miscalculated the number of days I was going to be there and so ran out of clothes and my return flight was at 7PM the day after my conference was over leaving me almost a full day of empty time -- normally that would have been an opportunity to explore the city, but Pittsburgh, while a decent spot, is not exactly what you would call inspiring. But sometimes fate smiles upon thee.

My request to switch my flight to the previous evening was met with penalty quotes roughly equivalent to the price of another complete fare, so that was out. Lucky for me, because on 4PM of that previous night the lights went out all over the Northeast, including my destination -- Detroit. But not in Pittsburgh, so while everyone was struggling to get through traffic and find gas and light candles, I was sitting in the hotel bar sipping a beer and watching a baseball game.

The serendipity kicked into high gear the following day. I decided to check out about 11:30AM and make my way to the airport to see if I could get standby on one of the three afternoon flights. And boom-boom-boom: as soon as I checked out the shuttle arrived and I got the last seat; there were no lines at the Northwest counter or at security; the first flight I had a shot at was scheduled to leave at 1PM, about a half hour after I arrived and not only did I get on the plane, they put me in first class. If I knew that run of luck was coming my way I would have flown to Vegas instead.

When I got to Detroit there were about two hundred people waiting for the parking lot shuttles. Apparently the roads were flooded out and only a trickle of traffic was able to get through. It took a good solid hour to get to my car, so that sucked…but wait! It took just long enough that by the time I got home, the lights were back on and everything was back to what passes for normal.

So I must confess that I don’t see what all you people were so upset about. You really have to learn to not sweat the small stuff.

Words and Music: You should be listening to Welcome Interstate Managers by Fountains of Wayne. The best CD I've heard in ages -- a power pop masterpiece. It's been playing in my car ever since I got back.

I'm currently reading Bangkok 8 by John Burdett. It begins promisingly, if it holds up it will be astounding. Of course, for me, reading time consists of a stolen half hour here and there so it may be a while before I finish it.

I will probably have more to say about these in due time.

Spam's Victims: I occasionally receive emails similar to this recent message:

From: djmak@freak.fr [not the real address]
To: dzot@usa.net

Hi.
Do you know how many rooms has in the pyramidal luxor hotel?
Thanks, David

I don’t really know what to make of something like this. I could assume that it is someone who read my essay on Vegas, and mistakenly took me for someone who knows something (clearly a stranger). But then I think, No it could be some sort of super-sophisticated spammer method to see if my email belongs to someone stupid enough to respond to odd requests. So poor djmak gets nothing but silence thanks to the atmosphere of anxiety created by spammers.

So, djmak, if that is your real name, the answer is No, I don't.

Don't Say I Didn’t Warn Ya: Like I forewarned, it has been a slow summer; well, slow for this place, but quite busy for me. Nothing has changed, Business As Usual is off to the printer and now all the ancillary work begins so I will continue to be neglectful. For now, I need to clean out everything I've been saving to share with you, so here we go. Ain't you lucky?

Health and Science Round-up: Some cool sci-health stuff I've stumbled on.

• You should know about epidemiology. It's what will prevent you from flipping out over the alarmist nonsense that the media wallows in. Check out, this introduction from Michael Fumento.


• The late Richard Feynman (Surely, you're joking…) chimes in on Stupid Science Tricks that he calls Cargo Cult Science.


• A fabulous article on the state of cancer research in Wired, and why, though we just recently found out how phenomenally complicated cancer is, we're closer than ever.


• A terrific series on misconception about diet and obesity by Sandy Szwarc over a Tech Central Station. Of course, some of it is old news to me.

Just Kidding: Once you are sufficiently jaded about science you can get a new perspective on the recent announcement that there is only a 50-50 chance humans will survive the century (thanks KK) by Sir Martin Rees. Wow – he's both a knight and a scientist, he must be an unquestionable authority.

Or not, check out this review from The Economist.

So how does he justify his suggestion that mankind might have only a 50-50 chance of surviving the 21st century-our final century, to use the alarmist title of the book? Even before your correspondent could ask him that question at a recent literary event, Sir Martin confessed to being a fan of Bjorn Lomborg-a Danish academic who recently caused some controversy when he suggested that greens have been systematically distorting the fact that the environment has been getting healthier in many countries.

Sir Martin then took the reviewer's copy of "Our Final Century" and pencilled in a question mark after the title. His publishers had ruled it out. The American publishers even changed the title from "Our Final Century" to "Our Final Hour". Sir Martin is clever enough to know that the end is not nigh, but he put up with the chicanery in order to gain a wider audience. A small sin, perhaps, in such an important book.

Writers are such whores.

Tech Round-up: Some cool recent techie stuff I've read stumbled on.

• It may be getting just too darn easy to play real money poker on-line. My problem with this has always seemed like betting on a coin flip with out actually seeing the result. If only there were more hours in the day…


• I can’t think of a better use for nanotechnology than cheap big-screen HDTV.


• What is the right cellphone for you?


• Amazon is going to start a full text search of books. I'm not exactly sure of the value here, but if it sells books, I'm for it.

Random Round-up: Where do I find this stuff?

• Ten Cars available in Japan that you won’t see here. Curious, but nothing all that compelling.


• An article about tedious lawyerly doings – not worth reading, but check out this quote.
  
  

  The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy is having a coming-out party this week. For three days starting Friday, law students and attorneys will hear speeches by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.; attend discussions on the environment, abortion, gay rights, government surveillance, human rights and other subjects; and mingle with dozens of top legal scholars and judges.
  
  It's not all heavy lifting. There also is a Janet Reno Dance Party on Saturday night.

  
  Par-TAY! Get down with your bad socio-political self!


• A fine review of Comerica Park (home of the Tigers, technically a professional baseball team) from ESPN, that makes points about Detroit that I have made before.


• Fascinating article about the life of an EBay fraudster on the lam. There's a movie in that.


• This looks like it might be a reason to live.

I Drink, Therefore I Drink: Courtesy of The Legendary KK, we have Signs That You Drink Too Much (don’t know why she thought of me).

• That pink elephant followed you home again.


• You're as jober as a sudge.


• Don't recognize wife unless seen through bottom of glass.


• Your job is interfering with your drinking.
  
• Your twin sons are named Barley and Hops.


• The whole bar says 'Hi' when you come in.


• You have to hold onto the lawn to keep from falling off the earth.


• Your idea of cutting back is no salt on your margarita.


• At AA meetings you begin: "Hi, my name is... uh..."


• Mosquitoes catch a buzz after attacking you.


• The parking lot seems to have moved while you were in the bar.


• Hey, five beers has just as many calories as a burger, forget dinner!


• You fall off the floor.


• Ozzy Osbourne shakes his head when he walks past you.


• You can focus better with one eye closed.


• Two hands and just one mouth... - now that's a drinking problem!
  
• 24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case - coincidence? - I think not!


• Your doctor finds traces of blood in your alcohol stream.


• You lose arguments with inanimate objects.


• Your career won't progress beyond Senator from Massachusetts.

It's Been A Long Time: Whew. Final edits for Business As Usual are submitted (hooray!). And as a reward for your continued patience I offer you a couple of articles.

First, over at blogcritics we have an extend musing on cheesy action films, James Bond, Chopsocky and Stupid Hotel Tricks. As you will no doubt realize, this all came to me during my recent travels. You may notice bits and pieces of past material reworked with a stricking effect. Or not.

Second, months late, you get Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch, a recap of my mid summer journey to Canyon Ranch Health Resort in the scalding Arizona desert.

And soon, I will get back to posting some of my garden variety nonsense, and get you all caught up on any recent developments.

My Humblest Apologies: I have been scurrying around the country again - down to DC, up to Mackinac - all the while trying to get the final edits done on Business As Usual. The result is no posting here and little work on all my other writing projects, including new content here. I can think of at least three projects for this place that I have partially begun and a couple other that are just ideas. Once I start ‘em I usually finish them, I just don’t know when.

Also, I have to start work on a web site for Business As Usual, plus I have some ideas for a redesign of this site (yes, it's that time again). ACK!

This is me begging for more patience. The best is yet to come.

Business As Usual: Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

Just Thought I'd Say Hi: Been a while since my last post and likely to be a week or so until my next. Sorry, busy time. I am working on a couple of things that should see the light of day before too long. In the meantime, the good folks at Kuro5in.org re-published my essay Aerobics for Regular Guys. The ensuing commentary ranged from interesting to deeply disturbed.

I wish I could tell you Apple Pie was still on sale at Amazon, but I have no idea what is going on with it now. Ah well, soon it will be Business As Usual.

Pillory Hillary: Not surprisingly, P.J. O'Rourke has little good to say about Hillary Clinton's book. But in fact, she's got no one to blame but herself for saying stuff like this:

One snowy night during my freshman year, Margaret Clapp, then President of the college, arrived unexpectedly at my dorm. . . . She came into the dining room and asked for volunteers to help her gently shake the snow off the branches of the surrounding trees so that they wouldn't break under the weight. We walked from tree to tree through knee-high snow under a clear sky filled with stars, led by a strong, intelligent woman alert to the surprises and vulnerabilities of nature. . . . I decided that night that I had found the place where I belonged.

That sort of prose makes Dan Quayle seem sharp and witty. She is blandly free of anything remotely resembling a soul or personality. Check out this quote:

Ireland invigorated and inspired me, and I wished we could bottle up the good feelings and take them back home.

Has the woman never heard of Guinness?

There Goes the Neighborhood: If this guy lived near me I believe I would be within my legal rights to pipe bomb his ride. First Divas, now this. Is it possible to legislate Quiet Time?

Day of Future Past: MIT has reprinted an article from 1950 about what the next 50 years would be like. Fascinating stuff. They got some very right, like this description of what came to be a microwave:

[The] expansion of the frozen-food industry and the changing gastronomic habits of the nation have made it necessary to install in every home the electronic industrial stove which came out of World War II. Jane Dobson has one of these electronic stoves. In eight seconds a half-grilled frozen steak is thawed; in two minutes more it is ready to serve.

And some stuff very wrong:

It is easy enough to spot a budding hurricane in the doldrums off the coast of Africa. Before it has a chance to gather much strength and speed as it travels westward toward Florida, oil is spread over the sea and ignited. There is an updraft. Air from the surrounding region, which includes the developing hurricane, rushes in to fill the void. The rising air condenses so that some of the water in the whirling mass falls as rain.

Only a futurist could imagine a constructive oil spill. Good read. Check it out.

Gunga galunga...gunga, gunga-galunga: This may be the funniest story I've ever read. It seems the Sports Editor of the Roswell Daily Record, in Roswell, NM (yeah that place, the global center of alien abductions) was fired for publishing a story about a local golf tournament wherein he placed a certain quote:

[He] quoted [Carl] Spangler as saying he invented a new kind of grass for the tournament. The quotation in Jones' story is taken directly from "Caddyshack":

"'This is a hybrid ... of bluegrass, Kentucky bluegrass, featherbed bent and northern California sensemilia (sic),' Spangler said. 'The amazing stuff about this, is that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on the stuff.'"

He got fired for that. Memo to the management of the Roswell Daily Record: Please see your doctor about getting irony implants. I suppose if you get probed by aliens often enough, you tend to lose your sense of humor.

#*$%#)*&#%^!!!!: I was about 600-700 words into my essay on Canyon Ranch and it appears to be gone. Disappeared. Vaporized. Devoured by poisonous flying monkeys. I would like to blame it on my computer (a Dell laptop, which contrary to their reputation, is flaky as all get out), but the fact of the matter is that I probably had a bunch of documents open and accidently clicked the red 'X' on it and even more accidentally clicked 'Don't Save.' Curses! A pox on all technology!

Yet, I shall start again and persevere. Basically, the check is in the mail.

Depends On the Meaning of Ironic: An remarkably witty article on irony in the Guardian Unlimited. I apologize in advance for the lurid language.

But other strands of media use irony to assert their right to have no position whatsoever. So, you take a cover of FHM, with tits on the front - and it's ironic because it appears to be saying "women are objects", yet of course it isn't saying that, because we're in a postfeminist age. But nor is it saying "women aren't objects", because that would be dated, over-sincere, mawkish even. So, it's effectively saying "women are neither objects, nor non-objects - and here are some tits!"

Guffaw. The article is not only remarkable because it's such a clever, fun read, but also because it appears in the Guardian Unlimited, an insufferably snotty paper where humor takes a back seat (way back) to pursed-lipped sanctimony. Ironic, that.

Gotta Click 'Em All: Just a few quickies.

• Government employee buys Ford Mustang by accident; redefines phrase "Close enough for government work."


• Supposedly, these Ten Inventions will change our world. Oddly, none of them are alcoholic.


• I really need to get this beer. It's brewed in San Diego. Anyone up for a road trip?


• Hey, did you happen to know the Apple Pie is on SALE at Amazon. No lie.

Just Because: Yeah, it's orange. Blue is far too common in weblogs, so I'm orange now. Summer = Warm = Sun = Orange.

Don't worry. If you don't like it I can change it back in a flash.

Scribbling For Fun and No Profit: First, in case you weren't paying attention, Apple Pie is on sale at Amazon for $9.98. You should buy a copy. Two or three maybe, they make excellent gifts.

I still don’t have a specific release date for Business As Usual, but I will be very surprised if it isn't available for Christmas.

Sounds great, eh? Wouldn’t it be cool to be a writer? Well, before you follow that path you should read this article, which will give you a good idea what to expect. Not that I regret it, but it's nice to see a realistic description rather than be told if you write a perfect query letter you're on your way to riches.

Did I mention that Apple Pie is on sale at Amazon for $9.98?

Calling B.S.: Michael Fumento has spent many, many years debunking popular health myths – Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome, Erin Brockovich, etc. He has argued that SARS is primarily a matter of hysteria and the Atkins diet is little more than modern day snake oil. Contrary to most of what you read in the press his opinions are researched and documented.

One other advantage he has over most health journalists is that he writes in a passionate, confrontational style that makes for lively reading. It also generates a great deal of Hate Mail which is an out and out riot. Here's a sample from the latest hate mail page.

Subject: Low Carb Friends

Mr. Fumento,

It's really too bad that you are so uneducated about the Atkins diet. Just last week, Primetime Live did a study on 6 overweight people doing 6 different kinds of diets and guess what???? The Atkins diet resulted in more weight loss than any of the others. As a matter of fact, several of the others said they felt they were starving and losing squat. Several research instituations (sic) are doing and have done studies on the Atkins diet versus other so-called healthy diets and found the same. I don't have all the technical information but am sure that even if I did, it would be wasted on you. And really, why bother, there are plenty of other low-carbers sending you all the pertinent info as we speak, through this same email address.

Btw, the reason obesity have steadily crept higher and higher during the last twenty years or so certainly isn't because of the Atkins diet. It's because the rising amounts of refined sugars and grains that the "low-fat" craze started, not to mention the upside down food pyramid. Ask any farmer and he will tell you the best way to get his livestock to gain weight is through an increase in carbohydrates, specifically corn and grain. And amazingly, the formula for hog grain, matches nicely to the food pyramid ratio.

But anyways (sic), say what you want, I've been low-carbing for three years and maintaining for two and nothing you say can take that away from me or MILLIONS of others who are living their life skinnier, healthier, and longer.

Enjoy your spaghetti you putz

Sincerely,
[omitted] Wilburn

Dear Mr. Wilburn:

Prime-Time Live? Funny, I've never heard of that medical journal. Where is it published and how does it pick referees for peer review? I'm also impressed by the fact that its Atkins cohort comprised a grand total of one (1) person. That sure beats the heck out of that recent JAMA review that I mentioned surveying 107 articles comprising 3,268 participants that found "insufficient evidence to conclude that lower-carbohydrate content is independently associated with greater weight loss compared with higher-carbohydrate content." And those "several institutions" you've named; none of them have published their findings. But again, I can see how you would find that more impressive than those 107 studies. In any case, I discussed those findings at great length in earlier articles. Too bad the only thing you seem to know how to read is what's posted at that Atkins propaganda site, "low-carb friends."

I think that if I "asked any farmer" he would tell me that corn is a grain and he wouldn't think much of you for not knowing either that or that the feed grains that farmers use are employed not because they are high in carbohydrates but because they are high in fats and protein. The main ones in this country are corn and soybeans. Does it strike you as coincidence that two of the most popular cooking oils come from those two grains?

As I discussed at length in one of those articles you neglected to read, Americans are growing fatter for one simple reason: They are eating more of everything. More fat, more carbohydrates, and more protein. But certainly you'd think that 15 million successful Atkins dieters would have an impact on the obesity epidemic, wouldn't you? But they haven't. Why? Because while 15 million people may have started it, virtually nobody has been able to stick to it. Your "millions" figure is sheer fabrication.

Finally, I do eat spaghetti and absolutely anything else I want. I just eat it in moderate proportions and I exercise. Finally, if I'm a putz, I'm one that's in excellent shape as shown in pictures posted to my website. And my data are strong enough that I don't feel the need to hurl epithets instead of responding with numbers. Or is being so sour, like being constipated, a result of the Atkins diet?

Sincerely,
Michael Fumento

Chortle. There's plenty more. The articles are sharp, the mail is fun. Spend some time there.

Anyone for Some Bowling?: I have to apologize to Miss Kate for being too late to tell her about the Second Annual Big Lebowskifest. The Big Lebowski is one of Kate's favorite movies of all time, and she'll be heartbroken that she missed it. It occurred on July 19th in Louisville and featured such events as "Recovery Brunch with the Dude." Sadly, I had to miss it being at Canyon Ranch and all (still working on an essay). Maybe next year.

Phone Follies: A public service announcement. It's been all over everywhere, so you probably have seen that there is a national opt-out list for folks who want to stop annoying unsolicited calls from telemarketers. There is still three months before the telemarketers must comply but after that, big fines will arise for violations – theoretically. There are quite a few loopholes so only time will tell if it will be helpful.

The other phone news is that in many areas, and hopefully nationwide in time, we have cell phone number portability – meaning if you change wireless provider, say from Verizon to Cingular, you can keep your phone number. Nice. Choices are good and not having to change your number if you can find a better deal makes going all cellular more appealing. If I could get in gear to get cable modem service installed I might just do it.

Tanned, Rested and Ready: Greetings all! I have finally returned after spending the last week-ish at the Canyon Ranch Health Resort in Tucson Arizona. A remarkable place - more details will follow.

For now, just be aware that Amazon has placed Apple Pie on sale for $9.98 (which is about what I would price it at if I had any say in the price). No idea how long the sale will last, get 'em while they're hot.

Back in a couple of days with new material after I decompress.

My Outhouse is Your Outhouse: This whole Outhouse Springs water thing (scroll down a few posts) has turned out to be a scam. Both The Legendary KK and The Always Delightful Chrissy have passed along quotes. From KK:

...To gain ''exposure,'' a six-pack of Outhouse Springs was sent to the local media late last week. For effect, toilet paper was used as part of the packaging. The press release accompanying it said the Atlanta company promoting the drink wanted to remain anonymous. Adams Outdoor, of Atlanta, with an office in Bethlehem, had no comment on Monday. But the same campaign hit the South in early May, with the Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., later admitting ''the media, including this very newspaper, ate it up, and Adams got its marketing coup. It can now use that information to demonstrate the power of billboards.

And from a email forwarded from Chrissy:

By now you have probably have seen the billboards promoting Outhouse Springs Water. This is a campaign from Adams Outdoor to get people talking so they can go to your clients and tell them how great billboards work.(not) They are doing it all over the state using unsold inventory.(this is why you are seeing so many)

So the mystery, such as it was, is solved. As far as a the scam goes - it was pretty clever. Just stupid enough to work. Now, with all the publicity, they should really market the water as a novelty gift. Might be more lucrative than selling billboard space.

OK, that's it. Two weeks of Real Life. Starting now. This time I mean it.

Site Weirdness Update: I had to make some adjustments but paragraphs should break properly now. The explanation is complicted and I'm not sure I like the answer, but it'll have to do for the moment.

Now, I really do have deal with real life for a couple weeks. This time for sure.

Later, gator.

Status Alert: The good news - I think all systems are go for A Pleasure Doing Business With You, which I still may rename Business As Usual because it's easier to handle. My hope is that it will be available by Christmas. It'll be a great stocking stuffer. More as things develop.

The bad news - I'll be on hiatus again for a while; probably the next couple of weeks. In the mean time, you can take a look at my latest contribution to Blogcritics, A Music Buying Paradise, Relatively Speaking.

Site Weirdness: First off, there is some weirdness going on with the site rendering. Suddenly, there are no lines in between paragraphs. I have not changed anything on the site that I know of to cause this. I am baffled. It seems to still work in Opera or Mozilla, but doesn't in Internet Explorer. This is truly deeply freaky to me. For example, there should be a blank line between this sentence and the next.

For some reason there isn't - for me anyway, I don't know if you are experiencing the same thing. If anyone has ideas I will be eternally grateful for the assist. Until I get it sorted out, please bear with me.

Outhouse in Lansing: I believe the editors of Men's Journal magazine (to which I am a long time subscriber) need to step away from the crack pipe. They have released their annual list of the 50 best places in the country to live (not available on-line). Boulder, CO is number 1, which seems reasonable, but there is only one city in Michigan in the top 50, and that city is Lansing.

What? I'm sure Lansing is a fine town, but there are at least 50 better cities in Michigan to pick. Lansing was chosen because of "football weekends and state government." I repeat: What? First off, I'm sure the MSU football games are a lot of fun and all, but football weekends in Ann Arbor at the Big House are legendary. And, State government? So that means you got an extra helping of bureaucrats wandering around.

Lansing is most recently notable for being the target market of Outhouse Springs a new bottled water with a truly disgusting name. You can read some background here (If that site doesn't work you can read Google's cache of the page.)

That’s the message media organizations received last week along with a six pack of bottled water labeled "Outhouse Springs." The offering heralded a billboard-only campaign launched in Lansing for the anonymously produced water that touts itself as "Truly Tasteless."

The press release, from an equally anonymous marketing agency (only the address, which is in Atlanta, was on the release) says the company that makes Outhouse Springs is "utilizing an outdoor media campaign with edgy imagery and sharp taglines" to draw consumers to what is describes as a ‘tasteless’ product.

"While this type of campaign is not new, it is the first time that an area like Lansing, with its traditional values and conservative nature, has been selected as a launch site for such an unusual product."

In other words, if Outhouse Springs can fly in dull old Lansing, it can make it anywhere.

Please don't write to give me grief for dissing Lansing. I'm not. I just pointing out that Men's Journal's selection of "dull old" Lansing as one of the top 50 places to live in the US and, implicitly, the best place to live in Michigan, is evidence that they are hitting the crack pipe with alarming regularity.

I'm just saying...

No Fear of Commitment Here: This is a remarkable story. It seems this Army Colonel, stationed in Iraq, managed to propose to 50 women over the past couple of years, many accepted despite never seeing him. Some went on to plan weddings. The scam didn't last.

The matter began to unravel after a television station in Washington, KNDU-TV, showed a segment in April about a woman in Pasco, Wash., who was engaged to Colonel Saleh and awaiting his return from overseas. That story was posted on the MSNBC Web site. Soon, other women who thought they were Colonel Saleh's fiancée called KNDU. According to these women, Colonel Saleh was a two-timer of massive proportions. They now derisively refer to him as "Kassanova."

[snip]

"We are not a group of stupid, naïve women," [one of the victims] said. "We are bright, intellectual, professional women. I can't tell you how much he wooed us with his words. He made us feel like goddesses, fairy princesses, Cinderellas. We had all found our Superman, our knight in shining armor."

I bet there's a bunch of expatriated Nigerian businessmen who love to get the email addresses of these women.

You'll Never Take Me Alive: Hunter S. Thompson, Godfather of Gonzo, describes his first encounter with the feds.

My first face-to-face confrontation with the FBI occurred when I was nine years old. Two grim-looking Agents came to our house and terrified my parents by saying that I was a "prime suspect'' in the case of a Federal Mailbox being turned over in the path of a speeding bus. It was a Federal Offense, they said, and carried a five-year prison sentence.

"Oh no!" wailed my mother. "Not in prison! That's insane! He's only a child. How could he have known?"

"The warning is clearly printed on the Mailbox," said the agent in the gray suit. "He's old enough to read."

"Not necessarily," my father said sharply. "How do you know he's not blind, or a moron?"

"Are you a moron, son?" the agent asked me. "Are you blind? Were you just pretending to read that newspaper when we came in?" He pointed to the Louisville Courier-Journal on the couch.

"That was only the sports section," I told him. "I can't read the other stuff."

"See?" said my father. "I told you he was a moron."

Since When Is It Saturday, Already?: I'm not entirely clear on why it's been so long since my last update. I believe I may have slipped into a time warp or something. More farm fresh, quality content coming soon - I promise.

If you get a chance, you should start watching the HBO series, The Wire. It is a terrific police drama, set in the gritty areas of Baltimore. Completely cynical, but completely humanistic. The characters are almost uniformly ineloquent, yet you come to know them thoroughly. Fabulous drama. I hesitate to recommend it because, as I write this, we are one episode into the second season and even at this early stage it may be difficult to catch up.

I'm looking forward to adding it to my next HBO Original Programming review, along with the superb, just finished season of Six Feet Under.

Busted...More or Less: A fascinating 3-part story (part 1, part 2, part 3) of Russian hackers, whose modus operandii was to compromise the security of a US firm, then blackmail them under threat of releasing sensitive information. They were convinced that being in Russia, the FBI couldn't touch them. They we're wrong, but it was not accomplished without a struggle. This would make a great documentary.

I Could Tell You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You: First rule of being Ronald McDonald - NEVER talk about being Ronald McDonald.

So protective is McDonald's of the character's mystique that men who play Ronald are never to admit that they do. Ronalds in costume aren't to say who they are in civilian life. That rather annoyed Craig A. Oatten, a police chief in Michigan, when a Ronald, in full red-and-yellow regalia, got into a fender bender near Saginaw a few years ago. Asked several times, the Ronald steadfastly refused to give his name for the police report.

[snip]

One former Ronald is a vegetarian who has since joined forces with animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to chide the chain. "I feel badly about what I've done with young people," says Geoffrey Giuliano, who played Ronald in Canada in the early 1980s. "I was the happy face on something that was horrendous."

Poor tortured soul. Another victim of the corporate injustice.

Science For Dummies: Scientific American presents their award winners for best science links. I haven't been through them all, but Cancerquest is absolutely the best layman's explanation of cancer I have ever seen, and I think I could expend some of my scientific curiosity at The Virtual Body.

Zero Down and Low Monthly Payments: This article in the Detroit Free Press speaks for itself.

In Iraq, no set of wheels is held in higher regard than the large, mostly white Toyota Land Cruiser sport-utility vehicles long favored by government officials, intelligence agents and VIPs from Basra to Kirkuk.

Locals call the vehicles "Monicas," as in Lewinsky, after the former White House intern.

Personally, I would have suggested a large, white Hummer.