Busted: A friend of mine recently had some trouble with a charge card getting rejected for no apparent reason. Coincidentally, I stumbled across an article in the 4/24 Wall Street Journal about just such a phenomenon, and why it seems to be happening more often. The WSJ story is subscriber only (I think), but I'll quote liberally.

When Robert Selander, the chief executive officer of MasterCard International, went out for a round of errands earlier this year, he decided to shop with a credit card that he hadn't used in a while.

That turned out to be a bad idea. By the time he reached the supermarket, a fraud alert was out on his card. The upshot: He got rejected at the checkout counter -- and came home to a message on his answering machine from the bank that issued the card.

These days, no one is immune from the campaign to stamp out credit-card fraud, not even CEOs of credit-card associations. Banks and retailers have an army of computers sniffing out unusual spending patterns, and every year they freeze spending on thousands of credit cards with little or no warning.

How bad is it? Well...

Internally, card issuers refer to this as the "insult rate." Some card issuers deny more than 100 legitimate charges for every fraudulent one they prohibit. Even the best operators turn down 10 legitimate purchases for every crooked one.

That's an insult rate worthy of Don Rickles. I suspect that hurts card companies more than they realize. I've never had a charge rejected, but if I did, I wouldn't bother calling them on the spot, I'd just whip out a different card, meaning a lost commission for the rejecting card company. A good reason to have more than one card. Most of us know that card companies will flag purchases that don't match a cardholder's normal patterns, but what does that mean?

The card companies raise the red fraud flag for any one of dozens of reasons. They're constantly looking for spending that doesn't fit normal cardholder patterns, or those of the retailers where people might be shopping. Most Americans don't buy computers in Paris, for instance, but a thief who stole their card might. Card companies are skeptical of purchases in foreign lands with high rates of fraud, including Russia, most of Eastern Europe and South Africa.

The alarm can also sound when it appears as if you've traveled faster than humanly possible. Two months ago, Jeff Foster, an executive vice president at Retail Decisions, a company based outside London that helps banks prevent card fraud, used his debit card right before he got on a flight in Boston and tapped it again as soon as he got off the plane in San Francisco. His bank, worried that two different people were using the card, cut him off.

One reason for the crackdown: the huge increase in Internet sales, which means there are many more transactions where the cardholder isn't present. That made it easier for crooks to assume someone else's identity, which forced credit-card issuers to take countermeasures that snared honest spenders too.

At the same time, the number of cards outstanding -- and the number of ways to use them -- has exploded in recent years. Many cardholders lard up their monthly bills with every possible charge in a quest for frequent-flier miles. Others now whip out their debit cards instead of writing checks. This means that ever-more transactions are pouring through the card networks.

[snip]

When Mr. Selander, the MasterCard CEO, temporarily lost his charging privileges on his seldom-used card, his bank may have thought a thief had stolen his card and then put it on "ice." In that situation, crooks find a lost card but then wait several months before using it. By putting it away for a while, they're hoping the original owner has failed to report it and it will remain active.

Some of that makes sense, some doesn't. Not being able to verify Internet sales is meaningless. Half the time I'm not even asked to sign my card slip anymore, never mind have the signature checked or present ID. And where is the identity verification on a Mobil SpeedPass? (Not a surprising policy, though - there're a lot of misguided Internet security concerns.)

I happen to be one of those people who puts as much as possible on the credit card for the sake of airline miles or hotel points. That's why some of this seems so weird to me. I have never had a credit card purchase rejected despite the fact that I have three cards that I rotate through. That means, for instance, that one day I'll be charging frozen dinners at Meijer's on a certain card, then it won't see use again for a couple of weeks when, say, I suddenly use it to buy an fine glass of Bordeaux in Bermuda.

I suppose it would be defeating the purpose to explain the rejection rationale in detail - that would make it easy for the bad guys to circumvent - but it's instructive to note that I must have some of the most erratic purchase patterns imaginable and I have never been rejected, where as my friend, who has pretty consistent buying patterns, got an erroneous smackdown. It makes sense, I suppose. It just means the credit card companies have given up trying to figure me out, they're just letting everything go.

So if you want to avoid rejection at all costs, make a point of consistently making credit card purchases in a haphazard and irresponsible fashion. There's a moral in that somewhere, but I can't figure out what it is.

You Want Fries With That?: This has been bopping around the 'net via forwarded email for a while. It is supposedly an actual employment application filled out for a job McDonald's. It's probably a hoax, but I got a chuckle out of it.

NAME: Greg Bulmash.

SEX: Not yet. Still waiting for the right person.

DESIRED POSITION: Company's President or Vice President. But seriously, whatever's available. If I was in a position to be picky, I wouldn't be applying here in the first place.

DESIRED SALARY: $185,000 a year plus stock options and a Michael Ovitz style severance package. If that's not possible, make an offer and we can haggle.

EDUCATION: You realize this is McDonald's, don't you?

LAST POSITION HELD: Target for middle management hostility.

SALARY: Less than I'm worth.

MOST NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT: My incredible collection of stolen pens and post-it notes.

REASON FOR LEAVING: It sucked.

HOURS AVAILABLE TO WORK: Any.

PREFERRED HOURS: 1:30-3:30 p.m., Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

DO YOU HAVE ANY SPECIAL SKILLS?: Yes, but they're better suited to a more intimate environment.

MAY WE CONTACT YOUR CURRENT EMPLOYER?: If I had one, would I be here?

DO YOU HAVE ANY PHYSICAL CONDITIONS THAT WOULD PROHIBIT YOU FROM LIFTING UP TO 50 LBS?: Of what?

DO YOU HAVE A CAR?: I think the more appropriate question here would be, "Do you have a car that runs?"

HAVE YOU RECEIVED ANY SPECIAL AWARDS OR RECOGNITION?: I may already be a winner of the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes.

DO YOU SMOKE?: Only at very high temperatures.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE DOING IN FIVE YEARS?: Living in the Bahamas with a fabulously wealthy dumb sexy blonde super model who thinks I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread. Actually, I'd like to be doing that now.

DO YOU CERTIFY THAT THE ABOVE IS TRUE AND COMPLETE TO THE BEST OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE?: Yes. Absolutely.

Pardon Me: In the last couple of weeks I have been in Washington DC, Bermuda, and the North Carolina Outer Banks. Now I'm back and I am exhausted - Northwest Airlines reverted to form for my trip back. More travel info in due time.

Oddly (or perhaps not so oddly), Slashdot isn't going to run my latest book review. I'm going to try another a couple other outlets but if they don't pan out, I'll post it anyway. And I have many writing projects in the works so here should be some good material soon, but it's going to be a few days until I can get back to things - with luck, I'll have some of my usual nonsense up this weekend.

Catch Ya On The Flipside: Time for another hiatus, since I have an awful lot to deal with in my alleged Real Life. It may be couple of weeks until the next update, but don't fret - as always, I will be back with a vengence and hijinks will ensue.

Status Memo: We're I a betting man, I would wager heavily that A Pleasure Doing Business With You will see light of day by year's end. And I am now thinking of changing the name back to Hijinks Ensue. The problem with APDBWY is that it is too long. The reason I changed it to begin with is most people I spoke with didn't seem to know what hijinks were, and many didn't know what ensue meant. Am I the only one who has employed the phrase 'hijinks ensue'? I think not. I'm beginning to think that if you really don't know the meaning of the words hijinks and ensue, you're unlikely to read it anyway, so it will do no harm to go back to the shorter title. I shall be agonizing over this for a while. You may just have to deal.

I have started work on a new essay - it will require a bit of research - with luck, by 4/8, without luck, 4/30. And I'm going on a minor adventure Wednesday night which I may document if it turns out to be interesting. Plus, still waiting my latest book review to hit the web. Don't touch that dial.

Toob Notes: The new season of Six Feet Under has been excellent so far. They have followed my advice and took it down a thousand, but I remain wary. The grimace inducing psycho chick from Nate's past returned this Sunday (haven't seen it yet, will have to catch a rerun) and that could destroy everything. We'll see. More comments will ensue as the season unfolds.

More importantly, I caught the World Poker Tournament on the Travel Channel the other night and it was wicked cool. They position a camera at each player's seat so that they can show what cards each player has. and so you can really see the thought processes of these guys as they place bets. It was engrossing. Here's the site. Somewhat disappointingly, the winner was determined by an incredible string of luck, not skill. I intend to watch each week. Vegas will fear me.

Link Roundup: A stupidity-free set of links for your viewing pleasure.

• Roger Ebert is the dean of movie critics. Even though I think he's wrong 30-50% of the time, he does write awfully well. But who knew he was a "hard drinking, guy-on-the-make during the seventies"?


• Check out these freaky cool paintings. At first glance you might think they are caricatures of some sort, but click through and look close, you can see influences of everything from Van Gogh to anime. Great stuff.


• Would you laugh at me if I told you I was posting from this chair? Well, I'm not, so don't bother.


• Finally a cell phone for the "descendents of Eve". Note the "features for women", including a "Fatness Index", a "Pink Schedule", and "Menstruation." (While you may think I'm documenting stupidity again, note that this is the Africa and Middle Eastern Samsung web site, so it's not stupid it's cultural.) Oddly, it does not include a cosmetics mirror or a burkha mending kit.


• Interesting commentary on how TiVo will alter television as we know it. I should get one; I could really use another remote on my coffee table. [[edit: also check out the follow up]]


• In honor of April Fools day, the 100 best hoaxes. Strangely, the George Foreman iGrill, a "low-fat, high-bandwidth solution to your networked cooking needs" is not included.

Blogology 101: Forbes.com ranks the best blogs in five categories, but makes you jump through hoops to find out what they are (links within links and pop-ups, ugh!). I'll do the hard work for you. I ashamed to say I'm not familiar with most of these (except, of course, for my buddies at Slashdot who publish my book reviews), so I post them without comment (imagine that!). I suspect all are worth checking out.

Tech

• Slashdot


• TechDirt


• Kuro5hin


• Gizmodo


• Reiter's Wireless

Media

• Metafilter


• Blogcritics


• I Want Media


• Gawker


• Romenesko's Obscure Store

Economics

• EconLog


• ArgMax


• The Knowledge Problem


• Winterspeak


• Institutional Economics

War

• Daily KOS


• Back-To-Iraq


• Tacitus


• Where is Raed?


• Vodkapundit

Enough is Enough: You know, when I sit down to gather material for posts lately it seems all I am doing is documenting all the stupidity I see around me. Yes, there's lots of it, but still, it's getting a little long in the tooth. So I promise not to post about idiots and their inane antics anymore. I need to confine myself to quality material for a while.

Seriously, my posts have started getting wearyingly negative. So that's it - I'm giving the chowderheads a break for a while.

But before I do that, I will treat myself to post this internet petition to get Michael Moore to go on a hunger strike for the causes he believes in. It's slightly misguided since there is nothing Michael Moore believes in more deeply than deep fried twinkies, but still a worthy effort.

OK, that's it. No more stupidity for the time being.

To prove it, I have another book review submitted to slashdot. I'll link it as soon as it appears. Also I have another feature I'm working on - it may take a while, but if I'm not going to take the easy road of stupidity, you're going to have to be patient.

My Baloney Has A First Name: I suppose I should comment on the Oscars, but it's difficult since I didn't watch the show, didn't see any of the films and don't really give a wombat's left gonad about the winners and losers.

However, from the reports in the papers, it is plain to see that Jack Nicholson is the wisest man in Hollywood. He kept his shades on throughout the evening, and considering Michael Moore attempted to pronounce the word 'fictitious' about fourteen times, Jack was the only one in the audience who didn't need to rush to the bathroom to flush the spittle from his eyes.

The Doggerel of War: I have to apologize again. First, for still having no solid new material. Second, for bringing the war into my posts, which I didn't want to do. And third, (partially because of the first two) I am once again posting about stupidity; in this case stupidity related to the war.

It's Not Like They're Running With Scissors: Miss Kate and Aunt Molly find themselves cut off at the knees because the fraidy-cat race committee for the DC Marathon has cancelled the race because of the war and fears for safety. Look, there are so many targets in DC, so many people everywhere, that an early morning marathon simply doesn't present any exceedingly special target of opportunity. Plus, it's a lot more eyes and lot more cameras on the street so your smart terrorist would avoid it like the plague. Even the incompetents in the Office of the Mayor were "stunned" by the decision. What's worse, the race committee did not offer refunds. Instead they signed everyone up automatically for next year. That's fine for semi-professional runners, but it's little help to amateurs - like Miss Kate and Aunt Molly - who don't intend to devote their entire lives to running marathons, and spent months in training, and had a whole bunch of pledges to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society riding on this. Sheesh. Get a spine, why don't ya?

No Pottys, No Peace: I have no sympathy for protestors of any stripe. Protesters - at least in the last thirty years or so - always seems like a bunch of children acting out; not really concerned with the issues as long as they get somebody's attention. No difference between them and the miscreants who riot after sporting events, in my book. I mean, really, what could be stupider than Puke for Peace:

In a unique form of opposition, some protesters at the Federal Building staged a "vomit in,'' by heaving on the sidewalks and plaza areas in the back and front of the building to show that the war in Iraq made them sick, according to a spokesman.

I could understand if they were trying raises awareness of the heartbreak of Bulimia, but that's a stretch. To answer my own question, I'll tell you what could be stupider: Poop for Peace.

At the Civic Center, a group of demonstrators defecated. Then they left, leaving the mess to be cleaned up by others. Not only disgusting, but this idiocy belittles the proud tradition of civic protest in our national history...

It's really hard to characterize this as free speech. Of course, these types are known for talking out their asses.

The best response, as usual, is satire. Check out this "protester's" sign. You can imagine the actual protesters eyeing this guy, wondering if he's making fun of them or not. Snicker.

Slowly Catching On: You may remember my warning about the monumentally stupid reality series Married by America. Well, it seems one Fox affiliate, in Raleigh, NC, took my message to heart and pulled the show.

I take total credit for this; I assume they feared the wrath of my millions of loyal followers. Plus, there's this.

"Married by America" features five singles who, with the help of family and the public, are paired with strangers and, according to Fox promotions, will commit to marriage. Last week, it was revealed that one of the contestants is already married.

I warned you about going retarded because of this show. See what happened to the Fox execs? That could be your future.

One Line Links: Don't blink or they will be gone.

• laughing in the face of danger


• another way to waste time


• this really pisses me off


• a truly terrifying website

Out Of Spite: I have a lot of sympathy for folks who are struggling for creative success and keeping weblogs. Can't imagine why. Fitting neatly in that category is Forrest, webmaster of TOSM (The Other Spite Meat). In addition to bloggery, Forrest's other occupation is playing bass for Just Another Victim, a band guided by a few less than stringent principles:

1) anything is fair game, if it's fun, we'll try to play it. 2) if you can't play it drunk, you probably can't play it live 3) it probably sounds better faster. and lastly, but not leastly, number 4) if you don't screw up, you're not trying. It should be noted that we try really really hard."

More importantly, TOSM is kind enough to link me up. Stop by for a visit, but consider this your obligatory naughty language warning, kiddies

Coming Up Empty: I have been a posting slug lately - as usual. Also as usual, I don't know where the time is going. One reason could be that work has been hellaciously busy. Another reason is this weekend has been insidiously warm and beautiful. 60+ degrees!! The snow banks are melting into sidewalk lakes and rivers. Today I was able to get into Ann Arbor and snag a bowl of Be Bim Bob at Steve's Lunch - a place I've mentioned before. Coincidentally, a brief review appeared in a local paper.

So nothing new for now, but as always I have plans. A new book review is coming. And an entertaining feature essay. And, I have a feeling A Pleasure Doing Business With You is crawling ever so slowly closer to reality.

So don't write me off just yet.

Going the Distance: The DC Marathon is coming up in a few days and it's a special one this year because two of the participants will be Miss Kate and her sister Aunt Molly. This dynamic duo took up marathon training to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and pay tribute to their brother, who was diagnosed with lymphoma last year. They are now in the home stretch of their journey; they've completed their longest training run (20 miles) and the next step is the finale (26.2 miles).

I can't think of a better tribute to a loved one fighting cancer than running a marathon, which is all about effort and perseverance. Beyond that, it is a life affirming endeavor to stretch your ability and endurance to the extreme just for the sake of the challenge, implicitly suffering now to strengthen yourself for the future struggles. It's especially poignant since their brother is a marathoner too.

So this is a small tribute to the two runners. I hope if such a battle ever confronts me I can face it with as much heart.

Link Chaos: A whole slew of blither and blather that has collected in my inbox.

• Ever thought of an exciting and lucrative career in horse dentistry? Turns out it can be depressingly lucrative. The woman is destined for the Stella Awards. (Hat tip: The Legendary KK)


• One of the folks waiting to stomp all over Saddam has a weblog of his ongoing experiences. I'm surprised you can't get court martialed for referring to a superior officer as a "Dragon Lady".


• Put on your tin-foil hat and check out Pole Shift Preparation. The end is nigh. Again.


• Remember that moron at Taco Bell? Life imitates satire.


• Are you a Google Guru? Check out these google search hacks. Very cool.


• Two words: Lion. Cut. Syllable count is key.


• Think you want to be creative. Think again. The average writer makes about $2000 per year from writing (I read that recently). It's better in the music industry, but not by much. Check out the finances of a "hot" new band.


• Ten cool techno cars. The only one that seems worthwhile to me is the Mercedes braking-by-wire, the rest are fairly useless or just gimmicks.


• You think you have a headache? What about the poor sheep? This article contains what may be the most perfect quote in history: "My relationship to sheep is a bit ambivalent now. I like them, but not when they come flying through the air."

Married in Maui: What do I find in my mailbox today but a very elegant looking note from my friends The Always Delightful Chrissy and her longtime beau Bob-o announcing that they up and got themselves hitched in Maui. No advanced warning whatsoever - thereby depriving us of the opportunity to check a box next to a small kitchen appliance on their registry and dance the hokey pokey in unkempt semi-formal attire.

To the newlyweds, I raise my glass and offer this advice (from one who wouldn't know).

To keep a marriage brimming
and fill the loving cup-
When you are wrong, admit it
and when you're right, shut up

Stupid Follow Up: Last time round I nominated the chowderheads who fall for those Nigerian e-mail scams as some of the stupidest people extant. Well it seems the scam perpetrators aren't very far behind them.

...the Everest of scam baiting is to con the conmen and get the fraudsters to part with cold hard cash. Only a few have managed this. One, writing under the moniker Bart Simpson, managed it by telling his Nigerian criminal target that he was being courted by another offer from West Africa. Bart said that this other correspondent had sent him $5 in a greeting card and he would sever his relationship unless the fraudster did the same thing.

BWAHAHAHA! Priceless. You have to click thru on that link and read the email exchange. More intricate and brutal is the solution of the true hacker.

Particularly vindictive anti-spammers will also send "supporting documents" to the fraudsters. When downloaded, these are found to contain not helpful bank details but particularly vicious viruses that cripple the criminal's computers.

One scam baiter managed to get her target to fall for this seven times before he got the message. Read how here. This means he either saw seven expensive PCs reduced to smoking rubble or spent an awful lot of money on repairs. It's hard to feel much sympathy for him.

Am I a bad person for celebrating the pain and hardship of spam scammers? I don't care.

Graphically Speaking: I meant to get a lot of work done last night but I got sidetracked by a combination of my interest in graphic and commercial arts and my intellectual curiosity (such as it is). I spent the evening perusing some interesting sites instead, so consider this your self-indulgence alert.

Graphic Design from the 1920s and 1930s in Travel Ephemera is exactly what it says. This is the kind artistic retro advertising that I would love to have decorating my walls (yes, that makes me weird). Some of my favorites from the airlines section here, here, here, and here.

Next I stumbled across Typophile which is all about type and fonts. A seemingly esoteric topic, but really quite fascinating. I spent a lot of time fretting over the font for this site and got mildly interested in the topic. If you have some time click on the courses for a brief history of typography.

Lastly, I found the site of Edward Tufte (pronounced TUFF-tee), who has been called the Leonardo Da Vinci of data. That is to say he is exceptionally knowledgeable in the visual presentation of quantitative data. For most of us, that means PowerPoint, but there's a bit more to it than that. There's some seriously creative stuff going on in this field. Check out the ET, Writings, Artwork and News section to get a feel for things.

I told you it was self-indulgent.

I'm With Stupid: We have a bunch of new entries in the ongoing reality series, Who Wants to be a Brainless Dolt. First we have the folks who displayed a valuable Dali original in a jail and were shocked when it was stolen.

The audacious thief was apparently not only brazen enough to confiscate Dali's sketchy rendering of Christ on the cross from a locked display case in the lobby of the men's jail, but he or she also managed to leave behind a schlocky, B-rate copy that at least three correction officers were puzzled to find upon reporting to work yesterday morning.

Imagine that. How ever could a hardened criminal from Rikers get past a locked display case?

It's a worthy entry, but for relating to the public at large, you can't beat the Captain Obvious senselessness of falling for those Nigerian e-mail scams. The added spice here is that, if you're reasonably active on the web, you get about 8 variations of this each day. How do you pick the one that sounds most real?

It seems the halfwits who fall for this can end up getting kidnapped or killing convenient accessible Nigerians in a violent rage. Kids, remember: Stupidity is not a game - just say no.

But the new leaders in the stupidity contest are the indescribably thick-headed creatures who trekked to Iraq to become human shields for Saddam. They went through hell to get to Iraq because they are convinced that Saddam is really a nice guy and only wants to defend children and small cuddly animals from heartless laser guided missiles. Once they arrived they were stunned to realize they weren't being used as human shields for pre-schools and baby-milk factories, but were being placed around actual military targets.

Suddenly, the slogan "Arms are for hugging" doesn't seem all that comforting.

My question is, How do people like this live to adulthood? Seriously, how do you go about your day-to-day life with the IQ of a hamster? Do you have to have a note pinned to your shirt to remind you to eat and breathe? Check this out:

...a 500 pound donation from a well-wisher in Istanbul was squandered on boxes of Prozac in a misguided attempt to cheer up the war-weary Iraqi civilians.

I am at a loss for words. Obviously, it is simply too easy to live and thrive in the civilized West. This is a real test of Darwinism. The fact that these drooling morons have survived to adulthood seems to fly in the face of natural selection. On the other hand, given the opportunity they have proven themselves willing to go to great lengths to die unnatural deaths and beat an early retreat from the gene pool. I guess time will tell. Either way, for the sake of the species, we must simply hope they have not bred in great numbers.

Site Finished: I think I've finally cleaned up all the loose ends with the site design. The archives are now working correctly. And some of the little oddities of formatting have been sorted out. So proud am I that I offer this cleaned up template should any other bloggers want to use, or build on, the design. Just click the link and you'll see the dam template page. The right click and select View Source (or View Page Source in Netscape/Mozilla, or View/Source in Opera) to save the template file. There's a lot of explanatory comments on the how and why of the style in the source. If you use it, please link back to a dam site and send me a note and I'll link back to you.

Now maybe I can get my nose out of technical books for another year or so.

How Did I Get Involved With These People?: I've written a couple of short book reviews and I hope to do more – they're linked over on the sidebar. But I'm pleased to say I actually read and finished the books I've reviewed. This appears to be counter to the generally accepted method of reviewing, according to this article.

Reviewing books is not a particularly well-paid form of journalism and it takes time. A book of any more ambition than a thriller can't be read for review at a rate of more than 40, or at most 60, pages an hour. Some books are only 120-pages long and can comfortably be digested in a couple of hours. Others, though, are 400, or 600 pages, or, in some dreadful instances, even more, and they can easily take days to get through.

The reviewer's fee, however, usually remains the same. So, shocking as it may seem, the truth is that some reviewers skip some books. And there are a few who skip through all the books.

But surely they are speaking of unscrupulous scam artists, not serious reviewers? Nope.

In the New York Times Book Review, a professor of creative writing, Beverly Lowry, reviewed a book by one of the people involved in the Whitewater affair, The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk by Susan McDougal. An Arkansas newspaper columnist, Gene Lyons, soon spotted that Lowry's review contained a basic error about whether or not the author eventually testified in court (she did).

The New York Times has subsequently had to publish a correction.

Or worse, this anecdote about one of my favorite historians, Paul Johnson

[H]istorian Paul Johnson [was asked] to review a big book - more than 800 pages - on the American Civil War. To give Johnson more time, Wilson asked his assistant to have it biked over that same day. The next morning, she admitted she had forgotten to send it and that it was still sitting on her desk.

At that moment, "the fax machine had begun to whirr into action, and 800 perfectly formed words on the American Civil War, with observant comments on the merits and faults of the book, had dropped into the intray. I saw no reason not to publish this review", says Wilson. "Like all really good journalists, Paul had somehow intuited the true nature of the thing under discussion."

Now, A.N. Wilson believes all journalism to be a form of imaginative literature rather than "an exact science"…

It is well known that few people buy books and the ones that do don’t read them. So in a way, reviewers are being true to the book buying public.

How Did I Get Involved With These People? 2: As an author I have to ask myself this: Is it better to have excellent reviews (here, here, here) in small local papers, or one really really really bad review in the Washington Post?

Back from Bolivian: The premiere comic genius of our time, Mike Tyson, has once again reared his rather thick head. Let us all rejoice. The comedy team of Tyson and his tattoo fought a guy by the name of Clifford Etienne. For you unsophisticated types, that's pronounced ay-TEE-on, and the guy appears to be a tough as the sound of his name. It's a little known fact that Etienne is French for Palooka.

The fight itself was trivial. Tyson knocked out Etienne in 49 seconds flat. Etienne was immediately compared to Greg Louganis. Upon picking himself up from the canvas he was heard to say, "I still get my check, don't I?"

Of course, all the fun occurs after the fight during the press conference, where we are treated to one of Mike's finest stand-up routines.

"I like doing other things. I like getting high, hanging out with my kids. I like drinking," Tyson said. "I have so many demons."

Classic. And:

Tyson claimed after the fight that doctors told him he had a broken back from a 1997 motorcycle accident. His doctor said the injury was uncomfortable but nothing serious enough to keep him from fighting.

Best of all, there is the suggestion that our buddy Mike needs a reality series. Oh, please let this happen. I shall gather all his best dialog and publish "Living in Bolivian: The Wit and Wisdom of Mike Tyson" and make a gajillion dollars. Unfortunately, they seem to want to center this on following his training up to a fight. That's wrong. The only way to do it is to follow his daily life like the Osbournes or Anna Nicole. That would be the perfect comedy and the pinnacle of reality TV.

Face the Music: The Grammys, like a four letter word that begins with 's', happens. Usually, there are two things you can count on. First, you'll get to hear live performances of all those songs that have been played to death on the radio in the past year. Second, you get to hear some performers - the ones who think record sales make them, like, real smart and important and stuff - proselytize on foreign policy.

I didn't watch the Grammys, but I gather there wasn't any political posturing this year. Sheryl Crow claims that is because the TV suits called everyone and told them to lay off. The TV suits say they didn't do any such thing and Sheryl needs to lay off the crack pipe. Either way, it's too bad. The only good thing that ever comes out of award shows is the material for a satirist.

From what I've read the highlight of the night was when some R&B vocalist named Erykah Badu struggled read the words on her cue card. The writers thoughtlessly used words with more than one syllable. Once she finally managed to stammmer them out, she didn't know when to stop and read the "APPLAUSE" instruction that came after her line. If anybody knows of a video clip of this on the web, please, please forward it.

The good news is two anti-divas were winners. Norah Jones took home too many pop music awards to carry, and Diana Krall took best jazz vocal. Maybe the Grammys are getting better after all. They may catch up to The DAMMYS.

Life Imitates a dam site: Remember this essay on everything wrong with the movies? Well, check out ArcLight Theatre in El Lay and tell me this isn't exactly what I suggested. I wonder what it will take to get them to open one in Dexter?

Cheese and Whine: The fundamental problem with humans at large is that they keep passing their diseases on to me. I am once again suffering from a head cold, mild so far, and I've learned that the absolute worst thing you can do when you have a cold is huddle under the blankets with a box of Kleenex, a pack of cough drops and the TV remote. So I put a lot of effort into continuing with my so-called life in spite of the horrible illness, and count myself lucky that I get to complain about it.

Blogger (including blogspot) was purchased by Google. This should be good - long term. For now, Blogger is still flaky. Half the time I can't connect and no matter what I do, I can't get the archives working. Blogger is a free service so don't have much cause to complain. They have a premium pay service, but informed people tell me it's not much better. Google is a top notch company - I hope they can sort things out.

Blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I've managed to lasso a few interesting links to hold you until I get my sniveling butt back in gear.

• Coming to Vegas, The Moon Resort and Casino. Moon and Stars, Shoot the Moon, Fly Me to the Moon - this could be the world's easiest advertising account.


• Signs. (Not to be confused with the movie by a guy whose middle name is Night. What's that about?)


• A Ford executive explains that the Camry outsells the Taurus because, "Very frankly, Camry is a better product that Taurus." Passers by shouted, "Duh!"


• I did not make up this Wet Burqa Contest, but I bet Weekly World News did.


• What's more gross than a frog flattened by a car? How 'bout a sheep? Irony: You remember that episode of Seinfeld where George was trying to preserve his high score on Frogger? That was playing on TV when I stumbled on this game.


• You simply cannot make things like this (.pdf) up. "A passionate interest..." Excuse me while I bust a gut.


• Dave Barry is funny even when being interviewed by Slashdot geeks.


• You have to read this utterly amazing obituary of aristocratic, eclectic socialite Bindy Lambton - including go-kart accidents, deep sea diving, and size 24 shoes. It reads like a real-life black comedy. Somebody - maybe Paul Thomas Anderson - needs to make a movie of this.

Stupefaction: So Joe Millionaire came to an end the other night, and it's all anybody's talking about. Annoying, since, though I never watched a single episode, I feel pretty safe in assuming it was stupefying. That Giant Sucking Sound you hear is the average IQ of Americans going down the toilet.

Now a lot is being made of the fact that the bimbo accepted the proposal despite finding out he is actually poor. I'm going out a limb, but I'm guessing she figured that after the show aired and he had all the publicity in Fox can buy, he would get a big contract for posing in his undies, a pile of cash for posing in less for Playgirl, and some extra tip money for miscellaneous public appearances and bit parts in made-for-cable movies. Same for her (except probably Playboy instead).

Then a few years down the road when she's divorced and sitting around sipping cosmopolitans with her divorced girlfriends, the conversation will turn to what went wrong with their marriages and the answer will invariably be, "I got married for the wrong reason." She'll be the queen of that circle.

So what's next? How about a show wherein exhibitionist losers are wed based on who the viewing public thinks would match up best. I want you to pay close attention to what I say next.

DO NOT WATCH THIS SHOW. IT WILL MAKE YOU RETARDED. NO MATTER HOW YOU TRY TO AVOID IT - TELL YOURSELF YOU DON'T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY, DO HOUSEWORK WHILE IT'S ON - BY THE END OF THE SERIES YOU WILL BE A RETARD.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Hold Yer Horses: Absolutely everything is going wrong. I'm having problems with both my web sites. My laptop has suddenly decided to display text all fuzzy and indistinct. The IRS rejected my electronically filed tax return for the most trivial reason imaginable, now I have to re-submit it. I hate technology. I'm going to go live in a cave. A warm, well lit cave, with indoor plumbing and cable TV, but still a cave.

Will actually post actual content in the next couple of days. Promise.

Link Fishin': First, I have no idea what is wrong with the archives. Apart form being oddly formatted, the last four months seem to be omitted. Heavy sigh. Just another thing on the to-do list.

For now, here's the latest from my recent casts into the cyber sea.

• Speaking of music industry bollocks, and I always am, check out this description of how Clear Channel manufactures the syndicated radio show, Carson Daly Most Requested. It is constructed like a pastiche from a database of phrases like "coming in at no. 4..." Technologically fascinating, but symptomatic of Clear Channel-itis.


• Finalists in the World Trade Center, The Next Generation contest. I like the one on the right. Although we need a better name than "Wedge of Light." It brings back bad memories of Junior High. It sounds a like a Bevis and Butthead remix of Madonna. It's like asking for a piece of low-fat pie. I could go on...


• One magazine's opinion of the best Simpsons episodes ever. The top four are all from ten years ago, but the Simpsons is still good quality TV, even now approaching their 300th episode.


• I'm not sure what to make of this optical camouflage. It reminds me of those X-Ray Specs in real life. There's video here. Weird.


• Lawsuit madness here in Michigan. Sue your school for an A+ instead of an A. I'd give the kid points off for doing something so stupid, but then I'd probably get sued for it. Better yet, a manicurist nicks a cuticle and gets sued for a half million. Mind-boggling.


• A real tragedy down in Kentucky. I'm put in mind of Bluto's reaction to the moving guys dropping a case of liquor in Animal House. As a matter of record, I am categorically opposed to using sewer water in your maragarita. (Link via The Legendary KK.)

Who Gets to Play the Wolf?: This must be a hoax. It has to be. Once I get over my amazement, I'll probably bust a gut laughing.

Mikhail Gorbachev is teaming up with former US president Bill Clinton and actress Sophia Loren to record a new version of the classic children's musical "Peter and the Wolf."

Retitled "The Wolf and Peter", the remake of Sergei Prokoviev's tale will tell the story from the point of view of the wolf, faced with the encroachments of urbanisation on his dwindling forest habitat.

Words fail me.

Hold The Olive: Roger from Great Falls, VA writes in with this advice in response to The Perfect Martini.

"Only things I would add are to chill the gin before making; put glasses in freezer for about an hour beforehand; peel fresh lemon rinds and squeeze oil, not juice, on top of prepared martini; hold glass by stem, don't cradle in hand; make ice cubes with spring water."

Wise words. Also he recommends Citadelle gin in place of Bombay Sapphire. They like it over at Tastings.com.

Hippies, Nostalgia, Etc.: I have been (very mildly) taken to task about my characterization of Ben Fong-Torres as a nostalgic ex-hippie (in this post). I suppose some clarification is in order.

Ben Fong-Torres is the former news editor of Rolling Stone magazine. In response to that, many of you young'ns are saying, "And?" Well, you have to understand that back in the late 60s and through the 70s, Rolling Stone was very different from the slick, high-style glossy it is today.

One of my hobby horses is the way in which high-quality, vital prose, especially journalism, is key to any activity coming to the forefront of popular culture. Rolling Stone did this for Rock and Roll music back in those years. To this day I can remember some of the stories I read back then, specifically I remember coverage of a Rolling Stones tour that captured the drug and groupie hedonism of that time, and I remember reading some intense early coverage of the London punk rock scene and how it flew so defiantly in the face of the cocaine and disco scene (which included my high school). It was also where I first read Hunter S. Thompson. Truly great stuff. (Do I sound nostalgic?)

Rolling Stone still tries to stay relevant - they gave P.J. O'Rourke a regular job, so they can't be all bad - but now it's loaded down with skin, fashion and spring break trendiness. MTV in print, and that's not a compliment. Yes, they try to be more edgy than, say, Teen People, but in the context of the superficiality of the magazine, anything weighty seems like a calculated attempt to impress.

For example, remember this post (can't find the original story, sorry), wherein we find Joan Jett was dissed with a mere mention whereas Britney and Mandy got all the coverage in a Women in Rock issue of some sort. Well, in the latest issue, we get a mea culpa, and they print the open letter complaint I quoted from in that post. I'd guess some focus group results indicated it was time to show they were hip after all so they took the opportunity. This is me being cynical. The point is that this is not what that magazine was like in the time Ben was there.

Anyway, Ben left Rolling Stone in 1980 (do any of you even remember 1980?) and has been intimately involved in music media ever since. Check out his web site for details. Most recently he was involved in a now defunct venture called MyPlay. MyPlay offered on-line storage lockers for your music files - the idea being you can access to your music collection from anywhere you can get to the internet. Visiting your friends and want them to hear that great CD you just bought? MyPlay to the rescue. OK, that may not sound like much, but it has a very powerful idea behind it.

You see, I don't want to own any CDs, or any DVDs, or any magazines, or any sorts of media. That's just clutter. What I want is to have access to the content when I want it from anywhere - home, office, car, Motel 6, and so forth. If broadband and wireless connections were ubiquitous, a service like MyPlay would be invaluable. Sadly, that's still years off. And then there DMCA to worry about...ugh.

The clarification I've been staggering towards is that Ben Fong-Torres has spent most of the duration of my life as a driving force in music media and is still standing and working and creating and flourishing in spite of the dire state of the contemporary music industry.

Which is what I meant by 'nostalgic ex-hippie'.

Ahem: Sorry to be out of touch but I was in DC for the past few days (actually in Northern VA, I didn't get into the district proper). The most amazing thing happened. I flew Northwest and had what was simply the most painless and pleasant air travel of my life. Yes - on Northwest! Once I recover from the shock I'll get some new material up.

Service Resumed: I've got the redesign straightened out for the most part - the only lingering issue is the bizarre way the archive links are rendering (those are created by a script hosted by the Blogger service so it's all guess work) - so I'm taking this opportunity to dump some first class links on you for chasing away the February funk.

• If you think talking horses, puppet aliens, or flying nuns are strange check out this defunct sitcom from down under featuring "a motor-cycling transvestite boxer" called Auntie Jack. Sound bites included. And Nero Wolfe is still cancelled.


• The second installment of The Lord of the Rings gets lost in the translation. Check out these screen caps of an Asian version of LOTR:TT, with hilarious English subtitles.


• An intriguing DVD. Looks to be made of short videos from the "world of 'demos,' originating from the European computer underground and created by talented programmers, artists and musicians."


• An intriguing web site. Made up of clever and funny Flash animations. Mostly I hate Flash - it wastes ungodly bandwidth for no reason, but this site makes me wish I had broadband and some free time.


• A couple of timely Columbia links. This forum thread was started by some folks who were watching the Columbia re-entry as it happened. They start to realize what was happening at about post number 20. And Washington Monthly unearthed this article from 1980 by Gregg Easterbrook (also Tuesday Morning QB at ESPN.com) regarding the riskiness of the shuttles. Very eerie links.


• One of the most fascinating articles I've read in a long time on sleep disorders at the NYT. Set aside some time.


• Dave Barry has a weblog, and I am not making that up.


• I have a new favorite word.

More on the Update: The first thing that you will notice is the colors. They are not random, they are, in fact, a reversion to colors that I used in the pre-blogger days. Long time readers will remember them. I like the blue; I'm not sure how I feel about the green anymore - it may change to white.

Things seem to render reasonably well in the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Netscape/Mozilla, and Opera. I can’t say how it looks in that new browser, Safari, which comes with the latest Macs, since I am Mac-less. I think it looks best in Internet Explorer, since the margin settings are more even, but that's fairly trivial.

The other thing you need to be aware of is fonts. Except for the title, the font used throughout the rest of the page is Trebuchet MS. If you use Windows, you probably have this - I think it installs with Windows. If not, you can get it here. If you don’t have Trebuchet MS, it should appear in plain old Arial, which I'm pretty sure everybody has. I think Trebuchet MS is a little more readable than Arial, but that's mere opinion.

The font for the title is Calisto MT (you can get it here if you don’t have it). If you don’t have Calisto MT, it will use Garamond. If you don’t have Garamond, it will use Georgia. If you don’t have Georgia, it will use Times New Roman. Again, not really a big deal.

The other thing about fonts is the size. I have made just about everything larger than before. This is to enhance readability. As I surfed around looking at other sites, one thing that struck me was how so many bloggers use small fonts, presumably in an effort to decrease the amount of scrolling needed. I got sick of squinting and vowed that I would increase the size of my fonts, scrolling or no. So there.

Also note that each post will have a tiny "permanent link" in the footer. If you wish to link up a specific post, rather than the page itself, just right click and "copy shortcut" (or whatever the non-IE equivalent is). This will always link to that post directly. This is not really new, it was available previously by click on the time posted, but now it's a bit more explicit.

There are even greater changes beneath the surface (and you can skip this paragraph if you have no interest in the technicalities of web page design). There are no TABLES used for formatting and no use of the FONT or BR tags. Everything is handled via Cascading Style Sheets. Conceptually, this implies the separation of structure and content, which in turn implies easier tweaks and updates. In the case of this site, that doesn’t mean much since everything is on a single page, but in the case of a large multi-page site it becomes hugely important. Even though it is not all that important to me, it's a good technology to understanding - so in a way, this was all spurred merely out of intellectual curiosity. (Who says I have too much time on my hands?) Once I get the design settled I'll post a blogger template that others can use an build on. In fact, sharp-eyed web monkeys may realize that this page is based on css/edge by CSS uber-guru Eric Meyer, which I started with and began hacking away at until I got here.

Which leads me to what there is left to change, and this is as much an exercise in reminding myself, as informing you. Some of this may be done by the time you read this. 1) The green background needs to go white (or at least very, very, very light green). That will make things more readable. 2) The section headings in the sidebar need more emphasis maybe some sort of underlining, maybe less spacing between the letters too. 3) The Date in the main portion looks silly and is spaced poorly, and maybe it should be in green. 4) The archive links needn't be spaced so far apart. I like the highlighting of links when you hover over them, but the text should not go black. 5) Many sidebar links don’t have tool tips. 6) The leader of the each post is green. It may look better in maroon.

Any other changes will come from your suggestions - don’t hold back, I can take it.

And then, it's back to the usual content.

Testing 1-2-3: Your eyes are not deceiving you. I'll have a lot more to say about why things are like they are soon. For now, it appears to be functional and that's about all I'm asking for. Needs teaks. Definitely needs tweaks. And your comments are welcome.

A further test. Here's a quotation.

This should be block indented and observably smaller. If it's not, that means I mangled something royally. If it is, that'll be a miracle. So, is it? Let's see...

Now here's what a link will look like. Nifty highlight, eh?

Back with more soon.

Not So Super: Since I bored you to tears with my football predictions back in Nov/Dec, I was a good boy and stopped. But I think the Super Bowl is worth an exception.

I was rooting for the Raiders. The question of whom to root for in a game wherein one feels no particular loyalty to one team or another is a complex one. Some people go through superstitious contortions to come up with a reason: "Tampa Bay is in the same division as my team and no Super Bowl winner in a year with a zero in it that was held west of the Mississippi has ever won their division the following season so I'm rooting for Tampa Bay cause I want them to be hosed next season." Some people go on the basis of who has the cooler uniforms, "That orange color of Tampa Bay is sooo 2001." The most valid reason is, of course, that you've placed a bet (I didn't).

I always like to root for the good guys, so that means I have to rationalize who the good guys are.

In Tampa Bay's favor:

• I like Chucky. I bet he's a lot of fun in the clubhouse. He also gave the least charismatic QB in the league, Brad Johnson, a chance at success after Dan Snyder sacked him in DC because he's "got no arm". He became an MVP candidate and the top passer in the post-season.
• I like the Florida Gulf coast. Not that it has anything to do with football, but still.

Against Tampa Bay:

• Warren Sapp is loud and obnoxious.
• Keyshawn Johnson is more loud and obnoxious than Warren Sapp.

In Oakland's favor:

• Some players with a whole lot of class: Gannon, Rice, Rod Woodson.
• Lots of old guys - not much younger than me in some cases. This counts double, in my book.

Against Oakland:

• Al Davis - A freak in a sweatsuit.
• Bill Romanowski - A pharmacologically maintained Neanderthal.

In the end I got behind Oakland because of the classy old guys. That worked out well.

You may have been following the story of the Raiders Pro Bowl center, Barret Robbins, who showed up drunk as a skunk for a team meeting and was subsequently told he was out of the lineup. In a plot twist worthy of Six Feet Under, it turns out that the guy is bipolar (I know I sleep well at night knowing there are 325 pound bipolar individuals roaming freely in society, how 'bout you?) and had gone off his meds. Under the pressure of the upcoming Super Bowl, he cracked and found himself going mental in a bar in Tijuana. Picture this: A 325-pound no-neck in a south-of-the-border dive, alternately buying rounds of Tequila for the house and crying in suicidal despair at the possibility of letting his teammates and family down.

The Raiders team, along with virtually all sports talking heads around the country, have been declaring that, while it was an unfortunate incident, it was not the reason the Raiders lost. Sorry, but it very much was.

If there is any consistent theme in football, it is that the play of the offensive line is ALWAYS underappreciated. This is done even by folks who make a career in football. In the first two seconds of a play, if the offensive line doesn't achieve it's goals - open the right lanes, form a good pocket, pick up a blitz - I'd be willing to be that the odds of a play succeeding drop by about two-thirds. And it is not just a matter of stopping a defender in a strength on strength battle. Defenses have all sort of tricks and shifts and strategies to confuse the o-linemen into missing their blocking assignments. The o-linemen have to work as a unit to adapt to these and pick up the right defenders. (Interestingly, the NFL regularly does some sort of IQ test for all players and it turns out offensive tackles come out on top position-wise.)

After losing four in a row early in the season, the Oakland o-line had been phenomenal. At least as good as the Tampa Bay defense, which has been heralded as one of the best in history. They were responsible for consistently giving Gannon enough time be one of the most accurate passers ever, and, in the few situations where a ground game was called for, the RBs had openings just as if they were the first options.

Generally quarterbacks and running backs understand this. That's why, since offensive linemen don't make the big bucks QBs and RBs do, the QBs and RBs buy extravagant gifts for their linemen. I read this year it was common to buy a $10,000 plasma TV for each of your linemen. Think about that. Linemen are so important to those who play the glory positions that they don't mind dropping round about a hundred grand to keep them happy.

All this was blatantly on display in the Super Bowl. There were instances where the Oakland o-line was out-of-sync or even confused. More than once Tampa Bay rushers went by virtually unimpeded. The result: Gannon sacked 5 times, and when not flat on his back, he was so thoroughly pressured that he coughed up 5 interceptions - so much for Mr. Accurate. If you think the o-line just happened to have a bad day and Barret Robbins had nothing to do with it, it's time to check in for a news update from Reality. Never underestimate the importance of the offensive line.

So, yes, it was Barret Robbins fault. Or it was the fault of his DNA sequence that made him bipolar. Or it was his bad judgment in going off his meds. But, as harsh as it sounds, there is one person to look at when assigning responsibility.

What a story, eh? A man's fatal flaw (bipolar disorder) combines with his fear of failure to bring about the failure he feared. A Greek tragedy in real life.

Poorer quality drama came after the game. Raiders fans, disappointed at their teams defeat, decided the stores and buildings and cars of Oakland were at fault. The intellectual rigor behind this strategy was exemplified by a two-bit rapper, improbably named Hannibal Willis.

"We lost, and that bothers a lot of the young people out here," said Hannibal Willis, a member of the rap group Hazardous Materials. "A lot of them are real Raider friends. I ain't gonna lie -- if we had won, we would have done the same thing, but milder."

But then, why give out your name when you can provide more solid evidence of your own criminality.

About 10 vehicles were set on fire and crowds broke the windows of at least one television news van, police and witnesses said. One group of young men set debris on fire in the middle of a street and then posed for news photographers.

Yes, in future neutral match-ups, this will count heavily against the Raiders, despite all their classy old guys. Time for Weird Al Davis to move the team again.

As a final close to football season, it's appropriate to review predictions by the football intelligentsia over the past few months. No one does that better that Gregg Easterbrook, Tuesday Morning Quarterback. Check out his final column of the season for a review of the prediction carnage.

Toolin' Around at a Dead Stop: You may now read the details of my arduous journey 50 miles east to the North American Auto Show in Dee-troit. Sadly, it didn't turn out to be so much about cars.

Industrial Suicide Watch: The radio industry continues its self-immolation, as thoughtfully documented in this longish feature (5 pages) in the Washington Post. Start with this apt description of the current state of affairs.

Owing to a growing sophistication in audience research, light-speed consolidation of radio ownership and the attendant rise in value of FM stations, the commercial FM dial has been essentially reduced to six musical formats: Pop/rock, hip-hop, country, classical, Spanish-language and variations on the theme of "adult contemporary," a sort of light pop or R&B. Research has shown radio owners that these are the moneymaking formats, and this is where they've flocked. Swept off the dial are niche formats, such as blues, bluegrass, easy listening and jazz, except for Kenny G-style "lite jazz," which falls neatly in the adult contemporary category.

One good point is the answer to the question of why we even care if radio exists.

Sure, you can download your entire CD collection onto your iPod and walk around with it. But those are the songs in your library, and even in random play there is a certain joyless satiety to that. The magic of radio long has been and will continue to be: You're alone in your car, flipping the dial, and, every so often, at exactly the right moment, exactly the right song comes on the radio. It makes you slap the steering wheel with happiness. The serendipity is spellbinding.

We are treated to a brief history of FM radio and Lee Abrams, who, in the early 70s, took FM from the free form, DJ programmed broadcasts to scientifically programmed playlist. As described by Ben Fong-Torres, nostalgic hippie magazine editor, immortalized in the movie Almost Famous.

"At its height in FM, you could look to the announcer as a person to inform you about not only the music and artists, but about the community at large," says Fong-Torres, 57, who lives in San Francisco and is a writer and lecturer. "They could bring in personal sensibilities to his or her broadcast day and, by their mood, tell you what is going on in the world around them. Then, if you happened to fall in and match their mood, they could play music that would be an underscore, an underpinning to what you have in common. Whatever you're thinking politically or socially; if you're coming down from a high or getting high, whatever. At the right moment with the right person on the radio, you could go on a little journey together."

Yet despite this, it turns out corporate programmer Lee Abrams may actually be the one to bring radio back as a big wig at XM radio, the 100 channel satellite network. Abrams, and anyone else who's at least partially sentient, seems to believe that Clear Channel (eew! ick!) took his system to an insane extreme.

Ten years ago, the nation's more than 12,000 radio stations were owned by 5,100 companies and individuals. Now, that number stands at about 3,800 owners. San Antonio-based Clear Channel Communications may own more than 1,200 stations, but the issue is larger than sheer numbers. Because many of those Clear Channel stations are in the nation's largest cities, fully half of the U.S. population hears the company's stations every day. (The eight stations Clear Channel owns in Washington are the maximum allowed in one city.)

On the upside, a lot of mom-and-pop station owners became instant millionaires and retired happy. On the downside, these new, huge radio chains were saddled with debt. Tiny, privately owned companies became big, publicly traded companies now subject to the demands of Wall Street, which expected continued growth and escalating earnings.

To meet the Street's demands, stations had to increase revenue and cut costs. Cutting costs meant consolidating jobs. If a company owned five stations in one city, it might fire three program directors and put all five stations under the charge of two PDs, who could hardly devote their full attention to the sound and music selection of all five stations. The big chains fired local on-air hosts and replaced them with syndicated shows.

To raise revenue, stations increased the number of commercials they played. Once in the 10-minutes-per-hour range, most stations now more than double that, often playing the ads in uninterrupted blocks.

Individual radio stations -- some of which big chains paid more than $100 million to acquire -- simply became too valuable to become laboratories for anything chancy, such as trying an unproven music format, tolerating extended deejay disquisitions or spinning a song that wasn't a guaranteed hit.

Stations became slaves to the kind of research Abrams pioneered.

Amen. This has gotten me excited about XM radio and it's competitor Sirius. I'm gonna shop around.

For added spice, Wired is running a couple of related articles. This one speculates what would happen if the music mega-firms actually disappeared, and this one highlights one way the music industry is, not surprisingly, misguidedly trying to fight the inevitable. Embrace or die, dudes.

It's Not TV: The hotly anticipated (at least by me) follow-up to my critical appraisal of HBO Original Programming is submitted for your approval. WARNING! I discuss the action in detail. If you haven't seen the latest seasons of The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, or Sex and the City and want to be surprised, DO NOT read the review. You have been warned.

In case you decide not to read it, you should know I have created a new word - Ozworthy - defined as: a plotline or event in a dramatic presentation that exists solely to for the sake of voyeuristic shock. I will use this word in the future without explanation.

Say What?: A couple of pages I found courtesy of Bill Simmons, the ESPN Page 2 Sports Guy, inventor of the Unintentional Comedy Scale, and writer for Jimmy Kimmel's new talk show.

First, a home page for Drobnjak Manjaks, center for the Seattle Supersonics. Words simply cannot do this page justice. It's mostly made of Flash animations, but they are small and quick to download. And be sure you are somewhere where you can listen to the narration. Your reward for doing so will be absolutely gut-busting unintentional comedy. Don't miss Advice for Children, and be sure to click on "This blob shape is my country. Now you know."

Second, Greg Hall, sports columnist for the Platte County Landmark (Missouri) has developed an intriguing method for covering sports. He just reproduces quotes and comments on them. Simple, original, and very effective, it seems to me. Anyway, he collected some quotes from a former Chiefs defenseman turned annoucer. It is a cruel irony to say they speak for themselves.

Neil Smith’s comments made during his appearances on Channel 5 for their pre- and postgame shows this past season resulted in a new phenomenon here in the land of OTC that I dubbed "Neilbonics." If Neilbonics were a Broadway show, it would be sold out for the next year. That is how popular the former Chiefs’ defensive end’s verbiage was to those who frequently read this column. Here is a heaping helping of some of Neil’s more "perceptional" quotes and my comments as they originally appeared.

• Actually this guy (Troy Brown) had a perceptional year today. ... I think he went 10-for-10 or 12-for12. ... His completion percentage was great. I love the way he was catching the ball.


• You know why? I think why. This is the reason why. Because I think what New England did today, they axe-ually they just everything you could probably the reverse they tried to do all kind of trick plays.


• Here’s what I think is going to happen. The coach, Dick Vermeil, is going to overlook everything and there will be some changes here (on the defense). I think what’s going to happen is that they are going to have to putting some players and benching them.


• They always come through because they always says what they have to mean.


• Rod Smith actually did have a great game but what when he did come back and redeemed himself early he dropped the football.


• Only thing he do is he go along the line of scrimmage and no one untouched him.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Go here, and check out the entries for 1/6/03.

Life Imitates Dilbert: Hot air in the summer, A/C in the winter; an article in the 1/15 WSJ explains why you can't do anything about it (it's subscriber only, but I will quote liberally).

Looking for an office thermostat that actually works? Good luck and Godspeed.

You may never find it. The controls for your company's heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) are likely hidden in the office ducts. If you do spy a thermostat, it's probably locked, or encased behind shatterproof glass.

Even worse, HVAC experts acknowledge what millions of office workers have suspected all along: A lot of office thermostats are completely fake -- meant to dupe you into thinking you've altered the office weather conditions.

The specialists are unrepentant. Fed up with of complaints from sweaty men and shivering women, HVAC technicians install dummy thermostats to give workers the illusion of control. In some leased buildings, even the corporate tenants don't know the thermostats are useless. Other times, it's the companies themselves, barraged with calls from workers, who ask the landlord's HVAC technicians to "fix" things.

And there's more.

Richard Dawson, an HVAC specialist from Homer, Ill., who has several landlord clients, says too many office workers feel their environment is "anything but what they want it to be." Better to install a dummy when they're out to lunch, he figures. He estimates that 90% of office thermostats are dummies (others say it's below 2%).

Does he feel bad? "I did what my employer told me to do," Mr. Dawson says. The complainers in the cubicles wore him out. "You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat. Guess what? They quit calling you."

I guess we know what becomes of over-the-hill game show hosts now. But wait there's more.

That's just one of several examples where the mere illusion of control seems to satisfy us. Plenty of placebo buttons give the same false impression. That "close door" button on elevators? It won't work unless you're a fireman or an elevator operator with special access to the system. The rest of the time, in deference to various building codes, it's deactivated, according to engineers at Otis Elevator.

I don't know if I buy that. I swear those buttons work; maybe only 10 percent of the time, but still.

The average office worker almost has to be a NASA engineer to get these thermostats working. That's exactly what Scott Packard is. The 39-year-old staff engineer, who works for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has used various illicit techniques to control climate at the different offices he has worked in, including obtaining a rare wrench to remove a thermostat cover.

He and other suffering employees have been known to hold a desk lamps or computer monitor up to the sensor to fool thermostats into turning on the AC. For heat, they strap a baggie full of ice water to it.

Non-working thermostats would be a luxury for me. The thermostats where I work are designed to react randomly to any adjustment. To address the problem the HVAC folks posted a sign over the thermostat that says, "Watch the swearing, please."

Life Imitates Dilbert 2: Or perhaps, life imitates a scene from Office Space.

A 32-year-old Boulder man who had opened his apartment's patio door to enjoy Wednesday's unusually warm weather was later overheard screaming threats and seen waving what appeared to be a handgun, prompting a maintenance worker to call police.

Officers, as a precaution, evacuated the man's apartment building and called SWAT officers to assist in defusing the situation.

It turned out that the man was simply upset at his computer - which he had called a "bitch" he "wanted to kill," police said - and the gun was a plastic pellet gun, not the .45-caliber automatic handgun it was made to resemble.

Maybe he thought this (415k) was an instructional video.

Don't Mind Me: Still being a posting slug. Actual content coming Real Soon Now, but I simply must finish this this wicked cool jigsaw puzzle. A one and a two and... Found on Who would buy that?, a blog of weird ebay auctions - check it out.

The State of Me: I have been a slug about posting new material, as Miss Kate pointed out recently. Sorry, I've had a good bit to do in other areas of my life, including work which has suddenly gotten a rather busy and is eating up my weekends, as it always does at this time of year.

Fictionwise, I have completed what I hope to be the final revision of A Pleasure Doing Business With You and it being evaluated by a literary agency on an exclusive basis. Not as exciting as it sounds, more often than not, these things don't work out. But I am confident that it will be published this year, one way or another. I have about a third of the first draft of my third novel Misspent Youth completed, which means that completion is a long ways off. It will go faster once APDBY is out and off my plate.

The other thing I really need to get going is a follow-up essay to my previous HBO essay, now that all the shows have been through new seasons and next seasons of both Sex and the City and The Sopranos are likely to be the last. Also, it looks like I will be attending the North American Auto Show at some point in the next couple of weeks. You can expect to hear about that experience too.

Then, of course, there is the site re-design that I obsess over yet never complete. I recently bought a copy of Eric Meyer on CSS which has given me all sorts of new and dangerous ideas - a great book if you have a smattering of CSS knowledge and need some examples of how to apply it. Naturally in my case, this makes me want to just go back to the drawing board entirely and throw away. It is a character flaw. Also, I've become envious of Sheri, the her new blog, Life is Suck...(except when it doesn't), is really cool. She has all sort of nifty little things going on, including allowing her readers to post comments. It uses a posting engine called Moveable Type, as opposed to Blogger which is what I use. Moveable Type is a lot more flexible, but to use it I'd have to change my URL from damsite.blogspot.com which would be a bit of an upheaval and would, of course, take time. I suppose I will have to continue to obsess from afar.

Enough blather...

Life Imitates Satire 6: The most widely publicized senselessness of late is the Raelians claim of have produced a cloned human through their research company called Clonaid. (Word is that Willie Nelson showed up one day volunteering to play. Bada-bing! Thanks, I'll be here all week..) That these whacked-out nut cases would pull such a stunt is to be expected; the real stupidity is in the press, who reacted with breathless journalistic pseudo-prose to this Watershed Event That Would Challenge All Our Cherished Beliefs To The Very Core. Funny isn’t it, that the finest scientific minds have been struggling with cloning for a long time - they've done mice; they managed to get a sheep done, but it didn’t work out all that well. But wait! - they missed something important: cloning humans requires detailed instructions from extraterrestrials on the planet Moron. Reporters fell for it, including one malletthead in particular who guaranteed verification. What a story! Front page above the fold! Of course, when it came time to actually verify the claim, the lights were out, the blinds were drawn and nobody answered the door. Lo and behold, it seems, we've heard that song before.

A specialist on the Raelians said she would not be surprised if the entire cloning episode was a stunt designed to attract new members and money.

''The only way they can succeed in that is to court the media,'' said Susan Palmer, religion professor at Dawson College in Montreal.

Palmer, who completed an 80-page report on the Raelians for the Vatican library, said swelling membership rolls is crucial to the sect's success.

The Raelian movement claims 55,000 members, mostly in France and Canada, though Palmer said active members number far less. All members must turn over 3 percent of their income, said Palmer.

Clonaid is no stranger to questionable claims. In 1998, the group made waves by boasting it would create a cloning lab in the Bahamas. It later admitted the entire operation was a publicity ploy never amounting to more than a post office box.

''For a minimal investment, it got us media coverage worth more than $15 million. I am still laughing,'' wrote Rael about the venture in his 2001 cloning manifesto, ''Yes to Human Cloning.''

Did it not occur to anyone the Rael is not quite real?

Life Imitates Satire 7: I'm generally annoyed by protests of any sort but this one looks interesting.

A group of Marin County women plan to march naked through San Francisco on Jan. 18 to protest the possibility of war with Iraq.

It's a shame more women won’t shed their…um…apathy in this manner.

Poison Gas Attack in England: You can always depend on Michael Moore. The walking mound of blubbering waste emitted a truly noxious outburst while in London, suggesting that the reason hijackers succeeded on 9/11 is that the passengers were white.

During one performance, according to the New York Post's Page Six, Moore shocked attendees of his road show by calling the passengers on the hijacked 9/11 planes "scardey-cats because they were mostly white."

His implication was that people of color, had they been a greater percentage of the planes' passengers, would have been able to disarm and disable the hijackers.

One regrets Moore was not on one of those planes. The hijackers would have been rendered helpless by his bovine odor, that is if the plane could have actually taken off with all that weight. Moore subsequently went on to piss off just about everyone else.

...But Moore didn't stop with the one outburst. On one of the last nights he was scheduled [to perform], the massive moviemaker turned bellicose blusterer, fuming at his "measly $750 a night" compensation and, according to the Roundhouse manager, criticizing security, even though Moore himself was responsible for it.

"He completely lost the plot," a member of the stage crew told another London paper. "He stormed around all day screaming at everyone, even the 5-pound-an-hour bar staff, telling them how we were all con men and useless. Then he went on stage and did it in public."

These are the sorts of things that should be videotaped. Is that asking too much?

Stick it to the Man: In the realm of useful information, many states are generating Do Not Call lists in an effort to fight telemarketers. Sadly Michigan is not one of them, but this page has a list of States that do and links to their lists. Check it out and sign up if you can to stop the irritating pests. The rest of us may have to wait for the proposed federal list. Now if they would only come up with a do not spam list.

I'm not sure if how is going to work out, but as a result of the recent price collusion suit lost by CD distributors, you may be owed a share of the settlement. If you bought a CD retail from between 1/1/95 to 12/22/00 you are eligible. Theoretically, you just fill out the claim form on line and you get a check for somewhere between $5 and $20. I have no idea how they decide who gets what (I'm sure if you wanted to wade thought he site you could figure it out) but it took all of 90 seconds to complete the claim form, so I say go for it.

Bits and Pieces: Just in case you haven't used your share of bandwidth for 2003 yet.

• I think we need mandatory sentences for cookie related crimes. Can you imagine the tune-up the perp would have gotten if this was over a donut?


• Marx. Harpo Marx. At least you know that if he was caught, he wouldn't talk.


• Think first. Then speak. Lake Superior State U. gives it's annual list of words and phrases to be banished. Some aren't so bad. Weapons of Mass Destruction is used pretty accurately. I'm glad they brought up using "challenge" instead of "problem". Maybe next year they will include opportunity. Anyone who says there are no problems, only opportunities should be struck with a blunt instrument. Repeatedly.


• The Diary of Samuel Pepys - a 17th century diarist who, through his ten year long diary, provided the a excellent view of the Restoration in England - is being reproduced as a daily weblog. Neat idea.


• Speaking of history, the First World War looks to be pretty comprehensively documented at this site.
  
• If you live in your Mom's basement and have way too much time on your hands, try Star Wars Origami.


• Stop in to visit Ginger Girl, a blogmistress who reads a lot, is crafty, and links to me.
  
• A strange attempt to meld words, music and the web, I'm not sure what to make of Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries. Curious. Very curious. (Watch the language in some of the presentations.)


• Stupid Drunk Tricks.


• It seems that even casual web surfers are pimp-slapped with pop-up ads everywhere. Some browsers, such as Mozilla based browsers, offer a way to turn them off, but Internet Explorer doesn't, since Microsoft doesn't want to risk alienating potential advertisers. To the rescue comes EMS Free Surfer. Load it up and you get no pop-ups, it's that simple. Recommended even if you aren't a web-head like me.


• Nothing to add to Dave Barry's year in review.

DAMMYs and SLAMMYs: A DAMMY is the coveted award given by yours truly for outstanding performance, exceptional quality, and general coolness. A SLAMMY is a metaphorical flip-off; a modern equivalent of a scarlet 'A' to identify evil wherever it may thrive. These need not be timely, they just have to have occurred to me in the last year or so. Herewith, the 1st annual DAMMYs and SLAMMYs

Category: Music

DAMMY - Pizzicato Five. This is the now defunct Japanese pop ensemble that I still listen to more than anything else at the moment. I don't understand the lyrics, but the perfectly crafted tunes carry me along. In a lot of ways, it reminds me a combination of '60s bubblegum and '60s pyschedelica and '60s groovy movie soundtracks and contemporary laser sharp production. Anyway, I like it; you probably won't. I have a friend who refers to this as Japanese Squirrel Music because, she claims, it sounds like highly caffeinated chattering squirrels. But then, she likes Creed. Which brings me to...

SLAMMY - Creed, the plodding, mopey, hurl-inducing chart-toppers, formulated in the foul depths of Clear Channel headquarters. I am still looking for ways to erase their very existence. You could add their weak sister Nickelback in there also.

SLAMMY - Divas (your Britneys, your Whitneys, and so forth). They have two volumes: Loud and Ear-splitting. They accurately mimic the sound of a gargantuan duck being given a roman candle enema. Dress like a slut, yowl like a banshee, and Clear Channel will beat a path to your door.

DAMMY - The Anti-Divas: Diana Krall, Jane Monheit, Norah Jones. These three jazz influenced singers demonstrate how bad most popular female vocalists are. Complex and subtle phrasing, a full range of emotions. Singing this good becomes and expression of humanity.

DAMMY - CDNow.com and AllMusic.com for their song previewing, and whoever makes those listening stations in Border's and Barnes & Noble where you can preview any CD in the store. We are saved from buying CDs only to discover they were nothing like what we wanted.

SLAMMY - Clear Channel (you were expecting otherwise?) for succeeding in reducing popular music to it's worst state since the mid-seventies. As a bonus, they did it all in the name of greater profits and ended up in dire financial straits. Way to be.

Category: Movies

DAMMY - Ocean's Eleven. A truly fun movie. Fun pacing. Fun acting. Dialog destined to be repeated ritualistically for years to come. HRH Miss Anna can already quote some good lines.

DAMMY - The Godfather Saga. Godfather I & II, recut in chronological order and with many missing scenes added. Whereas many think the Godfather movies are the best of all time I never thought them more than just good movies. This version moves it into the great category.

DAMMY - The Graduate. An old classic, still funny, still interesting, still more original than most current movies, probably because it never went through "script development" in front of a focus group.

SLAMMY - All the sci-fi/fantasy blockbusters ranging from the passable (Harry Potter) to the insipid (Star Wars) to the monumentally tedious (Lord of the Rings).

Category: Tube

DAMMY - Nero Wolfe. Tremendously well done dramatizations of the Rex Stout mysteries. Stylish and clever. The best acting on TV. Best show on TV.

SLAMMY - A&E. Cancelled Nero Wolfe.

DAMMY - Larry Sanders. Now rerun twice a night on Bravo and as funny as anything ever produced. Only show equal to Seinfeld at it's best, even edited from it's HBO form.

DAMMY - Blue Planet, for the most amazing nature footage ever shot.

SLAMMY - OZ. Totally depraved. Superficial characters, poorly portrayed. I suffered through a few episodes for the sake of my review of HBO Original programming and I found it to be thoroughly without artistic, intellectual, or social merit.

Category: Personality

SLAMMY - Barbra Streisand, Shakespearean Scholar.

SLAMMY - Mike Tyson. After getting noogied silly by Lennox Lewis, he announced he was going to "fade into bolivian." A few months later he announced his return saying, "I'm tired of being stupid."

SLAMMY - Michael Moore. To paraphrase Dean Wormer: Fat, stupid, ugly, ignorant, smelly, dishonest, greedy and poorly dressed is no way to go through life.

Last of Twenty Ought Two: I don't know if I'll get a chance to post again until the new year. Redundantly speaking for only for me, myself and I for one, I'm not particularly sad to see 2002 go. The highlights were my trips to Vegas and Naples (FL), and there were lots of little pleasures along the way, but mostly I found it frustrating. I should have been published again; at the very least, I should have written more fiction than I did. For that matter, I should have written more non-fiction for this site. I could make excuses for that all day long. I should have gotten more accomplished at work, which makes me wonder whether I'm losing focus in my old age. Which makes me further wonder whether I ever really had more focus, or it's just selective memory. I feel as though my life is filled with half completed accomplishments and promises delayed. My prevailing feeling is that my life should be somewhere other than where it is.

And, of course, I should be wealthier than I am.

If any of you say, "At least you have your health," I shall find you and throttle you with your computer power cord.

Who am I kidding, though? It's all just a self-indulgent, pensive whine. I have nothing to complain about except myself, so the means of improving things are immediately at hand. When viewed from afar, I have no doubt 2002 will be fondly remembered. Here's to an even better 2003.

Speaking of which, maybe I should institute annual DAMMY awards for the Best and Worst This or That of the year. Lemme give it some thought.