Starryshine -- now, with no pants

She has started a new trend: not wearing pants. Her reality TV crew says it's cool so it's now her "new trademark":

Paris has her repetilianly sexy stare. Nicole Richie has her oversized sunglasses and collar bones. And my new BFF's forever are convincing me that mine can be no pants and it'll like become a new trend that women all over the world will slavishly follow.

I support that.

Intervention

I was over at Shannon's and for some reason she started describing this television show, Intervention -- I was really floored. I couldn't believe something like this actually existed rather than being the sick fantasy of someone like Starryshine -- who, by the way, sounds like she's really going 'round the bend -- that it was not only being broadcast on TV but they actually have like 30 episodes! And I even get A&E on basic cable.

"Well, what shows do you watch?" she asked.

"Oh, the ballgame... and news shows. Hey, did you see Countdown? Do you ever watch that? The guy gave Rumsfeld the biggest reaming-out I've ever heard."

To wit:

Mr. Rumsfeld's remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis -- and the sober contemplation -- of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong....

The confusion we -- as its citizens -- must now address, is stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart -- that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld's other main assertion, that this country faces a "new type of fascism." As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism -- indeed.

That was Countdown's host Kieth Olbermann. Oblermann made his name as a sarcastic host on ESPN, the sportst network, and has been holding down a slot on MSNBC for several years, feuding with Bill O'Reilly and doing a sort of Daily Show-heavy -- as opposed to news-lite -- approach to the news. Serious when called for, but usually sarcastic and skeptical. In recent years, more and more outspokenly liberal, which coming from mainstream media -- not to mention cable TV, where proto-facists like O'Reilly dominate -- seems like a real breath of fresh air. Tonight he outdid himself, and I admire what he said.

I just wish it hadn't come during the dog days of August. But maybe people will take notice. You can watch the whole thing on the Countdown website -- it's about 8 minutes long.

Anti-porn law proposed in Britain

The British government today introduced a law that would make posession of "violent pornography" a felony befitting three years in prison. The government was responding to a petition started by a woman whose daughter was killed "by a man addicted to extreme porn."

Gee, I thought there was already a law against murder. This is like outlawing cars, not because of pollution, but because an insane man mowed down 15 pedestrians in San Francisco yesterday. My god, those cars are dangerous! Why, in the wrong hands...

Burn this

The SF Chronicle isn't making such a big deal about Burning Man this year -- unlike last year, when they made the mistake of sending a huge crew to document the festival right before Katrina hit New Orleans -- but the NYT is. Their arts section has a new slideshow every day. My favorite pictures are the ones without people -- or the ones where the people are only tiny ants.

Also in the NYT, Michiko Kakutani gives Jonathan Franzen both barrels. Fun!

Who owns tragedy?

I happened to be in New York for the first anniversary of nineeleven and was struck by the sense of ownership of New Yorkers for the event.

I got downtown and went to the 9/11 service at St. Luke's in the Fields. So I've now heard three 9/11 sermons and I finally realize what is so dissatisfying about them. They're all directly addressed to congregations that have actually lost people, congregations with people who barely made it out alive or who otherwise directly experienced the events of That Day. And sitting in the pew listening to this extremely low-energy, dry sermon -- it wasn't just that they were Episcopalian, I mean this woman was speaking as if she were still in shock -- I realized what was going on. New Yorkers think the attacks of Sep. 11 happened to them. They feel a sense of ownership. Similarly, but even more strongly, the well-organized and vocal Family Members also feel a sense of victimhood. They think they totally own this event. It not only happened to them -- it is still happening to them.

Well, if you had ash in your mouth for two months I guess you would take it pretty personally. But four years later I want to point out: It ain't only New Yorkers who got sent to Afghanistan and Iraq; the whole country has to suffer the unintended consequences of That Day.

This came to mind when I read Girlbomb's recent post in which she examined her still-strong feelings about the whole shebang.

Let me tell you something: Ground Zero is not yours. Were you here that day, that week? Did you see the smoke? Did you smell that smell? Did you walk around and see the posters, the desperate pleas for loved ones who'd never be seen again? I walked from the memorial in Union Square, past cops who checked my ID, into my building every day to see my downstairs neighbor's face on a flyer: Avnish Patel, MISSING, never coming back. The picture stayed up for a month.

(To be fair, a followup post couple days later retracted the "Ground Zero is not yours" line.)

I love Erlbaum's fierce sensitivity and strong, hilarious writing, and she is right to insist on the genuine quality of shared tragic experience. It's true that I'm not a New Yorker and can't understand what it was like to be there and know my neighbors were slaughtered and a part of my city reduced to smoking ruins. I was in SF for the 1989 earthquake, however, and while the loss of life was not nearly as great, dozens of people were killed and a part of the city -- several cities, actually -- was reduced to smoking ruins. And I actually had a similar reaction when visitors asked where they could go to see the smoking ruins: Buzz off!

Unexciting photograph of the day

This was the lead story/photo on Huffington Post just now:

Man, that's a killer image, isn't it? As in "conversation killer."

Huffington Post

Today's "Capitalized Phrases"

Sometimes you don't even need to "search inside this book." Sometimes the "Capitalized Phrases" tell the whole story:

Steven Toushin, Master Rob, Sir February, Sir January, Sir December, Sir March, Steven November, Wells Street, Hello Sharon, Best Western, Christian Reformed Church, Jack Rinella, Guy Baldwin, Old Town

Those are on the Amazon.com page for The Puppy Papers (which inexplicably showed up in the search results for my own name, though I have nothing to do with the book). If you like those, you should see the Statistically Improbably Phrases!

amazon.com, BDSM, erotica

Little pond

According to this article in the Toronto Globe and Mail, there are no more than 2000 "serious book buyers" in all of Canada. (Courtesy Publishers Marketplace.)

To which I say: On the back of a cartoon coaster, in the blue TV screen light, I drew a map of Canada, with your face sketched on it twice!

Do you realize what this means? With a couple of credit cards, a single person could dominate the Canadian best seller list at will! I can just see the sticker on my next book: #1 in Canada! In your face, American book market!

Canadian book market, books, publishing

What successful authors are really thinking

My friend Katia was telling me recently about a writers conference she had gone to where, no matter how successful the other writers were, they had nothing but complaints about the industry and their lives, or lack of them. Now she has turned this into a really funny bit of satire in which she reads the minds of authors who talk a good game:

Q: Your first book was a big success with a great press. What's up with your second book?

A (says): It will be coming out soon...

(thinks):I know it's going to bomb, too. They gave me 150K for a two book deal, and then my press never got behind me. The advertising was lame and nobody came to my readings. The marketing department made the cover a silly pink and doomed the book to chick-lit land. Maybe if I had gone to prison or something, the reviewers would take me seriously.

Katia was also just interviewed by Michelle Richmond.

authors, writers, whinging, whining,publishing,books

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- Impulse control edition

Houston is agog over a suburban woman who is accused of having an affair with a teenage neighbor boy; she may also have born the youth's child. In Missouri, a man was sentenced to 20 days in jail for breaking into his ex-wife's email account and sending her relatives dirty pictures of her they had taken when they were married. A Florida man was sentenced to six years in a software piracy case in Virginia.

People have boundary issues, don't they?

In Prince George Co., Maryland, a man was convicted on bribery and conspiracy charges for extorting money from a security firm seeking a government contract. In New Jersey, a construction contractor was sentenced in a wide-ranging bribery scandal involving the Paterson schools. And in Los Angeles, a former mayoral aide surrendered to face charges in another bribery scandal, this one involving Taiwan companies trying to score contracts with the city.

This is America, people. We don't just pay people off like in some banana republic. We hold fundraisers and have a democratic election, whereupon the people who wrote the checks get the business. That's how it works.

A New York chef who had just come home from work at a "ritsy" restaurant was strangled by an intruder who might be the same person who killed an aide to former NY mayor Rudy Giuliani -- both "were found naked and strangled."

Today's fake: taking advantage of Jon Karr obsession

A "notorious prank caller" impersonated a minor figure in the Jon Mark Karr weirdness and scored a live phone interview with Wolf Blitzer on his CNN show "The Situation Room." (Courtesy Mediabistro.)

And in suburban Kansas City, a couple pleaded guilty to fraud charges after it was revealed they faked sextuplets in order to get all the swag that comes with having a large litter. How did they get away with it at all? "The couple claimed the births were being kept secret by a court order because a family member was out to kill them." That that story was believed by authorities in their small town says a lot about rural Missouri, doesn't it?

fakes, hoax

Classic San Francisco

Now that I'm back in San Francisco after a ten-day vacation, I'm being reminded and confronted with a bunch of things that make life here amazing. The other day I was reminded of the Suicide Club -- a precursor to the Cacophony Society, Burning Man and other local underground institutions -- and how a Suicide Club event I attended in 1979 was in some ways my initiation to the San Francisco underground.

This town continues to surprise and amaze me, if I pay attention and am lucky. Tonight I went to my friend Bob's house for a small garden concert by the underground music legend Fred Frith. About 25 people heard Frith play electric guitar through an electronic processor/repeater, producing sounds that ranged from bell-like ringing to moans to flutes. It was about 40 minutes of never-again-heard improvization, and I tried to fix the moment in my mind so I'll always remember what it felt like to be middle-aged and still privileged, once in a long while, to be invited underground.

End of the vacation

Thoughts on return...

1. It was a ten-hour drive from Portland to SF -- and only two tanks of gas. I left at 7 a.m. and hit the toll plaza about 5:10 p.m.
2. I was glad, of course, to see the Bay Bridge and the fog-shrouded downtown. But I was even glad to see the utterly grungy spray-it-yourself car wash next to the Bayshore onramp to 101 north. When I saw that I knew I was back home.
3. Liz Henry's now on the SF metroblog! Look at this entry of hers with an awesome photo of her kid entering school for his first day.
4. While I was gone, the trial Cris has been working on as one of her internships ended, and they lost. Cris doesn't have a blog per se but she blogs as the cat; so she blogged about the verdict, in a very three-levels-of-indirection way.
5. I got home before Cris and opened all the mail that had piled up. (She has little interest in mail.) Among the bills was something from a blood lab that tried to bill the wrong insurance company. A year after I changed jobs we're still getting bills from people who have billed the wrong insurance. At first it made me pissed off and I would send the bills back with pissy letters but now it just makes me sort of sad.
6. The house was filled with flowers; our cleaner picks them from our garden and brings them in. I don't know what they're called but they smell so nice.

All righty then

I'm on my way back from my vacation at a remote retreat in the mountains in Washington, a Lutheran church camp where half the people are from Minnesota and sound like the characters in "Fargo." I have pictures here.

This is the place I stayed six weeks at in 2003. It was certainly easier being there as a guest rather than on staff.

Now I'm in Portland, and Monday I'll drive the rest of the way back to San Francisco. I sure have had enough of families with loads of kids -- not the ones at the church camp as much as the ones you run into in restaurants on the road. If I hear one more shrill two-year-old having a meltdown I'm going to brain him with the maple syrup.

Breaking: Americans are stupid

Overheard on the road:

In a small town:

Woman 1 (stopping to examine a shop): Oh -- "Shirts and Stuff."
Woman 2: "Shirts and Stuff!"
Woman 1: What time are they open tomorrow? Oh, they're not open on Sunday!
Woman 2: Shirts!
Man 1: What is it?
Women 1 and 2, together: "Shirts and Stuff"!
Man 2: Do you need shirts?
Man 1: Or stuff?

In a diner:

Old woman: I'll have eggs.
Waitress: How do ya want 'em?
Woman: Scrambled.
Waitress: Toast or hashbrowns?
Woman: Toast.
Waitress: White, wheat or sourdough?
Woman: Sourdough.
Waitress (turning to old man): And you, sir?
Man (quickly): I'll have eggs, over hard, wheat toast!
Waitress: You were all ready, weren't you? You're a good listener!

So painful. The food there really sucked too.

En vacance

I'm off on vacation -- see note above. Road trip!!

Overheard

Overheard this morning in a cafe:

Middle-aged hippie to the attractive counter girl:

Yeah, well, you oughta have your wedding in the same church on the same day -- that'd show 'em!!

Strange notes in today's terror news

From the New York Times story:

President Bush called the arrests "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom."

I don't think Bush even knows what he's saying anymore. I love freedom; perhaps an "Islamic fascist" will want to kill me; therefore he's killing me because I love freedom. There is so much wrong with this way of thinking I don't even know how to start. But there it is.

Mr. Clarke told reporters that the investigation had "already lasted for several months and will undoubtedly last long into the future" and said it had involved "an unprecedented level of surveillance.... We have been looking at meetings, movement, travel, spending and the aspirations of a large group of people," Mr. Clarke said.

They've been "looking at their aspirations." ...Incredible.

"This was a very sophisticated plan and operation," (Chertoff) said. "It was not a circle with a handful of people sitting around and dreaming."

That's an interesting image, suggesting some kind of summer-camp seance. "All right now, campers, close your eyes and think about where you'd like to be five years from now... ten year from now... twenty years from now!"

Kip Hawley, a United States Transportation Department official... suggested that travelers "leave liquids at home or drink them" before passing through security checkpoints....

I guess that would explain the large number of drunken people on flights today.

Joanne Weslund, 68, a retired schoolteacher from Hubbardston, Mass., was critical of the way the situation had been handled by the airlines as she waited for a British Airways flight. "It's been terrible," she said. "We are waiting in Disney-like lines."

Wow, so that's the gold standard for long lines now. "Disney-like"! And you know just what she means, too, even if you've never been to Disneyland. I guess Walt Disney never thought his name would be used this way.

David Charters of Princeton, who arrived around 6:30 am for a 9 a.m. flight to Calgary, was unsure he would make his flight, but was not making a fuss. "If you're not patient, you shouldn't be flying because things like this happen," he said. "That's why they have bars here."

See above notes about drunken people.

What are you working on? : Janice Erlbaum

Memoirist Janice Erlbaum is the latest interviewee in my "What are you working on?" series of talks with writers about their current projects.

I dig Erlbaum so much. Her first book Girlbomb is one of the coolest, funniest memoirs of being a teenager ever, and her blog is hilarious. Now read the interview.

Janice Erlbaum, Girlbomb, writers

Today's story that reads like The Onion but is actually a real story

From the Jackson, Mich. Citizen-Patriot:

A lesson in lingo at area Starbucks

...While some customers know the lingo unique to Starbucks, there are many Jackson-area people who don't.

"And that's OK, because if you say small, medium or large, we know what you mean," she said.

... "I remember the first time I was at a Starbucks and was afraid I would mispronounce the size coffee I wanted," Heynen said. "Was it a 'grand' or a 'grande' (emphasis on the last letter)? I didn't know. So I ordered a tall because I knew that word," she said, laughing.

On this day, as various customers at Jackson Starbucks walked in and out -- others stopping at the drive-through -- David Wilkinson of Benton Harbor, formerly of Jackson, sat at a table and finished sketching a drawing for an upcoming exhibit at Cirrcus, 634 N. Mechanic St.

"Yesterday, I got a mocha Frappuccino at the drive-through window; today, I'm having a venti coffee," he said, having no problem with the lingo.

Breaking: DeLay to withdraw from Congressional race

After the courts refused to allow the Texas Republican Party to pull disgraced former congressman Tom DeLay's name off the ballot in Texas's 22nd district, DeLay officially withdrew from the race today, clearing the way for the party or organize behind a write-in candidate.

Yeah, that'll definitely work.

That's entertainment

A Las Vegas judge declared a mistrial when the defense lawyer showed up drunk:

In an exchange recorded by courtroom video, Caramango arrived about 90 minutes late for trial, and can be heard slurring his words. The judge asked if something was wrong, and said she became suspicious when details of Caramango's accident account varied.

Caramango also identified a woman who accompanied him to court as his ex-girlfriend, and called her Christine. Questioned by the judge, the woman identified herself as Josephine and said she just met Caramango about 20 minutes earlier at a nearby bar and grill.

Perhaps he forgot to tip her, so she followed him into the courtroom.

What are you working on? : novelist Anne Elliott

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers about their current projects, Anne Elliott, who is working on two novels -- one of them a ten year-long project:

Following the advice of trusted readers (and some helpful rejections), I cut the novel to two protags. Now, under the advice of my agent, who is a seasoned book editor as well, I am making it a one-protag, singular-narrative novel. So it will have gone from 0 words to about 140,000 to about 70,000 in the ten or so years I've been working at it. This is definitely the project on which I have been learning basic writing lessons, especially about scaling back grandiose ideas. It has been a humbling experience.

By the way, if you're a writer who is in the middle of something and would like to talk about your struggles, let me know: mark dot pritchard [at] gmail
 

Today's fake: journalist invented interviews

A Norwegian journalist has admitted he fabricated interviews with Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, including the interesting (but wholly fictional) admission from Gates that he never carries more than a dime in his pocket and "makes $1 bets with his wife." All proceeds from the bets benefitted the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I made that last part up.

Burning prose caused forest fire

A woman burning pages from her journal started a 4000-acre forest fire in the remote mountains of Washington state, the Chelan County sheriff said.

(Sheriff) Harum declined to release the woman's name. She is in her 40s and has been in the Stehekin area for the past year, living and working in campgrounds, he said. "She apparently was camping in the area and decided to burn some paper, some writing she had," he said Tuesday. She told authorities that she put dirt and water on it after it was burned, but believes that it must not have been completely out.

Speaking of burning your literary bridges, Australian author Peter Carey has asked his publishers to remove the dedications from four novels he dedicated to his now-ex-wife, Allison Summers. (Courtesy Publishers marketplace)

Peter Carey, Flick Creek Fire, journaling, forest fires

Dept. of Mysteries: surveillance cameras

I just posted an entry on Metroblog: Who's watching?. To illustrate it I took several pictures around town and posted them in a new Flickr set for pictures of surveillance cameras.

Is this "citizen journalism"? Perhaps only if I actually follow up the story by trying to find out who the camera really belongs to.

security cameras, surveillance, surveillance cameras, CCTV

Dept. of mysteries

Salon today ran a piece on the Mojave airplane boneyard, a place you may have driven past if you're driving from northern California to Joshua Tree Nat'l Park -- the way leads through Bakersfield and up Hwy. 58 into the desert -- and I was inspired to take a look at the site through Google Maps. Here it is -- but what's that strange smudge at the end of the runway, just left of center?

That's weird -- but I thought it might just be an anomaly on this one spot. But if you zoom in as much as you're permitted on several of the airplanes parked there, you'll notice smudges on many of them too, only not as pronounced.

Okay, whatever. But check this out -- that's in Moscow. And if you search around Moscow, you'll find a number of these "erased" buildings. Here's another which I found at random in about 15 seconds.

So why are certain spots in Moscow (and by the way, I couldn't find any around Washington, DC) blotched out like this in the same manner as the airplanes in the Mojave desert? I can believe that some sites around Moscow are secret; I can even believe that there are some airplanes that are secret (and indeed, the Salon story does say the people who run the facility are secretive). But how does it happen that they both get erased in the exact same way?

Salon, Ask The Pilot, Google maps, redacted photos

It's Bad Behavior Friday&trade:! -- Silicon Valley edition

The utterly boring stock options fraud story got a whole lot more interesting this morning when Apple Computer revealed it may have to restate earnings back to 2002 because -- shocked, shocked! -- it may have made the same accounting "error" as other firms (such as Brocade, whose former execs face criminal charges). (If you want an explanation of the issue, see this colorfully-titled analysis piece from the San Jose Mercury News, Valley Binged On Options Like They Were Meth.)

The all-too-apt cartoon on the left is from the New Yorker a few months ago. I have it hanging on my cube wall. A former employee of a prototypical turn-of-the-millienium dotcom called Commerce One, I admit I binged on a few of those stock option things myself. (The company went out of business in 2004 and its assets were famously auctioned later that year.)

The other day I wondered whether AOL's decision to stop charging for email would lead to it ending the practice of sending out those annoying CDs. Apparently so, as Silicaon Valley gossip blog Valleywag said: "Forty-five people from AOL's free CD department were given paid leave last month to look for new jobs." Hmm, I wonder how that job search is going. "Experience?"  "I sent out 60 million free AOL CDs every month."  "Damn you to hell, Satanic wretch!"

Elsewhere in Silicon Valley, two neo-nazis attacked a black man while shouting racist slogans and "firing off Nazi salutes." What were two thugs from the Central Valley doing in Mountain View, one of the more affluent localities that make up Silicon Valley? Construction work.

By the way, how do you simultaneously attack someone and "fire off Nazi salutes"? Do you take turns? Or has it become a sort of karate move: "Seig haaiiiiiii!!"

Finally, the award for today's neologism goes to Technorati, whose site allows you to view listings "in order of recency."

neo-Nazis, Apple Computer, stock options, fraud,AOL

Dilbert creator: essentially a fascist?

The mega-successful creator of the Dilbert comic strip, Scott Adams, has for many years joked about the advantages of a society run only by a relatively small cadre of highly intelligent elite managers. For a long time it's been pretty clear that this is just a joke, expressed through (for example) "Dogbert's New Ruling Class," which is essentially just a fan club masquerading under a jokey plan-for-world-domination (see graphic).

Now, in his blog, Adams suggests that democracy as a concept or in practice is fatally flawed and that his hopes for society indeed rest on "a secret cabal of highly competent puppetmasters":

My favorite conspiracy theory is the one that says the world is being run by a handful of ultra-rich capitalists, and that our elected governments are mere puppets. I sure hope it's true. Otherwise my survival depends on hordes of clueless goobers electing competent leaders. That's about as likely as a dog pissing the Mona Lisa into a snow bank. The only way I can get to sleep at night is by imagining a secret cabal of highly competent puppetmasters who are handling the important decisions while our elected politicians debate flag burning and the definition of marriage. ...

I know some of you will say that it's obvious that corporate money influences the government. But that's not enough to make me feel comfortable. I want to know there's an actual meeting of the puppetmasters every Thursday at 3 pm. I want to know that when one of them suggests a new policy that the group votes by pressing buttons on their chairs and if the idea is deemed bad, the offender drops through a hole in the floor and is eaten by a golden shark. You can't tell me that democracy produces better policies than the golden shark method.

(Courtesy BoingBoing)

Notice he says "my survival depends on" society being organized this way -- not "the survival of humanity" or culture or anything else but his own tuchis.

Still pretty clearly a joke. But so much of the humor in the Dilbert comic strip also rests on this notion -- a few smart and (usually) unemotional people being victimized by hysterical idiots, who are in turn victimized by a greedy, evil genius who is willing to use capitalism to his own ends -- that I have the feeling Adams really does feel this way.

Of course, this is essentially a description of fascism, in which a powerful elite, which considers itself superior in every way to the hoi polloi, rules for its own enrichment and gratification. In today's political climate, I find it a little discomforting that so many people find this funny or, perhaps, even a good idea.

Dilbert, Scott Adams, fascism

More clueless people

The "clueless people" feature could certainly be a regular, and infinitely entertaining, feature of this website, but I'm not sure I have that much skin on my forehead, which constantly slams against the desk after I read these stories.

Onward.

An LA Times columnist shares some of the comments from bigoted Mel Gibson supporters he received after writing about the mad actor.

The pretty 20-year-old daughter of New York state senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno went missing last week. It took cops until this week to find her "wandering around Times Square with a self-declared pimp" whom she had met on... wait for it... MySpace. His profile there read:

My name is Jazzo and my interests in myspace is to meet beautiful young women that want to travel and get down wit a playa.

Seems to me like he delivered on that promise, and indeed, "Police were investigating if the admitted 30-year-old pimp had committed a crime relating to Rachel Bruno's disappearance." Hey, if tricking people into surrendering their youth and vitality to rapacious businessmen was a crime, the fast food industry would have been outlawed long ago.

Somebody give that girl a book deal, okay?

In Germany, a woman called 911 -- or whatever passes for 911 there -- to complain her husband would not... let's see, how did Mr. Jazzo put it? -- get down with her.

Beauty

The most beautiful blog I've ever seen -- Woolgathering, by Liz Perry. Courtesy Badger.

BTW, I didn't feel that little 'ol earthquake at all.

Further adventures in the 21st century

The day millions have prayed for is here: AOL has announced it will no longer charge for email, online accounts, or its so-called software. I hope that means it will no longer enclose its CDs in Sunday newspapers, send them to me in elaborate advertising mailers, or stack them up on coffeehouse counters. (More takes on the story from CNet and BusinessWeek.)

Six Russian volunteers will be locked in an airtight capsule for a year and a half to study what happens to humans who are locked in an airtight capsule. Just another preview of your trip to Mars. Better hope your travel companions are more fun than, for example, the typical cast of Big Brother, which the study resemples:

The mock-up "Mars cruiser" will actually look more like a cross between a standard three-bedroom flat and a stage set for a reality TV show. There will be cameras and microphones in every corner -- yet if the volunteers decide to contact the outside world, their main means of getting in touch will be e-mail. And there will be a long delay before they get an answer -- just like there would be during a real flight to Mars.

There's a challenge: have a contest between email transmission speeds from a Mars flight and from an AOL account. Who would win?!

Weird book deal of the day

Nikita Lalwani's first novel THE SQUARE ROOT, about a young British Indian adolescent math prodigy whose parents are grooming her to attend Oxford University at age fourteen, to Jennifer Hershey at Random House, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Jin Auh at The Wylie Agency (US).

Just more proof that the whole South Asian prodigy thing has Opal Mehta-stasized far beyond any harm that some plagarism scandal could bring.

Incoming!

Salon seems determined to provoke lately. The number of subscribers drawn to the endless dweeby blather of Cary Tennis must have peaked, since they have lately been publishing some positively weird shit.

Today's exhibit: Ryan Knighton's "Dancing in the Dark," an account by a nearly-blind guy of picking up a girl at a club and getting her back to his house, where the lights are now bright enough for him to tell she actually isn't his type.

And that's the whole piece. There's no epiphany, no lesson learned, no point -- it's like a joke without a punchline. The piece more properly would have itself been a letter to columnist Tennis, who could at least have offered some of his typical on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand, on-this-third-hand- I-seem-to-have-grown advice.

Like this:

Dear Ryan, You stupid twerp, how could you possibly have been graceless enough to drag this girl home and then not fuck her? Couldn't you have dealt with your sudden ambivalence after you'd had sex, so she wouldn't have felt like a complete idiot?

On the other hand, we've all felt like you do, at times. We've all brought people home whom we look at in the light of day and think "Who the hell is this? What was I thinking? I don't even like breasts!" But that's in the light of day -- the freakin' light of day, man. You weren't meant to have second thoughts in the middle of the might when you're both half-drunk and ripping each other's clothes off (I notice you didn't offer to help her remove her boots. It's a wonder you ever get laid at all.) You're supposed to have these second thoughts the next morning, when it's way too late. This is why candles were invented, you idiot!

On the other hand, look at it from my perspective. I get letters from clueless dicks like you every day, and frankly, I'm starting to wish I were a Muni driver. I even wrote a song about it:

If I were a Muni driver...
Beep beep, beep beep, oh yeah!
All day long I'd beepy-beepy honk!
If I were a Muni man!

A bunch of fuckin' clueless people

Can't stop shaking my head today at these stories:

In L.A., an actress and former model with an admitted "lifelong fixation on serial killers" has been "drawn into a deep bond" with convicted murderer Wayne Adam Ford, who killed and mutilated the bodies of four women in California in the late 90s. The attractive, blond actress, Victoria Redstall, is quoted as saying, "I trust Wayne with my life... He's got such a kindness to him and such a conscience."

A Brooklyn man who falsely claimed to have overheard suicide bombers planning a July 4 attack on the NY subway system is facing seven years in prison. And a rookie cop pleaded not guilty on charges of offering $3000 to kill his ex-girlfriend.

In Austin, Tex., a minister at Great Hills Baptist Church -- which had a big splash ad on its home page offering "Soul Mates" for members -- has been accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. The minister, Jerry Carver, still had his bio on the church staff page this morning, though if they buy a clue and take it down, you can see it at this permalink -- you're welcome! Carver is not denying he had sex with the boy; he says "the teen got into his vehicle willingly and initiated sexual contact with him."

Why am I making such a big deal about it? Because the church's senior pastor supports the state's gay marriage ban, quote: "To redefine marriage is to disintegrate society. It's going to result in the loss of the family unit in America. This is strongly the agenda of the homosexual minority." He also spoke out against a local domestic partners ordinance earlier this year.

And the church was the host in 1999 of a meeting between leaders of the religious right and then-governor George Bush. This 1997 article from the Austin Chronicle, an alt-weekly, describes "the cavernous expanse of one of the city's largest houses of worship... almost entirely without Christian symbology."