Michael Moore: now officially an asshole

The portly filmmaker has admitted that his complaints about Disney censorship of his new film were just a publicity stunt -- he knew long ago that Disney had refused to distribute the film, and was hoping for some "Passion of the Christ"-type publicity. It worked, too -- here's a New York Times article as well as a SF Chronicle story; it got Moore a British distributor.

Transcribe your coffee cup

Look at the banner ad on this page -- the page you start with if you're shopping for a Sony laptop. A suited Eurotrash guy is sitting in front of an enormous laptop, with his hands on the keyboard, but he's not looking at the screen. He seems to be typing from notes -- except there aren't any notes. He's looking directly into his coffee cup.

Poor suckers

A new book by a former FBI agent exposes the publish-yourself racket run by a cabal of self-appointed "literary agents:"

Dorothy Deering, an out-of-work bookkeeper saddled with a felony embezzlement conviction... had written a science fiction novel and been swindled by three "fee agents" who promised to find her a publisher. Rather than react bitterly, though, she was inspired to start a new career: Taking advantage of aspiring writers just like her.

In other book news, here's a profile of the new editor of the NYT Book Review, "a smart conservative."

From paper-pusher to prison guard

"She is the thumbs-up girl, the pixie-ish, T-shirted soldier, smiling, pointing and posing for the camera with naked and humiliated inmates." She is Lynndie England.

The Red Cross knew about it long ago.

Banner ad of the day

Accg. to a banner ad on the Boston Globe site, July 17, 2004 is John Hancock Fantasy Day. What the fuck -- do you dress up in 18th C. garb and practice signing your name with quill pens?

Why they don't send gay astronauts into space

Life abord the International Space Station is OK as long as there is a program of "rigorous work," said returning astronaut Michael Foale today. His fellow hampster, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, agreed: ''If there is work, it's possible to fly as long as necessary,'' Kaleri said. ''If there is no work, there is no worse punishment.''

They must specially select workaholics for the astronaut corps. I can think of a few non-work-related hijinks appropriate for a zero-gravity environment. All consensual, of course.

I proposed this notion to Cris, and we discussed what might happen if, say, the Russian guy were gay and the American guy were not. "Oh, the American guy would go for it," she said. "Any port in a storm." Yeah, but he'd only fuck the Russian guy, not the other way around.

"But aren't there cameras constantly monitoring them?" Cris asked.

"Yeah, but what are they gonna do? 'Ground control to Major Tom -- stop that right now!'   'Sorry, Houston, can't hear you -- and Gennady's got his mouth full.'"

Just what we need, another martyr

Micheal Moore's worn out his welcome for a lot of people, even liberals like me, and an incident like this will only encourage him: Disney, which distributes film's produced by Moore's studio Miramax, is declining to distribute Moore's latest film. Interesting details:

Disney came under heavy criticism from conservatives last May after the disclosure that Miramax had agreed to finance the film when Icon Productions, Mel Gibson's company, backed out.

Mr. Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chief executive, asked him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor.

Another take from the BBC and CNN and Moore's own site.

How's that war going?

(Have you noticed I'm repeating a lot of my clever headlines? Stick with what works, that's my philosophy. For example, I still eat pussy the exact same way I did when I was 19.)

It took a while, but that photo of a humiliated Iraqi prisoner balancing on a box, wires connected to various parts of his body, wearing what looks like sackcloth along with his KKK-style hood, has become one of the first truly iconic images of the Second Gulf War. I predict you're going to see it in history books, just like you see that photo of the naked Vietnamese girl running up the road. The Revealer compares the photo to images of the Inquisition; the hood is the most obvious common element. But Killing the Buddha has another view: the prisoner's hands open (in supplication?) remind him of images of the BVM. Check it out.

Just when things were going so well

That NFL player who was killed in Afghanistan was memorialized yesterday in San Jose, Calif., and everyone was pouring on the sentimentality when:

Tillman's youngest brother, Rich, wore a rumpled white T-shirt, no jacket, no tie, no collar, and immediately swore into the microphone. He hadn't written anything, he said, and with the starkest honesty, he asked mourners to hold their spiritual bromides.

"Pat isn't with God,'' he said. "He's f -- ing dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's f -- ing dead.''

I wonder if EPSN -- which showed the ceremony live -- had a five-second delay on that broadcast.

Recommendations for laptops?

I've had a Gateway laptop since November 2000 and I've patched it up for the last time. I want to buy a new laptop. No Gateway or Dell, and it has to be a Windows machine. (I've got a Mac G4 at home, so I've got that platform covered.) Any recommendations? Email me at toobeaut at yahoo dot com.

And for this morning's fun, here's a story about a guy who tried to kill his wife by fixing her a romantic bubble bath and then throwing a radio into the water.

Oh, it's the 'French Labour Day.' That explains it

From the blog of an American who recently moved to Paris:

Eric and I went to buy a shower curtain at BHV this morning only to discover that the store was closed. Stores are usually open on Saturday, so this was a little unusual. There was a sign on the door indicating that the store would be closed on Saturday May 1st, but it did not indicate for what reason. As a matter of fact, it pretty much appeared that almost every store was closed.

We decided we would just walk home, because it was such a beautiful day. At one of the street corners, we noticed a man selling some sprigs of little white flowers. Many people were buying them from him and Eric remarked that he had seen several people on the metro with the same flowers. I decided we should buy some of the flowers and ask they guy what the story was.

Unfortunately, our flower salesman did not have a great story behind the flowers. He just said something about them always being sold today. And then there was some mention of Labour Day. Well, I didn't want to tell him that he was about four months early for that.

My first reaction is to think, What a dumbass! Doesn't he realize that May 1 is a worldwide workers' holiday and that the American Labor Day is a bullshit substitute?

Then I realized the answer is no, he doesn't realize it. Even after it's explained to him, he thinks it's "French Labour Day." That's how bad American education is.

I can think of another word

Garry Trudeau interviewed on the recent Doonesbury storyline showing a character losing a leg in Iraq:

Iraq feels like a compressed version -- Vietnam on an accelerated timetable," he said. "The sorts of mistakes we're making are unique to Iraq, but their consequences are just as dire as they were in Vietnam. And the outlook is just as bleak."

And a BBC columnist says "Events in Iraq have been spinning out of control so fast on so many fronts that the W word -- withdrawal -- is now being mentioned." And he quotes a "senior defence analyst" as saying (emphasis mine):

It begins to look as though there is going to be a rather messy political solution to the whole affair, possibly brokered by the United Nations. Expect to see an agreement where both sides can claim some sort of a victory, followed by a rather hasty withdrawal of coalition troops at some stage in the next six months.

That's not the first time someone has suggested we should just declare victory and get the fuck out. It's an old business strategy. Several years ago at one of the tech companies I worked for, there was a project in trouble. We were doing it in partnership with a customer; they were paying part of the project's costs. At one point my company decided to back out once the next milestone was reached. On that day, there was a party, we handed out t-shirts that said "We did it!" and the next Monday cancelled the rest of the project.

In the case of Iraq, there would be two t-shirts. One would have a picture of George W. in his flight suit and say Mission Accomplished! The other would have a picture of Saddam Hussein looking like the guy on the cover of the Aqualung album and read We got him! Then we can all go home.

Two-bit thief of the day

A Muni fare box repairman ripped off at least $80,000 over several years, transit officials say; prosecutors are looking into whether the guy (whose annual salary was $83,000) also funded a small real estate empire with his thefts. Defense says he's just a "self-made man."

One's first reaction is to think, what an asshole, send him to Quentin for the maximum. But compared to scams like WorldCom or Enron, this guy is so small-time, like on the scale of the Sopranos. Still, there's something about ripping off a public agency that's more disgusting than ripping off a corporation.

Dept. of hubris

Comedian turned author turned radio host Al Franken says he'll likely run for the U.S. Senate in 2008 and attempt to regain the seat of Paul Wellstone for the Democrats. Wellstone's seat was lost after his death to Republican Norm Coleman.

Obviously Franken wouldn't be the first entertainer to run for office; he wouldn't even be the first from Minnesota. Nevertheless, I think it's overreaching for someone who is simply glib and opinionated to think he can be a policymaker and hold one of the most powerful public offices in the land. Is he really that sharp?

Those nutty Japanese

Japanese parents can now use the internet to spy on their kids in class. (Courtesy engadget) But now schools have to deal with parents who object to treatment of their kids, leading one school to take misbehaving kids out of the camera's range.

Morning fun

A new website, Media Matters, will be devoted to examining right-wing media bias. A NYT story quotes the founder, conservative hitman-turned-liberal David Brock: "The right wing in this country has dominated the debate over liberal bias... My belief is they've moved the media itself to the right and therefore they've moved American politics to the right. I wanted to create an institution to combat what they're doing."

I blogged last week about the NY social-set book The Right Address. Today the London Evening Telegraph has a pice on an author of similar ilk and her book Bergdorf Blondes (the two books are sometimes mistaken for each other, at least by me). This interview, part puff and part hit, is particularly remarkable for use of the word froideur. I don't know if the writer just made it up or not, but it is, you might say, ab fab. (Courtesy Gawker).

To spare the feelings of any Muslim visitors, officials at the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela -- terminus of the famous pilgrimage route -- will remove a statue showing their patron saint "slicing the heads off Moorish invaders."

Fr. "John" blogged several memorial May Day links, including one to a site for some British "Christian Socialists." Their publications page is interesting, while the homepage is less so.

Finally, here's a piece about a home-made online reference guide to sex especially for phone-sex workers. Said to "revolutionize" the industry, which I'm actually kind of surprised still exists, what with the internet and all. (Courtesy Romenesko).

Silence is golden

I spent the day at a one-day Zen retreat. The schedule was curiously bottom-heavy. The first one-day sit I went to, in the winter of 2002, started at 5:00 a.m. and featured seven 40-minute meditation periods before lunch, five after lunch. Now the schedule starts at 6:00 and has four periods before lunch and five afterward. So what, you wonder. Just that it's nice to hit the halfway point of the day with more than half the work over with; and I was a little discombobulated. I never knew what was going to be next. Plus they actually juggled the schedule while the day was still going forward.

It was painful, all right, and I hardly got into what could be called a real meditative state at all during the day. Most of the time I was just remembering how to sit. I was bored. I was conscious of annoying the people on either side of me with my fidgeting. I even left early.

But when I got home, I was a lot calmer than I have been in recent weeks, and when Cris said she couldn't go to the symphony because she wasn't feeling well, I didn't make a fuss. I just drove to the symphony hall and returned the tix for a tax deductin, and then stopped by the video store for another Sopranos tape.

For tomorrow's parties, part 2

L.A. Weekly has a major feature on Erowid, a vast website with much information about drugs of all kinds. Unless you're actually doing research on something, much of your browsing fun will come from reading Experience Reports, first-person reports by people who have tried getting high on all manner of substances.

For tomorrow's parties

I'm not going to parties tomorrow. I'm going back to the Hartford St. Zen Center for a day of meditation. It's been more than a year since I last went. I miss it.

Sitting is going to hurt. A lot.

But in the meantime, I've been meaning to put up some playlists of the psychedelic CDs I've been handing out to friends. Lots of 60s psychedelia, but also recent stuff that evokes or reminds me of same.

He may have testified with Cheney, but he walked back into the West Wing alone

Here's the the view of the president the White House would like to present all the time. The most commonly cited quote from Bush's after-testimony press briefing: "I answered every question." Man, I wish I had a job where the bar was set that low.

Meanwhile, remember that former pro football player who was acclaimed a hero for forgoing his million-dollar sports career only to get killed in Afghanistan? You thought it was last week's story. No, it's about to get major legs. A single op-ed in a single college newspaper mocked the footballer, saying he "got what was coming to him" and that Latinos would consider him a pendejo for getting himself shot instead of enjoying a pro athlete's prerogatives. Expect the Fox News types to jump all over this and ride it for weeks.

iTunes 4.5

Apple released a new version of iTunes yesterday. This transcript of a short Steve Jobs conference call outlines the new features. This article and this one comment on the new version and Apple's progress.

Huh, I never realized there was a limit to the number of times you could burn a playlist to a CD. That's a drag. But this comment points out you can get around that by redefining a new playlist with essentially the same songs on it.

What's interesting (if you want to dignify it by using that word) about the conference call is the typical self-serving coporate-speak spouted by Jobs. I don't know why anybody thinks Apple as a company or Steve Jobs as a businessman are different from any others. Most CEOs are smug hypocrites, just like most politicians.

Now for all the good news from Iraq

Satire is dead, they say. I haven't watched Saturday Night Live in years, The Simpsons seems tired, and even The Onion isn't all that funny lately. But once in a while something just kind of blows a valve.

Here we go: Sinclair TV -- owner of several dozen TV stations -- says it's tired of all the bad news from Iraq, and has decided to start telling stories about all the good things happening there. It's a little unclear how they intend to accomplish this, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. We're all waiting, fellas, for those feel-good stories from Iraq.

In the spirit of this effort, according to an entry on poynter.org, Sinclair will also black out from its ABC affilliates tomorrow's Nightline broadcast, in which Ted Koppel plans to spend the whole program simply reading and showing pictures of dead U.S. troops killed in Iraq. Too negative.

Nobody cares that Bush can't speak

A Chicago Tribune columnist says the press is unduly protecting Bush by not revealing how inarticulate and "mangled" his speeches and statements are. Here's a nice long excerpt from the column, for those too irritated to fill out one more damn site registration form:

You don't believe it's happening? Well, then, tell me about the furor over W's speech last week to a joint meeting in Washington of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Newspaper Association of America.

You didn't hear about it?

That's the proof.

If the press were not protecting Bush, you'd have read in your Chicago Tribune--or Washington Post or New York Times or Wall Street Journal or USA Today--that he delivered one of the most confusing, inarticulate public addresses since ... well, some people would say since his press conference a week earlier.

As it was, those hopelessly biased reporters who cover Bush overlooked the mangled syntax, penetrated the rhetorical fog and extracted some usable lines from the dross and manufactured stories that had the president sounding, if not quite statesmanlike, then at least intelligible.

The New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller led with Bush's response to a poll that showed the majority of Americans expect another terrorist attack in the U.S. before the November election. "Well, I understand why they think they're going to get hit again," Bush was quoted as saying. "This is a hard country to defend."

The Washington Post focused on his remarks about Iran's effort to acquire nukes. "The Iranians need to feel the pressure from the world that any nuclear weapons program will be uniformly condemned--it's essential that they hear that message," the president was quoted.

Neither The Wall Street Journal nor the Tribune carried a story about the speech per se, although the Tribune carried an Associated Press story that wove one quote from the speech into a story on the unexpectedly high costs of the Iraqi excursion. "The Iraqi people are looking at Americans and saying, `Are we going to cut and run again?'" the quote ran. "And we're not going to cut and run if I'm in the Oval Office."

I can't prove it, but I would bet that most of the editors and publishers went away from the speech wondering why Bush, who long ago proved that he is no extemporaneous speaker, hadn't ordered up an address for the occasion from his stable of White House speechwriters. I heard more than one of those in attendance say the same thing: "He wasted an opportunity."

But you didn't read about any of that, because the reporters, trained to seek meaning and the meaningful in any utterance by the president, focused on what could be understood.

Bush has benefited from this journalistic professionalism throughout his presidency. In a column almost two years ago, in July 2002, I quoted the complaint of a reader who claimed we had misquoted the president's statement in a press conference denying any "`malfeasance' in his business dealings prior to becoming president."

"The word that he actually used ... sounded to me something like `misfeance'--something which is not a word in any dictionary I've ever seen," the reader, Sean Barnawell of Chicago, wrote. "I feel the Tribune should not be in the business of `cleansing' what the president says in order to make him sound more articulate than he is."

Yes, we all know Bush is a fumblemouth. And we all know there's a vast gap the size of the Grand Canyon between the right wing's description of the press as the "liberal media" and the left wing's impression that the mainstream media is merely the mouthpiece of corporate interests.

But I think I know why Bush and Co. are not worried about the president's inability to spreak Engrish. It's because they know voters have already made their choices. There's a 48-48 split, and nobody in either camp is going to change their minds based on something Bush or Kerry say. People are already set in stone. There's a tiny group in the middle who can't decide whether to vote for Nader, Kerry or nobody at all. And while they may decide the election, they're not paying attention to Bush either. So Bush can go up to the microphone and speak Martian and not even Karl Rove will care.

Those nutty antipodians

It's been a while since there was a really good Australian story, so I was relieved to find this: Kangaroo to receive valor award for saving man

Okay.... right

Because it's my birthday, I checked my horoscope in the local paper. I admit I was underwhelmed:

TAURUS April 20-May 20
It's hard to tell if you're getting a thumbs up. That's because the person cueing isn't in a position to help out yet. Proceed cautiously.

Gee, that's... uh, thanks. Actually I have no idea what it means.

So I checked Bob Brezsny, the horoscope carried in most alt.weeklies. It was a little more positive:

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Close your eyes and take yourself back in time to the moment when you slipped free of your mother's womb. Imagine your original breath; recreate the sensation of air rushing into your lungs for the first time. Remember it as the end of your warm, dark, watery existence and the beginning of your sojourn in this bright, dry, spacious world. Dwell in that simulation for a while, Taurus, then consider this: You will soon experience, in a metaphorical way and on a higher level, another first breath. Like the earlier version, it will be both unsettling and vivifying, a time of poignancy and celebration.

Pfff... Well, yeah, but frankly, I'm looking for something a little more lively than just "rebirth." How about a nice corporate opinion? I found one on msnbc.com:

You're on the home stretch now, dear Taurus! Kiss your worries good-bye. Your efforts pay off in spades, as people listen to your advice and bend over backwards to try and please you. Although certain details in your love life still need to be ironed out, it's safe to coast for a while. You've spent months in this process of self-transformation, and you deserve a little rest...

Gee, that would be nice, if everybody just listened to my opinion and then "tried to please me."

We'll see about that. In the meantime, I think I'll just buy a lottery ticket.

Beyond Chron scoop: notorious developer plans supe run

A few weeks ago, some disaffected local "housing activists" and former SF Chronicle employees started an online daily called Beyond Chron. Today the paper makes it first scoop: an interview with Joe O’Donoghue of the Residential Builders Association, the man responsible for much of the pomo condo development in San Francisco, in which he says he will probably run for the Board of Supervisors.

Lit news

Dying this week were Hubert Selby, Jr. and poet Thom Gunn. A 25-year-old Nigerian teacher's novel is making a big splash in England. The SF Bay Guardian reviews Michelle Tea's new anthology.

Gun racks, 'logos everywhere,' lots of Republicans = 'Utopia'

A Washington Post story about affluent Republican suburbanites attempts to put George Bush's base under a microscope. Pretty entertaining. Though I went to high school in a different Houston suburb, everything in this story is what I found excruciating about living there.

The only hope really offered is the detailed description of the diet of the man who is the main focus of the piece.

Breakfast: "scrambled eggs over congealed grits fried in butter."
Lunch: "a brisket-and-sausage barbecue sandwich."
Dinner: "hamburgers with American cheese, salad and Tater Tots."

So fortunately the guy is going to keel over before age 65, relieving the younger generation of paying his Social Security and medical benefits.

"Penniless" student's account holding up, so far

After the New York Times wrote yesterday about an NYU student who couldn't afford housing and had spent the semester sleeping in the library basement, I mocked his tale and suggested it was a hoax. But today the New York Daily News jumped on the story and didn't seem to uncover any big holes. They found the kid's parents, and didn't contradict the story that he's 20 years old. (I think his picture makes him look a lot older.) Last night on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann interviewed the editor of NYU's student paper, which broke the story last week, and she confirmed the story as well.

A play at the plate

Birthday today. I almost never wake up with a sad memory, but today, for some reason, I did. I was 9 or 10 years old -- the time when Bruce H. was bullying me constantly -- and our class was playing softball. I was playing catcher, Bruce was on the other team, and there was a play at the plate. I received the ball in plenty of time to make the tag, but instead of burying the ball in my mitt and tagging him with the mitt, which you're supposed to do, I tried to tag him with the ball itself. (I think I was a little unclear on both the rule, which says tagging with the mitt is okay, and on how the play was supposed to be performed.)

With a banshee cry, Bruce yanked the ball out of my hand and tossed it away while crossing the plate. Big crybaby that I was, I loudly protested that Bruce's action had been unfair. My perspective was that yanking the ball from a fielder was unheard of. Sometimes the runner knocks the ball away (as happened in the stunning play at the plate in the Giants-Marlins playoff game last year) and sometimes the catcher hangs on (ibid.). But you don't reach out and just take the ball away.

Our teacher the umpire called Bruce out -- though from my perspective nearly 40 years later, he should have been called safe, frankly.

What's significant about this incident is how typical it is of the way Bruce bullied me. Very seldom did he actually beat me or physically push me around. Mostly, he simply used his size and strength to intimidate and humiliate me, doing things that were so startling and unexpected that before I figured out how to respond, the moment was over, and Bruce had delivered his annoying victory cry and moved on. The only atypical thing about this incident is that there was an adult there to intervene and rule against Bruce; usually the teachers, Scout leaders and others who were supposed to be in charge just looked the other way.

Yeah. Still pissed off about this nearly 40 years later. I guess I should get over it!

In another hemisphere

In Michel Houellebecq's novel Platform, Muslim extremists attack a (fictional) sex-tourist resort in southernmost Thailand, wreaking havoc among the revelers. Today real Muslim extremists attacked the same area. Somewhere between 75 and 95 people were killed in the fighting -- though government outposts, not resorts, were attacked.

How's that war going?

"Heavy fighting" as well as bombing killed "scores" in Fallujah and Najaf as hopes for peace dwindled.

A leaked report from a (now former) Coalition Authority spook/string puller is still hawkish on the occupation of Iraq, but admits the effort to promote a democratic Iraq is disorganized, rife with nepotism and cronyism, and "the progress evident happens despite us rather than because of us."

But here's my favorite: The Army asked two California ski resorts to return a couple of howitzers it loaned them for avalanche control, saying the artillery pieces were needed in the war.

Meanwhile, in Spain, the new prime minister is doing more than just pulling Spain out of Iraq. He's launching a campaign against domestic violence, making it subject of the first law drafted by his new administration.

When in doubt, answer 'MLK'

A "review sheet" distrubuted to Texas teachers -- what level, it doesn't say -- has some helpful hints for students:

"1. If it is a question about a person from the Revolutionary Era, the answer is George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.
2. If it is a question about a women's rights leader, the answer has to be Susan B. Anthony.
3. If it is a question about a civil rights leader, the answer will likely be Martin Luther King."

I'm guessing this has something to do with a standardized test which Texas students have to take. What a farce.

Seventies shrine for sale

The "Mary Tyler Moore House" -- a large Victorian in Minneapolis used for exterior shots of the lead character's residence on "the Mary Tyler Moore Show" in the 70s -- is for sale for $1.2 million. Among the amusing details in the story is the bit about how, during the early 70s, the residents got so tired of TV crews taking photos of the manse that they hung a huge IMPEACH NIXON banner across the front.

Long after the show was off the air, it continued to draw pilgrims:

In a 1995 article published in the New York Times, the Maurers said they seldom watched television and were unaware of the significant landmark status of the house when they bought it in 1988.

But they soon found out, the newspaper reported. On moving day, while they were sitting on the porch, a van stopped in front and a dozen people climbed out. They trooped onto the lawn, arranged a tripod camera and then, on signal, threw their hats into the air for a photo.

That makes me wonder: how might fans of other TV series register their devotion? Perhaps fans of "Friends" carry armchairs and reading lamps and set them up in front of fountains, while fans of "The West Wing" try to escape from the White House tour and walk purposefully through the corridors, carrying papers and having humorous, oblique conversations about politics.

Creative writer of the month

That "penniless" NYU student who supposedly spent the semester sleeping in the library basement because he couldn't afford housing? I don't believe it for a second. Just look at the guy's picture -- he's not 20! Come on! He wouldn't identify his parents, there's nothing about where he went to high school, and:

As he put it on his Web site: "I am a writer at heart, and go to N.Y.U. for creative writing, and this seemed like an experience I just couldn't pass up. I am an idealistic dreamer, and this seemed like something I could do, that would benefit me financially and creatively."

The decision to share his experiences with the world came later, he said, as he grew tired of explaining to friends what he was doing and why. He simply posted an explanation on the Internet.

The more he wrote about his life as "the Bobst Boy," as he christened himself, the more it became a kind of "stress relief," he said.

Gawker suggests, "You know he's gotten emails from about 34 hungry agents this morning. Sell that book, little fella."

The hissing of summer blondes

Really funny NYT article on what is expected to be this summer's gossippy best-seller, The Right Address. For some reason, it's common for two people to write books like this (cf.The Nanny Diaries) -- thus the reporter mentions two names.

Ms. Karasyov said she and Ms. Kargman never intended to write a great literary novel, even though they both graduated from Ivy League colleges and Ms. Karasyov studied Russian literature. In the — ahem — original Russian.

"Well, sure, I would have loved to have written `War and Peace,' " Ms. Karasyov said. "But this is not a book we're spending 10 years writing while we live on grants from Yaddo. There's always that one book every year that everyone talks about, and it can be really dramatic and heavy — you know, like the one with the dead girl watching down on us from above."

Ms. Karasyov, who was referring to Alice Sebold's literary novel, "The Lovely Bones," made an impressed-sounding "woo-ooh!" noise. She continued: "But our book is what you read between oiling up and then hopping back into the pool."

Also, be sure to look for the word trough toward the end of the story, and the image that it conjures.

Rumsfeld a la carte

Here's Def. Sec. Don. Rumsf., speaking last Thursday, on the odds of soldiers surviving at Fallujah:

For example, you take the Marines. They have been trained, they believe, for urban warfare and for the kind of problems that they're facing. It doesn't mean that you're going to be able to live through that in a perfect way without people being killed or without people being wounded, and the tragedy of the reality we live in is that that's happening. People are being killed and wounded, and God bless these wonderful young people.

(Scroll down to about 85% through the speech.)

Pretty good idea, really

A British poll found that 25% of workers admitted to napping on the job -- on or under desks, on the floor of staff showers, in cars in the parking lot. I'm feeling pretty wooly this morning and like I could use a nap myself.

It's a hot day all around the bay. But on days like this, the location of my workplace, only a mile from the ocean, is a real plus. While it's still warm, it's not like the inland suburbs, which hit 100 on days like this.

Also from the Guardian: Mike Skinner, the white English rapper whose Original Pirate Material was a fascinating and hilarious take on urban hiphop, has a new album out.

Classic NYer neurosis competition

The New York Observer has a funny piece on Netflix and the psychological ingredients of having a longer "queue" than others. It contains this classic bit of competitive neurosis:

For Elaine Chen, an ad copywriter at Wunderman, though, the problem is more mundane:

When a friend at work suggested she add Netflix to her already overloaded entertainment smorgasbord, the thought made her cringe. "We all basically have a bottom-line amount of information we can handle, so I thought, ‘I can’t be spending any more money on this crap than I already am,’" Ms. Chen said. "If I already have a cable bill, you throw in my Internet and my TiVo, it’s $100 a month!’ So I’m like, ‘If I pay another 20 bucks for Netflix, I’ll just feel like I’m an asshole.’ It’s particularly bad because I really have an extremely frightening home theater system for a single woman. At some point, I really need a reason to leave the house."

Elaine, huh? It does sound like a Seinfield bit.

'The world revolves around my cunt!'

Canadian high school students get high and talk about sex while one of them obsessively blogs the conversation.

Obligatory weblink dept.

In the most recent issue of Get Your War On, Garfield and Bill the Cat suddenly appear. Plus, it's funny and articulate, as usual. (Background for those who came in late: Get Your War On started as a thrown-together screed of post-9/11 anxiety and rage. It perfectly captured the modern patois of sarcasm, profanity and over-education. It caught on big, getting cited all over newspapers, TV and the internet. Plus the artist donates profits from the books to anti-landmine efforts.)

Okay, now that I've fulfilled my basic duty as a blogger -- actually linking to something on the web -- I'll just say hello. it's a beautiful Sunday morning; I awoke to birdsong, made myself some coffee, and read the Sunday paper in the sunlight-splashed front room, while Six alertly snoozed in front of me. Today, a typical Sunday: church, watching the Giants game on TV while exercising, then a trip to the store to pick up a pie, then the usual Sopranos-watching evening at Sara's.

Does this fool ANYBODY?? What is the point??!?

New York Times: Bush, Campaigning in Florida, Promotes the Environment

President Bush sought to burnish his environmental credentials again today, this time in the state that was the most bitterly contested of all in 2000, Florida.

Mr. Bush, in a noontime speech at the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, noted that this is National Volunteer Week. "This week, we observed Earth Day, and one way to honor the day is to honor those citizens in our country who understand the definition of stewardship, citizens who work to make sure that our environment is as clean as possible."

Meanwhile, in Yosemite yesterday, Bush's Interior Secretary thought she was going to do an Earth Day photo op, but instead was "peppered with questions" on the administration's commitment to rebuild park facilities after a federal judge halted the work.

Lede of the month

Mr. Monkey and three other topiaries kidnapped from a Maplewood greenhouse were placed in protective custody at a St. Paul neighborhood bar Thursday until their owner could pick them up.

That's from the St. Paul Pioneer-Press.

Make it up, it sounds better

Really interesting take in Amy Langfield's blog about all the reporting fabrication scandals of the past few years. She manages to boil down all the scandals from Boston Globe columnist Pat Smith to Jayson Blair with a few words:

I can tell you that in every newsroom I've worked in - sometimes as soon as the first day -- you start to figure out which reporters and editors play loose with the facts. And it tends to be common knowledge among the reporters, desk editors, copy editors and even the photographers... As for USA Today, if it's like most other newsrooms, (and like Jayson Blair and the New York Times) the top brass probably knew Kelley's work needed extra scrutiny.

Dept. of apologies

Many years ago, during my college years, Austin was still going through the post-hippie era. Among the wares that street vendors sold on the Drag were shirts that had been fashioned from Mexican flour sacks. I wore one when I went home for a visit, and my mother said suspiciously, "What does that say?"

I said, "I dunno -- it's just a flour sack."

"You don't know what it says?" she worried. "They could be mocking you! Maybe it reads 'My father is a fool!'"

So she fantasized an insult, not to me or to Americans, but to my mild-mannered father. This was typical of her paranoid relationship to modern culture.

I was reminded of this incident when I saw this story about a handbag company whose products had bilingual labels. But instead of a translation of the cleaning instructions, the French part of the label read: "We are sorry our President is an idiot. We didn't vote for him."

The best part of the story is that the head of the company isn't mad at the perpetrator; he wants to give whoever it was a raise. Because sales have taken off due to word of mouth.

Music for writing

If you have the Flash plugin and some bandwidth, go to The Rurals' site and listen to five songs they have available for streaming. Smooth modern soul music. Very nice.

Voting

Very nice map showing county-by-county results for the 2000 election. Mark Shields on Pennsylvania's swing voters, who "like Bush, but not his war;" a new poll shows Bush still has an edge there.

Health exec's compensation: $94 million A YEAR

Space Waitress links to this article about a bus strike in Minneapolis. It contains the astonishing factoid that the chairman of the UnitedHealth HMO got $94.2 million in compensation in 2003 alone. How fucked up is that?

McGuire was named one of the best managers by Business Week, which pointed out that UnitedHealth's revenues for 2004 are expected to top $33.5 billion. What the fuck is going on in this country?

Around the horn

That's a baseball term. It means to throw the ball all around the baseball diamond, usually just for fun, but sometimes as part of a complex play, from third to second to first base. So what, you may ask. I have to call these omnibus entries something, that's all.

Subversive Russian prison tattoos on the BBC News site include one of a fat pig in a Soviet general's uniform and Boris Yeltsin swilling liquor.

In California, a bill to legalize gay marriage made it out of committee, but that's as far as it'll go.

Remember those dunken antics by former Enron CEO J. Skilling earlier this month? Now federal prosecutors want the judge in the case to impose further restrictions on the former corporate magnate/monumental scam artist.

In a shocking move, a Texas appeals court commuted the death sentence of a man because he is retarded. Usually they can't wait to kill 'em.

A "civilian contractor" who took a dramatic picture of a planeload of flag-draped coffins on its way back from Iraq has been fired by her employer. The U.S. tries to keep photographs of flag-draped coffins out of the news -- so when someone actually comes up with such a photo, it's played on front pages. Somebody explain that cause and effect to Wolfowitz, okay?

And get Charley off the MTA, while you're at it

Nigerian "419" scams hit new heights with this doozy, which posits a secret Nigerian astronaut who has been stuck on the International Space Station for 14 years because his place on a return Soyuz capsule was taken up by "cargo." He needs a small cash advance to get home, and then you can share in the more than $15 million in flight pay he has accumulated during his sojourn in space. I find that irresistible, don't you?