A little more news

Apparently there's a scientific controversy over whether the "Black Death" of the late Middle Ages was caused by Bubonic Plague. Someone who thinks it wasn't suggests it was caused by an unknown virus that could still be around.

Today, the Washington Post reported the last scene of Act 1 of the Washingtonienne saga. The print edition published a photo of the lass, one Jessica Cutler, but they didn't put it online. For that we need, of course, Wonkette. I think Wonkette is the blonde and Washingtonienne is the brunette.

HP makes much of its profit from... printer ink. So much for the "paperless office," says the Chronicle writer.

Yeah, it's good to see you, too

They still sneeze their virus-laden sputum into the air, where millions of molecules can stay floating for as long as 30 minutes, waiting for a new victim to walk past. They still wipe their disease-laden hands onto phones, desks, door handles and taps, and work in a festering heap of snotty tissues and half-eaten packs of Codral.

The Sydney Morning Herald, one of my favorite sources of over-the-top writing, doesn't like it when you come in to work instead of calling in sick. And it has a name for you: "Flu martyr." I don't want to hear someone with an Australian accent pronounce that.

Relating to Blogger

I figured out how to avoid the boofy new Blogger home page. Instead of going to www.blogger.com, go to www.blogger.com/home and you go right to a plain login page.

Once I logged in, I noticed they were again offering me a GMail account. OK, it's supposed to be such a great fucking thing, I said all right. But then they wanted me to pick a username at least 6 characters long. pritchard was taken; so was pritch. Finally I said fuck it, who needs their GMail. Yahoo is going to up everybody's storage to 100MB to compete anyway.

I had a fairly productive day. (I mean Saturday, even though this post is going up early Sunday.) I finished the church newsletter and another small project they asked me to do. I didn't get anything done on the paying gig I mentioned before. Maybe tomorrow.

Woo hoo, 800th post

As far as I can tell, the new Blogger interface has few actual features. The main changes seem to be to make the interface chunkier and boofier, with giant icons and headlines, as if it were being repositioned to the children's market. Of course, you the reader can't tell the difference, because all the changes are on the user side. About the only thing of any significance is that it now tells you how many posts you've done, cumulatively. So I can tell you with confidence that this is the 800th post in this blog.

A recent story I read said that the most successful blogs are the ones where there are many posts in a single day. This gets people constantly checking back to see if there's something new. Using that measure, I've pretty much failed this week. Frankly, I've been a little depressed. I haven't gotten anywhere trying to find a literary agent, and nothing's going on in the dept. of Fooling Around. The only giggly fun thing is that I got a new laptop. But why should I complain?

Today I'm going to be working on three projects, neither one having to do with my own writing, only one of them a paid gig. And of course I have to get the volunteer gigs out of the way first.

I'll bet this treatment softened them up, all right

In case you need more, here are several new photos of abuse of Iraqi prisoners. If nothing else, the captions are notable for their highly conditional language. The editors won't even commit to whether or not a certain scene occurs in a corridor; it "seems to be a hallway," the caption says.

Washingtonienne: the series

OK, for those of you who like their comedies in one act, here is the entire Washingtonienne blog from start to finish. It's not very long, as these things go. The whole thing only lasted from May 5 to May 18.

What happened? From the Washington Post, quoted in wonkette:

One Congressional Record (Or Was It?) That Everybody Read

By Richard Leiby
Thursday, May 20, 2004; Page C03

Hill staffers possessed of naughty imaginations -- and perhaps too much time on their hands -- were madly swapping theories yesterday about the identity of a young Senate aide who kept what appeared to be a detailed online diary boasting of her many sexual partners. The woman's explicit accounts of her alleged frolics -- including an affair "with a married man who pays me for sex" -- were given wide notice this week by Ana Marie Cox, the Washington cyber-gossip at www.wonkette.com, who posted the diary.

"I just took a long lunch with X and made a quick $400," the low-level staff assistant, who calls herself Washingtonienne, wrote Tuesday afternoon. "I heard that my boss was asking about my whereabouts. Loser."

That was her last entry before the Web log mysteriously vanished from its hosting site, Blog*Spot. She had earlier described "X" as a married "chief of staff at one of the gov agencies, appointed by Bush."

The scandal-provoking staffer works in the office of Ohio's senior senator, Republican Michael DeWine. "We're looking at it right now. We're looking into the situation," DeWine's communications director, Mike Dawson, told us yesterday, but declined to provide any details.

It's unclear whether any of the entries were written on Senate computers or, for that matter, whether the diary is a work of fact or fiction. But certain details ring true, such as her salary ("how can anybody live on $25K/year?") and descriptions of office romances ("The intern did not show at the party on Saturday. . . . I don't need anymore sex scandals at work. But I'm bummed that he is not as interested as I had imagined.")

Cox, who has not made public the aide's name, said: "It is no more fictional than anybody's diary. My gut feeling is that it's true. She's pretending to take pride in her own degradation and I don't think you can fake that. I do think she's a good writer. I hope that she gets a book deal and gets some therapy."

And don't miss the cartoon Wonkette also ran (this one from Roll Call).

New laptop!

I received my new laptop yesterday. It's a Compaq presario 2500. Not too impressive in any way, except the combination of features for the price. I sacrificed light weight and saved at least $600 over a Sony. (Plus HP is supposedly an American company, so why not wave the fucking flag. Of course, the unit was actually assembled and shipped from Shanghai, according to the FexEx tracking info.) I'm spending the morning cleaning house on my old laptop and transferring files to the new.

Stolpa award winners of the month

Okay, so your country has been at war for more than a year. The most powerfully armed nation in the world is constantly on the lookout for "insurgents" and "terrorists." So even if it is considered a tradition -- and let's face it, how long-standing a tradition could it possibly be, given that the rifle was only invented 150 years ago -- wouldn't you think twice about firing hundreds of rounds into the air to celebrate your wedding?

The Stolpa Award is awarded to anyone who manages to do something so stupid as to not only endanger himself but his whole family. It is named after the man who, ignoring all signs and weather reports, decided to take a shortcut on a snowy mountain road with his wife and baby, only to get stuck in the middle of nowhere in a blizzard. He managed to claw his way out to get help, and the story was turned into a TV movie. The guy was acclaimed a hero when in fact he was, let's face it, a fucking idiot. The phrase "too stupid to live" definitely applies, but you only get the Stolpa Award for endangering your whole family in the process.

I should have such problems

Here are two articles about novelists whose debuts were so huge almost anything they do next will be a letdown: Hari Kunzru (I get his name mixed up with Hanif Kureishi) and D.B.C. Pierre.

When a spell-checker's not enough

What do you call it when someone uses the wrong word for something, in writing, and the two words sound the same? For example, if someone writes "I wasn't phased by his statement" instead of "I wasn't fazed"? Here's an advanced example, from the increasingly irrelevant Bazima:

When I walked into the party with Boo, Dan greeted me with the mother of all hugs. Must have been seventy people who showed up for Dan's party. The beer was in the bathtub, Swedes were snorting cocaine, and Drunk Girl was playing air piano. Boo choraled The Jewish Girls into doing shots with him...

Did you catch that? He "choraled" the girls into doing shots with him. Perhaps he sang his invitation as a fugue, in four-part harmony. So what is this kind of misuse called? The Grammar Lady calls them the "Typos of the Weak" (motto: We Never Wrest).

So the score is now California 8,923,982, Florida 1

A Tampa strip club owner put this message on the sign outside his joint: "Is Bush the Anti-Christ?"

I knew that G-Mail thing wasn't worth it

Yahoo mail is planning to raise storage on its free email accounts to 100MB. I guess Google's promise to offer a gigabyte (ten times 100MB) of storage scared them.

Meanwhile a bit on Metafilter the other day has something about people bargaining for G-Mail accounts. I guess it would supposedly be a great thing if I were to have snagged mark@gmail.com when they offered me an account. But I'm slowly learning to resist these supposedly cool offers. For example, it took me a while, but I've gotten over the humiliation of losing my status in United's frequent flier club. Over the last 18 months I've gone from being a Premiere Executive to just Premiere to, now, merely a lowly "member." And I gave up my membership in the Red Carpet Club too. Because I can hardly afford to fly anywhere anymore -- what difference does it make what airline status I have when I'm only taking two trips to Portland a year?

And in the blogisphere, add three to your rounds:

Washingtonienne (courtesy Wonkette)

Clueless (courtesy Washingtonienne) -- but what's that thing about "turning the ring so the point is facing out"?

Seach Engine Journal (courtesy Metafilter)

Moderation key to caffeine boost

That vente coffee you inhale on the way to work won't help you later in the day, new research shows. Instead, it's better to sip two ounces of coffee per hour -- that'll help you stay awake better. But nothing's better than a good night's sleep.

Blandishment of the day

"It just roared off the pad and flew into space."

That's a rocket scientist speaking. Not a poet.

Where the laughter never stops

The fur positively flew in Hartford, Conn. last week as Ann Coulter and Al Franken faced off [use userid black6 and pwd bloc66] in what was advertised as a "conversation" but quickly became a venue for mud-slinging and cheap shots.

The evening's tone was set early when Roberts asked which political figure each would most like to be. Coulter said she would answer with who she believed had the most fun. Her response: Sen. Joseph McCarthy, because he got to remove "communist spies from the government."

That elicited loud booing from the sold-out audience, that made its political leanings obvious with frequent applause and jeers.

Franken's response: "Hitler."

The audience roared with laughter.

Fun, isn't it? But there's something so bread-and-circuses about it. I wish for a little more light, less heat.

When nothing means something

You know Lynndie England, the "leash girl" soldier who appears in so many of the Abu Gharib photos? Just for fun, I typed in www.lynndie.com to see what would happen. Try it.

What you get is a blank page, but you know it's not just a blank page, because the page title -- seen in the title bar of the window -- says "Lynndie England," her full name. So somebody snagged the domain name at some point. Let's see...

   Domain Name: LYNNDIE.COM

   Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.

   Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com

   Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com

   Name Server: NS7.EDNS1.COM

   Name Server: NS8.EDNS1.COM

   Status: ACTIVE

   Updated Date: 06-may-2004

   Creation Date: 06-may-2004

   Expiration Date: 06-may-2005 

And http://www.godaddy.com/ turns out to just be a domain name farm. And proud of it.

The new puritanism in San Francisco

Two odd things in the local paper struck me today. First of all, there's a new crackdown on prostitution in strip clubs (last item). No explanation of why, just that there's a new D.A. And then there's a crackdown on naked runners in the "Bay to Breakers" race, an annual event that draws 100 "elite runners," 5000 real runners, and 100,000 goofballs out for a sunny jog across town. It's traditional to run the race in costume, and there are always people at the other extreme, i.e. running naked. This year they will be barely (sorry) tolerated: at the finish line they must put some clothes on, or they'll be ticketed. Again, no explanation. I don't know what this town is coming to. Next thing you know, they'll be cracking down on simulated sex at the pride parade.

Can't stop the laughter

Here's President Bush, at an unidentified public event. (The whitehouse.gov site says he was at a "No child left behind" event on May 12, but doesn't have a transcript that includes this exchange. This is a transcript of a video clip that was shown on May 13 on the MSNBC show "Countdown with Keith Olbermann." Quotation is about 60% of the way in.)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have a certain reputation at this school.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Tough.

(LAUGHTER)

BUSH: Yes, I ran into your kind when I was in high school.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

Vonnegut on Iraq, political culture, drugs, and a lot else

Here's a new piece by Kurt Vonnegut from In These Times. He glosses the war in Iraq, the war on drugs, the polarized political culture, the way the system primarily benefits the rich, and a heck of a lot of other stuff. It's like listening to an 80 year old man on pot, but he's our 80-year-old man on pot.

Too radical for the radicals

Even Hamas and Hezbollah have condemned the beheading of that American civilian.

Fundies on the attack

Several right-wing Christian groups have gone on the offense, saying our postmodern culture is responsible for everything from the abuses of Iraqi prisoners to the "degradation" of the institution of marriage. Concerned Women for America, one of the largest and best-funded lobbying groups, says rampant Western pornography is responsible for the abuses at Abu Graib prison. The Family Research Council echoes this assertion. And Dr. James Dobson, perhaps the most powerful right-wing fundamentalist leader, has started a new political wing of his Focus on the Family group.

Looks dirty to me

I wish I could read Portugese. Oh, wait -- there's Google's Language Tools!

My car starts to make bigger adventures each time in rough lands of the Garça and, remaining these radical activities, I fear for its survival. Thus that we arrived, the Marta left to run directing it a iron gate that opened without making any racket. It was important not to wake up nobody in the main house that has a privileged sight on the cavalariças. Thus that I entered, the Marta grasped me for the waist and pulled me for one box that, such as all the others, were empty. The horses had been moved for new cocheiras close to the house it Francisco and this age definitively the chosen space to pass the night.

The Marta lit a candle, hiper-protect thus because of the hay that if found in the room to the side, and that lying me apanha in a blanket to the squares shoots it my shirt loosening it with the ferocity that taste to see in the women. A woman who demonstrates its hunger is so rewarding as to make one ?quatro? in totoloto, she is not everything, but it is great part. E to know to make it without falling in asneira, is still more difficult. In the romantic environment that suddenly was installed, it was impressive the overturn?

?-Mas you distrust of me? it said infuriated.
?-Mas you are to speak of what! the Marta? Since when wanting to use condom in a relation it is to distrust of somebody?
- Then it is not? I do not understand you Sebastião, if already we made before without condom, for what! this now?
E when I judged that this subject was unquestionable, I gave for me to have to justify something that does not have justification, is a right! The Marta did not understand and in that night she decided to make birra.
?-or it is as I want, or is not...
E was not...

Rock goddess on Burroughs

In this interview, rock singer Marianne Faithfull talks about William Burroughs and his last work, a play called The Black Rider.

Also in the Guardian: the Weinstein Bros. company Miramax may have been kept by parent Disney from distributing Michael Moore's next film, "Fahrenheit 911," but now they're considering buying the rights privately and distributing the documentary themselves.

New immigrants readily grasp marketplace fundamentals, plant illegal cash crops

Asian immigrants in California's Central Valley are making ends meet by raising marijuana and opium poppies along with gourmet vegetables.

Breaking: Gender a natural construct

Once in a while, the circumcision of a newborn male baby is fucked up. When it happened to one of the twins born to the Reimer family of Winnipeg, Canada in 1966, the parents seized on the unconventional theories of a U.S. physician. Dr. John Money believed that gender was purely a social construction, and the parents accepted his help and raised their damaged twin as a girl. Last week, the unfortunate man committed suicide.

Another prefab confection

Prefab houses seem to be the rage. Every month I link to another designer's site. This month it's the Glidehouse, described as "a long, low-slung, understated dwelling -- a marriage of Californian warmth and Japanese precision -- with a slanted roof and a long wall with a series of 8-foot-wide sliding-glass doors that can open onto a view or close off the interior from the elements."

Awe-struck

There's something deeply weird about this news story: auto racing pit crews are helping Marine helicopter crews learn how to refuel copters. I don't know whether it's the product placement, the mixture of sports and war, or what.

Next we'll see giant product logos on combat helpcopters, I guess.

Still around

I was in the middle of a nice long post comparing the paranoid visions in the Matrix films and Runaway Jury, which we rented Saturday. But then Blogger went down and I lost the post. This discouraged me from using Blogger for a few days, but I'm almost over it now. The new interface is a little odd. It features big, boofy buttons and symbols, like it's being repositioned for child users.

There's bad news in the Washington Post today: Cheney's heart is OK. And I had been so hoping that they'd use his health as an excuse to dump him.

But the real reason for posting that is to draw your attention to Bug Me Not, a new service designed to subvert all the tiresome registration pages which newspapers are imposing. Just enter the URL of a site (such as http://www.washingtonpost.com) and it will give you a userid and password for an existing (meaningless) account.

Interesting about those prime numbers

Cicadas are an eastern phenomenon (I mean eastern U.S.) and don't appear in California -- one of the few plagues we avoid (frankly, I'll stick with earthquakes). But for those of you in the affected areas, Cicadamanina is a must-read. Even westerners will be interested in the cool charts that show, for instance, why broods with lifecycles of 13 and 17 years are more likely to survive.

It is a fucking gorgeous day here, sunny and just the cool side of comfortable. You'd want a sweater if you were sitting in the shade, but if you were working in the sun, you'd stream with sweat.

I have no plans. But in a minute I'm going to get the hell out of the house, to keep from wasting the day.

A fitting farewell to Selby

For marilyn, a big fan of Hubert Selby Jr., who died recently: friends and fans in Los Angeles recently gave the author a fitting memorial.

And no, I didn't buy a VIAO laptop. I can't afford it. I got a Compaq Presario. About 4 pounds heavier and about $1000 less expensive. Gone are the days when I just would have said Fuck it, I'm buying quality. So if you see me walking around bent over, you'll know I'm carrying the Presario.

Pound that issue

One of the most annoying things about single-issue activists is the way they find a way to link their issue to anything.

On Thursday night, 51 million Americans watched the final episode of "Friends." As the show came to a close, a message was conveyed loud and clear: if not for rent control, the show's ten-year run would have ended years ago.

Getting something done

I'll be out and about today, not on the internet much, trying actually to get something done for once on my day off.

Oh, there's this: No Sweat Apparel, Union made, free-trade, non-sweatshop clothing items. SF Chronicle story.

Much more music

Mike Skinner, a British guy who records a fascinating mixture of ironic rap and 70s-influenced pop as The Streets, has a new album. I heard a cut on BBC's 6 Music programme yesterday, and it sounded dumb at first -- like a lot of Skinner's tracks -- then cool. Meanwhile Marilyn is listening incessantly to Joni Mitchell's "Blue" album, but not without the help of some mild tranquilizers.

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.