A couple of days ago, I speculated as to what might happen should Senator Don Nickles choose not to run for another term in 2004. (If Nickles does run, of course, he'll win easily.) At the time, I suggested that there might be relatively little Democratic interest in the seat, given the paucity of Democrats with statewide recognition these days. OkieDoke.com's Mike pointed out in comments that I perhaps had overlooked Attorney General Drew Edmondson, who certainly qualified as having statewide recognition; I retorted that he might want to keep a lower profile, what with some heavy litigation going on.

Now comes this piece in The Daily Oklahoman, in which Edmondson says that open Senate seats don't come along too often and he'd simply have to look at the possibilities. Advantage: Mike. :)

Brad Carson, just barely in place as Second District Congressman, is also giving the matter some thought. And surprisingly (to me anyway), Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys (a non-partisan post, but Humphreys is a Republican in real life) is making some serious noise himself, even going so far as to rule out a run for the House before trying to move up to the Senate. That sort of slow, steady progress, he says, "is for very young, very patient people. I am neither." At least he didn't say "That's the way we do it in the O.K.C., bitch."

And most telling of all, Nickles has apparently thrown cold water on Ernest Istook, telling him that the state would be better off if Istook kept his Fifth District House seat rather than jump into a Senate race. Istook, of course, disagrees. For myself, I have always felt that the distance between Istook and the nearest clue was variable but never came close to approaching zero, and if Don Nickles, who keeps a closer watch on him than I do, is similarly persuaded — and I haven't heard that Nickles gave any such advice to the other three GOP Congressmen in the state — well, I might actually miss ol' Don when he goes. Whenever that may be.

My thanks to the anonymous reader who decided that yesterday's weather rant was worthy of suburban blight's weekly Cul-de-Sac roundup. (Feel free to 'fess up, if you're so inclined.)

For some reason, this weekend has brought an inordinately high number of dubious search requests, and while most of them aren't funny enough to submit to Disturbing Search Requests, they're still a few degrees off plumb, and far be it from me to refrain from mocking them.

The one that perplexed me most was olsen twins nude free pictures, for three reasons: (1) to my knowledge, there aren't any nude pictures of the Olsen twins, not even at blogoSFERICS; (2) if there were, it's highly unlikely this guy (it's gotta be a guy) would be able to get them for free, what with the legal angles and all; (3) I was the 187th hit for this string, which meant that he went through a hell of a lot of them. The vast majority of the higher placings, of course, went to porn sites, which will tell you they have any damn thing imaginable — Lithuanian choir girls, Thai farm animals, Dr. Laura's discarded sandals — if they can get you to click in just once. I honestly don't know how McGehee puts up with this.

Then there was pictures of guys with Peyronie's disease, which strikes me as seriously, um, twisted. Bent, even.

(Which reminds me: Danish pianist Bent Fabricius-Bjerre, his name mercifully truncated to "Bent Fabric", won a Grammy in 1962 for his not-exactly-rollicking piano recording of "Alley Cat"; it's about time we were favored with a decent Greatest Hits compilation for the fellow. They could call it Get Bent.)

Finally, there is hillary clinton thighs, presumably a weighty subject, but not one I wish to discuss around lunchtime, if you know what I mean.

Greg Hlatky raises Borzoi, an honorable breed from the Russian steppes, possessed of dazzling speed, singular beauty, and strength which belies its fragile appearance. Is it any wonder he's not especially fond of toy dogs?

I am minded of Robin Williams' description of the Pekingese: "Look! A dog! Let's hit it in the face with a shovel!"

I don't bear quite so much animus toward the animals, myself, but I have to admit, if you put a gun to my head and ordered "Today, you will go get a dog," and you further prohibited me from running down to the shelter and picking up a nice, sensible mutt, most of the toy breeds would be way down my list; it's all very nice that they've been bred to be companions to mankind and all, but the breeds that actually do things are companions just as worthy, and they have talents which extend beyond occupying lap space and defecating on the rug.

Some of my best friends have owned LFDs — I even briefly dated the owner of a Maltese, and the less said about that, the better — but most of my experiences with toys have struck me as really good arguments for cat ownership.

An editorial by Robert A. Martin in The Montgomery Independent hints that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore might be removed from office, not for violating a direct order, but for being "mentally unable to perform his duties".

Susanna Cornett is annoyed with this notion:

Nice shot. If she'd left it at that, it would have rated Zinger status. Then she played the anti-religion card:

I read the passage in question, and I didn't see that at all. I concede that she is more practiced than I at the art of ferreting out these things, but I think the average reader of the Montgomery paper, or of most papers, can distinguish between someone on some sort of quixotic crusade (such as Mr. Justice Moore) and someone who has actually gone off the deep end thinking he was doing the will of God. Mr Martin can be faulted here, I think, for relying too much on the opinions of "some court officials," but I'm not convinced he's equating (or even conflating) religion and insanity. If anything, I think he's managed to persuade himself that Roy Moore is an otherwise-okay sort of guy who happens to need treatment, an argument you'd hear more often in a courtroom where one of those fellows who has gone off the deep end is being tried — which indicates that Susanna Cornett's Insanity defense? title, at least, is precisely correct.

Dr. Frank perhaps suspects the presence of Englishmen somewhere in my family tree:

"Inner Morrissey"? Now I am scared.

I suppose, though, I should find solace in the idea of an entire people with the same limited capacity for joy as I.

In an effort to save a few bucks, the Oklahoma Tax Commission announced that they would no longer send renewal notices for vehicle license plates (or, as state parlance calls them, "tags").

Today the Commission backpedaled, saying that they weren't saving any real money by not sending the notices. State law provides for a thirty-day grace period after the expiration of the current tag; the Commission had hoped that people, knowing they would get no reminder in the mail, might actually renew on time or even early. It didn't happen.

(I myself used to procrastinate, though I never seem to find the time anymore.)

According to something called the Global Rich List, yours truly is the 57,547,924th richest person in the world, just barely within the top 1 percent.

I question their methodology — I'm sure there are people below me on the list who have a greater (or at least less negative) net worth — but it does serve as a reminder that there are a rather large number of people (although probably not exactly 5,942,452,076) worse off than I.

And it also reminds me of Arlo Guthrie's rambling "The Pause of Mr Claus", which has about the same instructional value:

And he probably didn't need to hit a Web site to tell him he was the last guy, either.

(Via Plum Crazy, which reminds you to subtract expenses before making any calculations.)

A sad tale, told by RoninCyberpunk:

Very good advice, and — wait a minute, there are children reading this thing?

I mean, it's a safe bet I'll never be missed if this site goes down, but I can't believe I have underage readers. (Some days, I can't believe I have readers.)

Embattled WorldCom boss Bernard J. Ebbers will appear in Oklahoma County District Court today to answer the charges filed against him by Attorney General Drew Edmondson last week. For some reason, Edmondson himself will not appear.

Reid Weingarten, counsel for Ebbers, has already indicated which way he plans to go with this matter:

Edmondson has come under fire from federal prosecutors and financial analysts for taking this action, a matter to which he is utterly indifferent:

Given his track record, he probably doesn't have to.

The fiftieth edition of Carnival of the Vanities is hosted by Rhetorica, which has chosen to take that first word in the title literally, much to the amusement of sinister dwarves like, well, me.

As always, the Carnival features the best bloggage of the preceding seven days, the vast majority of which is written by someone other than me. There's lots of great stuff; the best advice I can give is "Read 'em, Dano."

Back in the Pleistocene era, when there was still fresh lint in Rebecca's pocket, there was a very distinct line between the online diarist and the blogger. Over the years, at least partly due to sloppy people like me, the line has been blurred somewhat. But there are still some distinctions, as Wendy at Pound observes:

Whereas:

No wonder I have so much trouble finding a definition for myself: I couldn't get into either of those groups.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love; it's the only thing that there's just too little of.

While you're waiting: Madonna™ condoms, which cast a whole new light on the phrase "Material Girl".

I'll be sure to ask for these while I'm at the store picking up my Donner Party Trays.

(Muchas gracias: Anna at Primal Purge.)

Defrocked WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers won't be fitted for an orange jumpsuit just yet; he entered a Not Guilty plea to the state's fifteen charges, posted $50,000 bond, and got out of town.

Should Ebbers be convicted on any one count, he faces up to ten years in Big Mac and a $10,000 fine. He is due back in the Okay City for a preliminary hearing on 30 October.

Up at Better Living Through Blogging, Dave presents the Top One reason why he wouldn't vote for General Clark.

Interestingly — and not all that surprisingly — it's the same reason cited by Bill Quick.

I don't know if you'd call it a personal epiphany, but Mark Fuhrman, the detective who turned up the bloody glove in the O. J. Simpson case, has apparently turned his back on the death penalty; in Death and Justice: An Exposé of Oklahoma's Death Row Machine, Fuhrman, writing with Stephen Weeks, rakes various Oklahoma prosecutorial types, including retired Oklahoma County DA Bob Macy and disgraced forensic chemist Joyce Gilchrist, over the coals.

"Catastrophic errors," says Fuhrman, "occur in many death penalty cases because of the pressure to make a strong case and get a capital conviction." And I suppose if anyone knows about catastrophic errors, it would be Fuhrman. But to err is human; to design the evidence to fit the suspect is monstrous. And some of what went on in Oklahoma County during the Macy years is truly the work of monsters. This book goes on my Must-Read list.

(Update, 12:20 pm: The Bubba World archive of "Junk Justice" may well be of interest here.)

Bruce thinks we're being taken for fools:

Well, yes, I suppose they are. On the other hand, I'd rather I had it than they had it; I am (ever so slightly) less irresponsible with my money than they are. And I need hardly point out that if they didn't take so much in the first place, they wouldn't feel compelled to issue a rebate.

Besides, MasterCard will balk if I try to write too many of those convenience checks; Congress merely votes for an increase in the debt ceiling.

Septembers in Oklahoma have been known to be heinously hot, but this one is starting out beautifully, if you can overlook the morning fog, which of late has been almost tactile; you want to reach out of the window, grab a handful, and shove it out of your way. But it burns off by nine, and this evening, with twilight shading itself into the background, Domenico Modugno crooning from the center console (ah, mono), and still air just warm enough to justify the reach to the A/C button, it was a lovely drive down good old 62.

Unfortunately, the reason I was on good old 62 at a quarter past eight was because I'd just gotten off work; the elements which normally cooperate perfunctorily at best didn't bother to go through the motions today, and my 13-hour-plus day, horrid as it was, was still shorter than the sentences served by a couple of other poor souls.

Still, with just that faintest hint of the day that was, accompanied by a song both down-to-earth and otherworldly (I know very little Italian that isn't in some way pasta-related), it was a sweet end to a day that otherwise went on too long.

The ever-generous Michele has made it possible for you to set free your inner Tom Ridge.

Without surgery, yet.

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America has issued its list of Allergy Capitals, the places among the top-50 metropolitan areas where persons with "seasonal allergies" are likely to suffer the worst, and the Oklahoma City metro ranks seventh for fall sneezing and wheezing: we're up to here in ragweed and various pollens, and will be until the first fall freeze.

It's slightly better in the spring, when we check in at number 21. The worst of all? Louisville, Kentucky, which is #1 in the spring and #3 in the fall.

A reminder from Doonesbury's Garry Trudeau:

You'd be surprised how many people haven't figured this out yet. Or maybe you wouldn't.

One good thing about our local classical station: while they're conservative to a fault during most of the broadcast schedule, the 9-10 am block, known as the Birthday Hour, occasionally tosses that caution to the wind.

John Cage was born on this date in 1912. A number of composers share this birthday, but not only did the station find room for Cage, they played his Atlas Eclipticalis, a string of uncompromising galactic emissions that doesn't even approach the usual definition of "accessible." It is, of course, endlessly fascinating, but with classical stations pitching themselves as upscale background music these days — well, how do you shove John Cage into the background?

Yeah, I know: they could have spared the delicate sensibilities of some listeners by playing 4' 33", or filling the space with a second piece by Mrs. H. H. A. Beach. But the fact that they didn't strikes me as a welcome sign of life in a format too often just barely this side of moribund.

I'm not sure if I'm being trolled, or if I've simply been visited by someone who shouldn't be allowed into cyberspace for safety reasons.

Here's the comment in question, unedited for content or anything else:

This comment was attached to an April article on credit cards, which is obviously a topic far removed from this individual's interests.

The visitor's IP address traces back to Jaipur, which perhaps explains the "indian school's" bit.

Still: "you run this net"? I run this net? I may run this domain, but my influence over the rest of the Internet is somewhere between infinitesimal and nil and declining all the time.

Max Jacobs (he's either Common Sense or Wonder) generally applauds the House vote to approve a school-voucher plan for the District of Columbia, but one thing is bothering him:

A regulation that is unnecessary is a regulation still. Not being in the Ed Biz, I'm enough of a naïf to think that the imprimatur of the regional accreditation organization would be sufficient, but then I'm not sitting at a big desk in Washington trying to think up a way to expand the reach of my department either.

Private schools could opt out, though, couldn't they?

A new slant on the slippery slope. I don't like the sound of this, but dammit, he might just be right.

The Federal trials of Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were held, not in Oklahoma City, but in Denver. Nichols, now facing state charges, has asked that the state trial be moved out of Oklahoma; Judge Steven Taylor has rejected that request, though he said that if the court cannot find enough impartial jurors, the case will be dismissed.

The trial location is expected to be announced Monday; the trial itself begins on the first of March.

So I'm listening to Car Talk this morning, and the young woman from the East Village is describing the no-start issues with her car, and either Click or Clack asks: "Is this a Honda?"

And of course it's not: "It's an Acura Integra."

Either an unprecedented level of restraint or the miracle of post-production editing prevented them from responding "It's still a Honda."

I wonder how many Lexus owners realize they're driving Toyotas.

Rod Dreher at NRO's The Corner picked up on this letter to the editors of Crisis magazine by George W. Rutler, a clergyman from New York City. It's a gem from start to finish, and it provides, um, food for thought:

For the moment, I am enjoying a visual of PETA's sainted Ingrid Newkirk slow-roasting at 300 degrees for eternity, her own sanctimony for marinade — with just a dash of Lea & Perrins.

(Muchas gracias: The American Way!?)

I have lived nearly thirty years in central Oklahoma. During that time, I have delivered newspapers, and I have driven a car while unclothed.

It never occurred to me, however, to do both at once.

If there's anything to that "governing best = governing least" stuff, Governor Henry may already be on his way into the history books. Cam Edwards has already twitted the Guv for his extensive vacation schedule, and now the OkiePundit has uncovered yet another bowlful of junket:

Actually, one can hear the Palestinian viewpoint pretty well while in Oklahoma City. Basically, if you've seen one suicide bomber (and if you've watched the news for more than twenty minutes this year, you have), you've seen them all, and with them you've seen the Palestinian viewpoint in its entirety: anything else they may say is just window-dressing, and not good window-dressing at that.

Not that you should expect any other reaction from someone who was physically rattled by the Oklahoma City bombing, and who was utterly disgusted by the spectacle of Palestinians cheering in the streets after 9/11.

Peter M. DeLorenzo, the original Autoextremist, has his hopes up:

I don't have a problem with the Benz bits; Chrysler didn't have any suitable (which is to say, "non-truck") RWD platform of its own, and really, if you're going to dip into someone's parts bin, the Mercedes parts bin is generally a pretty nice place to rummage around.

I've seen photos of these cars, and while the Dodge Magnum, which will be issued first as a wagon, looks too much like an armored vehicle for Middle East arms dealers, the Chrysler 300C comes off as a solid, traditional American sedan, with all of that legendary genre's virtues (incredible amounts of room, the ability to consume vast numbers of highway miles in short periods) and vices (gawd, but that's a lot of brightwork in its mouth). Considering what we've been getting in the way of American sedans — have you looked at Ford lately? — the prospects for these Mopars look good, and I've tentatively added the 300C to my short list of Vehicles To Consider next time around. For me, this is a sea change, since normally I shop for a modicum of performance within the context of minimum visibility, but as the man says, sometimes you have to go big or go home.

A group known as PsychoPhobia has apparently hacked into Cam Edwards' Web site and replaced his index page with the usual modest braggadocio. His archives are apparently still intact — I was able to reach this page which I had previously linked, and all the items within a day or so of its posting — but they've snagged the top of the directory.

(Update, 7:15 pm: He's back up and running.)

With the laundry done, I settled back in my chair to perform two concurrent tasks, one sort of painful, one more like hopeful: I grabbed this week's accumulated bills and logged onto the bank site to pay them, and I popped open this week's newest musical acquisitions to play them.

Tucked inside the envelope with the phone bill was a pitch for the telco's own online-payment service, illustrated with an overhead shot of a woman at a notebook presumably using said service. Now Net-based services are no less likely to fall back on Sex Sells than any other commercial endeavor, but the telco's bill-paying model isn't the usual barely-legal refugee from a Skechers ad; you can't see her face, but her slightly-streaked, vaguely-unkempt coif, the slight thickness around her upper arms, the prominent striations on the backs of her hands as she types — all these things indicate that we're looking at, not some twentysomething babe, but her fortyish (fiftyish?) mother. And that's a good thing: not all of us are youngsters anymore, and when we were, we didn't particularly want to be reminded of things like phone bills. Besides, I was pleased to note, Mom had a nice pair of gams.

And precisely at that moment, Fountains of Wayne launched into "Stacy's Mom", a song about a guy who doesn't mind hanging with a classmate, but:

I pulled the booklet from the CD case to verify that yep, that's what I heard.

This probably isn't the sort of synchronicity that would have impressed Carl Jung, or even Sting, but it shook me up for a couple of minutes.

The Recording Industry Association of America has had mixed results in its efforts to clamp down on file-sharing, and Congress hasn't been asking "How high?" when the RIAA insists that they jump, so the industry's latest attempt to kill off peer-to-peer networking is disguised as an antiporn measure, which naturally attracts dimbulbs like Rep. John Sullivan (R-OK).

The amusing aspect of this bill, of course, is that it mandates the use of a software flag that's supposed to prevent a P2P client from being installed without "verification of majority" or "verifiable parental consent." Where is this flag? According to the bill, the FTC is supposed to manufacture a specification for it over the next year, at which time software developers are supposed to fall all over themselves to adopt it.

Says Bigwig:

The last thing we need is Congress in proximity to anyone's underpants — unless, of course, they and their "friends" plan to dine upon same.

One of these days I'm going to put together a mix CD called Songs in the Key of No Life, and when I do, I'm going to be inspired by Lindsay's selections.

(Depending on where you work, link may be somewhat less than safe.)

The suburban blight Cul-de-Sac is up for another Monday round, and once again, something from this particular dead-end was deemed worthy of inclusion. (Thank you, Kelley.) All sorts of neat stuff turned up this week, a lot of which I (and presumably you) really need to read.

The announcement came last year, and the last album followed, but while I believed the album, I didn't believe the announcement: somehow, some way, Warren Zevon would pull through.

He didn't, of course — I'd like to think that he was actually beating the Reaper when suddenly that son of a bitch Van Owen, angry over Zevon's narrative, burst in and gave him the Roland treatment — but everyone from Flo and Eddie to Ken Layne owes him big time, and they know it.

Now he sleeps. I'll drink a piña colada in his memory; his songs were perfect.

Following the lead of the extraordinarily gutsy Susanna Cornett, I'm throwing the comments on this topic open to whatever questions you may have — about me, the site, whether I trade nude photos of the Olsen twins with McGehee (by the way, the answer to this one is "No"), or anything else that strikes your fancy.

But be reasonable. Some things should not be discussed in polite society; some things shouldn't even be discussed in bloggage. And if it's a question that's answered elsewhere on the site, be prepared to be pointed in that direction.

The cutoff time is 8 pm Central (9 pm Eastern).

(Update: The word is "gutsy". No way am I going to tell you what the typo was.)

For a moment there, I thought no one was going to weigh in with a question, and I was going to go into a prolonged sulk. And then, of course, it occurred to me that this very site meets the definition of a prolonged sulk, so obviously I had nowhere to go.

Anyway, here's what I got, and here's what you get:

Venomous Kate:
[D]o you put on the left- or the right-leg of your pants first?

   Embarrassingly enough, I didn't know, and had to de-pants and then re-pants myself to ascertain the answer, which is: both functions begin on the right side.

Boxers or briefs?

   I've wavered over the years, but I've settled fairly firmly into the boxers column over the last decade or so. (There are times, sometimes having to do with being unable to face a mountain of laundry, when I do without, but this is probably fewer than 120 days a year.)

Crunchy or smooth?

   My palate prefers crunchy; my teeth, alas, prefer smooth.

Do you get me, sweetheart?

   Not as often as I'd like, but I suspect no one else does, either.

Goof Beyou:
Which came first — the chicken or the egg?

   Eggs can come? Damn. I learn something every day out here.

Mike:
How have you and/or the blogging community evolved over the years, and what is the average life span of a blog?

   I'm not even sure how many blogs there are. BlogStreet reported 145,330 this evening; Technorati claims to be tracking 922,327. I suspect, though, that the single biggest week for blog startups, at least in this country, was the week right after 11 September 2001, for fairly obvious reasons, and about a third of the blogs I read during that period were subsequently abandoned.

   There are many reasons why a blogger might give up: frustration with the tools, lack of time, or simply running out of things to say. Still, I've seen more than a few blogs that were left to lie fallow for a few months and then brought back to life.

   One factor contributing to longevity, I think, is specialization: a blog that covers a relatively narrow range of topics may draw fewer readers, but those readers tend to be very loyal. All-over-the-place stuff like I do is in general decline, though truly exceptional blogs will always have an audience regardless of focus or lack thereof.

MarcL:
Since you seem to enjoy being a traveling man...If you were to move away from OK to a location of your choice, would you go north, south, east or west? Beach, Mountains or something more exotic?

   I lived by the beach for about ten years and hardly ever went — some people should not be allowed in a swimsuit, and I'm one of them — so that's not a major draw. On the other hand, if I lived in the mountains, I probably wouldn't be quite so fond of them.

   The more I think about it, the more I like the area a few klicks either side of the Mason-Dixon line: southern Pennsylvania, northern Maryland, and a few snippets of Delaware. It's close enough to anything (as distinguished from anybody) I might want to see on the spur of the moment, and it's not smack-dab in the middle of a Major Metropolitan Area (though the eastern end of it is highly Philadelphia-oriented). I won't consider this, though, unless I've gotten to the point where I don't have to work and I can just bang the drum all day. (The chances of this, alas, are fairly slim.)

(If you missed out on this little exercise, it will be repeated at some point, probably when I'm desperately scratching around for a topic.)

For years and years, Tulsa has thought of itself as Oklahoma's Dallas, and that other city down 66 was Fort Worth, nothing more. Tulsa has had better convention facilities, a spiffier downtown, more hotel rooms — and today none of it matters, as a refurbished Oklahoma City shoots for the big time and Tulsa descends into tedious Lubbockhood.

Today, voters will pass judgment on a package of expensive civic improvements and industrial incentives intended to restore Tulsa's edge. The operative word here is "expensive": Vision 2025, as it's called, will cost nearly a billion dollars and will be financed by an extra penny of sales tax over a 13-year period.

There are some objections to the package — a downtown stadium? — but I think it will pass, if only because Oklahoma's number two city hates to be, well, number two. Still, it's not as visionary, if that's the word, as the MAPS projects in Oklahoma City, and there are legitimate reasons to question whether Tulsans will get any kind of return on their investment.

Right now, though, the one question is "What will the voters say?" That, at least, will be answered today.

This was up on the front page at RockSnobs, and it's good enough to warrant repeating:

Indeed.

In today's Letter of the Day, Venomous Kate implies that I "got naked" for her, a phrase which presumes that I removed all my clothing at her request.

I did, I must point out, retain my Nike sport sandals.

You might think you had the right to open your own damn garage door.

Not necessarily.

(Muchas gracias: Hanah at Quare.)

The Justice Department has ordered Tulsa's Rx Depot, which operates 85 pharmacies in six states, to shut down by Thursday or face the Wrath of Ashcroft. The chain does a thriving business on the side importing prescription drugs from Canada, and following a warning from DOJ this past spring, actually expanded its activities. Further, the Food and Drug Administration says it bought an antidepressant from Rx Depot at Canadian prices which proved to be a counterfeit.

Rx Depot's Carl Moore continues to insist that he will not yield to government pressure, and that he will not sign the DOJ's consent decree.

I wasn't there on the morning of the 11th; I was doing the same old workaday stuff that I always do. But the radio was on, I was half-listening, and suddenly the voices got higher and more agitated and eventually it sunk in that the world had changed right then and there.

There are many stories from that day. Some of the best of them are collected at Voices: Stories From 9/11 And Beyond, which surely you've read by now. And as of this afternoon, I'd thought it over, and decided I had nothing to add to the discussion, nothing to say I was willing to call my own.

And then the floodgates opened and the words followed in rapid succession.

It was written on the night of the 9th, but it's dated September 11th, and it's up now as Vent #356. I'm not sure if it's the best thing I've ever written, or the worst. Probably it's somewhere in between. One thing for sure: it's an object lesson in what happens when you try to retain too much composure for too long a time.

(I owe this one to Michele; the strength she's shown in collecting and compiling the stories — and in putting the fools in their proper place — has been truly inspirational.)

In the end, it wasn't even close: all four of Tulsa's Vision 2025 proposals passed, drawing 60 percent approval from the 40 percent of registered voters who turned out for Tuesday's election.

"It is the beginning of Tulsa's future," exulted Mayor Bill LaFortune.

Well, maybe. I'm not convinced waving $350 million at Boeing will encourage them to build the 7E7 in Tulsa; on the other hand, $22 million to help shore up sagging American Airlines, which wants to close one of its three maintenance facilities, one of which is in Tulsa, might do some good.

And there's the question of whether some Tulsans felt they were being railroaded into supporting Vision 2025. Michael Bates, a leader of the opposition forces, reports:

A lot of this goes on in most elections of this sort, I suspect.

Now comes the hard part: trying to get the maximum bang for Tulsa County's extra cent per buck.

Today I went to the Fence.

The Fence defines a boundary of the Oklahoma City National Memorial; if you're eastbound on Northwest 5th Street going downtown, you head right toward it. Which I was, and which I did.

The Fence was installed as a routine security item. But its appearance is anything but routine: threaded through its metal links, you'll find the stuff of memories, items left by mourners, something personal to offset the starkness of the empty chairs.

The Fence is familiar to us all; we've seen it a thousand times, reduced to the size of our living rooms. But that familiarity still doesn't prepare us for the sight of the real thing.

Tomorrow there will be an observance at Ground Zero. I'm afraid that were I there, I would find the experience completely overwhelming; even now, after eight years, I find I am still affected by the Fence.

Justin Katz found this letter in the Providence Journal:

Says Katz:

Moonbat Central in California has opened a branch office, maybe?

The first blast came at 5:14, and I sleepily did the math: yes, it's the 11th of September, and yes, I'm within five miles of Tinker Air Force Base, and yes, if they take out Tinker, there's a good chance I'm going with it.

A second eruption, the lights flickered, and finally it dawned on me that this was not any kind of military operation at all; it was nothing more than a very loud but otherwise unremarkable Oklahoma thunderstorm.

A bit of paranoia, I think, is probably hard-coded into the genome as a survival enhancement.

Incidentally, this site was hit with a Denial of Service attack last evening. (Well, not just this site — everything on the host was being hit — but there are relatively few blogs on this host, so you might not have noticed it elsewhere.) The attack was brought under control after about twenty-five minutes, but it's yet another reminder that we all have our little vulnerabilities.

Carolyne Duncan teaches literature at Haskell Middle School in Broken Arrow. Sometimes she teaches something more.

Last year, her seventh-graders read Paul Fleischman's Seedfolks and constructed two quilts, which ultimately wound up at Comfort Quilts. What is Comfort Quilts?

Cody Taylor, a student who participated in the project last year:

There's no feeling on earth quite like it.

That's the only excuse I can think of for failing to post the link to Carnival of the Vanities #51, hosted by Admiral Quixote and guaranteed to be shipshape.

Now hear this: get over there and read.

The amazing Bill Whittle sums up the state of the nation:

(In case you missed it, here's my take on where we were and where we should be going.)

The ever-inventive Greg Hlatky takes a look at the situation on December 7, 1943. Among other things, Kwajalein and Nauru are under assault by the Navy's Task Force 50, a Canadian soldier is killed in fighting near the Moro River in Italy, and FDR, Churchill and Turkish President Ismet Inonu are meeting in Cairo. Two years into that war, and Hlatky notes:

As punchlines go, that's the punchiest one of the day.

When June Carter Cash died earlier this year, everyone knew Johnny would follow, and this morning he did.

Last night I was playing American IV: The Man Comes Around again — I keep it at my desk rather than on the CD shelves — and while much has been made of Cash's incredible eclecticism (Depeche Mode? Nine Inch Nails?), what continues to strike me most about this series is the sound of his voice, the subtle fusion of weariness and triumph that can only belong to a man who has seen it all, yet knows that there is still more to see on the other side.

CMT.com has a good overview of Cash's life and career, but there's no better way to know the man than to listen to the music he made. And it will always be available in some form or another; any overview of American music of the last half of the 20th century is incomplete without Johnny Cash.

"I keep a close watch on this heart of mine...."

Lockdown at the Oklahoma County Jail, but it's not because of the possibility of escaping inmates; it's the annoying certainty of escaping sewage, which flooded the basement and the ground floor yesterday.

The plumbing was fixed quickly enough, but it will take time to clean up the mess. And apparently it's the fault of the inmates, says Major Russell Dear:

Sheriff John Whetsel may get his new jail yet.

Bruce suggests a new drinking game: take a shot every time the President "uses 9-11 to justify his policy du jour."

I wonder if all these booze bottles are recyclable....

All right, who wants to see David's cod piece?

Earlier this week, I threw caution to the winds — normally, this being Oklahoma, the winds would throw it back, but fall makes for some odd weather patterns around here — and fielded questions from readers. It went fairly well, all things considered, although there was some grumbling about the narrow window of opportunity.

So here we are again with version 2.0, which differs from the previous version in one substantive manner: you get more time. Thirty-six hours, in fact. Between now and 9 am Central on Sunday, you may post your questions as comments to this article; at that time, comments will be closed and I will make my best attempt at coming up with answers.

Ground rules:

• This is, after all, a Get To Know Me! project; while I am a tolerable Trivial Pursuit player and a better-than-average Googler, you shouldn't expect me to tell you every detail of Caractacus's uniform.

• If the question is answered elsewhere on this site, expect to be pointed thereto.

• Questions received in email or through other channels will be handled on an individual basis as appropriate.

• Even I have standards.
  

Them's the rules. Go for it.

By most accounts, men outnumber women in the talk-radio audience, and according to Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at USC's Annenberg School of Communications, there's a reason for it:

(Found by John Rosenberg, who comments: "I wonder what Kaplan would say if he weren't such a non-partisan, objective scholar.")

Why, you try to convince everyone on earth that you've got the Hottest Brand Going.

Even if what you're selling is nothing more than air.

Or at least once more, anyway.

On 17 April 2004, more than a century after the end of the Civil War Between The States For Southern Independence, or whatever you want to call it, the last Confederate war dead will be laid to rest in Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, S.C.

The crew of the submarine CSS Hunley, lost when the sub sank in February 1864 — the vessel was pulled off the ocean floor in 2000 — will be buried with full military honors, and both submarine buffs and members of reenactment societies are likely to turn out in full force.

And maybe some picketers, too; there's an online petition to ask the Hunley Commission, which has arranged for the ceremony, to bar the appearance of the US flag on the premises, and there are hints of local protests as well. Why? Well, of course, this was the Union flag (albeit with a different number of stars), and the Union, for those sailors, was the enemy.

Hunley Commission chair Glenn McConnell finds this incomprehensible. He's a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and "at the beginning of every meeting, we pledge allegiance to the US flag."

I'm not quite sure what I think of this just yet.

You're behind the counter at the auto-rental facility at the Philadelphia train station on 12 September 2001. You point to the form and you tell your customer, "Miss, I need your employer, work address and work phone number."

And for a work address, she tells you, "Number 2 World Trade Center, 59th Floor, New York, New York, 10014."

Your jaw, of course, hits the linoleum.

As for the customer, how she got out of the WTC and to Philly and beyond is the stuff of nightmares, even today.

It's posted at Little Green Footballs.

Well, I asked for it. Thank you for playing Let's Bend This Guy's Mind.

If you were crazed enough to post questions in response to this call, your answers are just beyond the MORE link.

Susanna Cornett wants to know:
What is your most treasured possession, and why?

I am surrounded by stuff, and lots of it, but most of it is fairly ephemeral and to at least some extent replaceable; even the overpriced wall hangings and the rare recordings can probably be found with a little bit of effort.

So this narrows the field down to things I can't replace, and ultimately I identified three, which are listed below:

3. A brass tie bar, approximately the width of the widest tie I own. This was given to me in 1967 by the kid sister of my best bud at the time; she apparently was not fond of my tendency to fasten down my tie with a paper clip. (Yes, Virginia, we wore uniforms in those days.) It is a measure of something, I suppose, that it was nearly thirty-five years later that it first occurred to me that she might have had another motive.

2. My high-school class ring, dated 1969, which I gave away once. (It was returned after a couple of weeks due to parental pressure. Both sets of parents, in fact.)

1. A replica of a goldfinch, circa 1976. During my mother's last days, she tried to keep as busy as she could; at some point, she dabbled in arts and crafts, and one day she found this 3½-inch model of a bird, painted it, and showed it off. Somehow I wound up with it, and the little bird has followed me around ever since; today, its little wire-frame legs long since twisted away and lost and the paint on its beak beginning to chip, it's perched (via some of that sticky stuff you use to hang posters) on the corner of my computer monitor, watching me type.

For all three items:
Intrinsic value: not a hell of a lot. Sentimental value: priceless.

Joe Goodwin asks:
You name your Mazdas. Why? If you purchased a Hyundai (in some hideously contrived alternate universe) what would you name it?

All my cars have had names, and usually it took a couple of drives before that name became apparent. Susannah (with an H), my first car (she was a '66 Chevy II Nova with the 250 straight six and Powerglide), scored her nomenclature the first time I got behind the wheel; on the other hand, Dymphna, the '75 Toyota Celica I got in the separation agreement (though I had been driving her for some time), took a while to make herself identifiable.

I have never driven any Hyundai, but a coworker owns an Accent sedan, in refrigerator white, and somehow it looks kind of Darla-ish.

Alan Sullivan came up with:
Do you roll your hose on a reel, or leave it lying on the ground? Uh, assuming you have a yard or a garden or something...

I live alone in a small, untidy flat surrounded by tar and cement; there's scarcely any reason for me to own a hose at all, let alone to take it out.

However, when I was married and lived in a house and there was an actual garden to tend, I always made sure to put it away neatly after use.

(Vickie: Nyah.)

Requested by McGehee:
Of the songs named by the Democratic presidential candidates as their favorites, which do you like best? Which do you like least? Which made you want to contemplate undertaking an act of political violence (other than the song you liked least)?

I wasn't especially impressed with any of the songs mentioned; the best of the bunch is probably Carol Mosely Braun's pick, Des'ree's "You Gotta Be", which manages to be both catchy and soulful. Joe Lieberman gets a raspberry for mentioning Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop", a song which was boring at its release and became annoying when it was adopted by the Clintonoids.

And for Dennis Kucinich, a variation on a theme:
Imagine there's no hairpiece
I wonder if you can
No fear of rainstorms
Or the ceiling fan
Imagine all the voters
Laughing at your rug....
You may say that you're balding, but you're not the only one,
I hope some day you'll realize that you're not fooling anyone.

Three questions, from the triumvirate at Blog o'RAM:
What is the last thing you invented? (samax)

I don't think I've ever really invented anything, though I have been known to jerry-rig quick and dirty stuff when necessity (who, as the saying goes, is a mother) demands; so far as I know, I am one of only a handful of people on earth who has made duct tape work on an automotive exhaust.

If an elephant's eye is the standard what do you use as a point of reference in Oklahoma? (punctilious)

Ten yards. If there's one thing you learn early in Oklahoma, it's how far you need to go for a first down.

If you are again passing through Northern Ohio may I buy you a beer? (rammer)

And it, in turn, will pass through me with dire speed, but you're on.

Paulsmos tosses in a heavy-duty query:
If you were to throw a dinner party and could invite anyone {real or unreal} who would it be...yes, this includes dead people although properly attired.

Excluding people with whom I've already broken bread...well, there are too many fictional characters I'd want to inquire about, so I'll confine myself to eight persons who actually existed, some of whom are still around:

Richard I, known as "Coeur de Lion", king of England: It is possible, I discovered, to trace his descendants all the way to the one girl I dated in high school, and, well, I'd love to see if there's any resemblance.

H. Allen Smith, writer/humorist: I'm apparently not ripping off his style effectively enough.

Barry "Dr. Demento" Hansen, musicologist and radio host: One of two people in the music industry I genuinely revere.

Stan Cornyn, former VP of Warner Bros. Records: The other one.

Clara Luper, civil-rights leader: She led the first widely-publicized "sit-in" in 1958, right here in the Okay City.

Dodie Smith, British author: She wrote I Capture the Castle, my favorite novel for decades now.

Deborah Gibson, singer/composer/actress: A test of my longstanding fanboy adoration.

Catherine Marie Charlton, composer/pianist/acoustical engineer: Just to see if she's as brilliant in person as she comes off on her CDs.

I've been at this a long time, though not that long; obviously I've never fisked a Spiro Agnew speech, never fact-checked Edward R. Murrow's ass. And it would never occur to me to give advice on how to do it, since I'm not persuaded that I do it all that well.

Fortunately for the newbies of the world, Saint Paul has no qualms about leaping into this particular breach, and his advice, generally, is quite good: both "asshat" and "idiotarian" are so two years ago, I'd agree, and, well, how can you argue with this?

"So far as I can tell, he wants Dick Cheney to pay everyone's medical bills," Zamfir sniffed, and under the table, Sophia kicked me in the shins for inviting the guy in the first place on a night when she was hoping for something more, um, one on one, if you know what I mean.

This, incidentally, is the specific blogger Saint Paul sought to instruct.

Just when I thought the book had been closed on the University of Mississippi's Colonel Reb, up pops a new chapter.

Chris Lawrence was trying to avoid the topic himself, until he found this site, and found it annoying:

On the other side, Patrick Carver, blogging as The Ole Miss Conservative, says his objections to the change aren't rooted in tradition, per se:

Lawrence, in an updated post, pointed out that this is basically the way the Ole Miss administration works on almost every issue.

After that CSS Hunley story I posted yesterday, and in view of some comments I've seen around blogdom in the past, I'm beginning to wonder just how much anti-Southern sentiment there is — not against the region itself, but against its trappings, its mores, its differences from those parts of the country which by dint of sheer media concentration dominate the culture, and whether some of that sentiment has actually penetrated below the Mason-Dixon line. It's not an organized movement, to be sure, but I have a gut feeling that some of our cultural arbiters have decided that some things are, well, just too Southern, and I suspect some Southerners are thinking that Reconstruction is still going on.

And I have to wonder, as people bail out of Boswash because it's too expensive and out of California because it's totally farging insane, if the newly-empowered South will bear a grudge.

(4:40 pm: Rewritten slightly to discourage conspiracy theorists.)

Rumor has it that General Wesley Clark may be ready to enter the Presidential race.

What's the quickest way to torpedo any prospective Clark support among bloggers?

You got it: an endorsement from Michael Moore.

The one thing you can count on every Monday morning (well, apart from an inability to drag oneself out of bed) is a fresh batch of bloggery from Kelley's suburban blight Cul-de-Sac. I honestly don't know how she has the patience to sort through all this stuff, but I'm glad she does.

When, exactly, did Yasser Arafat, derided by blogdom as "The World's Oldest Terrorist", ascend to the status of a Head of State? The more I think about this, the more baffling I find it; it's like Al Capone being given an honorary governorship.

Early in his Presidency, George W. Bush made it clear that he wasn't keen on dealing with Arafat, but for some inscrutable reason the State Department seems to want to keep Arafat, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, in business long enough to make their vaunted "roadmap" work. Well, the map is folded and then some — it's ragged and dog-eared and barely even recognizable anymore — and yet State still seems to want to keep Arafat around.

The Israelis, for their part, are still talking about sending Arafat into exile, and more than one minister has suggested that they might as well kill him. I'm not sure either of these is such a great idea: exile will merely give Arafat an opportunity to regroup his forces elsewhere, and killing him — well, the Arab world loves its martyrs, and loves to avenge their deaths. The solution, I think, is going to have to be a Latin American-style "disappearance", after which which no one will know for sure whether he's alive or dead. It might be worth it to hire some al-Jazeera technicians to fake up some regular TV appearances by Arafat during his, um, absence — hey, they do a bang-up job of keeping Osama bin Laden "alive" — and preserve the mystique. Under this plan, everybody wins: the Israelis get plausible deniability, the Palestinians get the leadership they deserve (and they say nature hates a vacuum), and Colin Powell gets someone to clean out his garage once a week.

And anyway, if we have to have a World's Oldest Terrorist, Fidel Castro is three years older than Yasser Arafat, and never mind how he got to be a Head of State.

...why can't we exile Gray Davis?

"In assessing the public interest," said the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, "the balance falls heavily in favor of postponing the election for a few months." And when the six offending counties fail to get their new voting systems in place on time?

Now here's a particularly sickening scenario: the Supreme Court agrees to hear an appeal of this decision, but not until the beginning of the Court's regular session.

Which begins on the 6th of October, one day before the scheduled recall election.

What is it going to take to rid ourselves of Gray Davis? Are we going to have to call in Israeli security?

S. Y. Affolee proposes the classification of blogs for archival purposes, using the Dewey Decimal System.

There are, of course, arguments for and against this particular usage:

A quarter of my traffic comes from those "random terms", but I'm inclined to like this idea, assuming the classification system beyond the decimal point is sufficiently flexible to allow for enough variables — though I don't want to see nine or ten decimal places if it's at all avoidable.

(Before you ask: The series 040-049 is not in use in the current version of the Dewey; news media and publishing presently occupy the 070s, though I suspect some of the occupants will object to sharing that space with bloggers.)

A little 4 x 6 card arrived in the mail today with dozens of lines of 6-point (maybe) type, and after going into Heavy Squint Mode, I finally got the gist of it.

A bank whose Visa card I use has offered to settle a class-action lawsuit which alleged that it failed to credit some cardholder payments on the day received (which, if true, is tacky) and failed to include in the Minimum Payment Due on some statements an amount sufficient for cardholders to avoid an overlimit fee (which, if true, suggests that some people can't figure this out on their own). The bank, of course, denies any wrongdoing, and is basically paying the lawyers to go away.

The following Serious Changes are being made in the bank's M.O.:

• Cutoff time — the time of day after which payments will be credited the next day — will change from 1 pm to 3 pm.

• The bank will exercise due diligence to insure that payments are credited, even if the due date falls on a weekend.

• The bank will fork over $3.5 million to settle claims.
  

Now I don't know how heinous their crimes are — I've never been late with a payment to this bank, and as far as I'm concerned their service has been first-rate so far — but inasmuch as the lawyers are getting a third of the loot, I have to assume that this is essentially a shakedown.

And to further support this assumption, there's this sentence about what I, as a member of the class, can expect:

Considering that the average late fee is about three times that, this isn't much of a settlement — unless, of course, you're counsel for the plaintiffs. I am seriously tempted to write a letter to the Court to opt out of the settlement, just because it will likely cause at least $10 worth of paperwork.

Spitbull has some further thoughts on this Dewey Decimal business:

Or, as Movable Type has it, "categories", some of which are easy to, um, categorize. I think pretty much everyone has figured out that Overmodulation here contains radio-related items, though Almost Yogurt and Dyssynergy are decidedly murky, and deliberately so.

One argument in favor of Dewey is that its use automagically elevates the blog to the status of a Classifiable Resource — though inevitably some such resources will be more easily classifiable, and likely more useful, than others. The correlation between "classifiable" and "useful" is undetermined as yet.

Spitbull also has a kind word or two for this site, noting that the OAQ File "rivals Episode 17 of Ulysses in its catechetical exhaustiveness," which might even be true, though I recall no instance of dining without having removed my hat.

Not anymore. And it's all Natalie's fault.

"No public speech will be allowed on the bus, which may include but is not necessarily limited to religion, politics, economics or finances."

This used to be the policy in Broken Arrow, which operates one bus. The American Center for Law and Justice filed suit against the city on behalf of two local women. At the time, the city had contracted out its bus service to a private firm; the city began providing the service itself on the first of September, dropped the policy, and settled the ACLJ suit.

The new policy permits any discussion so long as it does not disturb the passengers or the driver.

The Professor notes that he has received 25 million page views and is about to receive his twenty-millionth visitor, which is of course cause for celebration.

I mention this because at 1.25 page views per visit, he's trailing me; for the period 3/22/99 to ten minutes ago, I'm averaging 1.52.

Yeah, I know, pathetic, but there aren't too many brass rings dangling this low.

Jesse Youngblood, you've just pulled off a bank heist, and you've gotten away with a cool thousand. What are you going to do now?

You say you're going to deposit some of the loot in your account at the same bank?

BZZZT!

Wrong answer.

(Via Fark)

I drove all through Delaware this summer and never saw a single field of marshmallows, though Fritz Schranck has a perfectly reasonable explanation:

The leading cash crop in Oklahoma is also hidden from public view, albeit for different reasons entirely.

I wonder how well Rice Krispies sell in Delaware.

The Carnival of the Vanities has come full circle: for its first anniversary, it's back in the hands of its inventor.

So get ye to Silflay Hraka and see what Bigwig hath wrought.

As it is on every day that has a D in it.

At Cybergrass, Banjo Bob suggests a model for the music industry, and guess what? It's just down the street:

I'm seldom inclined to defend Jack Valenti's MPAA, but his business model does seem to be less insane.

In Erick, Oklahoma, there's an intersection: Sheb Wooley Avenue and Roger Miller Boulevard.

Roger Miller died in 1992, dang him, and now Sheb Wooley's gone too — leukemia, at age 82.

Wooley's biggest hit under his own name was the 1958 novelty "Purple People Eater", reportedly the answer to a kid's riddle; later, he penned the theme to Hee Haw, and released a number of wacky (and ostensibly inebriated) country-music parodies under the name "Ben Colder". A fulsome Colder couplet:

And Wooley sustained an acting career as well; he was Pete Nolan in the Fifties western Rawhide, which also featured a young fellow named Clint Eastwood.

Still, most people who remember Sheb will remember the one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater who wanted to get a job in a rock and roll band, and I bet that was just fine with him.

Tequila.

Saint Paul, last mentioned here giving advice to blogging newbies, has expanded on his theme of outmoded terms of contumely; as I observed, "asshat" and "idiotarian" are so two years ago.

Not that they aren't still useful words, but being on the cutting edge demands fresh insults, and Saint Paul wants them:

Write him at saintpaul at earthlink.net, and tell him dustbury.com sent you.

Cinderella Bloggerfeller turns up a Le Figaro piece about the ostensible American empire, and why if it did not exist it would be necessary to invent it. Guy Sorman writes:

And this was published in France, mind you. Admittedly, Le Figaro isn't the biggest name in French publishing — think of it as the Gallic version of The Washington Times without the Korean cash flow — but you can be certain that a copy of this landed on Jacques Chirac's desk.

The seal of the city of Edmond, Oklahoma, designed by local resident Frances Bryan, was adopted in 1965. In 1992, Rev. Wayne Robinson asked that the cross at three o'clock be removed, claiming that it showed government endorsement of religion; the city declined. Lawsuits ensued, the city lost, and to this day, the seal is displayed with the cross area blanked out.

Now comes a similar story, across the state in McAlester. At the 26 August city council meeting, firefighter Steven Belcher registered a complaint about the city seal, which contains an image of a church topped by a cross, though the complaint didn't seem to be about the cross so much as it was about the city's alleged behavior:

There has been no further statement from Belcher, and no formal request to remove the symbol has been filed, but McAlester city officials are busy working up Plan B, just in case; the current estimate for removing the ostensibly-offending symbol is $156,000.

Generally, I tend to want to keep the church and the state at arm's length, both from each other and from me. On the other hand, the blithe assumption that the Wall of Separation requires every last symbol of faith be expunged from public view is becoming increasingly annoying, and the argument that the appearance of an icon represents an endorsement strikes me as specious. The Edmond seal contains a covered wagon, which commemorates the 1889 Land Run; are native Americans going to sue the city on the basis that the city endorses white settlements on native lands? Will environmentalists condemn the McAlester seal, which includes an image of a coal miner's hat, for promoting fossil-fuel use?

Enough already.

Lynn remembers a simpler time:

Nowadays, you can't tell the bands from the blogs.

Jay Solo has been there:

A path I should follow, except that I've discovered that trying to become uninterested in someone stresses me out severely — which means that I tend to hang on until, you should pardon the phrase, a change of heart.

But damn, she's cute.

Over at Mutated Monkeys, Beth is grumbling about some strange email excrescence:

To me, it looks like one of those indiscriminate let's-throw-something-against-the-wall-and-see-if-anything-sticks plans that is only the tiniest hemidemisemiquaver more respectable than pure spam. The only way this could be more ridiculous is if this "link manager" from Link Builder went after, say, Dog Snot Diaries, claiming to represent a site interested in canine health.

Oh, wait, she did.

For about twelve hours this year, I had an extra sidebar item called "Testimonials", which included quotes from actual readers of this site, most of them at least somewhat favorable. During the brief period "Testimonials" was active, the comments posted to the blog by other actual readers underwent a sea change: somehow the Surly knob got turned up to 11. Wondering if the brief braggadocio had somehow contributed to the attitude shift, I pulled it off the site, and sure enough, things calmed down.

Now I'm wondering if maybe I should put it back, just to see what happens.

Oklahoma City's downtown movie houses closed years ago; with the exception of an occasional screening at the new Oklahoma City Museum of Art, films have migrated to the suburbs.

Now the Arizona-based Harkins Theatres chain has received a permit to build a 16-screen movie house on the south edge of Bricktown, adding yet another venue to the city's entertainment district. I hope they have room for an occasional non-blockbuster.