Seventh grade at a Catholic school in Rhode Island, and Justin Katz is there. In fact, he's been there before, and something is now conspicuous by its absence:

Title I, says the Department of Education, is intended "to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments."

A marked absence of any references to wall decor, which prompts Katz to ask:

The knee-jerk (not to be confused with "genuflection") answer is "Separation of church and state, case closed, so there." This might make some small amount of sense if the school in question were being asked to give up its religious instruction, in which case I think it's a safe bet the school would have refused to accept any grant money, under Title I or any other Roman numeral you care to name.

And why is it just religion that is subjected to this sort of treatment, anyway?

And while it's certainly true that some parents are upset by religious imagery, it would seem logical to suggest that those parents refrain from enrolling their children in a school run by a church — unless, of course, you think a steakhouse should be required by law to cater to vegans first.

The First National Bank of Bedrock?

Well, why not? There is a town called Bedrock, near the western edge of Colorado, and it's not necessarily harder to run Web-based financial services there than it would be in Denver or Salt Lake City.

But the Feds determined that it was a fake, and shut it down; a spokesman for the Comptroller of the Currency speculates that the "bank" site was used to collect personal information from modern Stone Age families potential customers.

(Via Fark)

A Federal appeals court has ruled that you still have the right to open your own damn garage door.

If you missed this, the case in question is Chamberlain Group, Inc. v. Skylink Technologies, Inc. Chamberlain, miffed that Skylink had come up with a third-party remote that works with Chamberlain openers, sued under the the government's all-purpose harrassment tool, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, arguing that Skylink's remote sneaks around the computer program in its openers.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation published this summation of the appellate court's findings:

(Disclosure: I have a Skylink remote, though it's not being used with a Chamberlain opener.)

Yes, that's Tulsa's very own Michael Bates appearing in Gawker with a gorgeous New York babe.

Icing on the cake? Said New York babe is the one and only Dawn Eden.

The man is obviously living right.

Usually a classified ad for a car causes major MEGO (Mine Eyes Glazeth Over). Then, in this week's Gazette, there was this:

Originally, the "225" designation represented the car's length in inches, and the '73 was pretty close to that. This year's model was designed well before the first OPEC oil embargo in '73, so not even perfunctory attention is paid to gas mileage; its 26-gallon tank empties seemingly as fast as you can fill it. This particular sample is a four-door hardtop in metallic blue; the top is white, as is the leather interior. The one concession to presumed modernity is the air conditioning, which has been retrofitted to use R134a refrigerant.

Obviously, even at the bargain price of a buck a pound, I can't even be thinking about this behemoth. It would never fit in my garage, and it would triple the cost of my daily commute. Still, it's a serious cruisemobile, something that could never be said of my innocuous little sedan, and while '73 was well into the era of emissions controls, which tended to play hell with driveability in those days, there's something comforting about being able to pop the hood and identify every single part, something that just doesn't happen anymore, and besides... that's it, stop right there, don't say another word, dammit.

Did I mention the ashtray has never been used in those 31 years?

[click]

Zell Miller, says Michael Crowley in Slate, has become a "cartoonish GOP partisan." John Rosenberg, noting the proliferation of "fake" or "in name only" tags that have been attached to members of both major parties, objects:

The American Conservative Union rates Carson's previous three years in the House at 42, which is to the right of most Democrats but nowhere near the median for Republicans. On the other side, Americans for Democratic Action rates Carson at 65, well below the middle-80s garnered by most Democrats over the past three years, but way above the single digits typically awarded to House Republicans. (Over the same three-year period, Zell Miller gets 25 from the ADA and 65 from the ACU.)

Which, to these jaundiced eyes anyway, makes Brad Carson something of a centrist. Certainly he's a few ticks to the left of the rest of Oklahoma's Congressional delegation, a solidly right-wing bunch; and given the state Democratic party's claim to being "squarely in the center of the political spectrum," he's got no reason to depart for the GOP camp.

Still, this is a conservative sort of place: George W. Bush got 60 percent of the popular vote here in 2000, even though fewer than 40 percent of Oklahoma voters are registered as Republicans [link requires Adobe Reader]. Zell Miller-style Democrats may seem bizarre to some blue-state folks, but they'd fit right into the Soonerland mix.

Bryan at Spare Change offers this take on recent outings and what they may mean:

(Links added by me, though the items linked are either themselves linked or mentioned elsewhere in the original article.)

The Log Cabin Republicans have a slogan: "Inclusion wins." And if certain elements within the GOP might feel an involuntary tightening of the sphincter, well, that's too bad. God knows I have to put up with a great deal of weirdness over here on the Democratic side of the aisle. Color me inconstant — that's a neutral shade, right? — but I'd much rather deal with, say, a gay gun buff, than with a straight fellow whose disarming manner turns out to be literally so.

This little darb by Convair was "the world's first supersonic all-weather jet interceptor," nothing you'd willingly mess with.

Not necessarily more down to earth is Carnival of the Vanities #102, dedicated to the cosmonauts of Mir, a wondrous vehicle that more often than not seemed like a Trabant in space.

Our thanks to Blogo Slovo for going to this much trouble to bring the week's best bloggage within easy reach.

Rock orthodoxy holds that black R&B = good, while white attempts at same = somewhere between pathetic and insulting. This pronouncement today is considered every bit as obvious as, say, there being four other guys in the Dave Clark Five; after all, Alan Freed never played those awful white cover versions. The argument can usually be summed up in two words: Pat Boone. Well, okay, I can go for years without hearing "Don't Forbid Me," but Mr. White Bucks had more groove than you think (cf. "Moody River," his fifth Number One).

But if Pat Boone was the Great White Hopeless in this version of rock chronology, the Diamonds were the smirking frat boys. Signed to Mercury, they churned out some decently-charting cover versions of R&B hits all through 1956, none of which got any respect from the purists; even Dave Marsh, as determined a revisionist as exists in this realm, characterizes the Diamonds' approach as "dripping sophomoric contempt."

Dave Somerville, who sang lead on most of those records, begs to disagree. From Dawn Eden's liner notes for a mid-90s Diamonds compilation: "We weren't putting anyone on," said Somerville. "It was serious stuff."

I'm inclined to believe him, not only because he was there, but because Clyde Otis, who started hanging out his shingle at Mercury in late '57, wrote the stunningly lethal "The Stroll," based on a dance theme that owed something to Chuck Willis's "C. C. Ryder," and offered it, not to a respected black R&B outfit, but to the Diamonds. I'd say Clyde clearly took them seriously, and the Diamonds responded with a brilliant recording.

What you remember them for, though, is "Little Darlin'," their biggest hit ever (#2 in Billboard as Mercury 71060), and here, the Diamonds did something unforgivable: not only did they cover a black act — Maurice Williams' pre-Zodiacs Gladiolas — but they had the temerity to improve on the product. I've spun the Gladiolas disc (Excello 2101), and it's a decent, but by no means inspiring, piece of R&B boilerplate, its modest merits overwhelmed by the crappy acoustics of the back room of Ernie's Record Mart in Nashville, where it was recorded.

The Diamonds, with a track record at a big label, could afford more gimmickry, and they threw everything but the kitchen sink into their revamping. The experts howled. Marsh complained that it was "mocking and cruel," but admitted: "I don't think I've ever played it once without wanting to play it twice." And shed no tears for Maurice Williams: not only did he make a ton of money off this cover version, but three years later he brought forth "Stay," which not only made it to Number One but inspired a lovely late-Seventies live version by Jackson Browne, one of the whitest guys ever to rock and/or roll.

Well, I'll tell you: we are so diverse that... but never mind. Nobody is buying. Oklahoma City, though many paths intersect here, is still widely perceived as being all of a piece, and it's a piece of white bread with the crusts cut off.

Four months ago, I came up with this:

There are now signs that the power structure is actually starting to pay attention to this sort of thing. The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce has begun Project NEXT, which seeks to "make Central Oklahoma attractive to educated and talented individuals and the most successful businesses," a task which they admit will require seeking "input from the entire community, including people that may or may not be [our] traditional partners."

I'm not quite sure the Chamber really has a handle on this yet. "We've got all the main minority groups — American Indians, Asians, Hispanics, African-Americans, gays," says Chamber spokesperson Drew Dugan in apparent "See how hard we're trying!" mode. Still, they are trying, and that's something they wouldn't have done forty, or even four, years ago.

Next Thursday, representatives from "all the main minority groups" will descend upon the Cox Convention Center to tell the Chamber what they think needs to be done. It should be interesting, to say the least.

From Heather and Jessica at Dancing Brave:

Not that any of these people are likely to be sent to Style Court.

I mean, I like a bit of razzle-dazzle here and there, especially there, but any outfit that invites the question "What was this person thinking?" is by definition the wrong outfit.

I figure something like this might be awaiting me a few years down the road:

No, no jokes. Not this time.

(Via Baldilocks, also resisting the effort to crack wise.)

Oh, did anybody think those ruffians from Chechnya were, oh, say, Buddhists?

Nope, thought not.

Meanwhile, it's probably time to bring out this old warhorse once more.

Let's see if I have this right:

God forbid her cherry should be popped, but you can fool around with the chocolate all you want.

Who came up with this preposterous confection? Planned Parenthood's Teenwire, of course. And as always, when Teenwire spouts nonsense (or worse), Dawn Eden reports.

I take my lunch at 42nd and Treadmill at about 12:25. There is a television set in the breakroom, and the advertising that pops onto the screen reflects the presumed demographics of viewers at that hour; there are lawyers, payday loan services, trade schools, lawyers, auto dealers promising no credit check, and lawyers.

I haven't decided which of the two legal firms who dominate this time slot on this channel is more of an irritant. The doughy guy who trots out every catastrophe known to man and then says "Call me, I know what to do" is certainly annoying.

But there's another spot in which a girl soliloquizes about facing an unplanned pregnancy, in which she notes, "I barely make enough money to care for myself." This ad, from an attorney who specializes in adoptions, is certainly lower-key, but what bugs me about this spot is the fact that the poor girl's situation is easily avoidable. Not that anyone will ever say so to the potential Jerry Springer guests who watch television at half past noon.

Dan Lovejoy has issued his Electoral College projection, and it flies in the face of all this "dead heat" stuff we're hearing from Big Media:

Bush 341, Kerry 197.

In this scenario, the Pacific Coast (except Alaska) and New England (except New Hampshire) go blue, and Kerry picks up Iowa and Illinois; Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey; Maryland and Delaware; and the District of Columbia — leaving a mere thirty-five red states.

Why is this happening?

Of course, getting 63 percent of the electoral vote doesn't mean that Mr Bush will get anywhere near 63 percent of the popular vote, but I figure 50.0001 should be more than sufficient.

A question from J Bowen of No Watermelons Allowed:

Well, yeah, if you're designing for convenience. On the other hand, if you'd like the stack to have some sort of stability, you put the heavier items (larger sizes contain more material and therefore weigh more) toward the bottom.

Okay, it's a minor thing — we're not talking differences of forty to fifty percent here — but gravity doesn't cut any slack.

Alternative explanation: Smaller chaps are pickier and will go through more items before buying, leaving their discards on the top; larger fellows are just happy to see something their size.

Whatever the reason, it's no less true of specialty shops that cater specifically to Big Guys, either; 1X is seemingly always higher in the stack than 4X.

I expect that posting will be a bit more sporadic in the next few days; I am not technically bedridden, but it's close enough. Over the past two days, not one, but two infections have befallen me, and while one is relatively minor, the other is a candidate for surgery.

This will, of course, play hell with my scheduled knee operation, which I expect will be postponed. In the meantime, I'm awash in antibiotics, which at this level have a generally-negative effect on what higher brain functions I have left.

KGOU's Oklahoma Voices program devoted half an hour this week to the onerous task third parties and independents face trying to get on the November ballot in this state. Representatives of the Libertarian and Green parties were in attendance; Richard Winger of Ballot Access News was on the phone from San Francisco. Winger's figures as of today show the Libertarians on 43 state ballots and the Greens on 27, though as of this writing neither of them will be on the Oklahoma ballot.

I did learn a few things from this program. For one, while ballot access in this state has always been difficult, it became much more so after 1968, when George Wallace managed to pull 46 electoral votes and almost 13 percent of the popular vote nationwide. And a spokesman for the state Election Board points out that there's always the question of stalking horses: for instance, there was widespread suspicion in 2000 that Republicans were providing sub rosa support to Ralph Nader's campaign, on the basis that Nader could draw away votes from the Democratic candidate. The Libertarian official noted that it's the job of the electorate, not the Election Board, to determine whether a candidate is someone else's sock puppet.

Richard Winger has noted elsewhere that the Oklahoma law is going to have to be reexamined next year. Last month, the state Supreme Court ordered that a candidate for Congress be placed on the ballot as an Independent despite that candidate's Republican registration; the Tenth Circuit has previously ruled that states may not require specific (or even any) registration for Congressional candidates, so at the very least this clause will be struck. Says Winger:

Helpful, and long overdue, if you ask me.

Debra Dickerson at Slate says that if we're going to pit one group against another, better class warfare than racial warfare:

There are some mechanisms for correcting the excesses of the market, and all else being equal, I'd prefer to rely on them, but all else isn't always equal, and sticking it to Joe and Susan Sixpack and their 2.3 kids on the basis of philosophy strikes me as unnecessarily cruel.

On the other hand, the bumper sticker I saw yesterday — "NO DEDUCTIBLES / NO COPAYS / NO INSURANCE COMPANIES / JUST HEALTH CARE" (I may have a couple of these out of sequence) — strikes me as unnecessarily silly, and I rather think it would have carried more weight had it not been stuck on the back of a $30,000 truck.

(Via Outside the Beltway)

I've met the Queen of All Evil, and she in no way resembles the strange denizens of Flatland.

I mention this because the Queen's consort has an interesting piece up about the disconnect between the underfed wraiths who are supposed to be the very model of a modern female beauty queen and the actual women we encounter in Real Life.

Besides, he invokes both ancient Greek sculpture and the neoclassical paintings of William Bouguereau, which proves he's serious.

Costa at Population Statistic meets a cute girl in a bar who may or may not have had Greta Garbo's standoff sighs.

Of such encounters are legends made.

If you're one of the seventeen known Undecided Voters, you've probably already posed this question to the pundits:

Beats me, but there's an analysis at The Anger of Compassion, if you're interested.

Very seldom in life are the words "Oh, look, a rupture!" an indication of good news.

But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that "very seldom" hardly ever means "never," and well, that infamous Second Infection I mentioned yesterday has opened up on its own and is draining its contents. (More than that, you don't want to know.) Assuming this pattern holds for the next few days, I won't have to sweat the possibility of surgery.

On the other hand, this will force the rescheduling of my knee operation, but that's no surprise; stuff like that gets cancelled even if all you have is a case of the sniffles.

This is, I regret to say, what happens when Dave throws out a weird idea for public consumption.

At least I didn't clutter up his site with it.

   To blog, or not to blog: that is the question:
   Whether 'tis nobler on the site to suffer
   The sneers and insults of outrageous trollage,
   Or to take arms against a sea of comments
   And by deleting end them? To blog: to write;
   No more; and by "no more" to say we end
   The head-ache and the thousand horrid spams
   The Net is curs'd with, 'tis a constipation
   Devoutly to be flush'd. To write, to blog;
   To blog: perchance with links: ay, there's the catch;
   For in this sphere of blogs what links may come
   When we have posted that which we think best,
   Still give us pain; there's the respect
   We never get for porting heart to screen;
   For who would bear the emails from the proud,
   The meter stuck, the readership ungrowing,
   The pain of poorly-written prose, the fact
   That Instapundit knows not who we are,
   That N.Z. Bear considers us a worm,
   When we ourselves might our quietus make
   With a blank template? who would once endure,
   To grunt and sweat on every single day,
   To turn out e'en a paragraph or two,
   Though undiscover'd it must needs remain,
   To answer every comment, good or ill,
   And somehow to forget the ones who read
   Though their existence never be revealed?
   Inertia doth make bloggers of us all;
   And thus the art form that we know as writing
   Is covered o'er with arcane codes of markup,
   And writers who might someday be remembered
   Will this way, be they lucky, merely Googled,
   And lose the fame deserved. — Soft you now!
   An actual Trackback! Though I am not worthy,
   My traffic is augmented.

Oklahoma City is divided into eight wards of roughly similar population (65,000 or so), each of which is represented on the City Council. Tulsa has a similar system with nine wards. Ken Neal, writing in the Tulsa World, says this system represents "ward politics of the worst kind," and wants to replace it with a convoluted mess where the nine wards will be consolidated into four, and the five other councilors will be elected at large.

"In effect," says Neal, the current system demands that councilors "are elected to try to put their district ahead of the overall welfare of the city." I don't live in Tulsa and don't have a grounding in Nealspeak, but I'll attempt a translation: "How can we do Great Things for this town if we keep having to piddle around with the petty needs of mere citizens?"

Ward politics by nature is fractious. For many years in Oklahoma City it was the three southside wards (3, 4 and 5) versus the rest of the city. But changing population patterns have changed the Council: parts of Ward 3 now extend as far north as NW 36th, and Wards 6 and 7 dip as far south as SW/SE 44th. Still, any city has limited resources, and this city in particular has to spread them over an incredible distance, so I'm inclined to think the residents of a ward would rather have someone sitting at the horseshoe who has some actual interest in that ward.

Michael Bates predicts the results of Neal's proposed charter change in Tulsa:

And I'm still concerned with Neal's tossed-off phrase: "the overall welfare of the city." If you can't get five councilors to buy such and such a proposal, maybe it's not so good for the overall welfare after all, huh?

Move over, Red Sox; chin up, Sports Illustrated. You want to see a real jinx in action, look to an undisclosed location near Washington, and heed the words of T. D. Allman in Rolling Stone:

It seems unclear how the John Kerry campaign can capitalize on this situation.

(Via Ken Layne)

Bookseller Edward Hyde suspects Regnery is playing games with a top-selling title:

"In print," I suspect, is a term which has different meanings to different people. To you or me or Mr Hyde, it means that there are that many copies of the book out there somewhere. Not having had a book published, I have to wonder if maybe the publisher considers "in print" to include any press runs actually ordered, whether they're complete or not. (I'd appreciate any information on this from anyone who knows.)

Meanwhile, the immediate result, at least for Hyde, is frustration:

Migod, he is serious.

It's not on their Web site yet, but the October issue of Automobile has a "highly subjective" list of the 100 Coolest Cars — and, of course, ten that are the very antithesis of cool.

Among the favored are, as I expected, some of my favorites, including the '53 Studebaker Starliner coupe with its legendary Raymond Loewy styling (#52), the first (1963) Buick Riviera (#49), the Ferrari 275GTB (#35), the '55 Chevrolet Bel Air (#22), and Elwood Engle's '61 Lincoln Continental with suicide doors (#19). The only one I really expected to see but didn't was Virgil Exner's '57 Plymouth, arguably the best-looking car ever to emerge from Chrysler, one of which is buried under the Tulsa County Courthouse lawn.

Over in the Bowser Department are such dogs as the Yugo, the Pontiac Aztek, and the Cadillac Cimarron, a tarted-up Chevy Cavalier introduced in 1982 that — well, let them tell you:

So that's what happened to General Motors in the 80s.

Next week, in fact. But for now, the Carnival of the Vanities is still in week #103, hosted for the second time by Pete Holiday's Encyclopeteia. (If you're keeping score, first time was #79.)

The second-anniversary edition will return to Silflay Hraka; in the meantime, you've got seven whole days to read all this good stuff, plus something of mine that was thrown in for tragic relief.

R&B fans may recognize the title as that of a recording by Laura Lee, whose biggest hit (Hot Wax 7105, 1971) was called "Women's Love Rights." It's been a recurrent theme in feminism for many years; starting a lecture tour in Australia, author Germaine Greer said that the high divorce rate was something to be celebrated:

And why might that be?

Oh.

How this connects to Greer's announced topic for the day — "Shakespeare and sexual difference" — I'm not in a position to explain.

I will point out, though, that the very same Laura Lee LP which features "Wedlock Is a Padlock" also contains a mournful version of the standard "Since I Fell For You." All together now:

How, um, empowering.

(Via The Currency Lad)

Producer, entrepreneur, and alleged "free man in Paris" — well, he did stoke the star-maker machinery behind the popular song — David Geffen brought forth upon this earth in the early Seventies a new label, which he called Asylum, and offered it unto Atlantic Records, that they might distribute it.

The first artist signed to Asylum was Jackson Browne, though the first actual album issued was Judee Sill (SD 5050). Geffen took over a floundering post-Jac Holzman Elektra in 1973 and moved Asylum under the Elektra banner — or maybe it was the other way around. In the middle Seventies, Asylum, as the prime outpost of L. A. pop, simply ruled, with the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt and Canadian expat Joni Mitchell all over the media map. Eventually, Geffen departed, setting up a label bearing his own name, and Elektra gradually put Asylum out of its misery.

The Warner Music Group, which still owned the label name, now has decided to resurrect Asylum once again, this time as a hip-hop shop. Things have certainly changed in the Hotel California.

(Via The Media Drop)

The goal, said City Manager Jim Couch, was to finish MAPS right and without debt.

By any reasonable reckoning, they did the job right; the nine original Metropolitan Area Projects were massive undertakings, and the results are breathtaking.

But did they go over budget? Here are the individual projects:

• SBC Bricktown Ballpark ($34 million)
  
• Bricktown Canal ($23 million)
  
• Oklahoma Spirit Trolleys ($5 million)
  
• Cox Convention Center renovation/expansion ($60 million)
  
• Civic Center Music Hall renovation ($53 million)
  
• State Fairgrounds improvements ($14 million)
  
• Ford Center ($89 million)
  
• North Canadian Oklahoma River development ($53.5 million)
  
• Ronald J. Norick Library ($21.5 million)
  

Which comes to $353 million, a fair chunk of change by any measure. However, the city claims to have collected only $309 million from the temporary sales tax (since expired) that funded the projects.

Of course: government projects result in cost overruns. Nature of the beast. No doubt some of the difference was made up by the sale of naming rights. And I've had years (don't even ask) when I overspent my income by 14 percent. So I'm not as cranky about this as I could be, I suppose, especially since the City isn't actually running a deficit, unlike some governments I could name.

Few keyboard instruments have been as influential in popular music as the Hammond B-3 organ, unveiled by Laurens Hammond in 1935. In order to give it something like the flexibility of pipe organs, Hammond came up with a set of drawbars — nine of them, each with eight positions — that provided the kind of timbre control available with pipe-organ stops.

There were two things beyond the B-3's capabilities, though: it couldn't travel solo — it required an external speaker — and it couldn't do any real vibrato. The man who solved both these problems at one shot was Donald James Leslie, who in 1940 came up with an external cabinet that contained two rotating horns (one high-frequency, one low-frequency) through which the speakers projected their sound. What's more, the rotation speed and angle were adjustable over wide ranges.

Leslie's Electro Music company began building these speakers in Pasadena, California in 1945; he had offered the technology to Hammond, but was turned down. Still, organists found the Leslie to be a superb companion to the B-3, and bought them in droves. Hammond, infuriated, reworked their speaker outputs to be incompatible with the Leslie's inputs. Hammond dealers were forbidden to sell Leslies, and Hammond briefly offered an in-console rotational system that proved to be a poor substitute for a Leslie. Nothing Hammond did, though, made any difference: you bought a B-3, you went somewhere else and got a Leslie for it, and you had yourself a world-class electronic organ. Eventually, Hammond started looking the other way when their dealers stocked Leslies, and many Hammond artists would demand that Leslies be available for their live performances.

In 1965, Leslie sold his company to CBS; the following year, Hammond — Laurens Hammond had retired in 1960 — cut a deal with CBS to buy Leslie speakers directly. The old war was over, and in 1980 Suzuki, having acquired the Hammond company, bought out CBS's interest in Leslie.

And it turned out that Leslie speakers had uses beyond sitting beside an organ; when John Lennon worked up "Tomorrow Never Knows," the most ambitious track on Revolver, he got the voice-through-a-tunnel effect by feeding the microphone to a Leslie.

As for Don Leslie himself, he retired in 1980, still in the San Gabriel Valley, and died last week at ninety-three. I think I'll dig up some Jimmy Smith discs in his honor.

This guy has a future, albeit fuzzy:

I will add only that apparently he has since moved out of his mother's basement and into an environment a tad less hospitable.

This morning I see the man with the knife, who will evaluate the waning-but-not-gone-yet bulbousness in Keisterville and decide what to do about it.

If he sends me to the hospital, this is the last post for the day, and thank you for visiting.

(Update, noon: Well, he is sending me to the hospital, but not today; surgery will be tomorrow morning at Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City. It is not expected that I will remain overnight, as this is considered fairly routine stuff. To them, anyway.)

Francis W. Porretto would definitely like to see the Federal income tax go away:

Fritz Schranck is a little more cautious:

But that's not his biggest beef:

Which leads to the next question: if Amendment XVI goes, does the payroll tax go with it? Or does its fixed rate, inasmuch as it is sort of "uniform throughout the United States," give it a pass under Article I, Section 8?

Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving System Dynamics kicks in right about here: once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a bigger can.

In 1965, John Lennon bought a Swiss KB Discomatic portable jukebox and stuffed it with 45s; when he left his first wife — his first life, if you will — behind, the jukebox stayed with Cynthia, and wound up in storage at his old home in Weybridge. John Midwinter, a music promoter from Bristol, bought it at auction at Christie's in 1989 for something like £2500.

While the Beatles' singles, in England anyway, were all Lennon and/or McCartney compositions, their early albums contained about a dozen American R&B remakes, and it should surprise no one that the contents of John's jukebox proved to be largely Stateside recordings; only three — Donovan's "Turquoise," the Animals' cover of Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home to Me," and the Big Three's "Some Other Guy" — were recorded in the UK. And there's a typo in the list at #37; "Bad Boy" is actually the Larry Williams original, which the Beatles remade in 1965. (The Miracles did not issue a track by that title, but did cut a single called "Bad Girl.")

And why 41 tracks? The Discomatic held forty 45s; as it turns out, "I've Been Good to You" is the B-side of the Miracles' "What's So Good About Goodbye." Of course, this means that there were 80 songs involved. And I'm willing to bet that John actually paid more attention to "Hey Gyp," the B-side of "Turquoise," than he did to "Turquoise" itself; while the A-side is a wispy hippie dream from Donovan's "Colours" period, "Hey Gyp" is a goof on American R&B with lines like "I'll buy you a Cadillac if you just give me some of your love, girl," sufficiently insane to inspire Eric Burdon to cut a suitably-wack version with his New Animals.

The Oklahoma House has voted to impeach Insurance Commissioner Carroll Fisher, sending five articles of impeachment to the Senate.

A list of the articles of impeachment is here. The Senate will organize a court to try the impeachment within ten days; a two-thirds majority of the 48 Senators is required to remove Fisher from office. House Speaker Larry Adair (D-Stilwell) has named a six-person board of managers to prosecute Fisher, led by Frank Davis (R-Guthrie).

Fisher says he won't resign, and Irven Box, representing Fisher, says that it is unfair for the Senate to try the commissioner while he's facing criminal charges in district court.

And that, I hope, will be the end of that.

I'm tempted to say something about how I've got nothing to worry about, that everything will fall into place as it should, but somehow that sounds so September 10th, you know?

See you this evening, or tomorrow. I think.

Well, that was fun.

So far as I know, keeping in mind that I wasn't awake for any of the important stuff — O Twenty-first Century Anesthesia, how wonderful thou art — things went according to plan. There were, however, a few moments of serious disconcert:

• While dragging myself out of bed this morning, I was beset with the worst possible earworm: Men at Work, "Down Under."
  
• "We now ask for a deposit, even from our patients with insurance." I hasten to add, they weren't adamant about it, and they probably would have let me slide.
  
• The anesthesiologist bore entirely too close a resemblance to Harry Dean Stanton.
  
• The clocks were right when I arrived, but didn't feel compelled to remain so: I watched in utter confusion as thirty-five minutes, per the clock in my prep area, passed in a matter of seconds.
  
• Some of these nursing types are entirely too attractive.
  

This is petty quibbling, though. I left here around 8:30 and was back home by three, which isn't bad at all. I thank all of you who expressed kindly thoughts, prayers, or calls for good karma on my behalf.

Now here are some uplifting notions. I particularly liked the third, "Be nice and fair to everyone, including people who are different from you." Who could possibly argue with that?

Then you click on Buttons and see stuff like this:

This is "nice and fair"?

The Happy Homemaker gives this the skewering it deserves.

NPR's All Things Considered had an obituary for Billy Davis, 72, whom they identified as an advertising executive. Which indeed he was; he created that "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" bit for Coca-Cola that grabbed the attention of the tragically-hip types at NPR, and the "If you've got the time...." spot for Miller Beer.

But before he did any of these things, Billy Davis was a singer, a songwriter, and a producer. For the first three years of their existence, he was the sort-of-fifth member of the Four Aims, later the Four Tops. (Top Lawrence Payton was his cousin.) Their demo, filled with Davis originals, got them signed to Chess Records in Chicago; they had no hits during their tenure with Chess, but Davis' songs were passed on to Chess acts like the Flamingos and the Moonglows.

It was about at this point that Davis started dating Gwen Gordy, and met Gwen's brother Berry; they began writing songs together, credited to Gordy and "Tyran Carlo," and one of them, "Reet Petite," became a small but indelible hit for Jackie Wilson in 1957. They continued to write for Jackie, and in 1958, with Gwen also credited, came up with Jackie's biggest hit up to that point: "Lonely Teardrops," which made it into the Top Ten in early 1959.

A falling out with Nat Tarnopol of Brunswick led Davis and the Gordys to set up shop on their own: Gwen, sister Anna, and Davis set up Anna Records in Detroit, which got its first hit in 1960 with "Money," a Barrett Strong single written by Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford. (Strong would later wind up as Norman Whitfield's writing partner in the late Sixties, while Whitfield was producing massive hits for the Temptations.) Harvey Fuqua of the Moonglows came on board while Berry Gordy was starting up his Motown and Tamla labels; Fuqua also came on to Gwen Gordy, and eventually Davis found himself squeezed out.

Back in Chicago, Billy Davis took over A&R at Chess, where he pushed the legendary blues label into contemporary soul; he updated Etta James, brought back the Dells, and introduced new acts like Fontella Bass, whose enormous hit "Rescue Me" in 1965 got the attention of the ad agency McCann-Erickson, who after three years finally persuaded Davis to join them as their director of music.

The rest, of course, is advertising history. And, well, I didn't want his rep as an ad man to overshadow his days in the record business, which is why this is here.

Besides, when Billy Davis was a kid, he drank Pepsi, not Coke: at the time, Pepsi was selling 12-ounce bottles for the same five cents Coke was asking for six ounces. I have no idea about his taste in beer.

Dear Mo:

Yeah, I know, it's that time again. And if it's been tough being a Muslim in the States the past three years, it's really got to be tough when the 11th of September rolls around and the calls of "Never forget!" rise from the land and all you can do is hope they forget about you.

There's just one small problem, though: you're not going to be forgotten. And it's not because of anything you did, either; it's simply a fact that entirely too many acts of heinous violence have been committed by Muslims, not just on 9/11, but as some sort of ongoing process. "What's that got to do with me?" you ask.

It's simply this: while the tides of history roll over everyone, they don't necessarily maintain an even depth. We are at war, Mo. And we are at war, not because of something you did, but because of things that were done ostensibly in your name, and in the name of your God. Until such time as we can weed out every last terrorist who claims to be doing the will of Allah, it is only prudent to assume the worst. Professional complainers call this "racial profiling"; the real world calls it "self-defense."

And really, Mo, this is an area where you can actually help. I know you don't want anything to do with those murdering thugs swarming out of the Middle East, but until you say so, how does anyone else know? There has been very little outcry from the many Muslims about the activities of the few. While it may seem unfair, silence does breed suspicion, and that makes it hard on you and on your friends. It's not that you'd be speaking out against Islam; you'd be speaking out against murder.

Sure, I still believe in "innocent until proven guilty." That's a legal construct, though; it carries the force of law in the courtroom, but it's unenforceable anywhere else. Until such time as we can put an end to terrorism committed by Muslims, any Muslim, however innocent, may be the target of some sort of suspicion. For that matter, I have roots in Syria, a place which could qualify for the junior division of the Axis of Evil; they could just as easily suspect me.

Anyway, this will pass. It may take a few years; it may take a few lifetimes; but it will pass. Let's hope by this time next year, we've made some substantial progress rooting out the terrorists. After all, you live here too, Mo.

See you in about a year.

A quick pass through the 'sphere to see what I missed, and apparently it was quite a lot:

• A movement may be cranking up to recall Tulsa Mayor Bill LaFortune.

• Nearly 18 percent of homes in South Carolina are "manufactured housing," formerly known as "mobile homes," formerly known as "trailers."

• A few people, not a lot, were actually crass enough to whoop and holler during the June 5 A Prairie Home Companion when host Garrison Keillor announced the death of Ronald Reagan. (Keillor himself had only kind words for the Gipper, though this was well before the avuncular Minnesotan suffered an apparent meltdown.)

• I'm pretty sure that when I was an Army personnel clerk, I had a Times New Roman, or at least Times Roman, typeball for the Selectric I was issued. On the other hand, I don't remember it as being a proportional font, which suggests to me that IBM reworked the typeface just enough to fit it into fixed width; certainly my typewriter wasn't capable of handling proportional fonts.

• Aaron Hawkins of Uppity-Negro.com died this week.
  

I've got to quit being sick.

I worked at Mickey D's in the early Seventies, and, well, I don't remember anything like this: Playboy is putting together a pictorial of women who work at McDonald's.

Hmmm. Maybe I will have fries with that.

What everyone wants to know, right after "So when are you dragging your sorry ass back to work?", is "How did this happen?"

I don't really know for sure. But I do know this much: stress reduces the reserve capacity of one's immune system, and bacteria are opportunistic little bastards. I suspect it was simply the combination of both these ingredients; attacks I would have routinely fought off during quieter periods actually got the better of me this time.

And really, it's rare I get knocked down like that, so I'm treating this as one of the standard post-adolescent You Are Not Indestructible reminders.

In regard to that Jonathan Klein crack about the typical blogger being "a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas," I wish to state for the record that I haven't owned any pajamas for approximately thirty-five years.

And that's nothing, compared to this: Beth Donovan isn't even a guy, let alone a pajama owner.

(And apparently she doesn't always sit in her living room, either.)

Someone once asked why I would go to the trouble of visiting parts of town that are generally considered, um, less desirable. It's simple: I don't want to get into the habit of thinking about a 600-square-mile city in terms of the few blocks that surround my house. Things happen all over town, and given the priorities of the press, which enjoys harping on tragedies even more than boasting about some dubious manifestation of "progress," I'd just as soon see for myself.

So I was near Linwood and Blackwelder today, where small firms under the general heading of "light industrial" vie for curb space with homes built around the time of World War I. And every other block, there's a church, and this being Sunday, those churches were busy. (I caught sight of an old-fashioned revival tent on a double lot.) A few black faces, but mostly brown; kids on bicycles, men unloading trucks, women in their Sunday best.

Now the roads through there aren't great, and I suspect the rest of the city's infrastructure is probably an upgrade or two behind schedule, but this struck me as a relatively nice, if obviously not at all upscale, neighborhood. (I spot-checked a couple of houses for sale, and you can still buy in around here for thirty-five to fifty-five thousand.) Professional worriers, faced with a few blocks like this, would undoubtedly start screaming "Blight!" and calling for intervention. And indeed, there's room for improvement, starting with what appears to be, at first glance, a higher-than-average crime rate. But I am becoming persuaded that the kiss of death for any neighborhood comes at the exact moment when the studies and the surveys and the recommendations start coming out and the focus shifts from "How can we make this area better?" to "How can we get these people out of here?" I, for my part, am loath to tear up an area of affordable housing just because it's not pretty.

The Oklahoma RedHawks won their division with an 81-63 record, eight games ahead of the Memphis Sounds, but the post-season is already over: the Iowa Cubs will be going to the Pacific Coast League championship, having dispatched the 'Hawks in five games, including a 6-2 shellacking this afternoon that wasn't as close as it sounds.

Yeah, I know, there's always next year.

This note showed up on the Web site of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives:

This page explains matters further.

Do I feel any safer? Not especially. On the other hand, I'd just like to say that I really, really like the idea of Federal laws that actually expire.

Though probably not the easiest to explain to your friends.

Which reminds me: Are the events of this past week paying me back for this?

(Via Erica, who traces this, um, meme back to here.)

A cousin of mine has informed me that she's been asked to run for the City Council in Austin, Texas, which prompted me to check out the way they run things in the City of the Violet Crown.

Turns out that Austin has a council-manager form of government, something I'm familiar with, but there's a twist: all six of the council members are elected at large. Which means that whatever power base she's built up in her section of town (just north of the University) doesn't mean a whole lot, since she's got to make her pitch to the entire city of 650,000.

I admit to being unable to understand why this is supposed to be a Good Thing. If each of the council members represents the whole city, why do they need six of them? The traditional complaint about ward representation, as used in Oklahoma City and more recently in Tulsa, has been that it encourages members of the council to think about neighborhood needs rather than the needs of the city as a whole, but the fact remains: neighborhoods do have different needs. Residents of Balcones Drive in northwest Austin don't necessarily have the same concerns as residents of Springdale Road on the east side.

There is, of course, a practical limit to how far down you can scale these things. I live in Ward 2 in Oklahoma City, which extends roughly from NW 23rd to NW 122nd, from Broadway to Portland, excluding areas adjacent to the Lake Hefner Parkway. This ward is currently represented by Sam Bowman, who lives in the Cleveland neighborhood, north of 23rd and east of May, at the southern end of the ward. It would be disingenuous to argue that everyone in Ward 2 is dealing with the same set of issues. But were we using at-large voting here, we'd have to guess which of the council members might be most interested in our problems if we wanted something done; as it stands, we take our problems to Sam Bowman.

And truth be told, I don't know how well a neighborhood activist like my cousin, who is used to hearing from a few hundred folks on a regular basis, will take to having more than half a million breathing down her neck.

Courtesy of the Baseball Crank, the last days of Stephen Foster, American composer, as recounted by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre.

This paragraph caught me:

Which, if you've ever seen the Suwanee, you know the old folks would have abandoned at their earliest opportunity. South Carolina myth, of which there is an abundance, holds that the river Foster really meant to enshrine was the Pee Dee, but he probably never saw it either; most of Foster's tender, wistful Americana was written in the city of New York.

Peripherally: MacIntyre, for his part, is best known at Surlywood for writing The Woman Between The Worlds, a Victorian-era science-fiction novel written in the middle 1990s, an utterly unfilmable story that I hope to see someday translated to film.

There aren't a lot of political yard signs at the moment: on my block, there's a total of one. Of course, the election is still seven weeks away, so there's still time for the little buggers to blossom, but for now, there's just the one.

Apparently, had I stayed in Charleston, where I lived during the 1960s, I might not be allowed to have such a thing today:

Of course, the new arrivals are supposed to sign these things voluntarily, but....

If anyone pursues it, I'd like to hear about it.

Brad Carson has pulled even with Tom Coburn in the race for the Senate seat being vacated by Don Nickles. A poll of "500 likely Oklahoma voters" shows Carson at 39 percent and Coburn at 37 percent; calculated margin of error is 4.4 percent.

Michael Bates has been parsing the poll numbers, and this statistic he turned up is most interesting: Coburn leads in four of the five Congressional districts, but is trailing badly — 58 to 25 percent — in the Second, the district which he once represented and which Carson represents now.

I did a little poking around in the results [link requires Adobe Reader] myself, and found a few bits worth mentioning:

• State Democrats are evenly split on the Presidential ballot: Bush leads 43-42 among Democrats, with 15 percent still on the fence. (82 percent of Republicans are already in the Bush camp.)

• There's a gender gap, but probably not the one you think: Bush is doing better among women (63-25) than among men (56-33).

• The lottery (SQ 705) might actually pass: 57 percent said they'd vote for it. Democrats favor it overwhelmingly, and Republicans tilt slightly towards it.

• SQ 711, the anti-gay-marriage measure, is a two-to-one shoo-in.
  

Of course, anything can happen in the next few weeks.

It was Sinclair Broadcasting's NewsCentral that got it first: from the archives of the Navy, they obtained the After-Action Report written by Lt. (jg) John Kerry after the incident for which Kerry won a Silver Star.

Jim at It'z News to Me caught it first on WBFF-TV, the Fox station in Baltimore, Sinclair's hometown. (I caught a replay on Oklahoma City's Fox station, KOKH-TV.) Jim has links to the complete NewsCentral report.

And Captain Ed, who knows more about these things than I do, reads and concludes:

Given the tendency of some of us to think the worst of John Kerry no matter what — a tendency Kerry and his campaign handlers have encouraged in recent months — it's something of a relief to hear that there was in fact a time when his instincts were sound and functional.

John Cole reports that the following look better, or at least as good, on high-definition television:

The following, however, are not improved:

It is, of course, reassuring to know that John Cole has his priorities in order, but this isn't, at least to me, a compelling reason to spend the extra bucks for HDTV.

Yet.

Paul at Wizbang describes what happens if Ivan comes ashore at the worst possible place:

I'm hundreds of miles away and I'm coming down with the chills.

Oremus.

Susanna Cornett has come up with a possible profile of the person who faked those infamous CBS memos:

This makes as much sense as any speculation I've seen, and far more than the ludicrous notion that the Bush campaign engineered the whole thing. Karl Rove may be the second coming of Machiavelli, but I doubt even he could have plotted something this intricate in advance.

CBS must atone, preferably along the lines recommended by Beldar:

This is not, I point out, due to any particular animus toward CBS: this is the absolute minimum CBS must do to retain even a shred of credibility as a provider of news.

And then the investigations will begin:

A little bit of history here:

Viacom was spun off from CBS in the early 1970s in response to an FCC ruling prohibiting broadcast and cable ownership in the same market. With one asset to speak of — old CBS reruns available for repackaging — Viacom built itself into a media power, with connections to broadcast through its syndication properties, and ownership of cable networks such as Showtime and MTV (which it acquired from Warner Bros. and American Express). In 1987 Viacom was taken over by Sumner Redstone's National Amusements; in 1999 Viacom bought CBS, its former corporate parent.

Since just about all mass-media firms are assembled from similar components these days, and those components are largely interchangeable — could Sumner Redstone be thinking about unloading CBS right about now?

(Update, 18 September, 6:20 pm: Fusilier Pundit has been contemplating the possibilities of a spinoff of CBS.)

(Update, 19 September, 8:45 pm: Sumner Redstone has sold off 341,500 shares, though I don't know if this was a CBS-related action or if it might have something to do with the pending sell-off of Blockbuster. It is, however, less than 1 percent of his equity in the company.)

That's right, buoys and gulls, the Carnival of the Vanities is two years old, and hosting the little brat this week: its actual parent at Silflay Hraka.

As always, the Carnival features some of the best stuff churned out in the past seven days by your favorite pajama-clad pundits, and now that it's come home again, let us all thank Bigwig for making this event not only possible but inevitable.

Originally posted 30 June 2001

Justin Hayward would certainly never say so, but a newcomer picking up the Best of the Moody Blues compilation, issued by The Label Formerly Known As PolyGram in 1996, might well conclude that the Moodies were basically Hayward's backup band. For some reason, this air of Justincentricity bugged me. Admittedly, Hayward and/or John Lodge wrote most of the group's hits, but the two-year period before Hayward and Lodge replaced Denny Laine and Clint Warwick produced a bunch of worthy 45s, the second of which — "Go Now!", a cover of Bessie Banks' 1963 American R&B ballad — made the US Top Ten and remains the band's biggest hit in Britain. While the Best of... set does include "Go Now!", and Hayward makes it clear in the liner notes (an interview with John Peel) that he had nothing to do with it, the casual listener could easily assume that nothing happened with the band until the Days of Future Passed LP.

To the rescue, the Dutch label BR Music, which has issued a two-CD set with the unwieldy title the singles + (BS 8123-2), snagged by yours truly today at a Best Buy store for a meager $15. On hand are all the UK singles (including a couple of B-sides) from the 1964-1966 Laine/Warwick era, the two flops that followed (one by Hayward, one by Mike Pinder), and then the Usual Material — with, unexpectedly enough, the 45 version of "Question", which diverges wildly from the version on A Question of Balance. It's not gloriously remastered like the PolyGram set, and the packaging is not entirely cheese-free, but as a representation of the historical record, it's a must.

Speaking of historical records, the August Playboy showed up today, in which Go-Go's stalwart Belinda Carlisle shows up in her birthday suit. I honestly don't know what she expects this to do for her career, or for that of the group, but damn, she does look nice, and since Playmates have generally tended to be about twenty years old or so, I make it a point to applaud, and to appreciate, pictorials of women twice that age. Not that I have any better chance of seeing them in real life, either.

Via email from a friend on the Redneck Riviera, way too close to Ivan to suit either of us:

1. An oak tree on the ground looks four times bigger than it did standing up.

2. Even after all these years it is still nice to spend time with Col. Mustard in the ballroom with the lead pipe.

3. When house hunting look for closets with lots of leg room.

4. Water from the shower is much colder than water from the kitchen sink — and tastes just as bad.

5. AA, C and D are the only alphabet we need.

6. The four-way stop is still an ingenious reflection of civility.

7. Radio can be the best way to watch television.

8. Chainsaw-wielding men are nothing to be afraid of.

9. SUVs are the best makeshift tents on the market.

10. You can use your washing machine as a cooler.

11. It's your God-given right to sit on your back porch and eat Chinese takeout by candlelight in your underwear.

12. We shouldn't complain about "useless" tools in the garage — we actually DO need a generator.

13. You can't spell "priceless" without I-C-E.

14. Downed power lines make excellent security systems.

15. Lakes can generate waves.

16. Gasoline is a value at any price.

17. Cell phones: Breaking up isn't hard to do.

18. The life blood of any disaster recovery is COFFEE.

19. The need for your dog to go out and take care of business is directly proportional to the severity of the storm.

20. Candlelight is better than Botox — it takes years off your appearance.

21. Air conditioning: BEST. INVENTION. EVER.

22. Water is a comfort food. But 3-day-old Cheetos are too.

23. Shadow animals on the wall — still fun.

24. No matter how hard the wind blows, roadside campaign signs will survive.

25. You should never admit to having power at your house in the presence of coworkers or neighbors who do not.

26. There's a plus to having NOTHING in the refrigerator.

27. Getting through the day should be an Olympic event.

28. The movie theater can be a most pleasant place, even if the feature is Alien vs Predator.

29. Somebody's got it worse.

30. Somebody's got it better. Obviously, they're getting preferential treatment.
    

Thanks, Deb, and you too, Squiddy.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has voted 3-2 to abandon the county's 47-year-old seal in an effort to avoid a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The revised seal will drop the image of the Hollywood Bowl with the cross over it, remove the oil derricks, and replace the goddess Pomona with a Native American woman carrying a bowl of acorns.

If this isn't silly enough for you, LAist has a recommendation for a new design.

Japan's oldest maker of motor vehicles — they built their first car in 1916 — has fallen on hard times in the US. For 2005, the model line has been cut from three trucks to one, and that one, the Ascender, is not a compelling buy, inasmuch as General Motors, which owns 12 percent of Isuzu, sells basically the same truck at Chevy, GMC, Buick and (with a heavy dose of artificial Swedener) Saab dealerships.

Still, I'm not ready to count them out yet. Isuzu still sells well outside the US, and in 1999 GM owned forty-nine percent of the company; three years later Isuzu managed to buy back most of the General's equity, and they plan to repurchase the rest and go it alone after the 2006 model year. They might even sell cars again here, something they haven't done since 1994.

As for Joe, inveterate liar that he was, I assume he's found a job in Big Media.

I mean, this cannot be happening. Johnny Ramone has died.

First it was Joey, then Dee Dee. I hope to hell Tommy's well.

I mean, I expected the bands I grew up with to get old, because I was getting old. The Ramones were supposed to spit in the eye of all that maturity crap. Three chords, no waiting, glue, then Carbona, and we're gonna beat on the brat, and whaddaya think of that?

I think I wanna be sedated.

A spammer, identified as "Tammie Ortega," unloaded upon me today an offer for, and I quote, "drugs out the ass."

Further comment from me would be superfluous.

Well, it will probably be slightly restrained: this enclave within Oklahoma City's north side is not known for being loud and boisterous.

Still, a seventy-fifth anniversary is something to celebrate, and the founding of Nichols Hills in 1929 was fairly remarkable, if only because the motivations for its founding were such a departure from the norm for Oklahoma City over the preceding forty years.

Mrs George R. Bixler, who was town clerk in Nichols Hills for many years, described it this way:

And indeed, if you drive on the grid in north Oklahoma City, things change radically once you cross 63rd; even Pennsylvania Avenue, a busy city thoroughfare, becomes a winding residential street with a 25-mph speed limit.

It's still a lovely place, though its lack of room for expansion — it's surrounded on three sides by Oklahoma City, and the city of The Village, incorporated in 1950, lies directly to the north — has resulted in the occasionally-unlovely prospect of fine period homes being torn down and replaced with contemporary faux châteaux. There haven't been that many demolitions yet, though, and I suspect the city strictly limits the number of permits it grants for such things, so I rather think Dr. Nichols' countryside will look about the same (give or take a few sport-utility vehicles) over the next seventy-five years.

It's not often easy, and not often kind, if you're a 21st-century liberal; the contemporary liberal mindset, says Marianne M. Jennings, is hard-coded into its holders' DNA, and the results are obvious:

Reminds me of the Judean People's Front People's Front of Judea.

Let it be said that there's nothing wrong with thinking things through, and that entirely too many notions have emerged from the Bush administration with little evidence that any such thought ever took place. (To pick an example not entirely at random, there's the President's immigration-reform package, which is a "reform" only in the sense that it changes the shape of something.) Still, BushCo occasionally acts; the Democrats promise to do better, but they haven't finished burnishing all the fine points yet. Perhaps this is an argument for electing more Democrats to Congress, on the basis that gridlock is goodlock.

(Muchas gracias: John Rosenberg.)

Convalescence has its drawbacks, but it did enable me to catch up on the world around me, so to speak. And here's some of what I discovered:

• John Kerry is doomed.

• Unless California moves now to cut auto emissions even further, thousands of San Franciscans will die — by 2100.

• The Constutional amendment proposed by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), which would allow 20-year naturalized citizens to serve as President, is widely seen as a step to get California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger into the White House. However, it could just as easily work for Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan.

• It is apparently possible, almost, to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." (I have lost the link to the source; if you know it, please advise.)

• Of the two major parties, the Republicans are generally seen as the more religious and/or sanctimonious. And the 2004 GOP platform invokes the name of God four times. The Democratic platform, however, has seven references to God.

• Even if you trade motor vehicles even up, with no money exchanged, Rhode Island will still charge you sales tax.
  

I feel so much brighter now.

The King of the Oldies, that is. His name was Robert Kurt Curtis, he was 53 years old, and he had spent just about half of those years documenting the rock and roll, the soul, the dance music of his beloved Florida.

This year, all that documentation came out in book form, and a monster of a book it is. Or "books," perhaps, since it takes more than one to bind the nearly 2000 pages of photos, charts, interviews and raw data.

And on the very day publisher Florida Media Inc. was sending this behemoth to the press, Kurt Curtis dropped dead, of causes yet to be determined.

"I want to be remembered," he had said, "as the guy who saved the history of Florida rock music."

Which, of course, he was.

(Muchas gracias: Costa Tsiokos.)

Men's Health magazine, tossing together a salad of disparate data bits, has come up with a list of the Least Sloshed Cities in the US, and at the top are Montgomery, Alabama; Yonkers, New York; and Hialeah, Florida. (I assume this data got mined before Florida became the hurricane capital of the solar system.) All these towns scored A-plus on a combination of DWI arrest rates, alcohol-related traffic deaths, and mortality rates for various ethanol-related liver diseases.

Scoring an F were New Orleans, Spokane, Kansas City, Albuquerque, Anchorage, El Paso, and worst of all, Denver. (Must be those Rocky Mountain Blogger Bashes.) Here in the Okay City, we're tied (with Seattle) for 82nd out of 101, with a solid D.

I think this calls for a drink.