The weather was sufficiently nasty last night to keep the ghouls and goblins away from my door, but the real weirdness started this morning: for a couple of weeks, it will actually be almost daylight for the last segment of my morning commute.

(Saturday, the sunrise was at 7:49, the latest — per the clock, anyway — it ever happens; this morning, post-DST, what sun we got, which wasn't much, started at 6:50. The dead-of-winter sunrise runs 7:40 or so.)

And a cold front is poised to slice through the area today, spelling the end of the easy part of the fall and the end of the outdoor-frolicking period. This is when we get serious about winter.

Some things, however, don't change; about a mile from the Grey Cavern where Treadmill crosses 42nd, the familiar fragrance of eau de polecat wafted into the ventilation system, just like it does in the spring and the summer.

From Robert Hayes at Let's Try Freedom, a declaration for our times — well, for the next four years and one day, anyway:

Emphasis in the original. And consider it done, sir.

I may have my flaming gasbag asshat moments, but I'm damned if I want to see a repeat of last election's brouhaha, and I refuse to contribute to starting a new one.

This was passed on to me by Francis W. Porretto. Thank you, FWP.

While David Letterman was still at NBC, he sat for a Playboy Interview, and he was asked why he was reluctant to give political endorsements. He said something to the effect that he'd hate to imagine someone thinking, "Well, hell, Letterman likes him, let's vote for the son of a bitch."

I can't imagine anyone taking my advice, but one last time, this are my suggestions for 2004. Do with them what you will.

President: George W. Bush (R)

US Senate: Sheila Bilyeu (I)

US House: Bert Smith (D)

Corporation Commission: John Wylie (D)

State House 87: John Morgan (D)

Oklahoma County Sheriff: Stuart Earnest (R)

Oklahoma County Clerk: Carolynn Caudill (R)

State Questions:
YES: 705, 706, 707, 708, 712, 714, 715
NO: 711, 713

I admit to knowing nothing of import regarding the judges running on a retention ballot, and make no recommendations for same — though my own practice has been to return to office anyone who hasn't given me a reason not to.

For more information and/or lame justifications:
state and local races
Presidential race
state questions

See also Les Jones's Blogger Roundup.

(Update, 3 November, 2:25 pm: Assuming 286-252 holds up, as it appears it will, the Prescience Award goes jointly to James Joyner at Outside the Beltway and Stephen Green at Vodkapundit.)

Michael Bates, proprietor of BatesLine, arguably — at least I've so argued — the best (mostly) political blog in Oklahoma, will be live-blogging Soonerland election results at The Command Post. We are indeed fortunate to have coverage of this quality for our little red territory.

It was cold and blustery and damp, but I've lived here long enough to know that it takes glare ice to make much of a difference in turnout, so I figured I'd pull in at about 6:40. About fifty folks had had the same idea, only slightly earlier, and there was, at least among this group, considerable sentiment for opening the polls at 6 am instead of 7.

Still, things worked with commendable efficiency; I spied one spoiled ballot — replaced on the spot with a new one — and one voter who was shunted to the side while someone researched his address change, but everyone else breezed through the two lines (divided alphabetically), and a dozen booths, plus three sit-down areas for wheelchair users, accommodated the crowd with, if not exactly ease, at least a general lack of hassle. The box counts the ballots as they're inserted, and mine, number forty-five, went into the slot at precisely 7:15.

And I was glad to have done the deed, and gladder still that I hadn't waited until this evening, when things are likely to get seriously hairy and, weatherwise, quite a bit wetter.

The new Mosher-Adams Street Atlas for Oklahoma City is out, and it shows seven hundred new streets since last year's edition, the biggest increase ever. A few of these, I suspect, come from outlying towns which, due to suburban expansion, are now practically suburban themselves, but the city itself is growing at a steady pace; the 2003 population estimate is 523,303, up 3.4 percent from the 2000 Census figure of 506,132. The metropolitan area, at 1,085,282 in 2000, reached 1,126,709 in 2003, up 3.8 percent, and projections [link requires Adobe Reader] by the Center for Economic and Business Development at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford anticipate 1,221,552 by 2010.

It's too early to proclaim the death of the classic boom/bust economic cycle that has dictated Oklahoma's destiny for a hundred years, and indeed many of the state's rural areas are still largely in decline, but for one of the few times since the Land Run, Oklahoma City has turned into something of a destination for migrants, not just from poorer parts of the state, but from out of state as well. Maybe the ghost of Tom Joad will be getting some well-deserved rest.

Em describes her first vote, at age 3:

Good question. Where is Geraldine Ferraro these days, anyway?

(Via Em's big sister Erica, also a babe.)

Terry Knight, born Richard Terrance Knapp in Flint, Michigan in 1943, has died in Temple, Texas, the victim of a stabbing. Knight, a DJ at fabled CKLW radio in the Motor City (technically, Windsor, Ontario), had joined a band called the Jazz Masters, which became Terry Knight and the Pack, who cut a few sides for Flint's Lucky Eleven label, distributed by Cameo-Parkway, of which the biggest was a remake of Ben E. King's cover of an Italian pop tune retitled "I (Who Have Nothing)," which made it to #46 in Billboard in 1966. When the Pack broke up, Knight took drummer Don Brewer and guitarist Mark Farner with him, brought in bassist Mel Schacher from ? and the Mysterians, and christened the threesome Grand Funk Railroad, whom he produced and managed through 1972.

In Temple, Knight lived with his daughter and her boyfriend; the boyfriend has been charged with Knight's murder.

The City Council is apparently going to shrink by two: Ward 4 Councilman Brent Rinehart is leading in the race for District 2 County Commissioner, and Ward 8 Councilman Guy Liebmann looks like a lock for House District 82. Mayor Cornett will have to call special elections to fill whatever vacancies are created.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are jumping the gun, but only a little: Tom Coburn declared victory over an hour ago, and about 9:00 the GOP decided that they'd won control of the state House. So far, the numbers are continuing to go their way.

Seven of the nine State Questions will pass, and 707 and 713 are leading, but just barely.

The State Election Board is posting their latest numbers here.

(Update, 10 pm: 707 is falling behind; 713 is starting to lose steam.)

(Update, 11:15 pm: 707 is back on the plus side; 713 is stabilizing at around 52 percent. Trebor Worthen has won House District 87. John Whetsel will return as Oklahoma County Sheriff, and Carolynn Caudill will return as County Clerk. Bert Smith didn't beat Ernest Istook, but he got a lot more votes than I thought he would. And, well, Sheila Bilyeu pulled over 70,000 votes, which means that a lot of people wanted nothing to do with either Brad Carson or Tom Coburn. Carson's concession speech, incidentally, was a lot nicer than any of his ads.)

Rain.

It started between nine and ten last night, about the time most of the state races were called. It continues to fall, and will likely continue to fall most of the day.

On the morning after the night before, I offer my congratulations to the winners and my condolences to the losers. The people have spoken, and in the best Oklahoma tradition, we said our piece and then got the hell off the stage. The rain will wash away the detritus of the election, the negative campaign ads, the temporary animosity steeped in the heat of the moment, all the things that divided us those many months. And the sunshine will return: it may not be as warm as we might like, and for a while it may not last as long as it used to; but it will return, a reminder that there are things beyond politics, beyond the power of mankind.

We now resume life as we know it.

Traditional media — at least, a hefty percentage of them — seem to hate bloggers in general. But within blogdom itself, there is an obvious hierarchy, which looks something like this.

(From Random Acts of Reality via Syaffolee.)

In the long run, it's the right thing to do.

(Update, 1:20 pm: And a pretty good speech, too.)

As if the ordinary Chrysler 300C wasn't spiffy enough, now there's a Hurst Edition.

The obvious inspiration was the '70 Chrysler 300 Hurst, but anyone who's ever had a fondness for traditional V8-powered American iron should find something to like about this big Moparmobile.

Besides, it's got a Hemi.

(Via Jalopnik.)

Actually, I haven't priced any rubies lately, but work with me here.

Here in the oil patch, the price of crude is always a topic of discussion, and with the price hovering in the low $50s of late, and gas prices running $1.85 per gallon around town, speculation as to what will happen at the pump next week is always rampant. And at some point in today's speculation, we wandered off-topic to the question of More Expensive Liquids, of which the most expensive, of course, can be found in the cartridges of your inkjet printer.

The common comparison, of course, is with Dom Perignon, but since not even The Donald buys Dom in 42-gallon barrels, we decided to do the math one more time. An HP 56 cartridge (black and white) for the DeskJet I use at work runs $35 and contains 19 ml; one liter of the stuff — 52.6 cartridges full — comes to $1842. Multiply by 159.05 liters per barrel, and you're looking at $292,900 for a barrel of ink.

The plastic shells? Well, I send those back to HP for recycling, so I figured it was easier to take them out of the equation, but surely they cost something.

Mike Clingman of the Oklahoma State Election Board reports that 1,463,875 votes were cast in the 2004 general election, beating the 1992 record by seventy thousand.

Oh, we have a few provisional ballots: 2,603 of them. I leave to someone more involved than I the question of why Ohio, with three and a quarter times the population, should have fifty times as many provisional ballots.

The 111th edition of Carnival of the Vanities awaits you at Quibbles and Bits, and, well, they stayed up late counting everything. Tune in to see if they have any provisional bloggage.

Caren Lissner apparently isn't surprised:

How "directly" does it have to be? I'm five miles as the grackle flies from where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City used to be; I literally heard the blast at 9:02 that sheared off the front half of the structure. (Nineteenth of April, 1995; it was in all the papers.) Terry and Timmy and whatever John Does may have been associated with them surely pass any conceivable global test for terrorism.

(Via Dawn Eden, who knows where I live.)

If I hear one more commentator grousing about how it's all because of those horrid religious conservatives, I'm apt to say words which would not be appropriate for the sanctuary. Here in Soonerland, the shiny side of the buckle on the Bible Belt, conventional media wisdom says that everyone emerged from the church to go vote for the ballot initiative (SQ 711) opposing same-sex marriage. And while 711 won easily, the two state-lottery measures, which won somewhat less easily, drew more actual ballots (not-yet-certified state vote totals are here), and even 711 proved to be less popular than the measure to abate property taxes on disabled veterans (SQ 715), which no one characterizes as conservative. The prevailing belief in The Area Formerly Known As Kerryland seems to be that social conservatives are small in number and decidedly weird; I'm not much of a social conservative myself, but I find it hard to see them that way — perhaps because they live over on the next street, as opposed to, say, way beyond the Hudson.

James Joyner amplifies:

Gee, ya think? But that couldn't possibly be, could it? I mean, isn't conservatism an oddity committed by and for odd people? Yet the Republicans still picked up those big numbers. There's only one other explanation: the center looked both ways, and decided to ignore the leftists.

And boy-howdy, they hate that.

Susan B. at LilacRose channels Cash Flagg Ray Dennis Steckler:

Yeah, I know a few of those too.

Point of order: being on the left side of the spectrum does not, ipso facto, make someone a barking moonbat. I've known too many counterexamples personally to believe that particular slander. On the other hand, the putative Reality-Based Community takes an awful lot of things on, well, faith.

State Question 711, which barred same-sex marriages and which passed Tuesday by a three-to-one margin, has now been challenged in court. Two couples from Tulsa have filed a lawsuit in US District Court which seeks to overturn both the Oklahoma statute and the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Apparently this suit has been in the works for some time, but the plaintiffs decided to wait until SQ 711 was passed.

Senator James Williamson (R-Tulsa), who sponsored the legislation in SQ 711, says he thinks it will stand up to the court's scrutiny; the suit will probably be heard some time next year.

Of course, this doesn't mean a healthy diet for the Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority won't necessarily benefit from the eventual passing of Arafat, either, says Meryl Yourish:

Meanwhile, if you were planning to mourn this fellow, you might take a look at some of these.

Update, 8 am: While Arafat continues as the Muslim equivalent of Schrödinger's Cat, I am reminded of this bit of speculation I did last fall:

Assuming by now Colin Powell isn't already cleaning out his desk.

The bottom line on ballot access in this state is still "It takes too many signatures," and the resources that must be devoted to gathering those signatures are considerable. The obvious question, therefore, is "How many signatures would not be 'too many'?"

One suggestion: one percent of the votes cast in the last general election, which would be a shade under 15,000. Still sounds like a lot, but getting a Presidential candidate on the 2004 ballot required over 37,000 signatures, so a one-percent threshold should certainly be easier to reach.

My own thinking, right this minute, calls for a flat 10,000 signatures to gain party recognition, maybe half that for a Presidential candidate, though I'm willing to entertain other ideas. The hard part, of course, will be persuading the legislature, which is made up entirely of members of major parties, to go along with changes like this.

Neither vivid red nor solid blue, my little corner of Oklahoma City is decidedly divided, as many Democrats as Republicans, with a salting of independents, third-party types, and, I suspect, a fair number of folks who are utterly indifferent to it all. Running just north is a street which contains five churches in the space of one mile; in the 49 weeks I've been here, while occasionally a flyer is left at the door, only one of them has contacted me personally through outreach, which is not at the level of what I'd consider annoying. Of the five churches, only one of them is what I think of as a conservative evangelical congregation in the present-day sense — I had attended one such church when I was younger and presumably less wicked — but that wasn't the one who sent the guy to ring my doorbell.

Proving that "your mileage may vary," the OkiePundit seems to be awash in evangelicals:

Now when I lived way out on the east side, I got more visits, largely from members of black churches, which given the population distribution in that quadrant is unsurprising, but none of their representatives ever struck me as being particularly insistent or coercive. And since I'm an irritable old cuss by nature, I have to conclude that they didn't go out of their way to bother me.

Obviously you can't extrapolate from here to a hundred miles up the turnpike, but something seems to be different around Alfalfa Bill's place. Speculation is welcomed.

Apparently there is still no Latin word for "blog".

This strikes me as implausible; I mean, surely the Greeks have a word for it.

(Via Sean Gleeson.)

A friend from blueland writes:

I pointed to this now-fairly-ubiquitous USA Today map which colors each county in 49 states (Alaska doesn't do counties as we know them) according to how it voted, which might have done the trick.

As of this morning, that map was still in the Blogdex Top Ten, a couple of slots below Jane Smiley's hatchet job in Slate with the subtitle "The unteachable ignorance of the red states." I'll quote just one paragraph:

If you look at that USA Today map one more time, you'll see exactly one county in Kansas that's colored blue: Douglas County. The seat of Douglas County is, um, Lawrence.

The sensible person will of course argue, "Quantrill's Raid was over a hundred years ago. How could it possibly have any relevance today?" It doesn't, unless you're an aggrieved leftist desperate to make a point. (And Quantrill's Raid, incidentally, was in 1863.)

BatesLine has a funny piece about cranky liberals in Tulsa, a fraction of which seem to feel that but for the grace of God — well, were there actually a God, you know — they'd be right at home in Manhattan:

Of course, if they want a real taste of the New York experience in the Bloomberg era, they're welcome to come down the turnpike to Oklahoma City, where we fine people for dropping sunflower seeds on the street.

Costa Tsiokos considers the freebie CD packed with the November issue of Wired and points out one potential stumbling block for Creative Commons licensing:

I haven't played that disc yet, but I can see where this leads. And a two-tier copyright system, with some works protected under the traditional system and others released to Creative Commons, is very likely, I think, to result in exactly this reaction to most potential purchasers: "He must not think much of it if he's letting it go out like that." Cynicism of the marketplace? Maybe. But it's the marketplace that rules in these matters.

For the record, stuff on this site is covered under traditional copyright, though the 1998 revisions to the federal copyright act motivated me to repudiate all extensions beyond the Berne Convention's provision of protection for 50 years following the death of the author — like all this stuff isn't already forgotten while I'm still alive, fercryingoutloud.

This being possibly the last really warm (middle 70s) Saturday until spring, I loaded up the CD player with Carolina beach music and hit the streets with the windows down.

Signs all over town are showing name changes. The Hilton Inn Northwest is mutating into a Crowne Plaza; Eckerd's drug stores have dropped their old logos, though relatively few have any CVS signage up.

And sometimes there are signs in response to signs. Back in June, Texas-based IBC Bank completed its acquisition of what used to be Local Oklahoma Bank, and this fall they had rented billboards around town saying "IBC is LOCAL", a reference to the name change. Little Advantage Bank, based in Spencer, put up some billboards of its own on the east side saying "We Really Are Local."

Advantage Bank, I note, used to be Spencer State Bank, back when you'd think that a state-chartered bank in Spencer would almost have to be named that. Steve Martin once observed that banks have to be named something like "Security National Trust and Federal Reserve," because "nobody's gonna put their money in 'Fred's Bank'," and I once faked up a radio ad for "State City National Bank and Truss Company" for reasons which are mercifully lost to history. Fred may have failed to get his name on the sign, but bank names have definitely taken a turn for the weird: the new bank in the tower at 1601 Northwest Distressway, a building named with brazen simplicity "The Tower," is called "Valliance Bank," which to me sounds like a fatal collision of "valley" and "dalliance." Not that I'd ever engage in such a thing, though Ondrya Wolfson might:

Okay, fine, for sure, for sure. Sheesh. Meanwhile, in a less-than-really-good part of Oklahoma City, the Riverfront Skatepark is nearing completion: most of the concrete is in place. And regardless of what you may think of sk8terbois, this is a Good Thing: cleaning up the banks of the newly-christened Oklahoma River is essential to making it a serious destination for travelers and bored-out-of-their-skulls locals.

Finally, one last sign: Hyroop's, styled "The Big and Tall Place," probably should have thought twice before proclaiming a "Store Wide Sale," and definitely shouldn't have proclaimed it on the side of a big fat balloon.

The Oklahoman had a few charts in the Sunday edition (not on the Web site yet) that struck me as interesting. It's no secret that here, as in other states, voter registrations were way up this year; they report that in 74 of the 77 counties, there were more new Republicans registering than new Democrats, and in two counties — Alfalfa and Harper — the number of registered Democrats actually dropped. Only in Oklahoma County (which includes most of Oklahoma City) did new Democratic registrations outnumber new GOP registrations, though they were pretty close in Tulsa County.

Still, even after that GOP upsurge, only 19 counties have Republican majorities; the Democrats have majorities in 58. And yet not one county gave more votes to the Kerry/Edwards ticket than to Bush/Cheney.

It's anybody's guess what will happen in 2006. I don't see any of the five House members (four Republicans, one Democrat) being replaced — Senator Inhofe will only be four years into his current term — but the GOP has control of the state House for the first time in ages between now and then, and Governor Henry, a Democrat, will be up for re-election in '06.

One of the rotating quips (alas, uncredited) in the "It Is Written" section on the front page reads like this:

So where does social justice fit in? Right about here:

I might go so far as to say that there's an unspoken call for vengeance behind the veil of "justice": the desire to see plutocrats exiled to, well, Pluto; the urge to punish the wealthy (except, of course, for those who contribute money to The Cause); the inexplicable hatred of inanimate objects like Evil SUVs.

Certainly sounds like a social disease to me.

It's called Blogumentary, it's, well, a documentary about blogs, and unlike previous such efforts, it's not devoted to fawning over the A-list. A rough cut was shown at the City Pages Get Real Documentary Film Festival in Minneapolis, and Erica was there:

I wonder if we can get a print here for next year's deadCENTER.

Do you live in a room like this?

If you must see this — and trust me, you must — well, it's Lileks. Do you need another reason?

Of course you don't.

The hotel-room tax in Oklahoma City was fixed at 2 percent in 1972, and has been there ever since. On the 14th of December, the city will hold an election to increase it to 5.5 percent, largely to pay for improvements to livestock and horse facilities at State Fair Park.

In announcing the election in the CityNews flyer in November utility bills, the city introduces this array of numbers:

A bikini of a paragraph, this is: what it reveals is interesting, but what it conceals is vital. What you're not being told here is that in addition to that measly two percent, travelers are being hit with the full sales-tax package, state, county where applicable, and city; lodging in Oklahoma City is ultimately taxed at a rate of 10.375 percent. I grabbed my handy Choice Hotels Directory, which got some heavy use this summer, and sure enough, most of the inns in the city are listed at that tax rate, give or take some rounding somewhere.

So if this measure passes, tourists will be forking over 13.875 cents in tax for every dollar of room rate. This is still lower than Fort Worth or San Antonio, but the city is making it seem like visitors have been getting the screaming deal of the century here, which of course they haven't. Meanwhile, the City of New York makes do on a mere 13.625% plus two bucks a day.

I'll still probably vote for the increase — we really do need to spruce up the horse facilities around here — but somebody at City Hall should have taken the time to give that tax comparison some actual legitimacy.

What the hell have the Democrats been drinking? Michele knows:

Under the circumstances, it would seem prudent to examine a place where the Christians already are and see what has been happening. By some strange coincidence, such a place starts right outside my front door.

And what is happening? Nothing.

Oh, yeah, we passed that anti-gay-marriage referendum. Big whoop. Same-sex marriage was already illegal in this state. Abortion? Nothing going on. Gambling? Established a state lottery, of all things. Prohibition? Still county option. Divorce? Still among the highest rates in the country. Desperate attempts at censorship? Dead issue.

I suppose you could find yourself stifled by the atmosphere, if your idea of communication involves needles, but I assure you, I've been here thirty years, and very seldom have I felt the Overly Churchy breathing down my neck. Then again, I haven't been indoctrinated to despise them in the manner approved by the social arbiters of Blueworld, either.

Diane Rehm: "Yasser Arafat lies in a French hospital...."

Person in my office: "Why not? He lies everywhere else."

Lynn Sislo prepares to depart the limbo of Independents for what may be a more dangerous abode:

My own contempt for Senator Clinton is a bit less vague, but I can certainly understand wanting to take part in the primary, something that hasn't been open to Independents on a regular basis; the law now provides that "[r]egistered Independent voters may be eligible to vote in [a] party's primaries and runoff primaries if authorized by the party," though it's unclear just how likely a party — other than the Libertarians, who actively sought this provision — would be to grant such an authorization.

And although Lynn and I don't agree on a whole lot, I'll be happy to see her on the Democratic rolls; if there's one thing the Democratic Party needs right now, and will need just as much in 2008, it's people who can be thoughtful without being hostile.

The last paragraph of a Houston Chronicle editorial objecting to the Electoral College:

As an experiment, The Prop, resting up in Pavement Narrows, New Jersey, dropped the current system into his spreadsheet, noted the results — Bush 286, Kerry 252 — and twiddled the numbers as follows:

According to this formula, Oklahoma goes from 7-0 Bush to 5-2 Bush. And what's the total overall?

Well, um, okay.

What is desired by most of the critics of the Electoral College, I suspect, is a system whereby anyone named George Bush automatically loses.

Michele has debuted I Have That On Vinyl, a place to indulge her nostalgia (and yours) for the pop-culture artifacts that seemingly haunt us all. As the sort of person who owns a Wagner Ring cycle and all of Debbie Deborah Gibson's teen-dream discs, I know exactly (well, to within a couple of blocks anyway) where she's coming from: sometimes our reaction to these things, however many years after the fact, is startling, even scary.

I can see an apologia for the Partridge Family coming on.

Today the State Election Board will certify the election results, which means that any recounts have to be completed by today.

And it appears there will be one: for State House District 78, apparently won by Jeannie McDaniel (D) over David J. Schaeffer (R), 7892 to 7858, a difference of thirty-four votes. There were approximately 29 provisional ballots, and Michael Bates reports that there were some ballot-scanner issues in one precinct.

Of course, what's important here is that we actually can recount these ballots. Says Bates:

And we could improve our level of voter authentication just by looking at the voter-ID cards issued by the state. (I always present mine, mostly because I have a fairly common name and having the card handy makes it unnecessary to ask for middle initial or street address or other identifying factors, but that's just me.) But by and large, the system we have is pretty darn good, and what's more, it's pretty darn cheap; you can buy a whole lot of low-tech scanning devices for the cost of a single touch-screen.

(Update, 8:45 pm: Michael Bates reports that Jeannie McDaniel did win House District 78, by a margin of 24 votes. And there's a second recount, in Senate District 32 — Comanche County — which hasn't been completed yet: Randy Bass (D) led Kenneth Easton, 9809-9774, though so far Bass' lead has been cut to 30.)

(Update, 8:10 am, 10 November: The Bass-Easton recount finished with Bass ahead by 51, 9854-9803. The Lawton Constitution doesn't apparently archive stories, but for now you can read it here.)

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and his lovely bride are apparently about to convert their Arkansawyer-Standard Marriage to one of those newfangled Covenant Marriages, as described here.

I'm torn on this particular issue. On the one hand, I am not overly fond of divorce, having gone through one myself, and I've been persuaded for some time that the grounds for divorce in this state are perhaps a bit on the lax side. (Contrary to popular belief, failing to cover the spread at OU-Texas is not considered legal grounds in Oklahoma.) But I'm not so sure that the answer lies in creating a two-tier system: some people may want a double-secret-probationary marriage, and I'm the last person in the world to want to dictate the vows they should take, but if we have a second class of marriage, we don't have much of an argument should some future legislature want to create a third, or a fourth, or a sixty-ninth. In 2002, the Oklahoma legislature considered a measure of this sort, but House and Senate versions could not be reconciled, and the bill was killed.

Rita notes that only about 600 couples have taken this step since Arkansas' covenant-marriage act was enacted in 2001; I'm surprised there have been that many. Governor Huckabee would like to see a thousand couples taking part in the conversion ceremony in North Little Rock on (gag) Valentine's Day.

Maybe what really bugs me about this whole business is this: If a couple really, truly wants a stronger commitment than usual, and is willing to forgo what protections (if that's the word) are offered by way of divorce, do they really need a law to back them up? Try as I may, I can't help but see an element of gimmickry here.

Dear "Mainstream" Media:

Have you had your fill of wallowing in Arafat yet? This ongoing death-watch of yours has gone beyond tedious, beyond maddening, and is now just a few ticks this side of completely insane. It's bad enough that you've spent the last few years trying to elevate this common terrorist to the level of a World Leader, but now you fawn over him as though his departure were something of a tragedy.

Yeah, yeah, I know: Nobel Peace Prize. Believe me, Yasser Arafat's contributions to world peace are right up there with Jeffrey Dahmer's contributions to nutrition research. If prizes of this sort were required to be based on meritorious service they'd have discontinued the Emmy awards for news two decades ago.

All anyone needs to know is this: first, when he's not only merely dead, he's really most sincerely dead; and second, whether that ragtag collection of street urchins you people have been trying to pass off as a legitimate state is going to take some positive steps toward becoming less of a boil on the world's behind. And being the generous soul I am, I'll answer the second question for you: No.

You complain that the FCC fines you for "indecency." Be grateful they can't fine you for irrelevance.

(Update, 11 November, 4:44 am: He's dead, Jim.)

It almost slipped my mind, and it shouldn't have: it was fifteen years ago that the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.

In November 1989, I was running a FidoNet echo and reading a lot of others. And a chap named Wolfram Sperber dropped into INTERUSER, and we dropped everything, because he was there, man. I saved his story, and it's followed me through half a dozen computers since then, which is a neat trick considering I was running a Commodore 128 at the time.

Sperber's story follows the jump; thanks to Baldilocks for the memory jolt.

After all these tremendous news from here and Germany at all, I feel the need to send a report to you all from Schoeneberg in West-Berlin about the "first night" from Nov. 9th to 10th.

At noon time on Sunday I'm sitting at my keyboard, listening to TV-Transmission of Beethoven's 7th sinfony from the Berlin philharmonics: a special free concert to our guests from the GDR... (Yesterday more than half a million has been in this part of the City where some 2 million people are living. It was reported that more than 4.3 millions of visa were given until now, i.e. for more than one fourth of the population of a state).-

You all get informed very quickly by your own mass media, and I don't want to duplicate lots of news...

What I want to describe, are my own adventures in that first night:

In the last weeks I had begun to look regularly at the GDR-Television: It had changed from the most uninteresting channels to the most exciting ones, and so I used to see them every day. - Transmissions of international press conferences had shown us the latest news from the official source directly... On last Thursday about 7 p.m. at the end of one of those transmissions I heard the longwinded formulated message, which was quotated in the West-TV-News some 20 minutes later (without special comment).

Without boasting, I can state to have recognized the real meaning of this complicated sentences at once... Some moments later I formulated the sentence "That means, the wall has fallen down just now!" This thought made me very excited. At once I began to phone friends, relatives, family in Berlin and West Germany. All reacted unbelieving to the unbelievable, some assuming I would tease them or something like that. So I had to substantiate the consequences of the message.- I dialed again. My conviction grew from one moment to the next and I wrote down some short messages to Fido and another Berlin Mailbox...

Interesting for myself now! The first thought and feeling I've got was NOT one of joy, but one of worry: Now the real chaos would arise here. I feared that all the events of the last weeks and months could have been preliminaries only, and just the practical aspects of the run from East to West would plunge us into huge problems.

So it took me some time not to worry, and better be happy :-)

(Till this Sunday it's the time of euphoria on the streets. Next week we have to deal with some problems...)

Evening main news at 8 pm ("Tagesschau") kept me in suspense, channel-crossing I spent the next hours in front of my TV. It needed some two or three hours until they formulated the short- and long-term meaning of this sensation clearly.

The first live reports from some checkpoints were shown. At this time, about 10 to 11 p.m. in the night, the first people from West Berlin arrived there, awaiting things or people to come. About midnight I decided to take my car. One moment I asked myself if I should quit it because of pure sensation seeking(?), but then I thought of the historical dimension and started.

There is a big boulevard in West-East-Direction leading through the Brandenburg Gate: In East Berlin it's called "Unter den Linden" (a historical boulevard of old Berlin), in West Berlin it's called "Street of June the 17th" (remembering those days of the year of 1953, when the revolt in the GDR was put down). When I arrived after 2 km at "Big Star" (traffic circle) this 8-track-Autobahn in the middle of the City already was overcrowded with cars and pedestrians, police cars with red lights (resp. "blue lights" here).

[Frenetic applause for Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin philharmonics just now on TV!]

Where to get a parking place now? I'd really luck to get one just in the forest, where it was forbidden, of course. ("Tiergarten" is our "Central Park")

[TV reports that not less than one million people are awaited from the other side today!!]

Walking, hurrying with hundreds of people I arrived at Brandenburg Gate after some 800 meters. There is no checkpoint but this is the most symbolic place of the wall. The NBC-Team already had built a small platform, and on their vans I read "Miet mich mal..." / "Just hire me...".

The American correspondent (Tom Broker ?) was rehearsing his part, being told new details every minute. Time for the the main news at home. Somebody grinned "These Americans, must have their scenery here, of course,..." Well, several other TV-Teams were working, too.

[Just now a picture from Brandenburg Gate: "Meet the press"]

The first four or five people had climbed upon the Berlin wall dancing in a storm of applause, and under the beams of two water-cannons from the other side (where we could not look).

The visitors' platforms, of course, were overcrowded. When I could get a short look from there over the wall, I saw some dozens of people in front of the gate coming to blows with the "Vopos". After a short time the frontier guards moved back to form a chain, rectangular to the wall, closing the areas on the left and right side.

More and more people climbed up, some had pick-hammers and begun to thump at the wall. I put a stone as a souvenir... (it's rather curious: It looks just nice, anyhow - this splinter and symbol of suppression and sorrow from that building surrounding us over a distance of 45 km, pop-art-painted over and over since years).

Some hundreds of Western people pushed onto this wall, one helping the other to climb up there.

I did it, too. There were a lot of discussions between all the people, one strange to the other. At the other side we looked at about hundred of people, which were dancing in front and under the Gate. It took me some time to understand that these were not East Germans but ours. The frontier soldiers had given up.

I talked with another man, and we decided to try it, too: We jumped down to the East, walked slowly through this Gate, the first time in our life and felt a little bit weired about all that...taking the last pictures of the film.

We could not recognize, whether the street was closed after about hundred meters and slowly approached: Small groups (from the West) in hotheaded discussions with very young guards. (I saw the strained and some helpless expression in one's eyes: "So what do you want to hear from him just now?!")

The nearly full moon in that clear and cold November night over us, we slowly began a walk on this boulevard "Unter den Linden", passing the Humboldt University, looking at shop windows ("Meissener Porcellaine") in the other part of this world in our own town, drinking champagne from the bottles of others. We felt that all was possible in this night. There were no excesses.

All Restaurants were closed at this after-midnight-time (normally). More and more pedestrians walked in both directions. We noticed that most of them were West Berliners. The first of them now arrived from the left side, from Friedrichstrasse (which is crossing there and leading to Checkpoint Charlie). - Then East Berliners, but much less, joined us, hesitating, it seemed to me; cars passed, hooting already. At the subway-/suburban line station there is a checkpoint. One of the many paradoxons of Berlin: Some lines from West and East are crossing there in the middle of East Berlin, but separated from each other. (Normally you are passing this station as West Berliner in transit without control and you are going underneath through the area of East Berlin. Big Walls are separating platforms for the two streams of traffic of East and West.)

We'd got the idea to call by phone to the West there. Of course, we had no GDR-coins. Three or four times we asked some people in the hall for changing some money, but we failed - all West Berliners! When I asked a couple the woman gave me coins, and she did not understand at all when I said: "Do you know already, what happened? We are from the West and just have climbed over the wall at the Brandenburg Gate. The frontier is open! Hundreds are here" The man asked something I've forgotten. Then I told it to her again. Only just she got it: She turned, silent and began to cry, quiet... Next moment they were away.

It was not possible to make a call! Phone boxes were occupied by West Berliners, nobody knew the "dial prefix" to the West. Then the lines were just blocked...

On our way between 2 and 3 a.m. we walked some kilometers to the North were more and more people filled the streets, laughing, singing, taking pictures and some videoing. - It seemed more and more like a festival, but not really euphoric or carnival-like at this hour, rather in some disciplined manner.

How to return? We decided to go to checkpoint Invalidenstrasse, from where the first life news via TV had arrived me in the evening. Gradually the street filled like in the rush hours on Saturday afternoon.- A lot of small talks into all directions.

Hard to say, whether more people from the West came from there or people from the East went with us now. Then two young families with small children passed in a hurry, everbody with a bag or suitcase in each hand. I asked them "You want to leave?" The short and some breathless answer was "We don't trust to changes, we want to go just now!"...

At the frontier (crowds of people and cars from both sides) I asked a customs officer: "How do you feel at this moment?" Laconically he answered: "Quite well, but more I'd prefer to lie in my bed!"

Then we stood a little bit at the first car, which was waiting for the permission to pass: We talked with two young men sitting in their Russian "Lada". The driver, a 23-year-old, said repeatedly: "I can't believe it. We just heard it and decided to try it at once. I'm feeling stabbing pain in the chest. It is nearly too much for us!"

They intended to visit aquaintances anywhere in West Berlin, where they never had been before, and asked for the way. We entered their car, an officer friendly said: "Wait some minutes, we are doing Entry now, I'll give you a sign". - Our hosts in the car stayed worrying and doubtful. After some ten minutes we passed the frontier.

So it happened, that I left in this night about 3.15 a.m., as a Pseudo-"East-German" in a Russian car taking the applause and cheering from hundreds of West Berliners we passed in a narrow lane step by step! :-))

First we went to Brandenburg Gate again: They wanted to stand there (at the other side) and have a look from there. It sounds curious, but it's true: their names were (nearly) ours: Ben-Karsten the one, Wolf the other.

What remains to report is: We spend the next hours of that night in the centre on and around "Kudamm"-Avenue, Memorial Church and so on.

There, at 4 and 5 a.m. in the morning, streetlife looked like at 9 or 10 p.m. in the past hot summer nights. Kudamm was closed for cars, except the "Trabbies" and "Wartburgs" (East German cars); again we joked about our "privilege".

Hard to get something to drink or eat, only some bars were opened. The Turkish "Kebab"-Station was selled out (no more bread available). All these people did what they are used to do (as they said): Standing patiently in a queue...

About 5.45 a.m. we leaved: Karsten for a short sleep before work, I (happy to sleep long, because of no duty for working the next morning), and our guests made their way for a visit anywhere in town with my road-map as a little help.

From the moment, we stood just on the top of the wall, we felt the historical meaning of this extraordinary night, and all the following what happened afterwards and what will happen in future let me feel the urge to write down this saga to spread it over the world.

It's a long and only a very personal story in the flood of news and reports you can get in these days. I wanted to use Fido-Computer-Netfor something more important (to me) than all the common Net-Messages of everyday..

What I hope now is:
-that no dangerous conflicts will arise at this obsolete frontier or in any part of Germany
-that there is no chance for any roll-back in the future.

One word at the end to future developments: The question of Re-Unification of Germany for me and (I think) the majority of people in West and (that seems sure) in East is no topic! Instead, unification of Europe should be the aim!

Not only because of fears and reservations of our neighbours in East and West (which, I think, are understandable, but not really justified). Just because of the future era, where national states are getting more and more unimportant.

In this sense we all applauded yesterday evening at Brandenburg Gate (where I was once again under thousands of people): A banner of Europe was fixed at the wall and on a street-lamp in front of the the chain of GDR-soldiers: They now stand again on top to prevent people from climbing up. "Well, we must have order!" (telling you that from "Prussia" :-)

But I'm sure, at least after one year we all will have walk there, on the ground, and in both directions.

Thanks for your patience to read this long story,

Ciao,
*** Wolf ***

--- FD 2.00
* Origin: To make my Point > FidoNet WestBerlin (2:245/10.22)

About five years and six and a half months ago, I let it be known that First Grandchild was on the way, and She Who Is Not To Be Named took it upon herself to predict the child's birthday: "November 10th. Same as mine."

She was, of course, accurate: Nicholas Cole Havlik indeed arrived on the tenth, to the amazement of the attending physician, who had predicted some other date. And while she doesn't go out of her way to remind me about how accurate she is, this is one of those times when she doesn't have to.

(No, I'm not telling you how old she is. Sheesh.)

112 is the official emergency telephone number for the European Union.

And 112 is the number of weeks we've had the Carnival of the Vanities, the weekly compendium of high-quality bloggage, which this week is hosted by Let's Try Freedom.

No comparison is intended or implied. (911, apparently, won't be coming up until 2020 or so.)

American drivers of a certain age will remember the Joan Claybrook Memorial Speedometer, inflicted on motor vehicles sold in the States around 1980: not only did it top out at a mundane 85 mph, but automakers were required to give special prominence to the national 55-mph speed limit. This was every bit as stupid as you think it was, and was eventually abandoned, as was the double-nickel itself. The thinking, and I use the term loosely, was that if the speedo only reads 85, everyone will assume that this is the maximum speed of the car and no one will drive faster than that. The far more common response, of course, was "Hmmm. Wonder what happens if I peg this baby?" The Law of Unintended Consequences at its finest.

And although this scheme didn't work worth a damn in the States, it's enjoying an inexplicable revival in usually-sensible Australia; the premier of the state of Victoria is proposing a 130-kph maximum (80 mph, more or less) for speedometers fitted to vehicles sold in Oz. What's more, he says, eventually he wants the actual top speed reduced. (Victoria, I assume, is the Australian equivalent of a Blue State.)

There's no way to predict how the Australian Transport Council will respond to this notion, but Tim Blair has a recommendation: if we must specify a top speed at all, let it be, oh, 300 kph.

Once upon a time, Christopher Hitchens asserted that he's an atheist, and then some:

He hasn't changed his mind on the subject, but he's persuaded that some of those beliefs are worse than others:

Score one for Jesusland. The American left will support damned near anything so long as it sounds sufficiently anti-American.

(Via Common Sense and Wonder.)

(Aside: This piece was completed long before it got a title, and when I finally came up with one, I reasoned, "Surely someone has used this term before." So I sent "dhimmicrats" to Google, and back comes this: "Did you mean: democrats"? Case closed, and thanks to Aaron.)

What guy doesn't want this?

The Catalogue for Philanthropy has issued its new Generosity Index, which this year, much like last year, argues that blue-state residents are chintzier than folks in the red states. Michelle Malkin breaks it down by electoral-vote winner. And Oklahoma, fourth last year, has moved up to third.

Before anyone goes into full-fledged Gloat Mode, I should point out that questions exist about the methodology used to calculate the Index. This not being my area of expertise, I suggest caution before using these findings to flay your stingy neighbors.

(Tilt of the shawl to Susanna Cornett.)

This is just wrong. Somebody got here today by searching for mary kate and ashley nude McGehee.

Then again, it could be worse: he (I assume it's a he, and frighteningly enough, it's from a University of Oklahoma IP) could have been looking for "mary kate and ashley McGehee nude," which no one is prepared to tolerate.

(Oh, and if you're looking for pictures, McGehee doesn't have any.)

Thirty years ago today I was standing on a mountaintop at the Edge of Nowhere, or so it seemed, staring into the face of the enemy, and I knew he was staring back.

Not that anything scary was about to happen. There was a rather large body of water between us, and even on the clearest of days I couldn't see him and he couldn't see me. Still, I knew he was there, and I assumed he knew I was there, and a few dozen other guys were making a list and checking it twice and delivering it to the commanding officer. They were doing their job, and I was doing mine.

And a few months later, that particular job came to an end; I left this post, a little older, maybe a little wiser, an unexpected medal added to my uniform, and after a few days of R&R — well, maybe some R, but not a whole lot of R, if you know what I mean — I reported back Stateside and was assigned to the Reserves for three more years.

This was before "Be all that you can be," and I've never been sure I was all that I could have been. But we had a mission, and I was part of it, and I'd like to think that I had something to do with the fact that the enemy no longer exists.

That enemy, anyway.

On this day of remembrance, there are millions more with their own stories to tell. You've already heard mine.

I've read enough post-election rants to last a couple of lifetimes, and while the gloating from conservative types has been something less than muted, the agita from the left has managed to sound seriously deranged yet somehow all of a piece. "If I didn't know better," I thought, "I'd swear this stuff was being artificially generated."

It appears that I didn't know better after all.

You really need to read the entirety of Douglas Kern's dismembering of the hapless Eric Engberg at Tech Central Station, but the choicest bit comes at the point where Engberg complains that bloggers and such like don't have access to the "experts" employed by Big Media, to which Kern replies:

I anticipate a rocky road for big-name journos over the next few years.

Sandy, my modest little sedan, rolled up her 38,911th mile today.

And 38911 may not mean much to you, but it does to me.

Some of the category archives here have grown to a megabyte and more, which is hell on load times and doesn't exactly enhance the rebuild speed. Two of the larger categories, Almost Yogurt and Dyssynergy, underwent a weeding process, and a new category, PEBKAC, was created for computer-related items that used to fall routinely under Dyssynergy.

This isn't going to make a big difference — taking, say, 75 items out of a 600-item archive still leaves that archive fairly huge — but every little bit helps.

Just how big is Fallujah? Matt Deatherage looked it up:

Oh, I don't know; a lot of smart people have left Pittsburgh.

But underestimating the magnitude of a task is nothing new for the Bush administration either; while they have the long view down cold, counting the number of steps between Point A and Point B is not their strong suit.

Jonah Goldberg digs deeply into the thought process:

They drop names to obtain street cred. Here in Oklahoma, the number of people who invoke the name of Ralph Ellison seems to exceed the number of people who have actually read anything Ellison wrote by a factor of two, maybe three.

Being the INTJ type myself, I obviously have no future as a postmodern metaphysician.

I might add that this disdain for the divine does not equal an insistence upon the concrete: it's perfectly respectable to concern oneself with, even to obsess over, the supernatural, so long as it's clearly divorced from that icky "religion" stuff.

This is not to say that no religion exists on the left, and I'm not about to say, for instance, that John Kerry's Catholicism is somehow bent and twisted because his official position on abortion is in opposition to that of the Vatican. I know not the man's heart; for all I know, he may be horrified by the very idea but suppresses that horror because it wouldn't sit well with the Democratic base. But another can of worms awaits an opening: whether voting against what you perceive as your spiritual interests constitutes hypocrisy, or something much worse.

(Poached from Justin Katz.)

Dear NewsOK.com: In case you hadn't noticed, it's November, fercrissake. The likelihood that we're going to have anything recognizable as a "heat index" in the next four months or so is, shall we say, decidedly on the low side. Not that I'm looking forward to wind chills, of course.
   
Update, 2 pm: We get results:




That you, Hibbard?

Oops, too late.

Meanwhile, Michele wants an upper age limit on rock performers on stage:

Actually, the part that hurts is this one:

With my luck, it will be packed with disco.

Dr. William S. Spears (OSU '62), founder and CEO of Energy Education, Inc., has bestowed upon his alma mater the largest gift in the history of Oklahoma State University. The amount of the gift was not disclosed, but it was sufficient for OSU to rename its School of Business after Dr. Spears; The Oklahoman reports that it exceeds the $70 million given to the school by oilman T. Boone Pickens (OSU '51), for whom the school's football stadium was renamed this year.

I get ten or twelve hits every week from search engines with the string "great legs," which generally leads the searchers to this four-year-old Vent to which I haven't paid a great deal of attention in recent months. Inexplicably, out of eleven million or so possible Google hits, that piece came in at #19, way ahead of anything else on the subject in all of blogdom.

It is, I must assume, at least a reasonable possibility that there are bloggers with great legs. Then again, the words of Cynthia Heimel keep jumping into my head:

I'm not sure I believe that in its entirety. I am, however, surprised that this is a topic that the Blogosphere™ has thus far managed to avoid; the only semi-serious discussion (which I, alas, helped to precipitate) was an Ann Coulter vs. Katie Couric competition, won by Coulter. And Coulter's blogging is sparse at best, while Couric doesn't blog at all.

On the Ann/Katie fuss, I commented:

We didn't end up debating that, which is probably just as well, since it's utterly irrelevant; I'd hate to have to find a correlation between, say, sparkle of prose and smoothness of shin. (Actually, I'd probably enjoy the research, but I'd be frustrated at the results, or lack thereof.) But this damned persistent guy-ness keeps me wondering, and there are a few who, I think, or perhaps just imagined, have dropped subtle hints that they provide a measure of this sort of eye candy in addition to their manifest textual brilliance — not that I'll ever know.

Out of four thousand or so blog posts, this one, I suspect, will be the one I will most regret.

It's persisted for many years, despite the presence of nay-sayers who don't see any evidence to support it, and people are perfectly willing to bend it to political purpose. Yes, folks, it's a religion — this one:

[Link added by me.]

Well, the high priests exempt themselves, of course:

My reasoned response, from a religion with more demonstrated staying power:

If you're keeping score, it's Matthew 1, Karl 0.

The clouds hung overhead all day, and by sunset they were ready to drizzle, so I didn't get to see a whole lot outside today. I must, however, note a correction to a previous edition: whatever that is at the east end of Bricktown, it's not the Embassy Suites hotel, which is apparently awaiting negotiations with adjoining properties to make sure everyone has enough parking spaces. The Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority is reportedly considering granting hotel operator John Q. Hammons an extension of six months before he starts construction.

Meanwhile, I was inside at the west end of Bricktown, watching The Incredibles at the Harkins. And while there's a certain amusement value in noting that this is the second film in a row I've seen which features nasty robots with tentacles, what matters here, as is always the case with a Pixar film, is the story. And I don't care if it is animated; you will not see a better action-adventure film this year — or next. The internal geekboy, of course, sprung from my head at the end of the credits to bounce Fantastic Four comparisons off the remaining handful of stragglers, and yes, there are some marked similarities, superpower-wise, but Fox's upcoming FF movie, ostensibly due on the Fourth of July, has its work cut out for it if it hopes to come even close to this league, and that's quite 'nuff said.

Just when I was getting used to credit cards that are credit-card-sized, a bank which shall remain nameless sent me a teensy 2.5-by-1.5-inch cardlet with a hole punched in the corner, presumably for use on a keychain. I don't think so. ("Hello, Mr. Hill? We found your keys, and oh, by the way, you're $10,000 in debt.")

And thanks be to Mac Gayden and Buzz Cason, who wrote "Everlasting Love," to Robert Knight, who recorded it in 1967, and to those drivers around Penn Square who didn't take umbrage while I was singing along with it at damn near the top of my lungs this evening. Probably to Elastigirl.

People hate Wal-Mart for lots of reasons: they don't like the crowds, they don't like having to park in the next county, they don't like the idea that somebody else (not them, of course) would drive twenty-five miles to save 99 cents on a box of Tide rather than walking into Ma and Pa Kettle's old gen'l store.

This is, however, the first instance I can recall of someone hating Wal-Mart because they expect to collect their unpaid debts:

Last I looked, bad checks were illegal.

And I must say, if 42nd and Treadmill were as hard-nosed about collecting from deadbeats as Wal-Mart apparently is, there would be suicide on a Guyanese scale. I can assure you, I would not miss these characters (calling them "customers" is an insult to the people with whom we do actual business) with their lame excuses and their inflated senses of entitlement. Fortunately, The Powers That Be are starting to see things my way.

(Via Always Low Prices.)

The World Council of Churches has expressed its "condolences" to the Palestinian people upon the death of Yasser Arafat:

For "unique and tenacious contribution," read "willingness to engage in any nefarious activity up to and including mass murder." Christopher Johnson sees how this same principle can be extended:

Anyone remember when evil was something that churches were supposed to, you know, oppose?

Somehow I got it into my head that privately-operated schools might be a little saner, a little less obsessed with process at the expense of results.

It's probably a good thing I didn't put money on that premise, according to this Reuters ("One man's news service is another man's slush pile") report:

There's only one possible response to this, and Kimberly Swygert, no slouch herself at doing the 'wheel, has already made it:

The kind of place, in other words, where even superheroes could be sued for saving lives.

Rock on, Dr. Swygert. And Deirdre — when you make the Olympic team come 2012 (2008?), make sure you forget to mention where you went to school. They don't deserve you.

If you act now, you, too, can live down the street from Surlywood; the house three doors down has gone on the market.

Built in 1948 and extended a couple of times, this little one-story box offers three bedrooms, a single bathroom, a carport built for two, and a couple of outbuildings. Claimed interior area is 1376 square feet, which seems about right. They're asking $89,900, and being the greedy so-and-so I am, I hope they get pretty close to it. (So far as I know, only one person in recent years paid 100 percent of the actual asking price on this block. Don't even ask.)

The Hollywood creative community, when it's not providing a working definition of the term "oxymoron," is lamenting the inexplicable failure of the majority of American voters to embrace their particular brand of politics. Joanne Ostrow in The Denver Post reports:

As distinguished, I suppose, from disappointed shock.

Now that's the sort of 120-degree career change I can't imagine. I mean, Planned Parenthood? Don't they already have enough media mouthpieces? And you know these self-described creative types aren't going to settle for mere scut work like, say, the fetus-disposal unit.

So expect the television schedule to be cluttered with more and more Very Special Episodes devoted to Hollywood's ideas of social injustice, and expect the ratings to continue to fall — and expect George W. Bush to get the blame.

Cable, Ostrow notes, doesn't whine as much as broadcast:

Tell that to Vanessa Taylor. Five will get you ten she'll come back with something like, "Oh, well, FX, they're a Fox network," her glossy lower lip quivering in contempt.

As a non-creative person — okay, I've written a few hundred thousand words here, and I did once get what looked like an actual offer to work on a series pilot — I'm not allowed to say these things, but I'm going to say them anyway:

1.  Social relevance plus crap equals socially-relevant crap. A story doesn't gain in importance just because it's been overlaid with someone's political agenda.

2.  Karl Rove did not send you a memo on what you can and cannot say. Neither did John Ashcroft, and neither will Alberto Gonzales.

3.  Complaints from the audience do not constitute censorship. Freedom of speech does not guarantee that everyone will just sit there, smiling, whispering "Oh, that's so true."

I could go on, but why bother? Hollywood listens only to Hollywood, unless someone in New York is signing the checks.

(Via Dawn Eden, who isn't signing any checks.)

We are all, I think, slow learners, and some of us think we're slower than the rest. Michele, at least, is no longer concerned with the speed: