According to the old joke, it's called "take-home" pay because you can't afford to go anywhere else with it.

ACNielsen research reports that of all the people they surveyed, the Americans and the Portuguese are the most cash-strapped; twenty-two percent of their US survey respondents reported that once the bills are paid, there's nothing left.

Then again, it was 28 percent last year, so at least some folks are doing better now.

And there's this:

I am slowly but semi-surely whittling down that mountain of debt, though an occasional Pick 3 winner would help.

I never thought about this, but now that it's come up:

I do know that when I'm called upon to read out loud — mercifully, these days this is for the benefit of a child or occasionally two, not for a grade which goes on my Permanent Record — I do my best to provide the inflections I think are indicated by the material, and try not to sound too much like a dork. (Exception: when I'm reading something that's supposed to be dorky.)

It's been suggested to me once or twice that I should put out some of this here drivel in book form, and I've always fended off the idea with "What would I do with the links?"

Actually, this question has already been answered. In 1997, Wired Books (then related to the magazine) put out a compilation of articles from my favorite Webzine under the title Suck: Worst Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising, and the Internet, edited by Joey Anuff (who used the Suckronym "The Duke of URL") and Ana Marie Cox (then "Ann O. Tate," more recently "Wonkette"). The articles were printed with the links highlighted; a line was drawn from the link to a sidebar, which contained the pertinent section of the linked material and its URL, in a wholly-different font so you wouldn't be confused by all this linear digression. At the time, it seemed freaking ingenious; today, it seems, well, freaking ingenious, even if you can click on a link in a PDF file these days.

Beck thinks it's 4897, but he lost count somewhere along the way, a feeling I know well.

Anyway, it's the 176th Carnival of the Vanities, a week's worth of high-intensity bloggage, hosted by Incite, and refreshingly free of anything from me.

Numerical trivia: Tulsa's firefighters are members of IAFF Local 176.

"We're addicted to oil," says George W. Bush.

Possible reasons for this statement, per Pudentilla:

I'm thinking one part "b," one part "d," and maybe a side of "Geez, Laura, have you seen this Texaco bill?"

And, now that I think about it, wasn't Rove supposed to be the Dark Lord?

Actually, few of us are ever Foyilled to begin with. I go through there maybe once a year just to avoid the Will Rogers Turnpike.

Foyil, Oklahoma, population 250 or thereabouts, is a little more than a wide spot in the road along Route 66 between Chelsea and Claremore, where Oklahoma 28 veers off to the east; the railroad runs parallel to 66 on the west.

Lynn has a few photos from this little town, including its terminally cute City Hall — although there is one explicable omission.

WESTERN UNION NO LONGER IN TELEGRAPH BUSINESS STOP COMPANY NOW BEING SPUN OFF FROM FIRST DATA SENT LAST TELEGRAMS LAST THURSDAY STOP WILL CONCENTRATE ON FUNDS TRANSFER BUSINESS STOP SAMUEL F B MORSE REPORTEDLY SPINNING IN GRAVE STOP

(Via Outside the Beltway.)

In their previous game, the Bulls were losing to the Mavericks by 30 points; they only lost by four. So you have to figure that the Hornets' 17-point lead in the second quarter wouldn't hold up, and it didn't; Chicago managed to retake the lead with three minutes left. But the Bees, in Sean Kelley's phrase, hit the switch at the right time, winning 100-95.

Now this is dedication: Aaron Williams, just acquired from Toronto, arrived at the Ford at 6:15, less than an hour before tipoff, and suited up. What's more, Byron Scott put him in four minutes into the game. (And the sellout crowd gave Williams a standing ovation when he set foot on the court, which had to be gratifying for everyone; he responded with 8 points, matching his season high, five boards, and two blocked shots. And five fouls, but you can't have everything.)

Incidentally, Williams is wearing the same number — 34 — that he wore for the Raptors; I have no idea what number Steven Hunter, due in from Philadelphia shortly, will be wearing, since Rasual Butler already wears 45.

Five Bees in double figures tonight; Chris Paul knocked down 25 and 13 assists.

There's still the question of what the Hornets, now 23-22, will do with Kobe and the Lakers this weekend — but that will be answered soon enough.

(Addendum: Brian Hanley of the Chicago Sun-Times heads his writeup: "Hornets cast a Paul on road trip." And Hunter's been assigned number 31.)

Another compilation of the weird things that draw people to this very site.

hit the road jack the meaning of the song:  I think it's to be found in the phrase "And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more."

naked lady t shirt:  If she's naked, how is she wearing a T-shirt?

what percentage of teenagers lose their virginity on prom night?  Somewhere between 0 and 100. Beyond that, it's impossible to be sure. (I was a 0, but you knew that.)

faith hill long legs:  Yea, let us give thanks unto the Lord.

what is the nearest large city to feasterville trevose:  Define "large." Otherwise, Philadelphia.

dating someone unattractive:  I have never dated someone unattractive. This does not, however, work in reverse.

switch bodies paris hilton:  It's not her body that's annoying.

sex with weman:  You mean this guy?

playboy wax:  Airbrushing is less painful.

are republicans donkeys or elephants:  Some of them are dinosaurs.

Oh, what wondrous things you find in your referral logs.

In the context of Oklahoma City, David Stanley Ford is an automobile dealership at 39th and May.

Elsewhere, David Stanley Ford is a playwright, who has written an American historical drama I'd love to see: The Interrogation of Nathan Hale, in which the man who regretted having but one life to lose for his country reveals the last secrets of that life.

Is it too much to hope that one of our local theatrical troupes might consider staging this work?

The Carnivals, of course, come out weekly, and they are staggeringly popular. But inevitably, they have a short shelf life: the participants strut and fret their paragraphs on the page and are promptly forgotten in seven days.

"Or maybe not," reasoned Mister Snitch as he sought to assemble the Best Blog Posts of 2005, a megacompilation which is, I think, the closest equivalent in blogdom to the Academy Awards.

Seriously. The awards for Best Something-Or-Other Blog, while worthy in their own right, are more like Oscar's Lifetime Achievement Award: it's given for a body of work rather than for any specific individual performance. And the recipients thereof would be the last persons on earth to suggest that everything they did was on the same superlative plane.

Snitch's compilation, by contrast, looked for the best individual performances during the calendar year, the posts which, given the ephemeral nature of this medium, have managed to stand the test of time. Ultimately, he hopes to see the collection, perhaps abridged for space considerations, appear in book form.

Still, one aspect of the Carnivals carries over: I'm happy to point you to the results, and urge you to read as many of them as time permits. (I won't feel hurt if you skip this one.)

Especially on the day before a heinous worm is supposed to crap all over us:

Not that I'm worried — if I'm reading this right, I already have a signature file to detect this little POS — but I know an awful lot of people who don't.

(Macintosh partisans: go ahead and gloat, but be sure to identify yourself as such. Not that it's hard to tell. Besides, it's not like Chairman Bill is looking out for us.)

(Update, 4:15 pm: Fixed.)

Some day we may be worrying about this:

Someone thought to ask the Cleveland Cavaliers' LeBron James what he thought of this, and he said:

And you know, at five-foot-nine, she's not much shorter than Speedy Claxton.

The late Charles H. Goren, reflecting on the days when he was still bidding two no trump with only 17 points, recalled asking one of the experts of the day to reveal the Secret of His Success. Said the expert, "All you have to do is sit South. Look at any bridge column or book. South always has the best hand at the table." Since then, said Goren, he has always tried to sit South.

Meanwhile, Laurence Simon, no dummy, asks:

(Disclosure: I have played in exactly one ACBL-sanctioned tournament, with an unrepentant Spades player as partner. We took third place.)

Since Acidman is almost pathologically truthful these days, I'll take this at face value:

I'd say it's as close to the practical minimum as you can get — unless you happen to be, um, me. My next birthday is my 53rd; my current car is my sixth, and that includes one I hardly ever drove and gave up in the separation agreement. (Scarier: when I turned 40, I was still on the third.)

I think we can all agree, though, that car payments are an abomination unto the Lord.

Which is by way of saying that I got nothin' much this morning, and feel free (without violating the usual considerations of taste and/or slander) to add something of your own.

KGOU radio (106.3 in Norman, 105.7 in the city) will rebroadcast Mayor Cornett's State of the City address on Oklahoma Voices at 11 am Sunday. A transcript of the 18 January address is here.

Warner Bros. once sold a $2 sampler album called All Meat, implying a distinct lack of filler among the tracks therein, which, given the content of most pop albums — "singles separated by varying amounts of filler," said Dave Marsh in one of his lucid moments — should be considered a strong selling point.

Not to Ann Althouse, though:

And how many albums are actually "in the form the artist wanted," and of those, how many of them are worth a second listen? How many albums have 100% prime cuts? (How many have even 40 percent?)

In the 1940s, we had format wars: the CBS LP (then styled "Lp") and the RCA 45. The thinking behind the LP was simple enough: no more changing records every four minutes or so. A wonderful idea if you're recording Das Lied von der Erde; not quite such a great deal if you're putting out pop hits. And the Top 40 radio format, which ascended to the top of the ratings books in the 1950s, had no use for albums of any size or speed, and not much use for "genre" tags; even as late as 1967, acts as divergent as Frank Sinatra and Aretha Franklin made the Top 40 charts, and therefore made Top 40 radio. Pop music is all about the single, the hit; I don't think I play any pop album of the last 20 years all the way through anymore, with the possible exception of Jagged Little Pill.

1. It may not work.

2.

When it's cold enough, the mind plays tricks on you:

(From Fahrenheit 4.51, 7 February 2003. The temperature that morning was actually a balmy 14.)

The former Downtown Airpark will be turned into a mixed-use urban development under the direction of Grant Humphreys, last seen starting up the Block 42 project east of downtown, which is going to look something like this.

Humphreys' Urban Form LLC bid $7.2 million for the bankrupt Airpark; they plan residential, retail, possibly lodging, an office or two, but, they emphasize, no casinos.

Philadelphia 76ers center Steven Hunter, traded to the Hornets this week, apparently flunked his physical, putting that transaction on hold and ensuring that Hunter won't suit up for the Hornets/Lakers game tonight.

Sixers president/GM Billy King says he hopes to have the matter resolved over the weekend.

Personally, I think "Mr. President, Pull My Finger" is a better title than "Mr. Shrub," but from what I know about Eddie Glenn, he won't give much of a damn what I think, and that's fine with me.

Anyway, he's posted the song and its accompanying video, along with this bit of exposition:

No way am I going to argue with that.

The Lakers game was sold out approximately nine minutes after tickets went on sale, or so the story goes, so I didn't have any compelling reason to go downtown today, but compulsion isn't everything, and I wanted to look over the old Downtown Airpark, which, as noted earlier, is about to be scraped away and replaced with one of those mixed-use developments you hear so much about in the trades.

Nominally at SW 16th and Western, the Airpark extends practically to the south bank of the North Canadian Oklahoma River; the OCPD uses the north end of it for a helicopter base, and now I'm wondering if they're going to move. Western on either side of this is fairly dreary, so new stuff this close to the river might well precipitate a general facelift for a half-mile or so in either direction.

Or maybe not. The march of progress goes ever on, but one of the things about marches, and God knows I did plenty of them in my day, is that you don't look down to see what's getting stepped on. Part of the old Riverside community, centered on SW 10th and Walker — the Community Center is just east of there, Little Flower Church just to the south — is being pretty well stomped by the coming of the New Interstate 40, which is, according to the maps, going to overlay SW 8th. What the maps don't tell you is how much of 8th isn't navigable anyway — railroad tracks slice through this part of town, and too many crossings cost too much money — or how much of the area has already been swept into oblivion. Blocks with one or two houses, sometimes no houses, lots of broken glass, the occasional abandoned appliance, stagnant water from a recent water-line repair: it's obviously not Katrina, but you're excused if you think it looks like it could have been one of her smaller siblings. "Every year," says Bob Waldrop, "Oklahoma City looks more and more like a Victor Hugo novel"; all this area lacks is a sewer big enough to chase someone through.

Then back north on Walker to the site of the much-delayed — ground was finally broken in late January — Legacy Summit at Arts Central apartments, nice enough but fairly undistinguished as urban residences go, which can serve as a reminder as spring and baseball season approach: Oklahoma City has hit quite a few home runs in recent years, but the conscientious stats guy will point out that there have been plenty of bunts, rather a lot of pop-ups to shallow right, and altogether too many foul balls.

Everybody talks about Kobe Bryant's bazillions of points, but it's almost just as important to the Lakers that he's second on the team in assists, and with Lamar Odom out, it fell to Kobe to feed the rest of the offense. And he certainly didn't hog the spotlight. (Well, there was that hissy fit in the third quarter that got him a technical, but he got over it.) But four minutes into the fourth, Phil Jackson pitched a fit (and got a T of his own), and pulled his starters in disgust. He thought better of it after four minutes more, but it didn't matter by then: the Hornets, who shot almost 57 percent from the floor, sent the Lakers on their way, 106-90.

Attendance was reported as 19,344, 181 over capacity. Chris Paul pulled yet another double-double — 19 points, 13 assists — and five other Hornets pulled down double figures. Rasual Butler hammered it home with a trey (he was 3 for 3 beyond the arc) with six seconds left; Desmond Mason started out strong and finished with 21 points.

Oh, and Kobe? 35 points and 5 assists. Good numbers, but this time they weren't good enough.

The Bees, now 24-22 and seventh in the Western Conference, next head for New Jersey; they'll be back at the Ford at midweek to meet the Sonics, and later the Knicks.

I've been puzzling over this one for a couple of days now:

I suppose I can provide support for this postulate, since I'm not exactly thrilled with the name I have. On the other hand, I can't really think of one I'd prefer. (Of the various noms de screen I've had over the past two decades, the single one I can say I really liked was "Harry," and that only because I'd paired it with the perfect surname: "Diehl.")

Maybe I should give this further thought.

At least, Chad the Elder thinks so:

I can barely resist posting this explanation:

Incidentally, "foolscap" refers to the watermark once used by a major producer of paper in this size; it is not a snide commentary on the quality of legal documents. I think.

Even more incidentally, I have an actual legal-size scanner, which has one distinct advantage, at least for me, over its smaller brothers: it can do an LP jacket (around 12½" by 12½") in two passes rather than four. (Works pretty well, too.)

Not having anywhere nearly as much fame as James Frey, I figure I'm going to have to punch up some of the incidents in my inevitable upcoming memoir, and where punching up isn't enough, I'm just going to have to fabricate things.

Top Ten possible embellishments:

10. Actually worked at 142nd and Treadmill
    
9. Once really ticked off Chuck Norris
   
8. Only wrote 100 blog posts; the next 5900 were thinly-disguised rewrites thereof
   
7. Those four seasons I spent in the NFL
   
6. One World Tour actually included the International Space Station, though figuring the mileage proved to be too difficult
   
5. All the Vents were written as one humongous text file back in 1995; I just pull out 5k chunks as needed
   
4. Sent a check to the guy who runs SiteMeter
   
3. My shelf contains only two records, both by the 1910 Fruitgum Company
   
2. That torrid affair with Dawn Eden Rene Russo Ann Coulter Maria from Sesame Street Maureen Dowd Aisha Tyler [oh, forget it, no one is gonna believe any of these]
   
1. Originally it was "She Who Is Not To Be Clothed"
   

Of course, I'll have to delete this post when the book comes out.

As promised, an early picture of Jackson Marshall Hill, firmly established as Grandchild #3, and presumably not fazed by an abundance of bloodwork in his first week, motivated by suspicions of jaundice. (It did drag him back into the hospital for overnight observation, but he's out and about; this being Russ and Alicia's second child, they've learned to outfit him with generic overalls instead of paying through the nose for OshKosh, b'gosh.) He has no idea what he's in for, of course, but how many of us did at the age of 0.7 week? I've got 2700-odd weeks to my credit, and I still don't know what's waiting around the bend. (A larger version of this photo, in which he doesn't look especially yellow to me anyway, can be had by clicking on the smaller one; sensibly, he's not fond of flash.)

The secret to success for a newspaper on the Web? Same as it ever was, says Doc Searls:

I like this, generally, but how "full" are "full archives"? It will cost you a few coins of the realm, but you can get everything that's been in The Oklahoman since 1901, when E. K. Gaylord was only twenty-eight years old and two years away from entering the newspaper racket in Oklahoma City. I'm not prepared to tell them that they should be giving that stuff away, especially since it's not really formatted for indexing. But last week's business briefs? Hardly anyone's paying for them now, I suspect.

(Aside: Is it proper to cite a reference in Wikipedia if it's one I wrote?)

Although this seems a bit roundabout, given the nature of the product in question.

(Possibly not safe for work)

Addendum: Alternate link here.

One of the wondrous things about Dolly Parton, I've always felt, is that she has a splendid pair of legs which are almost always on display, yet which no one has ever seen: this is magical misdirection worthy of Penn and Teller.

If you, like me, can't even imagine a world without Dolly, you might appreciate this premise:

No one ever so brilliantly blended art and artifice; surely there must be some way to keep her around for a few more centuries, and if ripping off a theme from The Princess Bride will do the trick, I approve.

(Warning: Link also contains a photo of Pamela Anderson, who in an emergency may be used as a flotation device.)

Mike's view from Little Axe:

Of course, Nebraska has a single legislative body: the other states have two, following the pattern established in the national Constitution.

There's no reason why it couldn't be done here, though. Mike cites this Muskogee Phoenix op-ed:

Myself, I'm persuaded that the attitude is more of an annoyance than the numbers, which is why I rather like the New Hampshire layout: twenty-two senators and four hundred representatives, none of whom get paid enough to make a career of it. (Annual pay, per the state constitution, is $100, with an extra $25 for presiding officers; subsequent amendments have introduced a mileage allowance, but the pay remains what it was in 1784.) At this level, it's hard to look down your nose at anyone.

I have admittedly not driven much in the City of New York — no more than a couple of hours at most — but when I did, I did not exceed the posted speed limits, when I could find said limits posted, though this is due more to crushing volumes of traffic than to my own dubious virtue.

That said, though, this perturbed me greatly:

Well, the NYPD does other things besides watch for speeders; their presence on city streets can be justified quite easily. And while it could be argued that installing one of these contraptions could be added to the list of conditions for possessing a NYC taxi medallion without difficulty, I'm thinking that mandating them for everyone will run into some Fifth Amendment issues.

Besides, does Bloomberg really want to be taking his lead on civil liberties from Singapore? Migod, he'll be having smokers caned.

(Via Gawker.)

Governor Henry's State of the State Address was given today, and I listened to it on the radio.

There was no mention of one of his pet projects, the state lottery, except in the most elliptical of terms:

And he attempted to preempt ongoing GOP obsessions:

He's calling, again, for cheaper drugs:

And he's willing to spend the bucks to push the state as a research center:

He departed substantially from his advance copy only twice: to acknowledge the absence of Chickasaw Nation Governor Bill Anoatubby, who was scheduled to be there but was called away on an emergency, and to add something of a homily to the closing.

Most of his new proposals are fairly non-controversial; there may be quibbling over the details, but I suspect he'll get most of what he wants. Which, if you get right down to it, sums up his first term pretty well.

Towards the end, he dropped the name of WWII correspondent Ernie Pyle, by way of one of my old favorite quotes, circa 1943:

As a Midwestern transplant, I have long since learned the value of this approach.

New Jersey had won ten straight at the Meadowlands, and they weren't about to let the Hornets break that string, so when the Bees took a 12-point lead at the half, the Nets poured on the pressure in the third quarter, and iced it midway through the fourth when the Hornets' offense went cold; even a pair of patented Rasual Butler treys couldn't salvage matters, and the Nets got their 11th in a row, 99-91. ("An industrial-strength tail-kicking," quipped Russ Eisenstein about that second half.)

It was the Bees' bench that provided most of the scoring: Speedy Claxton got 23, and Rasual Butler pulled down 18. Even J. R. Smith and Bostjan Nachbar were seen; Nachbar got a board and a dime, and J. R. hit both his shots, one a trey.

Fortunately, as road trips go, this is a short one: one game. The Hornets return to the Ford Wednesday to meet the Sonics.

I swiped this off a message board and cleaned up some (though by no means all) of its all-too-numerous offenses against the English language. It's, um, different:

I really don't see what this would do that likely couldn't be accomplished by some judicious Googlage.

And if I'm reading this correctly, those who are "attractive and confident" apparently don't make these judgment calls very well, or they wouldn't need the registry to begin with. At the very least, that should shake their confidence, n'est-ce pas?

Usually I keep my wireless phone shut off at work, not so much to avoid the interruptions — I get relatively few calls — but because reception at that location is somewhere between suboptimal and nonexistent. Once I leave the building, I crank it back up.

And the little blip came on to tell me I had a voice message. Okay, fine, I've had these before; I dialed the usual shortcut and was connected to a tutorial on how to set up voicemail.

They've been threatening to revamp the voicemail system, I remembered: maybe they finally broke down and did it. I set the phone down and drove home.

Back at Surlywood, I fired up the browser and jumped onto their Web site, and sure enough, there were a couple of lines on the tech-support page which suggested voicemail changes. I hit the pertinent one, and was rewarded with a lovely semi-transparent screen overlay which asked me which of the 70 or 80 phones they support I actually use. I made the selection and was sent back to the tech-support page, where there were a couple of lines which suggested voicemail changes. I hit the pertinent one, and was rewarded with a lovely semi-transparent screen overlay which asked me which of the 70 or 80 phones they support I actually use. I made the selection and was sent back to the tech-support page, where there were a couple of lines which suggested voicemail changes.

You can see where this is going, and the answer is clearly Nowhere. I exited the Web site and forced myself to endure the tutorial, which, however annoying, actually got me to my voicemail.

Perhaps this is what one should expect when a firm from the Seattle area is acquired by the Germans: lackadaisical yet somehow militant.

Marty Burns' NBA Notebook at SI.com reveals that the Players' Association is fighting the dismissal of Hornets forward Chris "Birdman" Andersen, who was suspended from the league in January for reasons which went unstated but whose penalty was consistent with severe violations of the NBA's drug policy.

The case will go to arbitration in New York Friday before Calvin Sharpe, professor of law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Notes Burns:

That should about cover it.

That which is embraced by the hipsters, of course. And who are the hipsters? For the answer, I turn to cultural historian and/or surly crank James Lileks:

And if, like me, you have an occasional need to know what will be so five minutes ago ten minutes from now, these are the people whose friendship, such as it is, you must cultivate. No wonder I'm behind on all the trends. I'm not hip. I'm not even hep.

And the next:

Up next: Cavemen save 15 percent on their auto insurance.

Well, somebody is reading the mommy blogs:

And so forth.

Costa appears to be nauseated by the idea:

Remind me to pick up an extra bottle of Pepto.

Kinja bills itself as "the weblog guide". It's quirky, but then it is a Nick Denton (Gawker, Wonkette) operation, and this is their pitch:

There's a full-screen "card" for each site they list, and a summary card which appears when you search by topic.

I bring this up because someone apparently went looking for this site, and the site card includes some useful info like the site description (which is normally hidden in a META tag), popularity (two stars out of five, which seems high) and posting frequency (43 per week, which also seems high, but which is at least subject to verification; this particular post is, in fact, the 42nd since the first of the month).

Interestingly, the following major topics are listed for this site:

Summary cards for forty-seven "related" sites are attached.

Surprised that I wasn't listed under "drivel," I ran a search for same, and got 44 summary cards, including one for USAToday.com (strange) and one for Michael Moore.com (perhaps not so strange).

Also included: a tool to extract the front page from the Wayback Machine. The earliest one they had was 23 October 1999, which seems fair enough: this domain didn't exist before 1999. (Version 6.037, if you're curious, and it looks awful, even without the graphics.)

I dunno who was looking at this stuff, but the IP traces back to Los Angeles. (Thank you for your interest.)

At what time of the day are you the most sexually responsive?

Here's the formula:

And so Samantha tried it, and this is what she got:

I need hardly point out that if I try this, it violates a sacred rule of mathematics: the one about dividing by zero.

Senate Bill 1022, by Mike Morgan and Todd Hiett (as heavyweight authorship goes, you can't get much heavier), adds one new sales tax exemption to the 50 already in existence:

Which, of course, applies to the Hornets: this was part of the package deal that brought the Bees to OKC, but the legislature was out of session at the time.

(Full text here, in Rich Text Format.)

It's always seemed at least slightly perverse to me that the American taxpayer, by and large, prefers to overpay (via withholding) his taxes during the year and then draw a fat refund the next spring. Of course, if he had to pay the entire sum at one shot, he'd be very, very unhappy, which is one reason why it's simply not done. (Another, more subtle, is that it tends to obscure the sheer vastness of said sum.)

Earnest Pettie, the Idea Man, is undoubtedly aware that the amount of the fat refund constitutes a de facto interest-free loan from taxpayer to government; taking this into account, and noting that Americans, as a whole, don't save very much, he proposes a system to offset both these issues:

Seems like this would get some extra mileage out of the Earned Income Credit, too.

Who loses? All those firms (including tax-preparation firms) who make loans based upon the expectation of getting their hands on refund checks. I can't say I'd shed many tears for them.

(Via BatesLine.)

Yours truly, engaging in some guesswork a couple months ago:

Stern, I suspect, has modified his position somewhat, if only because he's figured out that sending the Hornets back to New Orleans is going to cost a lot more money than any conceivable buyout. He's not crazy enough to say so, though.

With that in mind:

Number of NBA seasons, 2005 through 2015, in which there will be no team in Oklahoma City: 0.

Update, 10 February: Bennett and Oklahoma Professional Sports LLC, the ad hoc business consortium that backed Oklahoma City's bid to host the Hornets from 2005 through 2007, have set up a corporation to seek an NBA franchise for the city, be it the Hornets if they stay, or another team should they go. Meanwhile in Seattle, Schultz is making noises about selling out.

Regular readers, assuming they haven't fled for places less surly, will remember that last fall I balked at paying Oklahoma Natural Gas $8.393 per dekatherm for a year, on the seemingly-reasonable basis that the price couldn't possibly stay up that high for twelve whole months.

That sound you hear is my wallet flattening. On the upside, usage was way down, what with last month being the second warmest January since 1891, and prices have actually started to slide, though they're still higher than ONG's VFP Plan. Here's my situation, how it really stands:

• November: 2.4 used at $11.044; total price $26.51; VFP price $20.14; loss of $6.37.

• December: 4.4 used at $11.550; total price $50.82; VFP price $36.93; loss of $13.89.

• January: 9.7 used at $12.012; total price $116.52; VFP price $81.41; loss of $35.11.

• February: 6.4 used at $9.589; total price $61.37; VFP price $53.72; loss of $7.65.

• Cumulative: 22.9 used at $11.145; total price $255.22; VFP price $192.20; loss of $63.02.
  

O Spring, where art thou?

How can you buzz when you're slow? Chris Paul got knocked out of the game in the second quarter with bruises to the ribs; Speedy Claxton suffered a mild concussion after only thirty seconds in. The remaining Bees were game, and did their best to slow down Seattle's scoring machine, led by 34 points from Rashard Lewis, who got five treys in the fourth quarter — and to the delight of the Ford Center crowd of 18,807, somehow it worked: Hornets 109, Sonics 102.

Once again, five Hornets in double figures. David West got the double-double with 26 points and 10 rebounds; so did Kirk Snyder, with 16 points and 12 assists. And P. J. Brown came this close: 21 points, 9 rebounds. But the Big Shot was yet another patented Rasual Butler trey which broke a 102-102 tie with 15 seconds left: P. J. and Desmond Mason drew Seattle fouls and calmly dropped two free throws each to ice it. (Mason had 15 points; Butler had 14; the resurgent Bostjan Nachbar played seven minutes, scored 4 and got 3 boards.)

What happens between now and Friday when the Knicks come to town is anyone's guess. We now know that Steven Hunter won't be here: the deal has been called off. And I'd bet that CP3 will be back; after all, he tried to start the third quarter tonight before discovering that he wasn't quite up to it.

Okay, they're a little bit on the high side — a five-inch heel, which not everyone can pull off with aplomb — but one Dax Moy, a British "health and fitness chief," arguably the greatest title since one of those garage inventors said his 90-mpg carburetor had been vetted by a "physics colonel," as reported about twenty years ago in Car and Driver, asserts that shoes of this sort constitute a health hazard. I'm sure they're a hazard to my health — show me these underneath a spectacular pair of legs (I have some specific ones in mind, and I'm not going to get more specific than that) and I am guaranteed a case of eyestrain — but are they really that bad?

In a word, yes, says Moy:

A Guardian columnist points out another issue:

And surely we wouldn't want that, would we?

(Via Matt Rosenberg.)

I suspect one learns patience in a Corvette: being able to do well over the speed limit, well over twice the speed limit in some instances, and yet knowing that doing so will bring down the wrath of the gendarmes, would seem to make one a trifle cautious.

And I figure the guy behind me this morning on the southbound onramp to I-35 from I-44 east, who was keeping his distance, had already planned out his next few seconds: follow the ramp at 40-45 mph, behind that bog-slow sedan in front of him, and then dart leftwards into the I-35 traffic flow and make up the lost time. A reasonable plan, if I say so myself.

What he didn't figure is that I routinely take this ramp at 60, and while he was throttling back, I was applying what power I had, which admittedly wasn't a great deal, and tightening the curve. By the time Merge or Else came up, I'd left him five or six car-lengths behind, and what's more, I'd left him an opening more than sufficient to allow him into the flow.

Of course, I had the advantage of being in front and being able to see what was coming. But this little transaction tends to reinforce one of my cherished beliefs: it's more fun to drive a slow car fast than it is to drive a fast car slowly. And while I know better than to dice with Corvettes on the straightaways, I don't do at all badly on the twisty bits. (This, of course, is another justification for the World Tours: there's a dearth of twisty bits on the Oklahoma City waffle-iron street grid.)

Now this is synergy of a sort: the Carnival of the Capitalists folks — by which we mean Jay, generally — have undertaken to do this week's Carnival of the Vanities, edition #177.

I used to catch a bus every day outside 177 Meeting Street in Charleston, but that was years ago.

And that's just what they'll do. [Video clip, preceded by short ad.]

Dick Morris was unavailable for comment.

From James Joyner, on a theme I've surely mentioned before:

Suggestions, within reasonable bounds of decorum, are welcomed. (By me, not by James, who is happily spoken for.)

Winston Rand spotted this on a truck bumper in Nashville:

Click your heels together three times and ping.

Nancy Goldstein of The Raw Story asked twenty liberal bloggers the following question:

She explains:

The results were most interesting, and not even slightly repetitive: everyone had at least one cause or one candidate or one organization to fund. I think my favorite response was Kevin Drum's:

And why?

Works for me.

Inasmuch as I have readers on both sides of the aisle and almost everywhere else in the building, I'd be interested in hearing where you'd spend your $100 for political purposes.

(Via Lindsay Beyerstein, a contributor to the Goldstein survey, and one of my regular reads.)

The Oklahoma House has watched the livestock flee, but they're going to close the barn door anyway.

House Bill 2091, by John Wright (R-Broken Arrow), would provide a tax credit equal to the 3.5-percent vehicle excise tax to buyers of General Motors vehicles built in Oklahoma — which means, vehicles produced at GM Oklahoma City Assembly, which will be idled later this month in advance of permanent closing.

Wright is hopeful:

Last month, Governor Henry announced an incentive package he hoped would persuade GM to keep the plant open; Treasurer Scott Meacham says that the company is scheduled to discuss the package with state officials before the production line shuts down.

Wright's bill made it out of committee at mid-week and will go before the full House.

Watches? So three minutes, 20 seconds ago. Here's how they do it in the Land of the Big Sky:

During the World Tours, I allow my wireless service to dictate the time, mostly so I won't have to bother with time zones, but at home I set the darn thing myself: for some reason, they always seems to be about a minute and a half off. Then again, it's a consistent minute and a half.

If you were wondering if it's possible for a beautiful young woman to channel a grizzled old man, here's Donna in Andy Rooney mode:

I think she just talked me out of Netflix: if my queue matches my weight, I won't live long enough to see all those films.

So what's it like when Speedy Claxton starts? It's different, to be sure; with Chris Paul sidelined, the Hornets had to work yet another variation on their offense, and it didn't really start working until midway through the second quarter, at which point Slovenia's favorite son, Bostjan Nachbar, went on an 11-point rampage to finish off the half and cut the New York lead from 10 to 2; the Bees gradually pulled away in the third and after a couple of anxious moments in the fourth, put the Knicks away, 111-100.

Both sides had balanced attacks: the Knicks had seven players in double figures, the Hornets five. Two Hornets pulled double-doubles: David West (21 points/10 rebounds) and Speedy Claxton (18 points/11 assists).

The Bees are now 26-23; another one-shot out of town tomorrow night, against the Timberwolves, and back to the Ford to meet the Wizards on Monday.

There is junk mail, and there is mail for which "junk" is wholly inadequate as a description:

(From this untitled entry, 10 February 2001.)

Try as I may, I can't seem to get my mind around this concept:

Ceramic corsets.

Then again, what would I know about either fashion or eroticism?

That said, Oklahoma City artist Nicole Moan, in whose oven these garments come to life, is one of only 60 designers (of around 5000 applicants) who will be featured in Swatch's Alternative Fashion Week 2006 next month in London. And of course, schlepping all this wear-ware to the UK costs money, so there's a traveling show/fundraiser called "See It Before London", which will culminate next weekend with a couple of shows: Saturday at Sober Grounds Coffee House (2808 NW 31st, just east of May), and Sunday at Café Nova (4308 N. Western).

If nothing else, this hammers a few more nails into the coffin of the Sleepy Town on the Prairie reputation this town has, um, enjoyed for the last 117 years, though I don't think it's enough to win over the likes of Charles Barkley.

(With thanks to Steven "Metro" Newlon.)

The Oklahoma Heritage Association, which is moving to the former Mid-Continent Life building on Classen Drive, is selling their current digs to St. Luke's United Methodist Church.

Acquisition of the 1917 mansion at 201 NW 14th, once the home of Robert A. Hefner, will give St. Luke's the entire block, 14th to 15th, Robinson to Harvey. The church will use the upstairs ballroom for its new offices; downstairs will be used for weddings and community gatherings. The OHA has been offering tours ($5) of the mansion, which will presumably be eliminated when St. Luke's takes over, probably by the end of the year, so if you've ever wanted to see the place from the inside, you'll have to do it soon.

The United Kingdom, beginning 24 May, will "allow" its subjects to turn in their knives under an "amnesty" program which is likely to yield, among other things, a substantial quantity of "scare quotes."

No, actually, they're serious:

In other news, Tamara K. reports:

[Insert fowl pun here]

The Hornets blew hot and cold at the Target Center: after fighting back from a 14-point deficit halfway through the second quarter to an 11-point lead late in the third to five points behind midway through the fourth, they finally put Minnesota away, 100-94.

Not that the T-Wolves were any more consistent, but they owned the boards, and it's hard to argue with Kevin Garnett, who snagged 21 of those boards along with 19 points before descending into visible bitterness in the last couple of minutes.

All five starting Bees got double figures: Speedy Claxton got 28, within one of his career high, and Kirk Snyder got 28, six more than his.

The Hornets have Sunday off. The Wizards come to the Ford Center on Monday, followed by the TrailBlazers on Wednesday.

The City Council of Austin, Texas has taken steps to discourage McMansions.

Under the Council's temporary rules, which will be reviewed later this week but which are legally in effect already, builders wishing to tear down and rebuild homes can choose the largest of the following:

• 2500 square feet
  
• 20 percent space increase
  
• 0.4 ratio of home size to lot size
  

These rules are in effect for 120 days; the Council is expected to come up with permanent rules in the spring.

I'm trying to imagine my modest little wedge of land — 11,000 square feet, just over a quarter-acre — with a 4400-square foot faux château sitting on it.

(Via Daily Pundit.)

It's true that you never go back, says Susan Crain Bakos in the New York Press:

Personally, I figured out that I wasn't "all that" around the age of nine; the flab came quite a bit later. (The anger and the bitterness, well, that's another topic.)

And really, this fits with something I've been saying all along: women have a template for what they're looking for, and another one for what they're not looking for, and they wield them with micrometer precision.

Besides, this explains Barry White better than anything else I've read. (Don't believe me? Imagine any Barry White record sung by an actual white guy, and admit defeat.)

What I missed from the Bakos article is any suggestion that she's eventually going to give up the dating game and settle down with one of these gentlemen, but maybe that's just projection on my part. And I'm not going to suggest that, say, Maureen Dowd could get her groove back with a Taye Diggs type, but weirder things have happened.

(Via Michael Blowhard.)

Which of course we're not: blasts from the northwest are, even as I type, ripping through the countryside at a consistent 25 to 35 mph.

OG&E, however, is. From their current bill insert:

Emphasis added. And this is instructive: apparently as late as December, OG&E had sold less than 50 percent of their 50-megawatt capacity, but $12/dekatherm natural gas and a downward adjustment of the wind-power fee (from $2 to $0.10/kw) pushed demand to the max.

And if I needed any more persuasion, I could look at the bill I got Friday, which contains the following item: FINAL WIND OPTION COST -$8.62. That's more than I lost for the month on my gas bill.

The utility is already taking steps to increase its supply, though the new capacity won't be online until the end of 2006 at the earliest.

It's horribly unromantic to say so, but art depends for its very existence on artifice: things we think are wondrous tend to originate with things that are decidedly prosaic — or worse.

Alan Ayckbourn's play Comic Potential, which I saw today at the University of Central Oklahoma, is about the worse, and how its line of separation from the better becomes obscured, even erased. Chandler Tate, once a comic director who worked with the Big Names, is reduced in his later years to directing a television soap opera, one for which the expectations are so low that there is no actual cast: rather, there are "actoids," androids designed to a physical type and then programmed with their lines. This, of course, requires software, and software always has glitches, and in the very first scene, the pretentious physician is mixing up his vowel sounds. The technicians can fix that, sort of, but the nurse is actually busting out laughing on stage, and no one quite knows why.

It doesn't help when Adam Trainsmith, nephew of the network owner and (though he doesn't realize it) boy toy of a female network executive, shows up at the studio, thoroughly awed by Tate's oeuvre and fancying himself to be a writer of comedy. Tate brushes him off, of course, but there's a brief period when Adam finds himself left alone with one of the actoids — the presumably-defective Juvenile Character, Female unit who played the nurse — and discovers that somewhere in her dubious microcode there might just be a sense of comic timing.

No problem with that, until they redo the medical scene and instead of laughing, the JCF unit does a double-take worthy of James Finlayson. Tate is impressed in spite of himself, and Adam prevails upon Tate to let him work up scenes with the mechanical starlet, whom he now calls "Jacie."

And this might have come off, except that old Mr Trainsmith, sort of Rupert Murdoch without the charisma, sees Jacie as a threat and wants her sent back to the factory to be "melted down" — her accumulated memory erased and her microcode reinstalled. Adam, horrified, smuggles her out of the network facilities and into a hotel room, while he tries to figure out just how to save the poor girl, inasmuch as he's fallen in love with her and all.

Unfortunately, Jacie has problems adapting to life outside the studio: while she picks up cues quickly enough, all she knows is the thousands of lines of script she's had impressed upon her. And even more unfortunately, with all this new information having to be processed by her electronic brain, she seems to be achieving some sort of sentience.

Yeah, yeah: The Stepford Actors. But it's not so simple as that. For one thing, Adam, young and callow, has barely more concept of love than Jacie; for another, he can't bring himself to treat her like a machine, and she has no experience with anything else. And Sir Alan has no trouble blurring the lines between them: the ability to fall in love and the ability to laugh, quintessentially human characteristics, are inherently "grossly illogical," he says, and there's some question whether we handle them any more deftly than poor Jacie.

The three leads here all have difficult roles to play. Chandler Tate (Robert Keitch) drowns his depression in drink, but it never affects his critical judgment when the tape is rolling: well past his prime, he still won't compromise on the basics. Adam (David Schroeder) is so intoxicated by the sheer delight his artificial girlfriend finds in the mundane moments of life that he's willing to overlook the very real problems inherent in the relationship. (What happens when she drinks too much — never mind, I won't spoil it for you.)

None of this would work, of course, if you don't believe Jacie, and Courtney Drumm is a wonder: she absolutely nails this character, this mechanical creature being forced to respond to stimuli for which no programming exists, sometimes having to shift among various preset playbacks literally in mid-sentence; yet all the while she's fulfilling the Asimovian expectations of her species model number, she has to somehow contend with the possibility that she may be turning into something else — someone else — entirely. How could Adam not fall for her? Under the circumstances, I think I could have.

Regrets? Just one: that I caught the last performance, which means that I can't tell you to dash up to Edmond and see it.

Kugelmass, you'll remember, appears in a 1977 Woody Allen short story; his life, especially his married life, seems drab and unappealing, and magician friend the Great Persky contrives to have him inserted into Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary, right between Emma Bovary's affairs with Leon and Rodolphe.

Last fall, I asked Kugelmass wannabes into which books of fiction they'd like to find themselves, with interesting results.

Of course, this concept can be taken in many different directions. Perhaps motivated by a vision of Atticus Finch, a fictional character I too would have liked to meet, Jennifer poses a similar question:

My immediate thought was Heinlein's Time Enough for Love, but it occurred to me that Lazarus Long himself might well chastise me for the selection, simply because I was being presumptuous, something Long likely wouldn't countenance.

So I'll give it a little more thought, and I'll throw the question open to you.

Sculptor David Hayes, who specializes in abstract outdoor art suitable for public spaces, would like to place about forty of his works around Oklahoma City on a temporary basis.

The cost of the exhibition would be a smallish $112,000. Parks and Recreation says they can't afford it outright, but if sponsors step forward ... well, you get the idea.

Actually, this is consistent with city practice: they'll go for the really massive stuff like the Land Run Monument, but smaller things with lower perceived tourist value are often overlooked.

The local arts establishment, unsurprisingly, would like to see the Hayes project come off, and so would I. And perhaps oddly, its greatest effect might come on the day after it's removed — when we start contemplating what might fill in a space that we're no longer accustomed to seeing as empty, and we realize that we've given short shrift all these years to the purely aesthetic.

Actually, we weren't anywhere; a server went south (and given its location on the southern California coast, it would have drowned in the Pacific) about a quarter to six this morning Central time, and was restored to something resembling health an hour ago.

As we used to say back in the day, feces transpire.

Update: The official story from the host:

Sometimes even redundancy won't save you. (And neither will redundancy.)

The past is, well, past, and who among us can tell the future?

This analog watch shows only the present: hours to come and hours gone by are equally obscured.

If you live for the moment, perhaps this is your timepiece.

(Via Belhoste.)

Laurence Simon updates Tom Lehrer's Hunting Song for 2006. (It's the Cheney-est!)

The Hornets were down 17 at the half, down 19 early in the third quarter, and refused to lie down and die; a David West shot with 0.2 second left won it.

(I wrote four different versions of the opening paragraph in the last minute and a half: that's how wild this game was.)

Let it be said that Gilbert Arenas was incredible — he got 43 points — and that Washington played as hard as it's possible to play. And yet: Hornets 97, Wizards 96.

West got 19 points; all five starting Bees hit double figures, and Speedy Claxton, starting at point guard again while Chris Paul recuperates, got the double-double with 16 points and 10 assists.

And the new number-three point guard, Moochie Norris, just arrived from the Rockets in a swap for Maciej Lampe and "cash considerations," suited up and put in six minutes: he picked up a trey, a rebound, and an assist.

The last game before the All-Star break is Wednesday, against Portland. The Bees are now 28-23 overall and 16-6 since the first of the year.

Actually, I'd have better luck putting up a tip jar, but what the hell.

This is National Condom Week, and while the Condom Museum is still in the planning stages and therefore unable to provide you with handy mnemonic devices, you should take it upon yourself to remember the following Stretchy Facts:

• Condom use prevents something or other, and also protects against something else, though it's not, you know, ironclad or anything.

• While wrapping yourself in something cold on the way to something warm may seem contradictory, just tell yourself that you're practicing a form of diversity.

• That condom you've been carrying around for a year and a half, just in case? Throw it away. It's going to leak faster than the last three Administrations combined.

• The amount you'd save by not using condoms is insignificant compared to the amount you'd save by not actually dating.
  

Finally, the Playboy Advisor once took on a three-pronged question from a reader who was (1) worried about sexually-transmitted diseases, (2) suffering from premature ejaculation, and (3) dissatisfied with the size of the unit. The Advisor recommended:

(Notice: This post has been scanned for Trojans.)

Donna's is better, but mine is longer, so to speak.

Matt Galloway, whom you may remember from such classic blogs as The Basement, has introduced Buzz-O-Phone, which permits persons with telephones (remember those?) to leave up to a two-minute rant.

"And then what?" you ask. Then this:

Or you can listen to a batch of them right on the site using Buzz-O-Phone's Player.

I may have to try this out myself, once I'm outside of an environment whose background noise rivals anything you imagined in Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Update: I recycled repurposed some of my condom remarks to try out the B-O-P. Kinda neat. Look for 14 February, 17:27:05.

A suspiciously-timely survey by the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation (and who knew we had one of those?) with the assistance of Domino's Pizza says that it's possible to predict a couple's compatibility by their pizza toppings:

Or perhaps they're just cheesy.

Inasmuch as Domino's is reportedly involved with this survey, I'm wondering why they didn't pose the question I'd most like answered: "Will she come in 30 minutes or less?"

(Via Fark.)

... is not like the others.

From left to right:

1. Quayle.
   
2. Quail.
   
3. Whittington.
   

See, that wasn't so hard, was it?

(Swiped from Wonkette and enriched.)

The office — not my office, of course, but the one adjacent — contains surprisingly high levels of babeliciousness. (On a whim, I sent that word to Google, and it asked me if I meant "bootiliciousness"; the answer is "Not necessarily.") As one of the mainstays thereof was loading up her car for the trip home, I was bouncing some of my Standard Frivolous Ideas off of her; she was as polite as she could be without actually having to listen to me.

She started up the car, I retreated, and I discovered quickly enough that I'd been seen. "You still like her, don't you?"

My preachy side roused itself to the fore. "Once they're off the market, it's worse. Always."

It occurs to me that this bit of romantic pragmatism probably wasn't precisely the explanation she wanted to hear, but in my experience, it's almost invariably true. There's another one, same shop, 15 years or so younger, who used to be way cute. Now that she's tied the knot, she's freaking gorgeous.

And it further occurs to me that if this also works in reverse, it would help explain the lack of names on my dance card.

This is what I get for reading Jeff Jarvis:

So I read Sifry, and here's his definition of said keister:

As of yesterday evening I had, per Technorati, 205 sites linking to me.

Geez. Now people (205 of them, anyway) will be expecting me to be interesting, exciting, informative and/or witty.

This Michael Bates "side note" carries more weight than you'd think:

The city of St. Louis has much less than a quarter to a third of the St. Louis Metro population: St. Louis County alone, which has been separate from the city of S