"Mopery," said H. Allen Smith in Low Man on a Totem Pole, is the "old English misdemeanor of exposing one's self in front of a blind man on a public highway."

The Word Detective once was threatened with a more contemporary version:

The Detective's interpretation:

Meanwhile, Milwaukee, reports Triticale, has "approved an ordinance calling for fines against persons who 'loiter in a menacing fashion'." I wonder if this is like Oklahoma City's "aggressive panhandling" minus the actual request for spare change.

While it's of course a tragedy that Bill Gates has so much more money than some guy who pumps gas on the north side of Trenton, New Jersey, few people have volunteered for a tour of duty in the supposedly-inevitable class war. Whither this complacency? I think it may have something do with this:

Then again, like wealth, the capacity for envy is not evenly distributed; some people feel it much more than others. And if you factor out envy, what's left for the class warriors? Discredited, or at least discreditable, Marxist musings; the dubious assumption that it's all a zero-sum game, that there are only so many dollars in the world, that handing Shaquille O'Neal twenty million of them in a year results in fewer cans of spinach at the food bank; the notion that when Jesus said "Feed my sheep," He was thinking that the proper way to do so was to render a great deal unto Caesar, that Caesar may have the capacity to operate the Department of Sheep-Feeding and support legions of minions therein.

Beyond that, there's that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" business. Some people, you may be sure, will believe to the end of their days that the pursuit is a fraud, that the race is rigged, and to prove it to you, they will point to the finish line and note that not everyone has yet arrived. The proper response: "Who put you in charge of the stopwatch?"

James Brown, the hardest-working man in show business, once sang "I don't want nobody to give me nothin' / Open up the door, I'll get it myself." So long as the door remains open, people will continue to get it themselves. A heck of a system, if you ask me.

Geico, forbidden by New Jersey law to discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity in its auto-insurance rate structure, has come up with a real winner: collar color.

The Star-Ledger reports that a single male, age 30, from Newark who works as a janitor would pay $2880 per year; were the same man a lawyer, he'd pay $1686.

Geico withdrew from New Jersey in the 1970s, complaining of excessive regulation; it appears that since their return in 2004, they've learned to read the fine print. New Jersey insurance rules apparently permit this sort of pricing if the company can demonstrate correlation between educational level or occupation and loss experience.

To me, this suggests that state insurance regulators ought to look into the possibility of requiring that all risk factors used by a company be disclosed, and the weighting thereof be noted, when requesting a quote; that Newark janitor might well want to take his business elsewhere, if Geico considers him that much of a risk. There would be howls from the boardroom at first, but since when is that a surprise?

(Spotted at Fark and duly marked up 15 percent.)

Frosty Troy's Oklahoma Observer describes District 84 Representative Sally Kern as "Bill Graves in drag."

Considering that Graves himself represented District 84 before term limits kicked in, and considering that Graves and Kern have thus far been pretty indistinguishable on the issues, and ... never mind, it's too close to lunchtime.

(Previous snarkage here.)

The 180th edition of Carnival of the Vanities is hosted by The Cigar Intelligence Agency, and they've adhered to the traditions of this long-running blogfest. (What, did you think they'd reverse directions or something?)

I don't think I can say it any better than this:

Coming in 2007: Boobs on a Plane! (Well, maybe.)

The return of the Third-Period Drought was dramatic: the Hornets rolled up eight quick points and then didn't score again for the rest of the quarter. "Frightening," said Gerry V. "At least at Dunkirk they had boats."

It was a new club record, and not one they wanted to set: they gave up twenty-three unanswered points, and the Clippers, who had been down ten, took a lead they would never relinquish, winning 89-67. (You want scary? The Bees had led at the half, 51-47, which means they scored sixteen points in 24 minutes. Is this an NBA record for futility? Yes, it is.)

P. J. Brown got a double-double (10 points, 11 boards), but nobody noticed; Desmond Mason picked up 20 points, but ditto. Brandon Bass, who hadn't been seen lately, made two free throws (out of four).

Macas Watch: Arvydas Macijauskas came in with four minutes to play, but did not score. (Then again, at the time, neither did anyone else.) He did get a rebound.

I need some sleep.

Delmarva Power & Light is lifting its rate cap come the first of May, which will increase electric rates about 59 percent. This gave Fritz Schranck an idea: have Delaware state government generate its own power, using wind and/or solar technologies on state-owned land, rather than buy from Delmarva. This would presumably save the taxpayers a few bucks, it would answer the Governor's call for diversifying the state's energy purchases, and it might even relieve some small amount of pressure on Delmarva.

On the other side of the country, Matt Rosenberg suggests retraining the homeless for commercial-driver positions, which doesn't sound as insane as you'd think:

I think maybe that "50 percent" is a touch on the high side, but Matt's got some real-life examples to cite.

The SBC Bricktown Ballpark, following SBC's acquisition of AT&T and the assumption of its name, will be renamed the "AT&T Bricktown Ballpark" today.

Everybody, of course, will still call it The Brick.

The Professor mentioned this last night, but I thought I'd bring it up here, since The Oklahoman scored some props.

Jay Rosen's Blue Plate Special has come up with a list of the Best Blogging Papers in the country, naming six honorees and a couple of Honorable Mentions; one of the latter is The Oklahoman's LOOK@OKC blog project.

Of LOOK@OKC, the BPS folks wrote:

What I'd really like to see next from the Oklahoman is a blog from the editorial staff.

When Ask Jeeves announced that they were undergoing an extreme makeover, they let it be known that they were putting Jeeves himself on ice.

Or carbonite, which I suppose is close enough.

Sort-of-actress/sort-of-singer Jessica Simpson now has a signature shoe line, mostly innocuous, though the "Anna" wedge strikes me as unusually hideous.

[Previous version of this paragraph deleted due to blatant inaccuracy.] Available in sizes 5 to 10; Simpson's official size is a 7½, which doesn't necessarily mean she has a built-in excuse not to be seen in these.

Okay, not that early, but get a load of this:

Impossible. If it were a real British science journal, it would be called Evolution and Human Behaviour.

And anyway, there's a simpler explanation, says Dr. B:

I'm inclined to accept the good doctor's version of things, especially since Betty Rubble, not even slightly blonde, always struck me as way hotter than Wilma Flintstone.

If you thought cockfighting in Oklahoma was dead and settled, you might want to think again.

Val Holland of the Oklahoma Game Fowl Breeders Association says that the battling birds used to bring $100 million a year into the state economy, largely in rural areas, and that the statewide ban should be changed to county option, in the manner of liquor by the drink; indeed, Senator Frank Shurden (D-Henryetta) had shepherded a bill to do exactly that through the Legislature, though it died this week in committee.

I haven't seen any "Don't Touch Our Cocks" bumper stickers yet, though it's presumably just a matter of time; Pamela Anderson, usually attentive to the putative needs of chickens, was not available for comment.

Margi's had enough:

Blogs will never be practical until they can be made squick-resistant.

Go, girl, and be happy. What happens out here on the Old Blog Prairie doesn't matter a hill of beans just now.

Before there was Bling, there was — well, this:

(From this untitled post, 8 March 2001.)

You have to admit that this sounds pretty cool:

It's a Catholic university, and to the extent that it's integrated into the community, you might well expect that the community plays mostly by the same rules.

And you might expect headlines like "New Florida town would restrict abortion":

This doesn't mean that they're going to, necessarily, but the reaction is predictable:

The proper response, by Joanna of Fey Accompli:

Now if Monaghan were forcing people at gunpoint to live in his company university town, that's another matter. But he's not. Joanna continues:

I'm sure that our stuck-in-the-Sixties socialists would have raised hell, assuming such a place as "hell" actually existed of course, had some Republican type in a grey suit tried to move into one of their precious communes back in the day. So it's not that they don't like voluntary associations: it's that they don't like voluntary associations that they don't control, either by decree or by sheer numbers.

Besides, this is my favorite kind of social experiment: privately funded.

(Submitted to Wizbang's Carnival of the Trackbacks.)

Before the season started, the Hornets had been pretty much written off: no home, at least for a while; no star players; no reason to expect them to improve on the previous year's uninspiring 64-loss season. And therefore, there was no reason to put them on national television.

Well, forget all that. With the Bees drawing huge crowds and poised to make the playoffs, not to mention the presence of the almost-inevitable Rookie of the Year (thank you, CP3), ESPN has bumped the 31 March Wizards-Rockets game off its schedule in favor of the Hornets and the Grizzlies at the Ford Center.

(I need hardly point out that this would be a really good time for another sellout.)

Two military funerals will be held in Oklahoma next week, and lest anyone think it would be a really cool idea to picket them, the state has enacted a ban on such things, effective immediately.

Under the Oklahoma Funeral Picketing Act, it's a misdemeanor to stage a demonstration within 500 feet of a church, mortuary or cemetery from one hour before the services begin to one hour after they end.

Take that, Fred.

May Avenue, said local historian Roy Stewart thirty-odd years ago, "especially from Northwest Thirtieth on north, is a glaring neon alley," and while neon has become a specialty decoration instead of a standard sign component, the glare remains, from 30th to 130th and beyond — except at 8412.

The area north of the Wilshire twist and east of May, originally platted as "Nichols Hills Suburban" though it's not within Nichols Hills proper, was settled with smallish houses on medium-sized acreages (say, ¾ acre) from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Most of them are still there, along Dorchester or Elmhurst or maybe Drakestone, but the homes fronting on May were removed years ago to make room for development.

Except, again, at 8412: the Farha house, owned for decades by interior designer Jan Farha, has remained on its tract all these years, surrounded by empty space, thwarting plans to develop the 8200 through 8500 blocks. But Farha is gone, and the property was sold off earlier this year; today the little 1937 house is cut in two and will apparently be moved somewhere else. (The Assessor's office has this photo on record; it presumably will be removed when the site is cleared and new construction completed.) I'll hate to see it go; there are relatively few green areas along May anywhere in the city, and I consider myself at least slightly blessed to live near one of them.

A little closer to home, The Original Fried Pie Place, on NW 50th west of Portland where 51st veers off at an angle, suffered a loss some months back when its sign split literally in two: the pole remains in place, but bent over, and the sign itself, now upside down and presumably not readable from the street, is now actually touching the ground. Yet the Place always seems to have customers, which suggests to me that perhaps they can afford to fix the sign, but it's drawing so much attention in its damaged state that they've reasoned, "Why bother?"

The Swedes have rent control, and it doesn't work any better there than it does here. In fact, it might even be worse.

In Sweden, rents are generally set by something called "bruksvärde," which means literally "value of usage"; municipal housing providers negotiate with the hyresgästföreningen, or tenants' unions, and private landlords are expected to stay within the same general price range. The agreements cover size, age and general condition, but do not cover location: an apartment in downtown Stockholm and an otherwise-similar apartment out in the boondøcks will rent for just about the same number of kronor. It should surprise no one that new construction is essentially at a standstill; no one will give up an old apartment to move into a newer and de jure costlier one. Swedish scholar Johan Norberg writes:

It's an election year, and there's been a proposal to eliminate rent control. The tenants' unions have hired an ad agency to conduct some guerrilla marketing; the agency prepared thousands of stickers to plant on tenants' doors warning them that a switch to market-based rents will cost them 30 percent more.

The effect these stickers will have on would-be tenants way down the waiting list has yet to be determined.

Zillow.com is the current project of Expedia founder Richard Barton, and not everyone is impressed with Zillow's "Zestimate" market-value figures. Zillow contends that the more information it can tap, the more valid the Zestimates will be, and as it happens, the Oklahoma County Assessor has all this stuff available already, so I figured that Zillow had likely tapped in and run its magic formula and gotten something close to plausible.

Which, in my case at least, they did. The official Zestimate for Surlywood is $84,482, though they allow for a Value Range of $71,810 to $103,068. There are also percentiles: 43rd percentile for my ZIP code, 55th for Oklahoma City. (Who knew this part of town was pricier than average? Then again, it butts up against the south edge of Nichols Hills.)

The Assessor's 2006 numbers should be out by the first of April. I will check that figure against Zillow's presumably-updated figure at the time. I'm thinking, though, that the difference between the two will probably be $1000 at most.

New cars have a genuine appeal, but if you've hardly gotten any mileage out of your old one, you're probably loath to trade it in.

It doesn't seem to work that way for laws, though; even if we're not getting any use out of the old ones, we still want new ones. Eric Scheie explains:

Sssh. Not so loud.

It goes on:

Because, you know, the felons might steal them or something.

Only slightly closer to home, there's a different worry: when some kid climbs my fence while I'm away and drowns in my pool, and it's my fault because, well, I had a pool. Now I don't actually have a pool, but this is what I have come to expect; the lawyers call this an "attractive nuisance."

(Aside: About ten years ago, I was still living in one of the CrappiFlats™; I was hauling my laundry bag across the complex one morning when I saw some unexpected activity at the pool area. I dropped my bag and peered in, and there were a couple of kids I hadn't seen before, their clothing tossed aside, their grins as wide as could be. No, I didn't turn them in; but someone did, and a few days later, there was a new fence around the pool area, harder to climb and easier to see through.)

So I figure that eventually I'll be told that effective on such and such a date, I won't be allowed to have a pool, inasmuch as pools are demonstrably a nuisance and all that. A neighbor once asked me if I was considering a pool, and I said I wasn't, and indeed I'm not; but should anyone propose a ban, I'm calling the contractors first thing in the morning.

(Yes, it is sorta warm and sunny today. Why do you ask?)

Swiped from The Louie Report:

Presumably the whole staff was let go.

(Whoops!)

A survey of telecommuters says that about a tenth of them work without clothing.

While the most popular attire seems to be sweats — 39 percent of respondents wore them — 12 percent of the men and 7 percent of the women surveyed wore nothing at all.

Yes, I know I'm in the wrong business.

(Via Fark.)

A reader of Bob Waldrop's Oklahoma Food Blog has a warning for us gardening-oriented types:

LSU's Ag Center has issued this report on the critters.

File this under "invasive species."

Update, 3:15 pm: Snopes is doubtful about this; also, Home Depot says they don't buy bulk mulch from this part of the world.

Might George Berkeley have been right after all? Julie R. Neidlinger, on the persistence of memory, or the lack thereof:

I was going to say "Not being noticed in the first place," but obviously that's wrong; if you've never had something, you'll never know what it's like to have it taken away from you.

As close as I ever came to the heart of the matter was the day I turned forty-nine:

But this would seem to defy Berkeley: if I exist outside of other people's perceptions, at least long enough to expire unnoticed some weekend, then that existence cannot be dependent on those perceptions.

Still, there's a part of me which believes, insists even, that I make no particular impression, that I leave no footprints in the sand, that the moment of my demise means not only that I no longer am, but that I never really was.

Or, as Julie says:

Another reason, I suppose, to keep on writing, on the off-chance that I might make it in, somewhere, somehow.

Scion's slowest-selling vehicle, the appliance-box xB, nonetheless averages a mere two weeks in dealer inventory before being sold, among the fastest movers in the industry according to the mysterious associates of J. D. Power.

Quickest off the lot? Two other Toyota products, the Prius and the Lexus IS-series, at a mere ten days. The fastest domestic-nameplate movers were the Pontiac Solstice roadster and Buick Lucerne sedan, which fly out of the showroom within 16 and 18 days respectively.

The average vehicle is sold within 58 days, down 8 days from last year.

Glued to the showroom floor: Chrysler's Crossfire (302 days), Land Rover's Freelander (248 days), and the shoulda-retired-years-ago Ford Taurus (246 days).

These are, of course, averages. Be it noted that my car, so far as I can determine, spent approximately 380 days in an unsold state before I signed on the dotted line, and why, yes, there was a rebate.

(Via Jalopnik.)

A Google search came in today for "Kinkade lousy person", which surprised me a bit, until I happened upon this:

In Kinkade's defense, who hasn't wanted to whiz on Winnie the Pooh?

Still, this is a far cry from his carefully-crafted Christian Family Man persona.

(Via Tinkerty Tonk.)

The Phoenix Suns arrived in town with a ten-game winning streak, and nothing, not even the loss of Steve Nash in the third quarter with an ankle injury, was going to keep them from going to eleven. The Hornets shut them down in the first half, 61-49, but the second-half blues struck yet again, badly in the third quarter, worse in the fourth, and the Bees dropped their third in a row, 101-88. Phoenix now leads the series 2-1.

David West led all scorers with 22 points; Chris Paul picked up 14 points and 11 rebounds. Still unexplained is how they could pile up 61 points in the first half and only 27 in the second.

It's off to New Orleans to take on the Lakers Wednesday night. Rumor has it that the Arena will be pretty close to sold out.

I tend to be suspicious of anything that's labeled a Bill of Rights: the likelihood that any legislative package deserves this auspicious a title, I reason, is scant indeed.

The proposed Taxpayer Bill of Rights has been kicking around a while, and actually got adopted in Colorado — and promptly got suspended when the state ran up against a recession, which duly cut available funds for state spending. At the very least, the Colorado version of TABOR seems a bit inflexible; I am assured that the Oklahoma implementation, to appear on the ballot as State Question 726, will be different.

This is not to say better, though. If the Oklahoma legislature had carte blanche to raise taxes any time it wanted, I could see the need for TABOR; but in point of fact, the state has some fairly stringent spending limits already. Even the State Chamber knows this. Kent Olson of Oklahoma 21st Century, a think tank affiliated with the Chamber, made this clear last week:

I'm not quite so frightened by this prospect — and the State Chamber is under no obligation to accept this finding as its official position — but I'm inclined to agree with Dr Olson: we need to find a proper size for government before we think about ordering a straitjacket.

Update, 14 March: Francis W. Porretto suggests that even TABORs aren't enough:

To me, that is the more logical first step; we can work on (de)funding issues later.

Oklahoma City elects a Mayor today, and it's widely expected that the winner will be incumbent Mick Cornett.

Still, that's no reason to stay home. If you're backing Bob Waldrop or Joe Nelson, you need to be there for him. And if you're happy with Cornett, you need to tell him so.

This is technically a primary election: if no one receives a majority, the top two will face a runoff on the fourth of April.

Joe Goodwin is concerned about the latest telco merger:

Not to worry. Zombies, more than anything else, need brains; AT&T, even before the dismemberment into Baby Bells, had already sworn off brains, and people who worked there for extended periods will tell you that the place was absolutely hostile to anything resembling a brain. If you had one, or had access to one, you kept it discreetly to yourself.

Maybe Maureen Dowd was serious about finding a fellow in Oz:

Applications follow:

Jeebus. After reading these, I'm starting to think that I coulda been a contender. Remind me to pick up a case of Carlton Draught.

(Via Wonkette.)

Note to self: That abandoned birds' nest you knocked down this afternoon? There's a reason it held together all through the fall and the winter: careful application of local soils to reinforce its structure. Add four months and very little rain, and allow to sit; then, when force is applied, gravity does exactly what it's supposed to do.

Had I fetched a ladder before dislodging the nest, making it possible to attack it from the side, I'd have had nothing to write about; on the other hand, I'd have had a lot less dirt on me.

Or so Wal-Mart hopes. The retail giant is seeking a new bank charter from Utah officials, and has applied for Federal deposit insurance.

Wal-Mart sought an industrial-bank charter because, says the company, it has no plans to enter the retail banking business; it merely wants to cut its expenses for payment processing.

FDIC has already received nearly two thousand comments on the Wal-Mart application, which has spurred the agency to hold public hearings in Washington and in Kansas City.

Relatives of Sam Walton control Arkansas-based Arvest Bank, which has some Oklahoma locations; the new Utah-based bank would have no connections to Arvest.

I don't recall this much fuss when Nordstrom and Target acquired banks for just about the same reasons.

(Via Interested-Participant.)

Things I noticed in the Consumer Reports Auto Issue (April):

• The magazine considers the '00 Mazda 626 to be one of the "reliable used cars" one can get for "$6000-$8000". Maybe. I've had no trouble with mine. But the Reliability Ratings include only the six-cylinder models — perhaps they didn't get enough responses from owners with fours — and a '00 626 with a V6 will cost more like $9000.

• Quote from Environmental Defense's John DeCicco: "Hybrids have been overhyped, and the focus on the hybrid has created this image that if you want to be green, you have to get a hybrid. I think that's a very damaging perception because there are a lot of other ways to save fuel." This was incorporated into an article which states flatly that you'll never save enough fuel with a hybrid to cover the initial cost.

• Instead of just showing the horizontal bar, they're giving you the actual road-test score (1-100) on each car tested. There was one actual 100: the Porsche Boxster. (The Boxster, however, is not Recommended, due to lack of reliability data.)

• They got 21 mpg with their base-level Corvette convertible, the same mileage they got with a four-cylinder Dodge Stratus. (And the non-Z06 Vette runs on regular.)

• A reader sent in an ad for a Ford product with, among other worthwhile features, "anti-lick brakes."

• Their Scion tC test vehicle came with pricey Bridgestone Potenza RE92 45-series Z-rated tires that cost $680 for four at The Tire Rack. Rather a lot of rubber for a car that sells for under $17k.
  

I never have liked car shopping much; each year Consumer Reports justifies that dislike. Time to renew the old subscription, I guess.

"I'm sorry, honey, I can't," he says. "It's Lent."

"That's awful," she sobs. "To whom, and for how long?"

Your reaction to that may well foreshadow your reaction to this. [Requires QuickTime.]

Think of it as an object lesson in the superiority of Western civilization: we can take it as well as we can dish it out.

(Via Church Marketing Sucks.)

Which would be 1973, the year of Roe v. Wade.

In this Vent, I complained about a new abortion "reporting" measure being pushed by Rep. Susan Winchester (R-Chickasha), which I characterized as "intrusive." This KWTV news clip might actually make it look even worse than I said it was. [Brief ad before clip begins.]

Reserve shooting guard Arvydas Macijauskas is not at all reserved when he discusses his dissatisfaction with the way things are going, or not going, for him.

Glued to Byron Scott's bench, Macas has played just 105 minutes this year, scattered among 16 games. (A quarter of those minutes came in one game, against Atlanta on 7 January; he was 1-7 from the floor and scored 8 points.)

"I'm aware that I can't have 30 minutes every night," he says, "but you must remember, I gave up a promising career in Europe to play in the NBA. If I can't play [for NO/OKC], I hope they trade me. I'm twenty-six years old, the best possible age for a player; I can't spend three years on the bench."

Well, that's the gist of it, anyway. He's signed to the Hornets for two years, with an option for a third, at $2.5 million a year. On the depth chart, he's behind J. R. Smith, who isn't getting any minutes either; relief for starter Kirk Snyder usually comes from Rasual Butler or Linton Johnson, who are technically small forwards.

Rumors circulated right around the trade deadline that Macijauskas and Smith would be dealt to San Antonio in exchange for Brent Barry; it didn't happen. The Hornets front office confirmed that there was a last-minute trade that missed the deadline, though they haven't said exactly what that deal was.

Myself, I'd like to see both of these guys pried off the bench once in a while; the Bees are not that overwhelmingly deep.

[Google translation]

The newly-renovated New Orleans Arena kept filling up all during the first half; apparently there was a major traffic jam downtown. Attendance was 17,744, which is about as many as you can get into the Arena and still play ball. (If there was any question as to the extent of fan support in the Big Easy, I think that question has been adequately answered.)

The Hornets kept within screaming distance of the Lakers all night: they were down six at the half, the dreaded third-quarter blues didn't materialize, the Hornets briefly grabbed the lead a couple of times, but finally Kobe Bryant, who hit seven straight from the floor, and Smush Parker, who pulled off two late steals, put the Bees away, 113-107.

Unsurprisingly, this makes the playoff situation a bit murkier. The Hornets are now 31-29 (.5167); the Lakers are 32-30 (.5161). And right behind are the Jazz and the Kings.

Kobe beat his average, getting 40 points. Five Hornets got double figures; David West got 25, and both Chris Paul and Speedy Claxton dropped in 22. (CP3 snags yet another double-double, serving up 10 assists.)

The Pacers will come to the Ford Center Friday night, followed by the Nets on Sunday.

From Expert Texture (read all about it), a proposal for a new tag at the center of a new language:

Defaults for these parameters: level=medium; tone=even; subtext=none.

With 3x5x4=60 different combinations, it should be possible to cover anything from a Maureen Dowd pop-culture reference to [fill in anything by, say, Jeff Goldstein].

</snark>

(Via Doc Searls.)

Rainfall, 1 January through 7 March: 0.36 inches.

Rainfall, 10 pm last night until now: 0.54 inches.

To my utter amazement, I slept through it, which is more remarkable given the candlepin-bowling noises that tend to accompany spring rains out here.

There may be some more today.

This morning at Pratie Place: excerpts from Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary, a 1940s guide to the language of jive.

What is most remarkable, to me anyway, is how few of the entries reproduced seem quaint and outdated; many "jive" terms are still considered more or less contemporary. You won't hear "hincty" (adj. conceited, snooty) too often anymore, but the 21st century is rife with people seeking to "hype" (v., n. build up for a loan, wooing a girl, persuasive talk, cajole) something or someone.

(This post is dedicated to Barbara Billingsley.)

The Global Perspective is your host for the 181st edition of Carnival of the Vanities, the first — and, I remind you, still the oldest — of all the weekly blog compendia.

Volkswagen had a Type 181 vehicle, designed for, and used by, the German military. The 181 was produced for twelve years, and was discontinued in 1980. A few of them were imported to the US in the 1970s, and sold as "The Thing."

When you cancel your checking account, you are no longer allowed to use the Visa Check Card associated with that account.

Just in case you hadn't noticed.

Spring is almost sprung, and natural-gas prices have receded from Heinous to Marginally Less Heinous. Still, I'm running behind on my goal, which was to spend less than ONG's fixed-for-a-year rate of $8.393/dekatherm, and with the heavy-spending periods now pretty much over, I am forced to concede that I am not going to make it.

Gratuitous statistics:

• 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.

• March: 7.6 used at $8.455; total price $64.26; VFP price $63.79; loss of $0.47.

• Cumulative: 30.5 used at $10.475; total price $319.48; VFP price $255.99; loss of $63.49.
  

It won't take much more of a drop for me to start recording gains — but it's highly unlikely I'll get sixty bucks' worth between now and October.

There's a distinct air of bogosity to this eBay auction.

Still, that's a sort-of-plausible price tag, and, well, somebody ought to do something with it — though the lister should have noted the upcoming departure of Dillard's.

Update, 10 March: Ja'Rena Lunsford of The Oklahoman checks it out, and it's legit, although what's for sale isn't the entire mall itself, but the north wing of it, which used to be a Montgomery Ward store. (The anchor positions — Wards, Dillard's, Sears — are owned separately from the rest of the mall.)

Rotsa ruck: The 1 Billion Comments Project.

(I've been at this for 9 years and 11 months, I've had some form of commenting enabled for approximately half that period, and I've managed to amass only around 14,000 comments.)

The new Blondie Greatest Hits compilation, as you might expect, is far from perfect. I didn't expect them to dig up that live version of "7 Rooms of Gloom" that showed up on the CD reissue of Eat to the Beat; but they should have at least sprung for "X-Offender", which was a single, after all. At least "Denis" is there. Still, 20 tracks and 16 videos — it's a CD/DVD package — is nothing to sneeze at.

The one new track is something remarkable: a mashup of "Rapture" and the Doors' "Riders on the Storm," titled "Rapture Riders," which works better than it has any right to. Presumably for a limited time, you can hear it here. [Requires Windows Media or — gag — RealPlayer.]

(Spotted at Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch.)

The Mayor of the Tasman District on the South Island of New Zealand has called for the cancellation of a clothing-optional bicycle race for reasons of safety: the riders won't be wearing, um, helmets.

Local police said they had no legal justification to intervene, which prompted Mayor John Hurley to say:

But is it a double offense?

(Via Fark.)

Seen at Tongue Tied:

Being the sensitive soul I am, I feel as though I should come up with a term for people whose job it is to invent euphemisms, a term that is itself something of a euphemism, a term which ever-so-slightly conceals instead of being straightforwardly informative, and, well, "rectal milliner" has been used.

Suggestions are welcomed, though I'm currently leaning to "cranial copulator," a full seven syllables instead of two.

I tend to be impatient with other drivers, not because I'm in such a hurry myself, but because if the number of them is great enough, it is inevitable that among their number will be a member of the Anti-Destination League, waiting for the exact moment to cause brake lights to flash for miles at a time.

I was northbound on I-35 around NE 36th when the 60-mph traffic, which hitherto had been doing an actual 60 mph, abruptly dropped to about half that. No obstructions anywhere: just a League member, discovering he was in the wrong lane, and remembering that having a Plan B at times like this would get him drummed out of the ranks. (I couldn't tell if the miscreant was from around here or not; if he was, he had even less excuse.)

About 100 feet west of the Classen Circle, I was inclined to be a great deal more forgiving. The problem this time? Geese. A couple of dozen of them across three lanes, three more in the median, migrating north on foot. (This was right in front of Horn Seed Company, so maybe they were looking for dinner.) I don't know if these are the same geese which occasionally hang around Temple B'nai Israel, about a mile to the west, but I knew that if they were, it was pointless to try to distract them; I've tangled with them before, and they will not be moved. One woman actually got out of her car and stared, her face screwed into the very incarnation of "WTF?" I think she suspected, though, that she and her car were no match for twenty-odd birds with both size and attitude.

So said radio guy Sean Kelley near the end of the third quarter, at which point half a dozen technicals had been called; I was starting to wonder if maybe I'd picked up a Blazers hockey game.

No high-sticking at the Ford Center, though I'm quite sure that if either the Pacers or the Hornets had sticks, they'd have used them: this was a seriously physical game, and Indiana's Danny Granger left the fray with an eye injury, though he came back in the fourth quarter.

Oh, yes, the score: Pacers 92, Bees 90, after the weirdest six seconds I can remember. Down two, the Hornets called time at the beginning of an inbound, which annoyed Anthony Johnson enough to slam a ball back to an official. Yet another technical; the Hornets missed the free throw, and another inbound, where a classic David West at-the-buzzer jumper rimmed out.

And if there weren't a thousand free throws, there were sixty-three of them, with four players finishing with five fouls each.

David West, for the umpteenth time, finished with 20 points, 17 in the second half. Kirk Snyder and Desmond Mason both dropped 16; Speedy Claxton got 11. And while Chris Paul only pulled 7 points, he also bagged 7 rebounds and served up 8 assists.

Now 2-7 since the All-Star Break, the Hornets drop out of the 7th seed in the Western Conference, with the New Jersey Nets due in on Sunday.

"Rock is dead," said Dean Esmay, which prompted this postmortem:

(From "Two days burying the cat", 14 March 2004.)

I don't have any bumper stickers. But if I did, I sure as hell wouldn't consider them subject to employer review:

California law would seem to prohibit this sort of thing. And if it doesn't, well, it ought to.

(Via skippy.)

Whatever happened to "one from Column A" and "two from Column B"? Now there's "Sour bamboo shoot steams fish mouth" and other ineffable (ha! eff them, I say) delights.

Maybe McGehee will eat it: I don't see any indication that they put mayonnaise on any of this stuff. Not even the French Crips.

(Via Dr. B.)

Devra asks:

And by "someone (something?)," she means Amazon.com, which is constantly serving up "recommendations." Lynn thinks this could be interesting, so I'm putting up my list of recommended items and rating them on the classic American Bandstand 35 to 98 scale, where 98 = "I'd actually run up the mileage on the Visa card to get this right this minute" and 35 = "I wouldn't take this even if you had Aisha Tyler deliver it to me in person."

The Flaming Lips: The Fearless Freaks DVD: 85. Added to Wish List.

Hard To Find 45s on CD, Vol. 2: 1961-64: 60. Of the 20 tracks, I have 19 already, and I don't particularly like Joe Dowell's "Little Red Rented Rowboat." Like all ERIC Records product, it's done extremely well, but I don't need this one.

Hard To Find 45s on CD, Vol. 5: Sixties Pop Classics: Not rated, I already have it.

Half a dozen different Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes: Average of 87. (I don't know if I can sit through Red Zone Cuba, though.)

Brian C. Anderson, South Park Conservatives: The Revolt against Liberal Media Bias: 70. This isn't as blatant a play for attention as Rod Dreher's "Crunchy Conservatives" shtick, but it's probably not a great deal more meaningful either.

John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History: 85. Added to Wish List.

Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades): 80.

Erin J. Shea, editor, Tales from the Scale: 65, simply because I doubt it's as funny as Wendy McClure's I'm Not the New Me, my purchase of which brought on this recommendation.

Glenn Reynolds, An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths: 86. Added to Wish List.

One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found: 90. Added to Wish List.

Sideways (Widescreen Edition): 85. Added to Wish List.

Lynn's conclusion on her own list: "Overall, fairly accurate but relatively little that I'm very excited about." I can say just about the same.

Disclosure: While looking over this list, I was distracted by $58.83 worth of other stuff, which presumably will be reflected on the next group of recommendations.

Where does the city end, where do the suburbs begin? The easy answer: at the city limits. But that's not always the useful answer, especially when you're dealing with Oklahoma City, which covers 600 square miles of land and rather a lot of water, and whose borders are the poster child for irregularity. In the geometric sense, I mean.

Northwest 23rd Street is hardly suburban. Yet when Sears, Roebuck opened a store on the edge of the old Shepherd homestead at 23rd and Pennsylvania, it was thought of as a "suburban" store, probably because the Sears store downtown (on Sheridan, then still Grand Avenue, west of the Biltmore Hotel) was still open at the time. Both those stores are gone now, as is the Biltmore — the present-day Biltmore at Reno and Meridian has tenuous connections at best to the original — and 23rd Street is now the city's Axis of Ethnicity, with black, Asian and Latino sectors that don't exactly overlap but which aren't really distinct. The city has been sprucing up the streetscapes on 23rd, but what's been lacking so far has been a concerted effort to bring new business to the area. (The Gold Dome restoration arguably did more for Classen than it did for 23rd.)

So I have to see it as a favorable sign that the old Tower Theater on 23rd between Walker and Hudson, considered a "suburban"-style moviehouse when it was built in 1937, is being restored, along with the retail space surrounding it. A 1964 photo posted by the developers shows the theater nestled between C. R. Anthony and T. G. & Y. — and doesn't that take you back? Retail along 23rd has been in constant flux for the last 40 years or so: the old Sound Warehouse is now an Asian grocery, and perhaps the store with the longest tenure during this period is the Soul Boutique, which opened in the early 1970s in what used to be the Records, Inc. building on the northeast corner of 23rd and Classen. (A CVS store sits there now; the Boutique was last spotted on 23rd between Lee and Dewey, with the same logo it had originally.) I can't help but be hopeful about this project.

Speaking of Towers, there's something called the Atrium Towers on 63rd west of the Lake Hefner Parkway, and something about it has always bugged me. Today I figured it out: can you really call something a "tower" if its height is way short of its width?

If you head out east on Reno, you'll leave the city limits in a mere three miles, and I did that today to take a look at the current state of things in Midwest City. (And, well, to run a couple of errands: I have my hair, such as it is, done in MWC, and the Woodside Car Wash, off 8500 NE 10th, can usually be counted upon to be functional, which sadly is not always the case for squirt palaces closer to home.) I-40? Fuggedaboudit; there was signage freshening today along the Crosstown, and traffic was backed up three or four miles.

Over at Heritage Park Mall, there's not a great deal of hope, though the current owners have spruced up the place a bit; Dillard's, due to die this month, has locked all but one set of exterior doors, and the parking lot still looks like the surface of the moon. I didn't mention the infamous eBay auction, though: why worry people unnecessarily?

And it's weird to see the last vestige of the old Atkinson Plaza, the Firestone store, still standing along SE 29th while everything else for a third of a mile in either direction is the very new stuff for which the Plaza was demolished. On an impulse, I pulled out the Yellow Pages, and it's still listed as being at 139 E. Atkinson Plaza, an address which should not even exist anymore. (Behind it, the Target store is at 7305 SE 29th; Kohl's is at 7401; closer to the street, Steak 'n Shake is at 7181.) I suppose this was negotiated with the city of Midwest City.

And I came back on the Crosstown to see the new signs, and didn't see a thing — unless it was for the two-lane exit off I-40 westbound to I-44, which I don't remember being there before.

I've never had occasion to avail myself of their services, but it occurs to me that a bail-bond operation, to be successful, must be memorable: when you're likely to need them, your mind is probably on, um, other things, and research is not high on your list of priorities.

This is no doubt why Ken Boyer has all those vintage cars parked around town. One outfit that advertises on TV occasionally is 2 Blondes Bail Bonds (not to be confused with 4 Non Blondes), though I'm not entirely sure why lightness of hair is an advantage in this business. A firm with a small but eyecatching Yellow Pages ad is A-Bomb Bail Bonds, whose slogan is "We'll Blast You Out!" Then there's Nutt Bail Bonds: "We've Got the Nutts to Get You Out!"

Still, if your greatest need is for a number for that One Phone Call, perhaps the coolest of the bunch is Mickey Bail Bonds, which can be reached toll-free at 877-IBN-JAIL.

As of 9:09 this morning. The 1,000,000th person through the turnstile got here by way of Beirut (!), trying to find out something about "courtesy kerr dental products, orange, calif.", about which I know from nothing but for which I seem to have the #2 spot in Yahoo!'s database.

Otherwise, my Middle Eastern traffic is way up this week, probably because of this.

For the statisticians in our midst, this is the way they've accumulated:

• The very beginning:  9 April 1996
  
• 100,000:  2 January 2002
  
• 200,000:  9 December 2002
  
• 300,000:  10 August 2003
  
• 400,000:  20 February 2004
  
• 500,000:  24 July 2004
  
• 600,000:  23 December 2004
  
• 700,000:  12 April 2005
  
• 800,000:  10 August 2005
  
• 900,000:  30 November 2005
  

Thanks to all who participated in the making of this utterly-meaningless milestone.

I'm just starting to see the faintest hint of blossoming on my twin redbud trees out front — once they get going, they look something like this — which means that it's a perfect time to point to this BlogOklahoma story on the official state tree.

For the purists and/or botanists: our redbud is Cercis reniformis; the Judas tree is Cercis siliquastrum.

The house three doors down, which was sold around Thanksgiving 2004, has since been resold; there was a massive yard sale yesterday to get rid of most of the contents. I don't know the sale price this time, but the previous sale was for $101,000, and Zillow.com Zestimates the place at $114,646.

Now a house across the street from there has gone up for sale. It's a slightly smaller home — 1152 square feet, says the Assessor's book — and the asking price is $85,500, within a lawn mower or so of Zillow.com's Zestimate. (Speaking of Zestimates, the one on my place, which was lower than that a week ago, has crept up to $86,407.) The usual neighborhood benefits apply: walking distance (a block and a half, in this case) to one of the better Oklahoma City schools (state API score: 1291 out of a possible 1500), comparatively easy access to the best stuff in town, Urban Conservation District zoning, and a Neighborhood Association that gets rather a lot done, given its limited resources. So far as I can tell, my presence on the block for the past two years has not caused property values to plummet.

Update, mid-April: Selling prices, per the County Assessor: $109,500 and $87,000 respectively. The latter, you'll note, is above the original asking price, suggesting yet another bidding war on this block.

Well, the Hornets patched up their leaky defense (fourteen steals!), but there was still the issue of actually scoring some points once in a while, which they didn't do until about two minutes in, by which time New Jersey had already piled up eight points. The Nets led by as many as 19; the Bees whittled it down to four late in the game, but for the sixth game in a row, it was not to be: Nets 95, Hornets 84, and the Bees drop to .500.

Scoring? Five Hornets in double figures, but only CP3 got as many as 17. When you miss 48 of 81 shots, this is what happens. The Nets, meanwhile, never dropped below 50 percent from the floor.

Will time away from the Ford Center help? A trip to San Antonio sounds scary all of a sudden, and then two games in New Orleans, against the Nuggets and the Clippers, won't be pieces of cake either.

A few things I picked up, not entirely at random:

• Some linguists are more cunning than others.

• Connecticut's branch of the NEA could give high marks to the state's three Republicans in Congress, who have supported most of the union's issues — but they won't.

• Judging purely by political contributions, women's reproductive-health issues are 52 times more important than men's.

• Should tanning salons sign their work?

• Now you can see a genuine flaming wingnut.

• In the Florida Keys, calling an 800 number to get an exterminator is just the beginning.
  

What a way to finish a weekend.

This Weetabix description of the City of the Big Shoulder Pads got me musing:

Chicago, of course, has had time to build up this kind of mythos, and enough people over the years to pass it on.

Is there a comparable description for Oklahoma City? Maybe. I see this town as a farm girl, used to fresh country air, at least when she's upwind from the livestock, used to simple, uncomplicated fare for dinner, suddenly faced with the task of picking out a prom dress and not having the slightest idea how she's supposed to look in it. You can tell her that her hair is pretty, that she can afford to take an inch or two off that hemline, and she might even say she agrees with you, but you can hear the butterflies doing barre exercises in her mid-section, almost loud enough to drown out her voice.

And yet when she finally puts it on, fills it out, makes it work, you know someone's going to fall for her — hard — and you just hope it's someone worthy of her.

I had an entry yesterday — specifically, this one — in which I linked to six different sites and sent TrackBacks to five. (I haven't quite figured out how this works on BraveJournal.) Two of the sites were using TypePad, and one of them sent back this message:

It ends there. Apparently this is the complete text:

I'm guessing this is related to comment throttling in later versions of the Movable Type engine. I really don't care, I suppose — there are other ways links can be discovered, and it's not like I'm hard up for recognition — but there ought to be a better way to handle this issue. (I don't believe I've encountered this, for instance, among mu.nu blogs.)

Nancy Pelosi's Innovation Agenda is not really a typical Democratic document. Yes, there's the tendency to throw government funding at things, but there's at least the recognition that business does something other than generate tax revenue.

John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's new Open Market blog singles out one provision of the Agenda for two, maybe two and a quarter cheers:

A few more like this, please.

What's scary is that the logic of this proposal is well-nigh impeccable:

Well, there's one problem, but ...

In an era when even respected literary lights can go batshit crazy, this might be just the ticket.

Vermont's prisons are full. What to do? Why, outsource the jailarity to Oklahoma, of course:

This presumably is good news for Sayre: North Fork is the city's largest single employer. Capacity is 1440; it's operated under state license by Corrections Corp. of America.

And it's such a deal:

"Oklahoma Discount Prisons, now with three great locations!"

And I suppose it's something of a relief to know that even with incarceration rates increasing far faster than the population, we still can make room for out-of-state, um, visitors.

(Via Fark.)

Update, 14 March: Sayre is happy.

Bugs pitched only one game (in 1946) at the Polo Grounds, and it wasn't a complete game at that — he came on in the fifth inning — but contemporary research suggests a speed of at least 150 mph (!) for his "powerful, paralyzing, perfect, pachydermous percussion pitch."

I consider myself indeed fortunate to have witnessed this event, albeit after the fact, on film.

In 1969, the FCC revoked the license of WHDH-TV Boston, channel 5, owned by the Herald-Traveler Corporation, which also owned the Boston Herald Traveler newspaper, and accepted a competing application for the channel from Boston Broadcasters, Inc. The Herald fought back, but lost, and in 1972 channel 5 was taken over by BBI, using the call letters WCVB-TV.

(Note: The current WHDH-TV, owned by Miami's Sunbeam Television, is on channel 7 and was not involved with any of this.)

WHDH had been a CBS affiliate; BBI, as part of its application, vowed to run more locally-produced programming than any other station in the country, which scared CBS into dropping its affiliation. ABC, then languishing on channel 7, switched to 5. And BBI was as good as its word — at least, in the early years. I was actually in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from the summer of '72 to the spring of '74, at the behest of Uncle Sam, so I got to see some of this stuff for myself; as I recall, some of it was a trifle too earnest at times, but channel 5 was my TV news source of choice.

But the station has been sold twice since then, and the standards that prevailed back in the Seventies are now — well, you can well imagine:

In fairness to WCVB-TV, I should point out that they employ no Ogles.

Besides, it's funny.

Eventually, of course, it will be illegal to tell jokes of this sort, which is all the more reason to make sure they get entered on the Permanent Record while we still can.

Alexandra Foley at Modesty Zone finds a perhaps-unexpected role model:

I think a closer match for that "happy medium" might be Dolly Parton, who has always been willing to mock her sexpot image — her trademark line might be "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap" — and who leads one of the least-scandalous lives in all of showbiz. Still, both Mae and Dolly were on the right track: they controlled their scenes, and should you presume too much, you could expect to go away empty-handed, or worse.

The Big Three credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — have decided that there should be only one system for determining credit scores, and are rolling out something called VantageScore.

Under VS, all three bureaus will use the same methodology to determine a person's credit score. Scores will range from 501 to 990 and are not strictly comparable to present-day FICO and similar scores. And each range will be assigned an alpha grade: 900s will get an A, 500s an F.

What won't change under the new system: the method of detecting and fixing incorrect information in a person's file, which will remain rather cumbersome.

Well, it was sorta different: P. J. Brown, who took an elbow in the forehead against the Nets, sat out this game, and Desmond Mason lasted all of fifty seconds before a bruised knee took him out. Marc Jackson started in the middle, and, mirabile dictu, J. R. Smith got some minutes. (He didn't score but once, but he played fairly decent defense.)

The result, unfortunately, was more of the same: Spurs 96, Hornets 81. But there weren't any ghastly lapses, any protracted dry spells, any spectacularly bad plays: the Bees played well, just not well enough to beat the league champions on their home court.

Jackson, in his first start, scored 16 points and pulled down six rebounds. Chris Paul scored 16, David West and Speedy Claxton 14 each. Tony Parker snagged 20 (and a double-double) for the Spurs, but the real thorn in the Hornets' side was Brent Barry