Hmmm....

All this "rage" from Mona Magno-Veluz, because she, um, gained five pounds.

You probably didn't know that Sony was still building the occasional Betamax, so it likely makes no difference to you that production will end after a 27-year run.

Maybe I ought to go get my SL-HF900 fixed; they bring big bucks on the used market, even today. Fortunately, my SL-HF840D still works, and I have plenty of blank tapes.

While looking at some local TV-station sites as perfunctory research for the preceding item, I noticed that apparently the Fox TV network doesn't demand that its local affiliates wrap themselves in Rupert Murdoch-approved isolation; quite a few Fox stations have affiliations with CNN, including KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City, KABB-TV in San Antonio, and WTIC-TV in Hartford, Connecticut.

There's nothing particularly weird about this — CNN swaps video with affiliates of the other major broadcast networks as well — but really, if the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy™ were the ideologically-driven monolith it's alleged to be, shouldn't Murdoch, or Fox News boss Roger Ailes, or somebody, have pulled the plug on these deals by now?

Not likely. Fox, first and foremost, has to make money, and annoying the affiliate stations is not the most efficient way to do it. What's more, Fox, having acquired the old United Stations (Chris-Craft) group, now owns some of the biggest UPN affiliates, including WWOR-TV in Secaucus, New Jersey (New York City market) and KCOP-TV in Los Angeles. Strange bedfellows are the rule, not the exception, in today's Big Media market.

Admittedly, the world is not exactly teeming with Volokhs. Still, I read The Volokh Conspiracy fairly regularly, and I've subscribed to Movieline for over a decade, and it never once occurred to me that Movieline founder and CEO Anne Volokh might be somehow related to Sasha and Eugene. As Homer J. Simpson might say: "D'oh!"

During the six years this site has been in operation, I have delivered a few righteous denunciations of things which I thought needed denouncing, but I don't think anything in this domain qualifies as a world-class Fisking; I've never really been all that vicious.

Until I got home this afternoon and found, of all things, an eviction notice waiting for me, five days after the rent was due — but seven days after it was paid. And I've got the receipt to prove it. What's more, they cashed my check on Tuesday, which is rather easily verifiable by a call to the bank.

So this particular quasi-Fisking will be delivered in person tomorrow morning. I don't really expect anyone to quake in fear when I arrive, but you'd better believe they're going to be shaking when I depart.

And if their response is not satisfactory, well, it will be Google-able for the remainder of eternity, for the edification of all.

Update, 6:40 pm, 7 September: The one staffer on duty happened to be the one who signed the rent receipt, so there was little arguing to do; what bothered me was the bland admission that, well, these things happen. Perhaps they do; however, they should not.

The next step, perhaps, is to blame those horrid liberals in the Connecticut Department of Public Health; apparently Ann Coulter is a couple years closer to AARP membership than she's been willing to let on. Of course, whether she's 38 (as she claims) or 40 (as Connecticut records indicate) is largely irrelevant, unless you think that 40 is some horrible age for a woman to be, in which case I suggest you've been hanging around too many Britneys for your own good.

And let us not snipe solely at Ann Coulter. Just to show you that this sort of thing transcends mere political stances, Barbara Walters' bio has always said she was born in 1931, two years later than the actual date.

Besides, Walters and Coulter share other attributes besides the ability to write off years with the stroke of a pen: both are well-served by short skirts, and both tend to overestimate their journalistic credibility.

(Muchas gracias: Jeanne d'Arc.)

As Ron Ziegler used to say, previous statements are inoperative: they issued the Final Demand today. And fortunately, it was a day in which everything at 42nd and Treadmill had gone terribly wrong — Christ on a crutch, why do I put up with these nitwits? — so I was in the proper mood to deliver world-class invective.

Actually, it fell slightly short of world-class, but what the hell, it's better than they deserved; I should have sued the bastards. In the meantime, there is still the task of providing Googleable information about this place, which is called Courtyard Village, owned by Pacific West Management, and managed (and I use the term loosely) by Lisa Rada (for now, anyway; they go through personnel like Gray Davis goes through campaign contributions), for the benefit of anyone seeking a flat east of Oklahoma City and north of Tinker Air Force Base.

Ms Rada, incidentally, seemed unimpressed when I indicated that I was expecting a written apology, and that I would post it here when it arrived — and that I would post references to its absence until it does.

And if I discover anything deleterious has been added to my credit record as a result of this, well, you'll get to hear about that too. I was assured that it would not, but how likely am I to believe that?

Posting, incidentally, may be light around lease-expiration time.

It's called Trident White, and I never would have bought it had it not been fastened to a bottle of Listerine (another Warner-Lambert product, and how come AOL hasn't bought them yet?); I've never been much of a gum-chewer, perhaps due to an inability to snap it with authority. It's low on the calorie scale — 2.5 per piece — and contains some odd dairy derivative yet is lactose-free. And best of all, it's supposed to whiten, or at the very least maybe de-yellow, one's teeth.

All this is secondary, though, to actual chewing satisfaction, and here the stuff comes up short. This particular flavor (billed as "peppermint", but it tastes like discount-store mouthwash) is something less than enthralling, the pieces are tiny (perhaps to ensure that 2.5 calories per), and I have certain qualms about anything this small that lists a dozen and a half ingredients. And titanium dioxide? Well, that certainly explains the "white" part.

I have no doubt that it will sell, and sell well, but I don't think it's persuasive enough to win over Doctor No. 5.

Look for a definition of the handy Yiddish term "chutzpah", and you'll likely be told of the wiseguy who murdered his parents, and then threw himself on the mercy of the court on the grounds that he was an orphan. As nuanced explanations go, this is one of the best.

I'm approaching the front door, and for the third time in a week, there's a notice stuck up there. Is this the written apology from the landlord for the shabby treatment I've been getting of late? Of course not. It's the standard sucky "renew your lease now and get a smaller rent increase" pitch. The increase isn't much — 2.3 percent — but that hardly mitigates the gall.

Actually, given the history of this place, I suspect I may be here longer than the current management (Pacific West, for all you Googlers), in which case I think I shall keep discreetly silent about future plans until the last moment possible.

The big news at 42nd and Treadmill today was the arrival of new Certificates of Benefits from our newly-appointed Czar of Health Care Bucks. It is apparent to me that said Czar is desperate to save dollars any way possible: the Certificates, seventy-six pages, were printed, per the back page, in 1995, and sixty pages of changes, amendments, exclusions, Special Notices, and other insurance-company effluvia are stapled to the inside covers. Needless to say, this makes the Table of Contents well-nigh worthless; I have to assume that the First Commandment of Insurance — "Thou shalt not pay claims if there is any way to avoid them" — has a Sub-Commandment somewhere about making the actual obligations of the company as murky and indistinct as possible.

Of course, we'll drop them in a year or so, once they've finished the initial contract and start charging what they really wanted to charge in the first place, and subsequently we'll be suckered in by yet another pack of twerps who'd rather be in Mergers and Acquisitions than in some tedious business like health care.

Okay, I give up. What the heck is a Shenandoah Steak Sandwich?

Update: Jump forward one week.

10:15 am: "Slow drain" reported to management.

5:15 pm: First acknowledgment of report. Minion inspects tub, finds a small quantity of damp detritus, flushes bowl, watches quantity of detritus increase twofold.

5:20 pm: Minion returns with quart bottle of Volcano Extract or something, spritzes a quarter of it down drain.

5:25 pm: "Didn't work. I'll call the plumber."

5:50 pm: Entire building is suffused with the gentle aroma of discarded jockstraps. I decide I will not cook tonight, and order pizza.

6:20 pm: Pizza is delivered.

7:00 pm: Tub now half-full of brown, brackish, bubbling brew.

7:50 pm: Level of said brew recedes to half an inch. I pour two gallons of boiling water into the cauldron.

8:00 pm: Nasty phone call to management.

8:04 pm: Management advises that plumbers are "on the way".

8:10 pm: Begin questioning neighbors. Upstairs residents report no problems; downstairs residents aren't home.

10:45 pm: Winds kick up to 60 mph; storm begins.

11:25 pm: Peak of the storm; winds exceeding 65 mph, rain falling at 0.05 inch per minute.

11:27 pm: Plumbers arrive.

12:05 am: Plumbers, having run both ends of line, report no blockage; suspect combination of Volcano Extract and boiling water may have loosened up the clog.

12:10 am: Off to bed at last.

5:15 am: But it doesn't last, does it?

I admit up front that this is not my area of expertise; the only thought I've given to this sort of thing up to now has been wondering what it's like to stop at the top of the Ferris wheel when Freddy Cannon or Chuck Barris or somebody fell in love down at Palisades Park. On the other hand, I can't let this go by without comment, either.

So here's the story: beginning October first, amusement-park rides in New Jersey will be subject to statutory limits on gravitational forces — sort of. Under the new rules, amusement-park rides must not exceed a force of 5.6g for more than one second. The law was devised after the death of two women at Ocean City in 1999 who were thrown from a malfunctioning roller-coaster car. Had the coaster been working properly, the riders would not have been subjected to forces exceeding 5.6g — no ride in New Jersey is designed for forces over 5.0g — but the state evidently felt that outlawing malfunctions themselves was not a viable option.

Do high g-forces cause brain damage? The medical profession is divided. On the other hand, extensive brain damage among New Jersey residents could be just what ethically-challenged Senator Robert Torricelli needs for his reelection effort.

(Muchas gracias: Bo Cowgill.)

"Is it just me," I wondered, "or are all these new Walgreens stores real eyesores?"

It's apparently not just me.

Last week, I asked:

The answer, courtesy of those fine folks at the Greater Southington (CT) Chamber of Commerce:

Gotcha. And thanks. (Of course, out here in Soonerland, if you ask someone about "pulled pork", he'll glare at you and tell you it's none of your damn business, but that's another issue entirely.)

Now to contrive to get one of these sandwiches without having to drive 3200 miles....

The always-alert (and almost frighteningly gorgeous) Aimee Deep points to a deal between an advertiser and America Online which was apparently used to generate bogus transactions in an effort to inflate revenue figures for both parties. "I can tell you from personal experience," says Deep, "that these Big Media companies try to coerce you [into scams like this]."

This must be some of what AOL Time Warner used to call "synergy" until the word became a colossal joke.

With the exception of Southwest Airlines, which seems almost immune to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that the competition routinely suffers, American air carriers have pretty much been reduced to panhandling.

So, is Southwest doing something right, or is everyone else doing everything wrong? I'm not quite sure. Kim du Toit, on the other hand, is a bit more certain about things:

Indeed, something to hope for. In the meantime, if I have to go somewhere, I drive. (It's not like I'm going to France or Hawaii or Madagascar anytime soon.)

Under our old, complicated, expensive health plan, the cheaper of my two Daily Drugs would cost me a $10 copay.

Under our new, simplified, low-cost health plan, the cheaper of my two Daily Drugs costs me $23.50, which sum is then submitted to the Plan Czar, who applies the pertinent formula and then sends me a check for — well, nothing, since I haven't met this year's overall deductible.

Next year, if the rumors are true, in order to receive the maximum network discount, we have to have these prescriptions filled at a drug store in the Sudan.

Will the real Saddam Hussein please, um, shut up?

Not that it matters anymore, but I wear a size 14 (US) shoe.

New today: things you can expect with really bad credit, courtesy of The Vent.

Bigwig has nailed 95 feces (more or less) to the wall, a story which will bring sighs of recognition to any parent who cries "Pee, pee!" but there is no pee.

I am in no way heartened by the fact that in almost every corner of the nation, there are workplaces every bit as toxic as 42nd and Treadmill, and for much the same reasons; all this means is that there are going to be people just as annoyed as I am.

However, giving them an airing is probably a Good Thing, so I refer you to Caterwauling.com, and recommend that you scroll down to the Part Deux entry under October second. (No individual links that I could find, sorry.)

And the sky is grey, and where are the blog updates?

Angie Schultz finds four-part harmony on such a winter's day.

Kim du Toit wearily points out the obvious:

Then again, if his description of Maryland's politicos is accurate — and I'm inclined to believe that he's got them pegged to the nth detail — it's not at all obvious to them. Yet.

Of course, you've heard about those term-papers-for-sale operations, and certainly you'd never, ever consider buying one of these things and passing it off as your own research.

Jack Schwartz did his own research (which I am blatantly copying) on one of these outfits, and he reports:

And I am envious. Ten bucks a page? And we're sitting here blogging for...uh, yeah, right, never mind. Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, and don't shade your eyes.

The Loyal Peon is annoyed by questionable weapons speculation in the DC-area sniping epidemic:

Um, they get paid for it?

I yield to the Peon's weapons experience — indeed, to most people's, since I've never owned multiple guns and didn't fire off that many rounds when I wore Uncle Sam's duds — but I do claim some expertise in shooting off my mouth without backup. And in your average newsroom, you're probably not likely to find a whole lot of firearms enthusiasts, so I wouldn't be surprised to find that these on-air conclusions are being pulled out of thin air, made only slightly thicker by thirty seconds of Googling.

Last time, I was kvetching about the way in which prescription drugs were being handled by our new insurance carrier. A revised version of said kvetch was dispatched by snailmail to the pertinent officials last weekend. They have now responded with a check for the proper 70 percent of the out-of-pocket expense. Apparently the entire group was miscoded, so presumably they've heard from four or five dozen people by now. I am, of course, grateful for the refund, which, all things considered, was pretty damned quick; but I will be even more wary than usual when I actually have to seek outpatient (or, worse, inpatient) services.

Tim Blair reports the following offer, made by a professor of English at Wheaton College:

"Millions," says Blair, and I don't doubt it for a moment.

Governor Parris Glendening has ordered a ban on outdoor shooting (indoor shooting apparently is unaffected) in four Maryland counties, ostensibly to cut down on false sniper alarms by people reporting hearing gunfire. The likelihood that the resident sniper is actually going to observe this ban is, shall we say, on the low side. And the ban plays hell with some previously-authorized hunting seasons, which means that in exchange for not catching the sniper, suburbanites will have their gardens eaten by deer.

(Muchas gracias: Ravenwood.)

If I confined myself to topics clearly within my area of expertise, I'd probably post only one or two paragraphs a month. (Never you mind whether you think that would actually improve the site.) I have, however, steered clear of the speculation regarding the D.C.-area sniper, except to point to an occasional bit of information. What was needed, I felt, was a one-shot, all-inclusive, low-shriek-level overview of the gunman and his possible motivations.

This task was undertaken over the weekend by Susanna Cornett, who is not one to shy away from the Big Jobs. She mentions, in a paragraph on qualifications, that she is not an FBI profiler; it is my opinion that the FBI would be far better off if she were.

The Arab magazine Majallah, according to Fox News, has published what purports to be Osama bin Laden's will, dated 14 December 2001 and obtained from a "very reliable" source in Afghanistan.

Much of the document is devoted to whining: about how the hated invaders showed strength of purpose; about how Afghans — even the Taliban! — put up such meager resistance; about how al-Qaeda would be a lousy career choice for his children. And, of course, it's liberally salted with verses from the Quran.

Bloggers have insisted for months, despite contrary reports of dubious origin, that what's left of bin Laden has been decorating a rock somewhere in an Afghan cave. US officials aren't saying a word — yet.

The major thrill of getting out of Daylight Savings Time isn't the sixty minutes of sleep I didn't really get on Sunday morning; it's the fact that for the next couple of weeks, anyway, I can drive to work when the sky is something besides pitch-dark. (Sunrise Saturday was 7:49 CDT, which means I arrive an hour before dawn; even around the late-December solstice, sunrise will not get any later than 7:40 CST.)

From the standpoint of climate, I won't miss this October much; while it's still a few degrees warmer than the coldest on record, it's only a few, and we're headed for the freezer later this week. The TV Weather Weasels are already hedging their bets.

It's my brother Paul's birthday.

It wasn't that many years ago that there was some doubt he'd ever make it this far. What's kept him going is the combination of modern medicine and old-fashioned faith — and the conviction that you have to have both to make it work.

At this rate, he should be good for forty-five more.

For a single guy in his forties, I am relatively tidy: while I make no claims that either my kitchen or my bathroom is suitable for computer-chip fabrication, my bed is made daily, my socks are picked up, and my car does not serve as a rolling trash cart. (She Who Is Not To Be Named once commented that "This doesn't look like you just drove two thousand miles in it.")

There is, of course, a downside.

Airports have three-letter codes. O'Hare in Chicago is ORD; Los Angeles International is LAX (I often wonder about those guys wearing "LAX Security" patches); Baltimore-Washington is BWI. Sioux City, Iowa is SUX, and you can imagine what they think of that.

Anyway, the FAA was asked back in March to change the code, and now has declined to do so. Airport officials in Sioux City may try again, but for now, they're stuck with what they have.

First Union is a big bank; its name appears on lots of people's checks throughout the eastern United States. Apparently it's still unfamiliar to some people, though: a Jacksonville, Florida woman was busted for allegedly trying to cash a forged payroll check for a phony company, drawn on, um, "Frist Unoin" Bank.

It could have been worse. Had she waited another month, she would have had to try to spell "Wachovia".

Last year about this time, I was going on about something truly bizarre in the Victoria's Secret catalog, a publication which apparently is mailed to everyone on the planet except me. As before, I obtained a copy from my old friend Nova, who claims to actually wear some of this stuff. (I will, of course, take her word for it, as the likelihood of getting to inspect her underthings for myself is vanishingly small.) She made it quite clear, though, that the replay of last year's hyperbauble, the ten-million-dollar Fantasy Bra (the sort-of-matching panty is included in the, um, package this year), is not something she would choose to wear even if she could afford it, for reasons having to do with hygiene and/or insurance. I think that's what she said, anyway; looking at the pictures in the catalog, I found it not especially easy to pay attention.

There's also a Star of Victoria diamond pendant for under a grand (well, two dollars under a grand), which goes well with this, but I rather imagine it goes well with most things.

1483: Martin Luther, primary player in the Protestant Reformation

1610: Ninon de L'Enclos, Frenchwoman of prodigious desires

1759: Friedrich von Schiller, German dramatist and poet

1925: Richard Burton, English actor

19xx: [Details deleted, on the off-chance that the person involved might see this, something not likely to happen with, say, Schiller]

1999: Nicholas Cole Havlik, esteemed grandson and world-class wrecker of furniture

Felicitations to all.

"It wasn't me who started that ol' crazy Asian war," the song goes. "But I was proud to go and do my patriotic chore."

And yes, I suppose it was a chore, in the strictest sense of the word: first we take care of business, then we can sit back and swap stories.

Some people will look at that word "proud" and grimace. "How can you possibly feel any pride in what you did?" Well, I did it well, and at the time, it seemed like exactly the right thing to do. Thirty years later, it still seems so.

No regrets from this former Army man; I wore the green, like so many others my age, and fortunately, most of us came back from where we'd been.

You don't have to spend any time remembering me today, but please do think of your friends and mine, your relatives and mine, who took on this "patriotic chore" themselves. And say a prayer, if you would, for those who didn't come back.

The United States Arctic Research Commission, noting that the polar zones are warming more quickly than the rest of the globe, has projected that in five to ten years, it will be possible to sail through what is now the Arctic ice cap at least a couple of months out of the year, cutting 6800 miles off the shipping distance from Asia to Europe. For supertankers, which have to round Cape Horn because they can't get through the Panama Canal, the difference is over 11,000 miles.

Assuming the Commission has called this one correctly, the fabled Northwest Passage is here at last, too late for Henry Hudson and Martin Frobisher, but on time to be a genuine boon to today's global commerce. And to think we did it all with our modest little SUVs.

Well, it started out as a song by Paul Simon; if nothing else, I've proved that my scansion can be as idiosyncratic as his.

Cue the guitarist, and:

An autumn day,
It's the middle of November.
I say, "Go home,
Take your damned inspectors, nothing here to see!"
'Cause the only thing that matters here is me:
I am Iraq, I am defiant.

(And Iraq never learns,
And a tyrant finally dies.)

Obviously "Weird Al" Yankovic has nothing to worry about from the likes of me.

Thanks to Bob Radil, who suggested this (though not to me, actually) on rec.music.rock-pop-r+b.1960s. (Yes, I still read Usenet. Who knew?)

And apologies to Mr Simon. I admit, this one is even worse than "I Am a Schmuck (I'm from Lawn Guyland)", which I shan't repeat here.

Aimee Deep notes that both al-Qaeda kingpin Osama bin Laden and Disney chairman Michael Eisner had been keeping a low profile, only to resurface this week, and asks the question no one else dares ask:

Gee, you think we should ask Koppel?

Anna at Belligerent Bunny has a grand and glorious tale about a missile we don't have, but ought to, and theoretically still could. Even the name — Tacit Rainbow — is spiffy.

"One of the more repugnant features of our modern society," says Kim du Toit, "is how we have become increasingly used to treating individual human beings as mere ciphers." There are situations where this is excusable — the military, for one, because it's one environment in which the individual truly must be subordinated to the group, and in prison, for another, because if you've gotten there, it's part of the price you pay. (I point out that otherwise, the military and the correctional system are not all that similar, no matter what I told Major Whatzisname back in 1974.)

Back to du Toit:

I think it's actually worse than that, and I think we can blame the government for it. Under our preposterous tax code, those of us who work for someone else are not assets of any sort, any kind of investments: we are expenses, pure and simple, and it's unrealistic to expect corporate types, forever mired in their bean-counting milieu, to be able to make any kind of connection between Badge #521 and Fred over in IT.

And it doesn't much matter how big the corporation is, either. Were I to leave 42nd and Treadmill, the place would take a substantial productivity hit and would lose one of its few remaining connections to reality — it was explained to me just this past week how burning up a couple thousand bucks or so a year on a publication that no one reads and no one will read, which in fact is viewed by its target audience as an annoyance, is considered a brilliant effing idea — but as far as they're concerned, it's just a couple of accounting entries to change and a COBRA form to fill out.

I really think this guy at Lactose Incompetent has actually worked here; either that, or it's just as bad the world over and we are all screwed. Neither of these is comforting.

I do my best to get a summer break in spite of them. Otherwise, this is spot on; as the bottom-ranking nerd, I have no hope.

Wendy, aka Weetabix, describes the shopping on the far side of the Styx:

I dunno. I'm kinda white and fairly trashy, but I do my best to avoid Le Mart du Wal. I'll occasionally set foot in a Sam's Club, generally to buy incredible quantities of something I wouldn't want to be seen buying at Albertson's, but actually to visit a Wal-Mart? That's just not on the agenda. And it's not your standard left-wing Exploiter of Peoples argument, either; I figure any retailer that isn't exploiting us greedy buyers is only a few pages away from Chapter 11. I just don't deal well with Incredibly Huge Crowds. I don't go anywhere the day after Thanksgiving, for that reason alone.

And where was I four hours ago? The checkout line at Target (which, of course, is pronounced "tahr-ZHAY"). And they had (O frabjous day!) those Verbatim CD-Rs designed to look like 45s, priced way higher than any other recordables on the shelf ($8.49 for a box of ten with full-size jewel cases). Would I have driven the extra 0.4 mile to Wally World to save maybe sixty cents on these? Not likely.

There will be no more "420 Specials" at Your Pizza Shop in Canton, Ohio; the Repository reports that shop owner Pat Koury, responding to a request from a DARE official and a memo from the head office, has taken down the offending signs. "420", of course, is widely believed to be drug slang, though I have yet to meet a single stoner who responds to the number.

Your Pizza Shop is located at, um, 420 12th Street Northwest.

The Nice-O-Meter at claus.com inexplicably lists me on the kinder, gentler side of the ledger:

Stuff like this could ruin a guy's reputation, you know?

(Muchas gracias: Miss Christine.)

Scott Ganz takes a break from serving time on a jury to explain huge punitive-damage awards:

And they don't even get a cut of the proceeds, either.

Is there a solution to this?

The Weekly World News (imagine The New York Times after twenty years of Howell Raines) reports that the actual eject button for the human soul has been located in the angular gyrus of the right cortex. Or something like that.

This might almost be plausible, but it leaves a whole lot of questions unanswered: why, for instance, is there no channel selector? And is it possible to fast-forward individuals whose time isn't running out fast enough?

With the former Senate Majority Leader martyred and the Republican Party duly purified, attention must now be turned toward the blatant racial policies of non-governmental organizations. Gregory Hlatky suggests we begin with a group which touches millions of households in the nation and somehow is never, ever called to answer for its crimes. He refers, of course, to the American Kennel Club:

Why, there's actually a club bearing this blatantly-racist name! Do these beautiful dogs know they're being used as cannon fodder to preserve the privileges of The Man?

Most of the time, day or night, you can turn to one of the news channels and see footage of people killing one another, or heads of people talking about people killing one another. And if you do this often enough, you might conclude that peace as a concept is as remote as Neptune, and as unlikely to be reached in your lifetime.

And this conclusion works, sort of, if you are inclined to define "peace" as something contingent upon the absence of war. In which case, erase "Neptune" and replace with "Betelgeuse": man's inhumanity to man is a seemingly-permanent feature of the landscape, at least to the extent that man himself is a seemingly-permanent feature of the landscape.

But it's not every man, on either end of that equation. Like so much else, peace, as a process, must begin with the individual. And peace on an individual level is more complicated. Life itself is fraught with conflict: things just refuse to fall into nice, neat little patterns we can follow by rote. At some point, we are faced with questions as basic as "Should I stay or should I go?" Can you just walk away? Sometimes you can. Sometimes you can't.

When I was younger, so much younger than today, a radio station once had the temerity to follow John Lennon's "Imagine" with his "Working Class Hero", a mordantly bitter tune that demonstrated pretty convincingly, at least to me, that the lightest and brightest of dreams could — maybe even had to — coexist with fear and loathing and disillusionment. Finding a balance therein is, I think, one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, and I suspect it will take me the rest of my days. But it's a conflict from which I cannot walk away.

A short time later, I was in the Army, and during this time I had some cards made up which identified me as "Specialist, United States Peace Force." Unofficial, of course. Some noted — some will note, even today — that I wore a uniform and carried a rifle (and sometimes more), and that by so doing, I belied my own self-description. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now. The argument that you should never, ever strike first is awfully close to the argument that you should never, ever take vitamins. I don't know any homeowner who will say, "Aw, let's give the termites a chance." If conscience demands, as it will, that we think things over before we commit ourselves to some frightful war in the Middle East, it demands also that we consider the consequences should we walk away.

Peace on the individual level: "Can you live with the decisions you have made?" I'm working on it. And thank you for working on it for yourself.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled greeting-card sentiment.

Dean Esmay has come up with a list of half a dozen offenses which, in his view, qualify as Crimes Against America, trangressions so heinous that the only suitable punishment is "immediate loss of citizenship and expulsion from U.S. territory."

Fortunately, Mr Esmay has tongue firmly in cheek. I think. (If not, I see trouble, with a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for Balzac.)

The Republicans have been calling for tort reform for some time, at least partially because trial lawyers are generally lined up under the Democratic banner, but mostly, I think, because there is increasing irritation with the ongoing whine of self-described victims: "I am hurt," they cry, "and somebody's gonna pay!" Whether the somebody in question is at all culpable is at best a secondary consideration.

I got a reminder of this last night in a chat room, courtesy (so to speak) of a person who, I am given to understand, has suffered some romantic reverses in recent months; while those who presumably hurt her keep a low profile, anyone she considers a friend or associate of the culprits is duly attacked on sight. (Well, except me: it is generally a waste of time to heap invective on me, since my reputation for payback in kind is fairly colossal, if largely undeserved, and besides, trying to hurt my feelings is rather like trying to cool off a glacier.) It was a dispiriting experience all around, comparable to watching fourth-graders taunting each other in the playground and trying out all the new words they learned watching Cinemax.

To paraphrase the bumper sticker: feces transpire. They always have, and they always will. In this Oprahzoid era when being a victim is the next best thing to being a celebrity, everyone wants a cut of the compensation fund — whether it's deserved or not.

Personally, I think she should get a blog.

If you're in Connecticut and you covet a traditional fever thermometer with a column of mercury enclosed in glass, this is the last day you can buy one.

(Disclosure: I own no holdings in thermometer manufacturers, CVS, or Walgreen's.)

This is the time of year when pundits issue predictions, and sometimes they prove to be absolutely stunning in their prescience. Needless to say, such a level of prognosticational perspicacity is the exception rather than the rule; apart from the occasional weather forecast, I've been consistently wrong on all manner of things. I do believe, however — and since this is a meteorological prediction, sort of, there's a chance I might be right — that Kevin McGehee has nailed it with this one:

Somebody give that man a raise.

Millions of people at America's airports. How do you determine who's just a passenger and who's a terrorist? The new IMAO Frank Test for Terrorists avoids the hemming and hawing and cuts directly to the ten questions that need to be asked. What's more, the Test prescribes a quick and effective means of removing terrorists once identified:

I think he'd feel even safer seeing two of them thus ventilated, assuming they travel in pairs, but certainly this is a start, and let's face it: you don't get this kind of innovative thinking from the likes of Norm Mineta.

The ragtag bunch of losers known as the Earth Liberation Front (no link; I have some standards) is claiming responsibility for setting jugs of gasoline under six sport-utility vehicles at a Girard, Pennsylvania dealership and igniting them. Three SUVs were destroyed; three jugs failed to ignite.

What I want to know is this: Why in the hell are these people wasting fossil fuels? Don't they read their own propaganda?

(Muchas gracias: duckboy online.)

The American movie-going public has apparently adjusted to five or ten minutes of advertising before the Feature Presentation. We don't like them, mind you: we're just resigned to the inevitable.

This sort of blasé acquiescence hasn't made it to China yet. Zhang Yang, upset because the 9:30 showing of Hero was delayed until 9:34 by advertising, filed suit against the theater and the film distributor, demanding the removal of the ads and a refund of his 40-yuan admission (not quite five bucks), plus an additional 40 yuan as compensation. Zhang Yang, as it happens, is a lawyer. Of course, had this happened in the States, there would be a class-action suit and demands for damages in the millions of dollars, which, after legal fees, would eventually be paid off to members of the class in buy-one-get-one-free coupons for Raisinets.

(Via Fark)

The group known as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has announced a boycott of KFC because of alleged animal-rights abuses — which, given PETA's predilections, probably includes being served on a plate.

Perhaps miffed at being left out of the proceedings, members of the Earth Liberation Front are reportedly getting ready to fire-bomb a Pizza Hut.

There is almost always something to keep me awake when I really, really need to be sleeping. Lately it's a low (below 50 Hz) rumbling that I can't localize but which definitely isn't originating within my living quarters. Obviously something somewhere besides my nerves is vibrating, but what? The upstairs flat has been vacant for two or three weeks, and if it were their heating unit, which is directly above mine, it would shut off once in a while, and even if it didn't, I should still be able to hear it more clearly from directly below, and I can't.

If it varied at all in pitch, I'd think "subwoofer," but this is pretty constant. I tell you, stuff like this will kill me even faster than work.

For reasons undisclosed, apparently Joe Garagiola will be replaced in the broadcast booth at the Westminster Kennel Club show this February by CBS weatherman Mark McEwen.

I was sort of hoping for Fred Willard, but I see no reason to be picky.

(Muchas gracias: Gregory Hlatky.)

Ryan Rhodes has a really Sweet song for the UN inspection team. Laugh out loud. I did.

Breathes there a man with soul so dead who never to himself has said: "Jeebus, I could run this place better than these clowns"? Somehow I doubt it. In my own office, this utterance is heard roughly sixteen times a week, and not just from me.

Besides, what qualifications could possibly be required? Secra can certainly fill the bill at her workplace:

She also proposes policy changes, the most truly innovative of which is "Walking away from a paper jam will be considered a dismissable offense."

Oh, well, we'll never lure her away from the Bay Area.

Most states are suffering budget woes these days, and Utah is no exception. But few observers expected the axe to fall on the highest-profile appointment in the state, porn czar Paula Houston, who will be out of a job on the first of April. The Utah legislature had cut the $150,000 for Houston's office out of the state budget; Attorney General Mark Shurtleff realigned services in an effort to keep the program going, but faced with $750,000 in cuts to his budget this year and possibly more of the same next year, the AG pulled the plug.

I am reasonably certain this does not mean that West Valley City (Houston's home town) is going to start looking more like West Hollywood.

There hasn't been a really good answer to this since Johnny Carson retired ten years ago.

Until now, courtesy of Weetabix:

Every time I see that, I have to clean the monitor. Again.

First, the families of a pair of DC-area sniper victims announced they would sue Bushmaster Firearms and a gun dealer for ostensibly making it possible for the snipers to pick them off.

Next, Hilary Rosen of the Recording Industry Association of America announced that local ISPs should be required to pay the RIAA for allowing their customers onto peer-to-peer file-swapping networks.

Finally, the Farmers and Miners Bank of Oronogo, Missouri is expected to announce that it will file a claim for damages against the Ford Motor Company, one of whose vehicles was used by Bonnie and Clyde as a getaway car following the robbery of the bank in 1932.

Once I quit answering the phone, things got pretty quiet around here; the hateful little box hardly even rings anymore. When it does, though, the odds are it's something strange.

For instance, why on earth would anyone from ESPN call me? It's represented on the Caller ID screen as belonging to ESPN, and cross-referencing the number places it firmly in Bristol, Connecticut, which is ESPN's home base. (I actually drove past it during last year's World Tour.) The most likely explanation is that someone misdialed by a digit or so, but I somehow find it hard to believe that there are people in a Major Entertainment Organization who dial as sloppily as I do.

There are those who insist that life's obstacles are essential to the development of one's personality. Virginia Postrel, just recovered from IntraLASIK, sees things slightly differently:

I suspect I'd be warped even if I hadn't suffered anything at all, but the idea that we are merely the sum of our experiences has always bugged me, and I'm always delighted to find a reason to reject it.

Well, okay:

Not even I would have had the nerve to use the term "box hedge" in this context. And American television, at least the ad-supported stuff, probably isn't ready for D. H. Lawrence, let alone female hirsuteness. It took Playboy sixteen years (!) to get up enough nerve to display any shrubbery at all.

But back to this Guardian piece by Mimi Spencer:

Eyelash-fluttering is passé? Horrors!

Truth be told, I really don't believe that a guy's level of, um, enlightenment correlates particularly well with his enthusiasm (or lack thereof) for body hair; historically, testosterone has demonstrated itself to be quite indifferent to ostensibly higher brain functions.

I will state for the record that it is most unlike me, upon seeing the drapes, to speculate as to the nature of the carpet. (This is undoubtedly due to the fact that I can imagine no circumstances under which I would be able to make the comparison with any degree of precision.)

Back to Mimi:

Was "Who the hell has time?" one of the options on the questionnaire?

Really, I don't expect anyone to endure the torment of a bikini wax (I assume it's a torment; I'm in no mood to check this empirically), but I wasn't that crazy about Helena Bonham Carter before she played Ari.

Oh, and the Number One sign your next-door neighbor is a Playboy Playmate: Her lawn is completely bare, except for a narrow strip on each side.

It wasn't that long ago that Condé Nast was practically giving away its magazines; I remember renewing Wired for a year for twelve bucks. It probably costs that much to mail the damn thing.

Comes the renewal notice for Vanity Fair: one year $24, two years $42 "Preferred Rate". Preferred by them, maybe. I balked and went to the Web, where their fulfillment house offered two years for $30 if I coughed up my email address.

So, in exchange for a fistful of highly-filterable emails, I'm up twelve dollars. Should you, dear merchant, wish to bribe me similarly, you know where to find me.

Poor Edward. He's been on the job barely a week, and already he has to put up with this:

This woman has issues, you think? You haven't heard the half of it.

And actually, neither has anyone else, as of this writing; Edward, his storyteller instincts honed to a fine edge, is letting the details accumulate rather than jumping to the punchline. Look for the entries titled "Pretention" and read upward.

As always, the Professor has sage advice regarding the destruction of the space shuttle:

Rand Simberg should have something to say later today.

Meanwhile, prayers might seem to be in order.

Update, 10:50 am: Rand Simberg has checked in, and he's calling, once again, for some rethinking of the space program:

When I was growing up in the Jurassic period, it was taken for granted that space flight by 2000 or so would be routine. Obviously it isn't. Would more extensive experience have prevented this disaster? It's hard to say for sure, but it seems reasonable to me that if we'd done a lot more of these flights, we'd have a better grip on what can go wrong and what can be done about it beforehand.

Leaving a "medical facility" in a Baghdad suburb today, Dr Hans Blix cast his eyes downward for a fleeting moment, and in that split second he saw something of grave importance:

His shadow.

There will be, apparently, six more weeks of weapons inspections.

Legendary rock producer/recluse/nudnik Phil Spector was arrested today for allegedly killing a woman in eastern Los Angeles county.

[insert "Unchained Melody" joke here]

Update, 10 pm: I left this in a comment at The Last Page, and after reviewing its contents, I figured I may as well inflict it on you guys as well. The melody, I think, you already know.

I should probably create a "Taste Takes a Holiday" category for this sort of thing. Then again, I'd probably have to pay Laurence Simon a retainer.

From the We Must Protect The Children™ files:

What word is that?

The word is "gun".

"Look out! He's got — um, wait — one of those things, you know?"

(Explanation, for those requiring one:  Mrs. Sousa's Canadian, so it takes four of her letters to equal three of ours.)

If Salon's latest sob story is to be believed, they'll run out of (borrowed) money at the end of February and have to shut down.

I suppose it's too late to ask that the balance of my Premium subscription be transferred to FARK.

(Muchas gracias: Jeff Jarvis.)

Those of us who have seen only the six-hour telecast (which is about 4:08 after you fast-forward through the commercials) from the Westminster Kennel Club show have no idea what goes on for the rest of the time, and if I'm reading Greg Hlatky correctly, we may not want to know:

And there was more room to stretch out, too:

I once went to a show in Oklahoma City, with 14 (I think) rings, and it seemed crowded with only 2000 dogs. (And there's something disconcerting about the phrase "only 2000 dogs," if you ask me.) No carpeting, either; concrete and plasticky mats with a grooved pattern. And the only person who slipped was yours truly, but this was because I was being kneecapped by an exuberant Irish Wolfhound puppy the size of — and comparable in greenness to — the Incredible Hulk. The owner was profusely apologetic, and I wasn't injured, but it was a weird experience just the same.

If you thought area-code changes were fast and furious, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Three of the Baby Bells are complaining that voice-over-IP calling — where you send your voice as bits through the Net — will eat up the pool of available phone numbers even faster than cell phones and pagers and fax.

The most likely scenario, ten years down the pike: area codes grow to four digits, and telephone numbers to eight. We'll get used to it eventually, though I worry about how I'll explain "867-5309" to Jenny's children.

The San Francisco Examiner has "repositioned" itself as a free daily newspaper, and will be distributed only through stores and racks; there will be no more home delivery. This move is widely seen as the last attempt to keep the Examiner alive before it's either folded into the thrice-weekly Independent, also owned by the Fang family, or killed off entirely.

I suspect Daily Pundit Bill Quick will shrug this off, figuring the rival Chronicle, whose columnists and letter-writers are regular targets of his wrath, can't possibly get any worse.

Bleeding Brain proposes some timely adjustments to the periodic table. Francium, a nasty reactive (and radioactive) metal, should be renamed; the proffered suggestion is "Britanium". Double the T (Rule, Brittanium!), and I'll go along with it. (Otherwise people might think you're naming it for Britney Spears, and her area of expertise isn't chemistry, but semiconductor physics.)

Further recommended is the renaming of Europium for "the first astronomer who discovers intelligent life forms in France." This could take a while.

I demur, however, when it comes to the renaming of Berkelium. I have no particular reason to want to commemorate Berkeley, but BB's suggested name — "Blogium" — duplicates an existing element.

That element, of course, is Boron.

Still not good enough a reason to do it in the road.

(Via DiVERSiONZ)

A couple of weeks ago, it was speculated in some circles (yes, even here) that Salon might not make it past the end of February.

Are they counting the hours themselves? Looks like it.

Does this startle you?

I wonder if an entire company has ever up and quit....

Now if someone asked me this:

I'd respond something like "Because if it weren't secret, the place would be crawling with angry environmentalists."

But the question is not for me.

I still have an actual rotary phone. You know, the kind that dials with a dial; you stick your finger in and move it around in circles and...uh, never mind.

This sort of thing would never do for the Oval Office, as The Third Kind's Phil illustrates.

There was yet another ad on the radio this morning for Botox, and after the usual revulsion ("People are injecting a known toxin into their faces? Ewwww....") passed, I started wondering: Can other Nasty Substances be pressed into useful work? Can salmonella help your lawn? Does smallpox have a future as an industrial lubricant? Will anthrax kill termites?

Okay, it's too early in the morning for such things, and anyway it's been more than thirty years since I set foot in the lab. But who back then would have predicted that botulinum would have a commercial application?

Catalog retailer Spiegel — besides its own huge fashion book twice yearly, it also produces the Newport News and Eddie Bauer books — has filed for bankruptcy protection. Spiegel had been ailing for some time and had been delisted from the Nasdaq last year.

Spiegel's glory days, I suspect, coincided with the golden era of TV game shows, to which they often supplied prizes, always identified as coming from "Spiegel, Chicago 9, Illinois." (The arrival of the ZIP code, which rendered it "Spiegel, Chicago, Illinois 60609," seemed to deflate the announcement somewhat.) Their catalogs grew increasingly stylish, even arty, in recent years, and were sold at newsstands.

The effect the company's reorganization will have on director Spike Jonze, heir to the Spiegel empire, is unclear.

To no one's surprise, there's now an entry at petitiononline.com collecting signatures asking for an investigation into the death of Rachel Corrie, last seen meeting the business end of earth-moving equipment in the Gaza Strip.

But what's to investigate? She was playing Human Shield, and this particular role evidently took more out of her than she had intended. Nothing out of the ordinary. If anyone should be investigating this incident, it's the Darwin Awards committee.

In 1991, the Congress decided in enacting the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that unsolicited faxes, since they created not only inconvenience but actual cost to the recipients, could legitimately be legislated out of existence. Subsequently, the state of Missouri filed suit against two junk-fax operations, who claimed that their, um, product was protected by the First Amendment. The US District Court hearing the case sided with the faxers; the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has now reversed that decision.

The pertinent part of the ruling:

I tend to be somewhat uneasy about government involvement in matters of this sort, but in this case I'll make an exception, since someone calling my fax machine uses my consumables, and not all junk-fax purveyors honor do-not-call requests. I'm hoping that this finding by the 8th Circuit will serve as precedent for a national antispam law: I get maybe two dozen junk faxes a year, but I get three dozen spams every day, and I doubt the government would permit me to kill the miserable SOBs who send them.

No news organization, I think, is more reviled in blogdom than Reuters.

As it happens, the Reuters staff isn't too happy either, what with the CEO drawing a bonus of nearly $1 million while leading the company to a staggering $630 million loss. Management, of course, defends this sort of thing.

(Via Romenesko)

Peter Arnett, we are told, is covering the war for MSNBC and for National Geographic Explorer, a narrower range than it sounds. At Regions of Mind, Geitner Simmons reports that Arnett's reportage so far has been, to be charitable, a bit on the soft side:

It seems they could have saved some money by just hiring Robin Leach. He's got lots of free time these days, and who else can intone "Presidential palace" with such gravitas?

It's bad enough that college athletes so often fail to graduate, but what really bugs Ernie Chambers is knowing that the schools and the NCAA tend to look the other way when it happens. The proposed Chambers Rule would address this situation on a game-by-game basis by requiring that the school with the lower graduation rate spot the team with the higher graduation rate one point for each percentage point difference. An example:

I'm not holding my breath waiting for the NCAA to enact the Chambers Rule on a national basis, but I'm willing to bet it would result in more diplomas for these kids in a relatively short time.

Formally, he's Yakee A Dangerous Liaison, but everyone knows him as Danny. He's a three-year-old Pekingese, and he beat out twenty-two thousand competitors to win the top prize at Britain's Crufts dog show, the world's largest. (By comparison, the Westminster Kennel Club show in New York is limited to 2500 dogs.)

Now there's a challenge to his title. The Times is reporting that Danny had had surgical alterations: a facelift. Danny's owners deny any such thing ever took place, but the Kennel Club will investigate.

(A facelift? On a Pekingese? The mind boggles.)

Brigadier General Yossi Kupperwasser of Israeli intelligence has suggested, in a statement to the Knesset, that Iraq may have stashed weapons in Syria, which would explain at least some of the failure of UN weapons inspectors to find them.

According to the general, these weapons might be made available to Hezbollah for use against Israel, although he said the likelihood of a direct attack on Israel remained low.

According to Venomous Kate, Saddam Hussein is very much like the Norwegian Blue, with the possible exception of the plumage.

(Not via InstaPundit)

Saddam is dead, says Glenn Reynolds. While debate continues over whether he's merely dead or really, really most sincerely dead, Reynolds is willing to be put to the test:

To quote the Great One himself: Heh.

As far as the US is concerned, the major airport serving Baghdad is now called "Baghdad International Airport". Your travel agent, assuming he's goofy enough to book you a flight there in the next couple of days, will continue to use the three-letter code "SDA", which presumably is derived from the airport's previous designation as Saddam International.

Will there be an effort to change the code as part of the ongoing process of de-Saddamization? I doubt it. Historically, it's damned difficult to get an airport code modified, even if it truly sucks.

Sarin gas? Nope. That facility near Baghdad was actually a production site for pesticides.

Then again, I was once hosed down with malathion — don't ask — and I assure you, I didn't like it much.

Despite my relatively high proximity to the place, I've never actually set foot in Colorado. And if The Fat Guy has assessed the place accurately, I may not want to:

I'm sure someone (probably in the People's Republic of Boulder) has calculated the optimum backpack-to-Birks ratio.

Connecticut is starting to look better as a vacation destination, despite the distance.

This is probably not the best time in the world to be named "Saddam Hussein".

Especially if you live in Norway, fercryingoutloud.

Saddam Hussein, a young Iraqi Kurd refugee who arrived in Norway in 2001, has petitioned the Oslo government to change his name officially to Dastanse Rasol Hussein.

(Muchas gracias: Jesus Gil, who probably has thought about changing his given name once or twice.)

"Iraq," said Ambassador Mohsen Khalil at an Egyptian news conference, "has now already achieved victory — apart from some technicalities."

Gee, you think this argument will work for the Kansas Jayhawks?

When last we heard about Danny, the Pekingese who took Best in Show at Crufts, there were rumors that the dog had undergone surgery before the event, and the Kennel Club was going to investigate.

They have, and this is the report: yes, there was an operation, but no, it wasn't intended to compensate for a cosmetic defect. The poor dog had a throat problem which was corrected, nothing more.

Greg Hlatky, who's had to spend a few zillion dollars on veterinarians himself over the years, has further details.

Compared to the stereotypical Average American Consumer, I am way low on the Fickle-O-Meter. I still have my 1974 stereo (and quadraphonic!) receiver and speakers, and one magazine subscription that has run since 1978. I've kept the same bank account for twenty-eight years, despite the fact that the bank has changed hands twice during that period. In short, I am generally a loyal customer, provided you don't try to stick it to me — and once you do, you're history.

Relegated to the past tense this afternoon: my long-distance company for the past two decades. (I won't mention any names, but I'm sure they made a mint off me during those months when I was always talking and talking.) Never before have I seen a firm actually lose an electronic payment. My bank was incredulous — "How could they do that?" — but after checking to see that yes, the payment was sent in a timely manner, and no, the recipient never heard of it, they promptly reversed the charge to my account. I wrote the offending firm a check for the entire balance and promptly switched my LD service to someone else offering the same rate. And if you've switched LD services lately, you know that this is not something to be undertaken lightly; anti-slamming rules, to prevent unauthorized changes, make authorized changes exceedingly cumbersome. Still, as the phrase goes, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

And, just incidentally, the new LD provider was happy enough to offer me a better rate than what I'd had or what I'd asked for, once they heard I was leaving That Other Firm.

What the hell? The once-mighty Reuters is now resorting to buying banner ads on BlogSpot?

Okay, it's not like PETA was selling ad space to KFC or anything, but it's still weird. (Click here for a larger version, including the URL of the site where, quite by chance, it was found.)

The lovely Michel no longer has to go through life as a 34A; she has successfully raised $4500 at her Web site to cover the costs of, um, rack renovation.

No word on whether she's going to raise any additional funds for a back brace.

(Via The Register)

Electricity and running water are scarce in postwar Iraq. I know this because NPR has managed to mention this situation on every single program this week except maybe Car Talk. The ill-concealed subtext: we have no idea how these poor people are suffering, since nothing like this ever happens over here.

This conforms to a basic leftist recipe: mix compassion and smugness, beat endlessly, bake halfway. The icing on this particular subtextual cake: it's completely wrong.

I was restocking Coca-Cola this weekend — to the dismay of health-care professionals, dentists, indeed everyone except the supermarket, I go through an amazing quantity of the stuff — when I had the bright idea of checking out the competition. I don't mean Pepsi or Royal Crown; I'm familiar with them, and I grab a bottle of RC now and then to revisit my younger days, when a carton of RC was the favored promotional giveaway by the local Top 40 station and I was desperate for free stuff. (Besides, She Who Is Not To Be Named...but never mind about that.) What I mean are the new Muslim-oriented knockoffs, conceived (I presume) in response to the opening of a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Israel, both of which promise to kick in some of their receipts to, um, causes of interest to their customers. Not being particularly willing to import any of this stuff, I settled for browsing their Web sites.

Qibla-Cola, which pledges on every bottle "10% of profit to 3rd world causes", may seek to position itself as the anti-Coke, but it emulates the Coke model almost entirely: in addition to the flagship brand, there are Qibla 5 (Sprite), Qibla Fantasy (Fanta Orange), and Qibla Water (Dasani), and diet versions of all but the latter. No Qibla al-Pibb yet, but give them time. The Qiblas come in 500ml and two-liter bottles; cans are promised soon. Qibla-Cola's ad flyer (a two-meg PDF file, which strikes me as overkill) proclaims "Time to make a choice!" and presents the slogan: "Liberate your taste." Almost amusing, really.

On the other hand, Mecca-Cola is deadly serious. How serious? Their slogan is in French: "Ne buvez plus idiot, buvez engagé!" And, indeed, the parent company is called Mecca-Cola Beverages France. (They're hiring, incidentally.) Even the English-language pages contain the French slogan, translated as "No more drinking stupid, drink with commitment!" Mecca-Cola kicks in 20 percent of net profit to its causes, half to "Palestinian childhood" (does this include Semtex?) and half to local NGOs in its distribution areas. In a bizarrely Cokelike gesture, their signature product is called Mecca-Cola Classic.

I have, of course, no idea how these concoctions taste, but I suspect they're at least potable, perhaps on par with, say, budget-priced Wal-Mart knockoffs. And it's probably a Good Thing to see Muslim capitalism at work, if only because there are going to be imams here and there who are appalled by the whole concept. Still, pouring money into Palestine is rather like — well, drink enough cola, regardless of brand, and the metaphor becomes obvious.

Licensed to Kill, Inc. is a Virginia-based tobacco company. I think. Certainly that's what it says in their corporate charter. Whether they'll actually market any of their product line remains to be seen: certainly I haven't seen any at the local stores yet. Still, considered solely as a vendor of agitprop, they're already way ahead of those schnooks at the American Legacy Foundation.

I don't know why I didn't think of this:

Actually, I know why I didn't think of that; the slots at 42nd and Treadmill that fit that description are already filled, and have been for some time.

(Via Fark)

You know the joke:

Adjust for inflation: something called QualityWatchWorld spammed me today with an offer of, and I quote, "Italian-crafted Rolex — only $65 - $140!!" This, I presume, would look splendid hanging on my wrist as I drive my Burmese-built BMW over to Philly's Phaux Phurs.

Something called ATWGS is mentioned in the fine print, so I decided to run them through the search engines, and found this, which is a bi