Valentine’s Day has never done a damned thing for me, and this little Oklahoma Gazette item won’t help:

Oh, sure. Drive a steak through my heart, why don’t you?

Every psychedelic record ever made, according to Lileks:

[T]he 60s aren’t seen as The Past; the 60s are a Timeless Vault of Cultural Touchstones, the apotheosis of Western Civ. Sigh. Well. One of the future Diners will take place in the 60s — don’t ask why, it’ll be explained — and I will use many of the gutbustingly dreadful “psychedelic” records I have collected. It’s obvious from Note One that everyone involved in the effort had so much THC in their system you could dry-cure their phlegm and get a buzz off the resin, but instead of having the loose happy ho-di-hi-dee-ho cheer of a Cab Calloway reefer number, the songs are soaked with Art and Importance and Meaning. You can imagine the band members sitting down to hash out (sorry) the overarching themes of the album, how it should like start with Total Chaos man because those are the times in which we live with like war from the sky, okay, and then we’ll have flutes because flutes are peaceful like doves and my old lady can play that part because she like studied flute, man, in high school. The lyrics are all the same: AND THE KING OF QUEENS SAID TO THE EARTH THE HIEROPHANT SHALL NOW GIVE BIRTH / THE HOODED PRIESTS IN CHAMBERED LAIRS LEERED DOWN UPON THE LADIES FAIR / NEWWWW DAAAAY DAWNNNING!

Five years later it was obsolete.

Which argues forcefully for less-portentous fare. Cue Betty, Veronica, Archie and Jughead Ron Dante and Toni Wine:

Sugar, ah honey honey
You are my candy girl
And you’ve got me wanting you.

Wasn’t a sugar cube, either.

Hard to envision this as a dialog box. This was found by a local technician working on the production of recovery disks:

He didn’t mention whether the system complains if you don’t answer quickly enough.

Weaselspeak, says Lynn, has infected weather reporting:

Winter storms are now “winter weather events” or “winter precipitation events”. I don’t know … maybe it’s not weaselspeak; maybe just the opposite. Maybe they’re trying to make it sound bigger and more dramatic.

It’s not just weather, I suspect: everything imaginable is an “event” these days. Is anything less important than an “event for television”? Since most of us get our weather from TV, we inevitably get TV’s inflated sense of self as part of the package.

This is not, of course, to knock the meteorologists themselves:

Actually, I admire the local weather people. They’re always on top things and do an excellent job of informing the public.

But the trappings of television give minor annoyances like this particular “winter weather event” prominence they simply don’t deserve. And I always wonder if fear of litigation is written into the script: it wouldn’t be the first time a weatherman was sued for being wrong — although this guy was actually sued for being overly dramatic.

The late Molly Ivins was the editor of the Texas Observer for six years, and for now they’re devoting the front page of their Web site to her memory.

I remember this passage — it was in her last Observer before moving to The New York Times — and it still sounds wonderful:

I have a grandly dramatic vision of myself stalking through the canyons of the Big Apple in the rain and cold, dreaming about driving with the soft night air of East Texas rushing on my face while Willie Nelson sings softly on the radio, or about blasting through the Panhandle under a fierce sun and pale blue sky… I’ll remember, I’ll remember — sunsets, rivers, hills, plains, the Gulf, woods, a thousand beers in a thousand joints, and sunshine and laughter. And people. Mostly I’ll remember people.

And people will remember Molly, with a smile the size of Texas.

“So this is what being a crack addict is like,” Trini mused as the Woot-Off entered its 64th hour. And it’s a nerve-wracking experience, to say the least. At least I was able to snag a couple of things that sold out quickly.

Whatever my speed, though, it was unfortunately not sufficient to secure for myself a bespoke orange Cadillac.

And after 68 hours, Woot had unloaded more than 52,000 items and taken in something like $2.2 million, which would pay for about one-twentieth of the therapy needed by all the wooters struggling for their very own brick owl cages.

In 1947, a Taipei street vendor and an agent of the government of the Republic of China got into an argument over black-market tobacco, which outraged observers; within a day, said outrage had grown to a full-fledged uprising in the streets, which the government did its best to suppress. Casualty counts vary, but are generally in five figures. The incident was dubbed the 228 Incident, since it began on the 28th of February, now a national holiday in Taiwan.

Not quite a national holiday, but a reasonable cause for celebration, is the Carnival of the Vanities #228, now playing.

Which means I don’t have to:

Troy, a high-income city of just 80,000 people and home to [Michigan's] only Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue department stores, now has another distinction. It is the only non-resort city of its size to have two Hooters.

“You come directly off the interstate and that’s the first thing you come to,” said Wade Fleming, a councilman who voted in June to reject the transfer of a liquor licence to the new Hooters restaurant from a rundown tavern that once operated at the same location. “That starts to define Troy, I think, and that’s not how we’d like to define Troy.”

Hooters executives want just one restaurant in Troy but the company won’t close the old one until it’s allowed to serve alcohol at the new restaurant, which opened Monday on a larger, more visible site.

Critics are concerned that the restaurants’ scantily clad servers don’t fit the image the city seeks to project in its Big Beaver commercial district.

“Oh, indubitably,” as Daffy Duck used to say.

This AutoWeek test for automotive idiocy has its charming moments, but ultimately it’s aimed at the sort of tweedy folk who drive twee English wrecks with Lucas electrics, which describes very few of the people I see on the road around here. At the suggestion of Autoblog, I present herewith a list of indications that you, too, might be an automotive idiot.

1. You react as though you were slapped in the face when someone mentions that your Lexus is after all just a juiced-up Toyota. (Similarly for Acura/Honda and Infiniti/Nissan.)

2. You feel compelled to boast about the superior quality of German engineering while your Jetta is in the shop for the third time in six months.
3. You pretend not to notice that your ride quality has gone to hell since you installed those ridiculous 19-inch wheels.
4. You believe that four-wheel-drive makes you immune to the effects of winter precipitation.
5. You think it’s good for the car to spend ten minutes in the driveway warming up. (It’s not, and what’s more, you’re getting 0 mpg while you’re doing it.)
6. You believe that going 56 in the left lane in a 60 zone is proof that you are a Good Person.
7. Your speed decreases as you move up the onramp.
8. You put a load of stuff in the trunk to improve winter traction — and you have a front-wheel-drive car.
9. You have no idea what you’re going to do now that you’ve missed your exit.
10. You’ll just take this one phone call, it might be important.

I could probably go on all day, but that would take all the fun out of the comments, assuming I get any.

One Gersh Kuntzman (like there’d be two Gersh Kuntzmans, or Kuntzmen, or whatever) complains in the Brooklyn Paper that Miss America always seems to come from some place like, well, Oklahoma:

Look, I’m not going to pick a fight with my friends in Oklahoma. It’s not Miss Oklahoma’s fault that she’s the latest in a long line of airy blondes with middle-aged-lady hairstyles, a talent for baton-twirling and vaguely Southern accents who have hijacked the notion of American beauty.

This year, it was supposed to be different. By sending the raven-haired, tap-dancing, no-nonsense [Bethlene] Pancoast to the contest, New York was saying “no” to the beauty queen-industrial complex that drives this, our nation’s most illustrious pageant.

Unfortunately, the pageant said “no” right back.

Pancoast, of course, is far too gracious to accept my premise that the Miss America Organization is not only biased against beauty, but also against the northeast (which hasn’t won since 1984).

Let the record show that Bethlene Pancoast is indeed hot. (Actually, every woman from Brooklyn I’ve ever met has been hot, but this is too small a sample to be considered Useful Data.)

And I wouldn’t for a moment suggest that there’s any connection between the following isolated factoids:

• The Pageant is carried on Country Music Television.

• Ms Pancoast lives in Brooklyn, one of five boroughs of the City of New York, which has no country-music radio station.

Nor does she herself suspect a fix:

I really don’t think there’s a bias against us. The thing is, pageants are a much bigger deal in the South. They train for them. A lot of girls down there do it from a young age.

I admit here that (1) I haven’t watched one of these things in thirty years or so, inasmuch as they always seem a tad creepy to me, and (2) Kuntzman may well be right about the notion of American beauty having been “hijacked” — certainly the last time I was in Los Angeles, where beauty is a primary currency, all the Major Babes looked more or less alike.

Still: nyah.

Venomous Kate, on Monday:

Yesterday was International Internet-free Day. Ironically, I found out about it via my RSS reader a day late.

Life is like that sometimes, and by “sometimes” I mean “more often than not.”

Then again, I have a serious distrust for anything billed as “International”: if you utter the word “International” in my presence, it will have to be followed by “Harvester” or “House of Pancakes” to merit my attention.

And a painful pas de dix it was for a while, as the Hornets, up seven after the first quarter, were colder than Minnesota winds for the next twenty minutes or so. The Timberwolves, fortunately, were not much better, and by the fourth quarter the Bees had this figured out and pulled away at the end, 90-83.

There’s a tendency to think of Minnesota as Kevin Garnett and however-many dwarves. Not so. Garnett was a tad off his game tonight — for which we thank Tyson Chandler — but Mark Blount, scoring 21 points, took up the slack. And there wasn’t that much slack, either: Garnett had a double-double with 17 points (including a last-minute trey) and 13 rebounds.

The Bees didn’t shoot all that well, either — subtract the two leading scorers (who were 17-22 between them) and you’re looking at 32 percent. They did, however, play some decent D; they pulled off eight steals (four by Chris Paul) and blocked nine shots (four by Tyson Chandler). Chandler continues to get serious numbers: he had 16 points and 18 boards despite having to guard Garnett. CP3 was in good form, rolling up 24 points and eight assists. Devin Brown started at shooting guard in place of Rasual Butler; neither of them had an especially-good night. And Jannero Pargo had another one of his late-game bursts off the bench, scoring 13.

Coming up: three road games, at Houston (Saturday), Sacramento (Monday), and Denver (Wednesday).

You won’t want to stop at one: Faster Than The World is collecting your votes for Worst Song of the Seventies through early Sunday.

I am happy to note that no fewer than four items from my list of regular barf inducers made it to the ballot.

As of this morning, there are a bit over 45,000 search results for “vista sucks”, and you can be sure this did not go overlooked in Cupertino. In my mailbox this morning:

Go beyond Vista.

It’s time to get a Mac. If you’re thinking of upgrading to Vista, you’ll probably need a new computer. Why not get a Mac? It’s simpler, more secure, and way more fun. And it works with the stuff you already have, like printers and cameras. So before you upgrade anything, you owe it to yourself to check out a Mac.

I don’t need a new computer, and I’m not thinking of upgrading to Vista, but sooner or later Microsoft will stop patching the leaks in XP — and that, I think, will be the optimum time to move.

I admit up front that there are streaking incidents on my CV — no actual arrests or anything — and that today I am older and wiser and, most important, slower.

I must emphasize, though, that those schemes were better thought out than this one at an Arkansas IHOP:

A 21-year-old Fayetteville man stripped down and made a run for it. He reached a nearby car wash, but it wasn’t hard for police to follow the barefoot prints in the snow.

Most of the restaurant guests laughed, but the restaurant manager failed to see the humor of the prank and called police.

Officers found the shivering man hiding behind a nearby car a short time later. Police asked the man how he intended to get his clothing from inside the business and how he expected to get home after running from the restaurant. The man said he did not think that far in advance, police said.

“I’m sure it sounded like a good idea at the time,” says Rita.

Tax returns completed and submitted. (This is actually two weeks ahead of last year’s submission.)

Elapsed time: 50 minutes, which would have been less were it not for some particularly dumb things I did (read: “misplace list of donations” and “close browser at inappropriate time”), and an internal argument over whether I should revive the “1040 or Fight” title for this post.

As before, I used an online third-party filing service; I am persuaded that it’s not possible to create one that has a completely un-clunky user interface so long as the forms themselves are discouragingly convoluted. They extended me some sort of loyalty discount for using them again, which didn’t hurt. (I am insufficiently broke to get one of the full freebies, it appears.) I’ve printed out copies for reference, and now I don’t have to think about it for another year.

First quarter: cold shooting, hot tempers. Rockets point guard Rafer Alston and Hornets small forward Desmond Mason were sent home after some harsh words, eight minutes in. The score at the time was 9-8 Houston, and the quarter ended with the Bees up 17-15. Second quarter: cooler heads, still cold shooting. Score at the half: Hornets 33, Rockets 30. In the second half, things started to open up a bit, but they opened wider for the Hornets, who led by as many as nineteen points and won by thirteen, 87-74; it was only the seventh loss at home for the Rockets.

No, I wasn’t expecting this either. Yeah, Yao Ming was inactive, but Dikembe Mutombo has proven himself worthy at the post; yet Mutombo, while he got six rebounds, scored nothing. Tracy McGrady poured in a respectable 18 points, but nothing much else seemed to work for the Rockets.

With Mason gone, the Hornets’ bench had to work that much harder, and tonight they did, combining for 38 points: Bobby Jackson and Jannero Pargo scored 12 each. Chris Paul picked up 12 points and served up nine dimes; Devin Brown, in his second start as shooting guard, had 18 points, five assists and seven boards. Tyson Chandler? Yep, another double-double: 11 points, 12 rebounds.

No games tomorrow — supposedly there’s some big football game or something — and the road trip resumes in Sacramento Monday.

Okay, a screen for your projection TV is no big deal, even at 90 inches diagonal.

But an inflatable screen for your projection TV: well, there’s no middle ground. Either this is exactly the sort of thing you’re looking for, or you wouldn’t buy this in a million years even if you won the lottery and your significant other demanded that you put a home theatre system out by the pool you’re supposed to put in.

I tend to lean toward the latter, if only because Woot buyers are the fastest frickin’ clickers in the online shopping universe, and it took almost nine minutes to log one sale. (As of now, twelve minutes later, there’s no second sale.)

Update, 10 am: It appears they’ve now moved four of them. Perhaps this is their way of making sure they have nothing to do while the game is on.

What are the odds on a favorable outcome? If you believe the Magic 8-Ball^®, about even.

(Via Vincent Ferrari.)

Forget all these honey-flavored breakfast cereals: Dave is holding out for steak-flavored Cheerios.

(Yes, he posted this before, and I mentioned it then. The question remains: will someone have to bundle up in the dead of night to pick up an emergency half-gallon of Worcestershire sauce?)

The Fitworld (now that’s a name) gym in Heteren, the Netherlands, starting the fourth of March, will offer Naked Sundays for clients who wish to work out without that tedious workout gear.

The major worry seems to have been addressed:

Nude exercisers would be required to put towels down on weight machines and to use disposable seat covers while riding bikes. All machines would be cleaned and disinfected afterward. “We clean them every day anyway,” [said owner Patrick de Man].

It might not be a bad idea to offer really dark glasses to the customers.

This weekend has proved to be somewhat less unproductive than I had anticipated: not only did I finish off my tax returns, I got the car washed, the kitchen restocked, a new mix CD assembled, two blogs (not this one) updated to WordPress 2.1, and three loads of laundry done.

In other words, I did just about everything but, um, post.

About five thousand people land on this site every week. Sometimes it’s deliberate; sometimes they’re just looking for something. And sometimes the something they’re looking for is worth mentioning here.

god of refrigeration:  Hail to thee, O mighty Freon. R-134 is but a pretender to thy mighty throne.

the river that shares its name with the city of san francisco:  Hint: it’s not the Columbia.

hal cash atm:  ”I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t allow you to overdraw your account.”

gamma girls:  Do they take beta blockers?

which females has the nicest and biggest breats [sic] according to astrology?  Gemini. Think “twins.”

potable cd-r recorder:  I find that a little hard to swallow.

what does a woman with 36B bust look like:  Migod, you’d think they were rare or something.

compelling reason for your marriage to be unpublicized:  You’re marrying Paris Hilton.

Chance of dying at 49:  In my case, zero.

is this a lasting treasure, or just a moment’s pleasure?  If I tell you now, will you promise not to ask again?

Is it okay to use an epilator on the face?  If you don’t mind feeling like you’ve been smooching a Weed Eater, sure.

women as doormats:  No way to get them to look up to you, believe me.

clueless men what women want:  I don’t claim to know what women want, but I suspect it’s not clueless men.

zip code 78666 satan:  Um, no, San Marcos.

impacts of improper disposal of chicken:  Imagine a giant beak pecking at a face — forever….

As conspiracy theories go, this has to be one of the best:

[T]he Patriot Act is a government plot written by the credit-card companies to force all Americans into eternal debt slavery. My eureka moment (or “awakening,” in conspiracy-theorist terms) came when I tried opening a savings account at a local bank.

I already have a savings account, of course, but I’m fed up with my current bank because they keep making bonehead mistakes that take forever to fix. So I figured I’d switch to another one just down the street. Unfortunately, it’s illegal for me to open a new bank account right now because I don’t have the required paperwork. Specifically, the Patriot Act requires a person opening a savings account to have two forms of ID but I only had one with me — a driver’s license.

Here’s where it gets convoluted:

[F]or a second form of identification, I can use a credit card. So can you. We’ve all seen news stories about toddlers or housepets being issued credit cards in their names. Hell, I once had a VISA gold card issued to me and maxed out before I even knew I had it.

Legally, I need no proof of identity to get into credit-card debt, yet credit-card debt (or at least acquiring the means to get into it) counts as one of the forms of ID the government requires before I’m allowed to save money rather than owe it.

This sounds like a good argument for a Swiss bank account. Then again, if you want to deal with, say, Credit Suisse, you might as well go to Singapore.

Believe me, I know from this:

One of the more successful methods, different from mine, that I observe is to refuse to have a real love and/or relationship. I know several people who don’t date at all and don’t want to. They have their imaginary self, imagined love and their memories. That’s it. They never have the rush of a new relationship and a new sex partner nor the high of feeling confident and fulfilled, but they never suffer the fiery hell of a relationship in flux and shambles, leading to a pit of burning lost love excrement up to one’s nose. They “win” by not playing. In my opinion, they have put life on hold and in my opinion this is a fate worse than death. It’s also the option I believe I am most likely to choose.

It is not a fate worse than death, though it pretty much guarantees you an empty bed, which some people consider the practical equivalent thereof. Me, I am unwilling to be led around by glandular secretions.

I look at it this way: without this particular complication, I am managing to keep my emotional curve just slightly above the X-axis. Why would I want to drop back into the bottom of the graph in the hopes of an occasional half-hearted caress?

Many years ago, for the OAQ File, I wrote that “I will encounter someone of prodigious desirability who wouldn’t have me on a bet.” I consider this a hazard of life, an unavoidable hazard at that, and indeed I was correct in this prediction. If anything, I underestimated the number of such encounters; if there is any contentment to be derived from having known it all along, I herewith lay claim to that contentment.

I suspect I’ll be addressing similar subjects a number of times this month, inasmuch as this month is February, which contemporary culture has inexplicably chosen to dedicate to lovers. By the mercy of the Almighty and the wisdom of the Caesars, it is the shortest month.

Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune analyzes the Oklahoma City NBA situation:

The problem for the Sonics, now with new owners from Oklahoma City, is trying to keep a low profile while lobbying for public money for a new arena (fat chance). If that were somehow approved, they’d keep the franchise in Seattle because it would be a guaranteed financial winner. But if not, the way would be open for the franchise to relocate to Oklahoma City because the Hornets have announced an NBA-pushed return to New Orleans.

This will bring back memories of the attendance figures for the Rochester Royals. The rumor is the league wants to keep Oklahoma City open for the new Sonics owners. That would give the Hornets no place to return if New Orleans cannot support a team (they were last in attendance before the hurricane). That would then put the pressure to sell on maverick Hornets owner George Shinn, not an NBA favorite, thus giving new Hornets owners a chance to go to Seattle if the Sonics leave, or swap with the Seattle owners so they could relocate a franchise to their home in Oklahoma City.

The theory is the league doesn’t want Shinn continuing to profit from mismanagement and then moving and would make it hard for him to return to Oklahoma City. And you thought those Raymond Chandler novels were hard to follow.

The Rochester Royals, you may remember (I didn’t), drifted to Cincinnati, then to Kansas City (as the Kings), and ended up in Sacramento.

“Oh, you have to have the printer plugged in to install the ink cartridges?”

Duh Scale (1 to 5): 4.5

Excuse me while I guffaw at this:

The results from this study suggest there is a relationship between typeface selection and the reader’s perception of an email. The email presented in the typeface that was judged in previous studies to be low in appropriateness for email (Gigi) was perceived to be less stable, less practical, more rebellious, and more youthful than either Calibri (highly appropriate) or Comic Sans (moderately appropriate). This finding suggests that documents presented in typefaces that are viewed as less appropriate are seen as less serious and less professional in nature. The appropriateness of the typeface also affected the perception of the email author in that the email using Gigi created a perception of an author who is less professional, less trustworthy, and less mature. Finally, the typeface that was lower in appropriateness led participants to conclude that the author was a lower level trainee employee. When choosing a typeface for a document, the level of appropriateness should be taken into account in order to avoid sending unintentional messages.

Apart from the question of what there could possibly be on God’s green earth for which Comic Sans is “moderately appropriate,” I plan to ignore this entirely; anything you get from me will be in your mail client’s default typeface because I think HTML-encoded mail is an abomination unto the Lord and a pain in the ass generally. With the exception of one monthly newsletter which is sent to me as a Word document (which I open in OpenOffice.org because I refuse to install Microsloth Office), I read everything in plain text; if nothing else, it creates the illusion of less spam.

(Via Swirlspice.)

The former Rochester Royals are quite at home in the California capital: the Kings jumped out to a 40-24 lead after the first quarter, 63-50 at the half, and while the Hornets drew to within one in the fourth quarter, the Kings held on for a 104-99 win.

Sacramento had six players in double figures, led by Ron Artest with 21; Mike Bibby dropped in 19. The Kings shot over 70 percent in the first quarter and were still over 50 percent at the end.

The Bees had some serious offense: Chris Paul got 24 points, Desmond Mason 17, David West 16. The difference? Both teams made 16 free throws, but the Hornets missed eight — and the Kings missed only two.

To Denver, for a round with the Nuggets on Wednesday; the Bucks will be in Oklahoma City on Thursday.

This one was swiped from Suburban Lesbian.

1. The phone rings. Who are you hoping it is? You, of course.

2. When shopping at the grocery store, do you return your cart? Always.
3. In a social setting, are you more of a talker or a listener? I start out listening, and maybe talk towards the end.
4. If abandoned alone in the wilderness, would you survive? For a few minutes, anyway.
5. Do you like to ride horses? Haven’t done it enough to develop a taste for it.
6. Did you ever go to camp as a kid? Once, but it wasn’t my camp.
7. What was your favorite board game as a kid? Scrabble, because I hardly ever lost.
8. If a sexy person was pursuing you, but you knew he/she was taken what would you do? I can’t imagine this happening — the first part of it, anyway.
9. Are you judgmental? Extremely. Also unapologetic.
10. Would you date someone with different religious beliefs? That depends. Is she hot? *
11. Are you continuing your education? Not in the formal sense.
12. Do you know how to shoot a gun? Adequately, but not much better than that.
13. If your house was on fire, what’s the first thing you’d grab? Am I inside the house or outside when it happens?
14. How often do you read books? Just about every day.
15. Do you think more about the past, present or future? Of course I do.
16. What is your favorite children’s book? I dunno. I was reading ostensibly-grownup stuff in elementary school.
17. How tall are you? 1.82 meters.
18. Where is your ideal house located? It’s probably this one once I get it, um, customized.
19. Last person you talked to? Trini.
20. When was the last time you were at Olive Garden? 1985, I think.
21. What are your keys on your key chain for? Things with locks, obviously.
22. What did you do last night? Listened to a basketball game on the radio.
23. Where is your current pain at [sic]? Right knee.
24. Do you like mustard? In small doses.
25. Do you like your mom or dad? Well, yeah, but they’re both gone now.
26. How long does it take you in the shower? About five minutes, unless it’s summertime and I’m cleaning up after yard work, in which case more like 10.
27. What movie do you want to see right now? Idiocracy, which I just got on DVD but haven’t opened yet.
28. Do you put lotion on your dog or cats? Not applicable, but Huh?
29. What did you do for New Year’s? Slept through as much of it as possible.
30. Do you think The Grudge was scary? Didn’t see it.
31. Do you own a camera phone? No.
32. What’s the last letter of your middle name? Y.
33. Who did you vote for on American Idol? Never actually watched it.

* SL had exactly the same answer to this one.