Space is precious in Japan, which has five times the population of Texas in about half the area. It stands to reason, therefore, that if anyone built a working farm in a bank vault, it would be the Japanese:

Though walled in from sunlight, weather and geology, it’s unbelievably verdant. Tomatoes, lettuce, strawberries, and other fruits and vegetables, as well as flowers and herbs, are grown in an area about 1,000 square meters. There is even a terraced rice paddy.

A thousand square meters is about the size of my yard, so this must be one heck of a bank vault. Some background:

The hi-tech vegetable patch, called Pasona O₂, is located in the Otemachi Nomura Building in the Tokyo district of Otemachi, where many major corporations have their headquarters. The building, which has 27 floors above ground and five below, used to be home to Tokyo Life Insurance and Resona Bank (formerly Daiwa Bank). But these firms have left, and office space in the building is now leased to several different companies. This project was launched by the temporary staffing agency Pasona Inc. When Pasona moved its headquarters to this building, it decided to lease the second basement floor — formerly the Resona Bank vault — and turn it into a vegetable garden.

In the absence of sunlight, the plants are sustained by artificial light from light-emitting diodes, metal halide lamps, and high-pressure sodium vapor lamps. The temperature of the room is controlled by computer, and the vegetables are grown by a pesticide-free method in which fertilizer and carbon dioxide are delivered by spraying. Hydroponics, in which plants are grown in water and hardly any soil is used, is one of the methods of cultivation used in the facility. Technical assistance in setting up the indoor farm was provided by Professor Masamoto Takatsuji of Tokai University, who is researching such projects, which are known as “plant factories.”

All this high-tech stuff, they hope, will attract young people to agriculture. Maybe it will work. I have no idea whether you can keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen the Ginza, but I have to admit, I like the idea, even if my own approach to growing stuff is decidedly low-tech.

(Via Popgadget.)

As suggested by TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott:

[NBA players] talk about a massive spectrum of things, of course, from AAU to Zydrunas Ilgauskas. But sprinkled in there among the things players talk most frequently — you hear it again and again — is the Cheesecake Factory.

Nowadays, if ever someone tells me that they bumped into an NBA player out in public, I like to stop them mid-sentence and guess: “Was it at the Cheesecake Factory?” It can make you look like a freaking genius, because once in a while, you’ll be right. (If that doesn’t work, I ask if it was at P.F. Chang’s. Those two together account for a ridiculous percentage of player sightings nationwide.)

And, well, we already have both a Cheesecake Factory and a P. F. Chang’s.

We’re already well into the inevitable Diablo Cody backlash, but she hasn’t worn out her welcome with me yet, as witness this snippet from her Oscar weekend:

Sunday morning: Five people arrive at my hotel room. One to coat my fingernails with death-proof acrylic, one to sand my hooves, one to make sure I get the dress on properly, one to prep my face for the merciless HD telecast, and one to make my self-cut, home-dyed hair look pretty. At one point, they’re all on me at once, assessing their respective sectors with identical furrowed brows. Then the dress comes on, and it’s slit so high you can see my utilitarian flesh-colored thong. Unfortunately, this is the Oscars and not a stripper convention. (I’ve been to both!) The stylist’s assistant begins stitching the slit while the makeup artist frantically sponges concealer onto my scraped knees and bruised calves. I am not merely flawed; I am one giant flaw that has manifested itself as an ambulatory being.

I have no doubt that other attenders and contenders have to endure much the same thing. However, I can’t imagine them telling the story quite this way; surely none of the red-carpet regulars would describe a dress, even a dress from Dior fercrissake, as “the Frock of Overexposure.”

Originally the operation at 42nd and Treadmill consisted of half a single building, but over the years it’s expanded to fill up the rest of that building plus one formerly-unrelated structure next door. (We’re not recession-proof, but we’re close.)

Some years back, house wrens conducting reconnaissance in the area discovered that the underside of the second building’s full-width metal awning would accommodate their particular nesting style with ease, and gradually they took over the place, defending the premises with great vigor and carefully disassembling the nests before migration, lest some interlopers take over.

A few birds had been wandering in over the last couple of weeks, but yesterday they were back on site in full force. About a dozen were perched on the edge of the building like small grey gargoyles, standing watch; others were gathering straw for nest construction; still others occupied the bank of trees along where the curb would be if we had a curb, presumably to make sure no one else got the idea of settling in this zone.

This is, I assume, pretty much the inevitable result of adaptation to one’s habitat: these are urban birds with attitude to match, the stereotypically-meekest dove exhibiting pigeon levels of intransigence. I’ve seen conflicts in my own back yard before: blue jays ruled the place for a year or two, then moved on, but paid a visit the following spring, only to be given the Evil Eye by newly-resident robins. Even the local crows, which have a considerable size advantage and a reputation for deviousness, make a point of steering clear of the wrens.

Today’s assignment: burn up a gift card at the supermarket. Difficulty: I need fruits and vegetables, which don’t always come neatly prepackaged and/or prepriced.

Last time I was faced with a dilemma of this sort, I wound up sacrificing $1.60, so this time I vowed to do better, and to do the math in my head. The problem, of course, comes with the unofficial scale in the produce department, which is accurate to approximately zero significant digits.

And I did better, using up all but thirty-nine cents. It occurred to me that if I’d gotten one additional banana I might have come closer, though two might have put me over the mark. Yes, it would have been simpler to go over and pay the difference in cash, but that’s not how I roll.

There’s a service called Gift Card Giver which takes these unused balances and puts them to good use, but they require that you mail in the actual card, and I am for some reason disinclined to use a 41-cent stamp to send off a 39-cent gift card.

Maine, meanwhile, is considering a measure that would mandate cash refunds on balances of $5 or less. A representative of the Hannaford supermarket chain argued before the state’s Judiciary committee that such a rule “would negatively affect the economics of the gift card program,” which qualifies, I think, as duh-worthy.

“Don’t you think the world needs more pink/orange/red shoes?” asks Phlegmfatale, and well, it’s hard to make a serious judgment call from this angle (damn camera phones anyway), but the color scheme is kinda neat — she also has a pair in “dove gray/periwinkle/oxblood” — and the shape is playful without being completely absurd. It’s Gorgeous by John Fluevog, and, well, let the wearer tell the tale:

This is another pair of 3″ heels I can stand and walk comfortably in all day long. I highly recommend, if you don’t mind a shoe that’s a little on the clunky side. I really should pick them up in black myself, while they’re still available. I keep waiting for him to do a new run of phosphorescent shoes…

The heel is a bit unconventional-looking, I suppose, but there’s a lot to be said for support, and as Fluevog says, this shoe “adds a half inch to your height without looking too chunky,” which is something you can’t expect from the all-too-ubiquitous platform. And the idea of keeping the design fresh with limited-edition color schemes somehow appeals to my sense of continuity: after all, I once strolled into a New Balance store and requested the most current version of an existing shoe I’d gotten used to.

eBay item: “You are bidding on a framed genuine FAKE birth certificate of Barack Hussein Obama. Did I say that his middle name is Hussein? I did? Okay. Here is the fun part. Because it is apparently against the rules to use the middle name of HUSSEIN, the winning bidder will have the opportunity to choose a new middle name to replace HUSSEIN. It will be inserted in the FAKE certificate. We can begin using the name, and then we won’t have to worry about being arrested by the DemocRAT PC police for using the actual real name HUSSEIN.”

Top Ten likewise-unacceptable middle names for Barack [           ] Obama:

10. Koresh

9. Diane
8. Jacob Jingleheimer
7. Amadeus
6. Tuvok
5. Ringling
4. Anakin
3. Medici
2. Kuhn
1. Insein

(Swiped from Fausta by way of E. M. Zanotti.)

I admit to having had a qualm or two about the teensy smart fortwo, inasmuch as the sort of high-density traffic mazes in which they’d seem to flourish hardly exist out here on the Plains.

Now that they’ve arrived here, a happy owner reports:

We just took delivery today. And we are very impressed. I live in Oklahoma City and the Smart dealer is located in Tulsa, which is about 100 miles. The drive back home was perfect. The car had no problem with keeping up with traffic, which on the turnpike speeds average 75-80mph. 80mph was not an issue to keep up. When we originally test drove the car during the tour, the cars seemed a little bouncy and jerky. Our cabrio is very solid and smooth. Top up on the highway, there is very little wind noise. Top down is stupendous. And the premium sound system ROCKS!!! All in all we couldn’t be happier with our purchase. And for the days driving, after taking it on a tour to friends to show off, we averaged 44 mpg. WOOHOO! One other thing to point out, the attention the car gets is insane. I felt like I was in a parade on the highway. I have never had so many people waving and smiling and pointing. Some even snapped pictures.

The automated-manual transmission, however, is not your standard slushbox by any means:

This is not a typical automatic that we are used to in the US. If you drive it like one, the shifting is sluggish. However! If, when it comes time for it to shift, let off the gas just a little and it’s quite smooth. In other words, you drive it like a typical standard transmission, you just don’t have a clutch to push in. My dealer instructed on this at delivery and it took a little getting used to. But after a full day of driving you don’t even think about it.

Still, every car has its quirks, and this particular quirk doesn’t seem severe. Traffic on the Turner does move routinely at around 80 mph — posted speed limit is 75 — and I figure if the sheer volume of eighteen-wheelers didn’t prove intimidating, smart should have no trouble selling a bunch of these little darbs here in the Sooner State.

Timely advice from Tamara K.:

Folks, we have a serious perception problem in this country. A bunch of people seem to think we have “leaders” instead of “representatives”. Bosses and not employees.

Folks, we hired them. We pay them. They work for you, not the other way around. If you are sitting around and waiting for leadership from this collection of do-gooders, used car salesmen, and former Student Body Treasurers, you might as well wait for Santa while you’re at it.

These are the people we hire to schlep out our legislative trash in Washington, DC because we’re too busy being, you know, productive to handle scutwork like that. We’ve given them a metaphorical Roto-Rooter and asked them to keep the navigable waterways clear; handed them a calculator and asked them to keep an eye on the national checking account. And, like a sixteen-year-old left home with a simple list of chores who instead gets into the liquor cabinet and invites her friends over for a party, look what’s happened to them.

Similarly, P. J. O’Rourke: “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

Folks, if you want “Political Leaders” you’re living in the wrong country; the closest provision we have for a “Political Leader” in the Constitution is the guy we hire to mind the Army & Navy and shake hands with foreigners for us. This is the country where we’re supposed to be leading ourselves, not waiting for solutions to be handed down from on high. Your representatives are supposed to be representing you, hence the name. They are not the legislative equivalent of grenades, where you pull the electoral pin, lob them towards Washington, and hope they go off the way you expected.

During those days when I was expected to be able to know how to hurl those little pineapples, I learned: “Once you pull the pin, Mr Grenade is no longer your friend.” As evidence of this, each and every day the Federal Register accumulates more and more shrapnel.

Of course, there are those who don’t wish to lead themselves, and will wait for solutions to be handed down. A small percentage of them become clever, thereby becoming the most dangerous of creatures.

“Watch the parking meters,” adds Mr. Zimmerman.

Not the sort that lures men to their deaths, but the sort that’s supposed to motivate you to prevent your own. The sound came roaring in at 7:49, followed closely by the howling of gale-force winds. A tornado warning was issued for the area around State Fair Park, about three miles south of here; while no actual funnels were seen, there was enough of the telltale rotation on the radar to justify going into hiding for a few minutes. The warning has just expired for my part of town, but continues on the east side as the storm tracks eastward. We continue to get lots of wind and rain.

Update, 7 am: The office, of course, is flooded.

Ho-hum: another week, another perfunctory examination of the logs, another dozen or so goofy search strings. But you’re used to it, right?

database long island women:  Is this a database of women on Long Island, or a database of island women with, um, length?

yogurt psychological description:  At least nobody’s accusing it of being multicultural.

floor wax bob vila:  Why wait until he’s on the floor? Wax him now.

robot tattoo:  And you said you’d never need that extra set of drill bits.

“who needs brains when I’ve got these”:  Trust funds, right?

what is the reason customer unsatisfied with PROTON:  Some people just don’t take a positive charge very well.

matt drudge “not on radio”:  And they say there’s no God.

How the hell do I program this keyless entry remote for my 2003 Park Ave.?  You’re asking me? Do I look like I own a Buick? (Don’t answer that.)

my Scion Dealer insists I am loaded:  Maybe it’s because you keep showing up with a keyless-entry remote for a Buick.

spirits watch us masturbate:  At least they don’t distract us.

how to modify 2007 honda accord driver seat to accomadate [sic] someone with long legs:  Um, slide it back, maybe? Unless you’re Nadja Auermann.

moist turtle’s gilbert gottfried:  This is the first I’ve heard tell of Gilbert Gottfried having any effect on amphibians.

cooked squirrel testicles:  At least they aren’t raw, though I can’t address the question of moistness.

Cruex Jacob disease mad cow disease:  Um, that’s Creutzfeldt. Cruex is what you use for mad jock disease.

With steak prices well into double digits, one local supermarket is fighting back with unit pricing: they have single ribeyes and New York strips, smallish ones, for a flat $5. I had them weigh one for me: just under nine ounces. This works out to around $9 a pound, which is two or three bucks cheaper than the stuff in the display case, and it’s a reasonable size for a single person; the ones they usually cut on site tend to be 12-14 ounces, a bit more than I need at dinner time, and end up costing around ten dollars apiece. I’m not so adept that I can guess the weight of any given cut on the first try, but I’m not doing the strictest portion control either, so a little bit of variation either way won’t bother me greatly.

There are, often as not, better deals to be had by buying the so-called Family Packs; but I have never quite warmed to the necessity of unwrapping the big package and rewrapping each individual piece separately.

Volkswagen Group is facing a takeover by Porsche:

German carmaker Porsche wants a majority share in Volkswagen. During an extraordinary meeting on Monday, the company’s supervisory board gave the green light for the acquisition of shares. The company’s chairman, Wendelin Wiedeking, has been given authority to start the steps necessary to get regulatory and antitrust approval for the share purchase. “Our aim is to create one of the strongest and most innovative automobile alliances in the world, which is able to measure up to the increased international competition,” Wiedeking said.

In the past two and a half years, Porsche has gradually built up a 31-percent voting stake in VW Group, a process helped by the European Union’s finding that Germany’s so-called “Volkswagen Law,” which prevented more than 20 percent of the company of being acquired, thereby protecting the interests of the German state of Lower Saxony, which also owned 20 percent, was inconsistent with EU rules.

There are, of course, strong historical ties. Dr Ferdinand Porsche, perhaps influenced by a design by Josef Ganz, is credited with the creation of Volkswagen’s Beetle; the Porsche family still pulls the strings in Stuttgart. Wiedeking has brought billions of euros into Porsche’s coffers, mostly by broadening the product line and annoying the hell out of Porsche purists.

Depending on whether you’re counting revenues or employees, VW Group is between 15 and 20 times the size of Porsche, so this is a case of Jonah getting a big fish dinner. I have to wonder if maybe, somewhere down the line, Ford might be swallowed up by Mazda.

Seen in the Border Mail by Ray Dixon, this odd little advertisement:

Mr Dixon attempts to explain:

What is a “genuine” nudist?
Someone who not only likes to parade around in the nude in front of other people, but who is also not just trying to show off his or her prowess. Think of the not so well-endowed, they MUST be genuine nudists to go around showing off what they haven’t got.

What is the ad really selling?
I think they might be trying to find recruits for a new super competition of nude volleyball, which is tipped to be played at this year’s Beijing Olympics.

I suspect Mr Dixon is giving us the Trans-Hemisphere Chain Pull with this latter, but I have to admit, I’m amused by the concept: wouldn’t that just frost NBC’s, um, bottom line?

As expected, it’s from Nine Inch Nails.

Ghosts I-IV, a collection of 36 instrumental tracks, is the new release from the no-longer-under-contract Trent Reznor, and he’s offering it in a variety of formats:

NIN has supplied five extensive ways to get Ghosts I-IV. For free you can download the first nine tracks, known as Ghosts I. A $5 fee gets you all 36 tracks as well as a 40-page informational PDF as a digital download. A $10 two-CD set is the third option. Also available is a $75 deluxe edition package that includes the audio CDs, a data DVD, Blu-ray disc, hardcover slipcase and more. Finally, the band offers a $300 ultra package that includes everything — the deluxe edition as well as four LP180 vinyl discs and two Giclee prints all signed and numbered by NIN frontman Trent Reznor. The latter two packages won’t ship until May 1 and the ultra package is limited to 2500 pieces. The three CD packages also include an immediate digital download of the entire album.

The download, incidentally, comes in your choice of three flavors:

• 320-kbps MP3s (LAME encoded)

• FLAC lossless
• Apple’s own lossless format

The band is also throwing in liner notes (a 40-page PDF file) plus wallpapers, icons, and similar effluvia.

I may have to grab this myself, though I’m wavering on whether I want to wait for the CDs or spend half as much on just the FLACs. (Should I need MP3s, I keep a LAME encoder handy.) If you’re keeping track of Halo numbers, this is number 26.

Update: I’m ordering the CDs. Ship date is 8 April; shipping charge is $6.99.

Further update: The downloadable stuff didn’t, due to a server error; I’ve left an email to the proprietors.

And when there is March, there must be Madness, right?

Here’s the pitch:

Ogle Madness is our very own gimmicky spin-off of the NCAA March Madness tournament bracket. Basically, we took 65 of Oklahoma’s best and brightest “celebrities,” and seeded and placed them into four regions. Starting Monday, we will post match-ups and let our readers vote on which celeb they want to advance to the next round. The celeb with the most votes advances, while the loser is sent home. The tournament will continue until the championship game on April 21st, where Oklahoma’s top celebrity will be crowned.

And so it goes, exactly the way you’d think it would. Which leaves one question unanswered: why did they put “celebrities” in scare quotes?

The answer lies deep within the bracket diagram itself. [Link goes to PDF file.] There’s no particular argument with TV eye candy and fantasy figure Amy McRee as the first seed in the Midwest, and she should easily dispose of #16, whoever it is who picks out Bob Mills’ sweaters; but for some reason #5, yet another example of TV eye candy — this one a guy — has been put up against an #11 seed who not only lacks instant recognition, but who isn’t even slightly presentable. I have reference to, um, me.

The other #11 seeds look like this:

East: Tall Paul
Paul’s specialty: protecting all the things you own, like cars and trucks and mobile homes. And you probably know his phone number, too. (I’m in the book, but big whoop.)

West: Grant Johnston
Another semi-cute TV type, this one in front of the Doppler. (I don’t think I’ve ever actually Doppled.)

South: Aubrey McClendon
Just about everyone in Seattle reviles him, which I suppose means he can’t be all bad. (He makes more money than Tall Paul and I put together, too.)

Things which bother me:

• I can’t possibly win in the first round, because the sort of people who would vote in this thing will see the possibility of a Tyler-on-Tyler matchup in the second round.

• Surely more than 65 people in this state are more famous than I.
• Chuck Norris (born in Ryan, Oklahoma) doesn’t enter brackets. He bends brackets.

Things which don’t bother me:

• The definition of “celebrity,” once stretched enough to include the likes of me, is now so debased as to be essentially meaningless, giving me hope that eventually we will have role models based on something other than mere visibility.

• At least I’m seeded higher than Hinder.

The voting for the 64th slot begins Wednesday.

“House Rules Committee Advances Dank Reform Bill.”

You gotta admit, it takes a pretty strong committee to craft a reform bill that’s really, truly dank.

Back in the Pleistocene era, McGehee was getting a lot of traffic from people who were hoping to find raunchy pictures of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who were then (1) underage and (2) pretty close to household words.

Now that the Dualstar Damsels are neither jailbait nor in demand, you’d think this sort of prurient interest would have died down. Hugh Marston Hefner (let’s see if anyone complains about his middle name) begs to differ:

After understandably courting Lindsay Lohan to pose for Playboy following her NY Mag shoot … the robed golden oldie has now set his sights on none other than the collective 100 pound twosome that are Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. Having previously begged the then-plumpish-sized twins on their 18th birthday, Hef is still under the impression that “the twins are every young man’s fantasy,” according to a source at Ace Showbiz. Call us crazy, but last time we checked, women with the bodies of 12 year-old boys who dress like grannies ready to hop the bus to Atlantic City don’t exactly set men’s pants ablaze.

I know from nothing about young men’s fantasies, but there are people, Hef among them, who believe with all their flinty little hearts that there is nothing sexier than twins, even if said twins look like the Smith Brothers (Trade and Mark).

Unless, of course, it’s triplets.

The Times-Picayune is reporting that the New Orleans Hornets are prepared to sign Chris “Birdman” Andersen, dismissed from the NBA two years ago for drug use.

Commissioner David Stern is expected to lift the ban today; if so, and Andersen passes the physical, the Bees, who have first rights to his services, will have 30 days to offer him a contract equivalent to what he was making before the suspension: $3.5 million a year, prorated for the rest of this season. If they don’t, Andersen will become a free agent and can negotiate with any other team.

The Hornets can definitely use a big man — the Birdman is 6-10 — to spell center Tyson Chandler, so look for this deal to come down pretty quickly.

Update: It’s official. If all goes well at the physical, he’ll be in uniform as soon as he gets a new number: #12, which he used to wear, now belongs to Hilton Armstrong.

Or, perhaps more precisely, SMiShing, which is a phishing attempt using Short Message Service, a protocol used for text messages on cell phones. It’s not new, exactly, but anything that works once will draw lots and lots of copycats once word gets around.

Recent citations:

Fox Channel 2 in St. Louis … reported that consumers in the St. Louis area have been receiving text messages on their cell phones that appear to be coming from Arsenal Credit Union. Instead, these messages are being sent by identity thieves. The messages ask readers to provide information about their bank account, debit card and credit card numbers, so Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon has put out a warning to consumers.

Earlier this month, the Web site of the Washington State Office of the Attorney General added information about three new identity theft scams — one involving text messaging. Here’s what happened: A text message in Spanish was sent to the cell phone of an elderly woman. The message provided a phone number and asked that she call them immediately, so she did. She was told she had won something and was asked for her personal information to confirm her identity. The woman’s daughter was in the room and suspected foul play, so she ended the phone call.

Smishing needs to be smushed, pronto.

Turnout in Ye Olde Precinct looks to be pretty good for the “NBA tax” vote; I cast ballot number 558 at a quarter past five. I have no idea how the neighborhood actually voted, though the “Big League City” signs outnumber the “No Sales Tax” signs by a factor of seven to one. I think it will pass, though not overwhelmingly so.

Update, 9 pm: With about three-quarters of the precincts in, Mayor Cornett figures 60-40 is good enough to win, and maybe it is, though it still seems like jumping the gun to me. Then again, he presumably knows which precincts are still out, and I don’t.

Update, 9:30 pm: Okay, he’s right and I’m wrong. With everything in, though technically still unofficial, it’s 62-38.

Ray Davies, in his guise as a Muswell Hillbilly, came up with this gem: “Take me back to those black hills / That I have never seen.”

The Kinks didn’t sell a lot of records with this premise, but people have followed in Davies’ footsteps just the same:

In Love and Consequences, a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.

The problem is that none of it is true.

Really? None of it?

Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed.

This calls to mind Mary McCarthy’s dismissal of Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie, including a, an, and the.”

Apparently Ms Seltzer was unclear on the concept:

You know, the rules of a memoir are pretty simple. If an event actually happened to you, you can use it in a memoir. If it didn’t actually happen to you, you can’t. Because then it’s fiction, you see. Which is different from a memoir. No, really; you can look it up. I’m not sure why this has suddenly become so difficult for everyone to process.

So if I started such a thing, I’d have to leave the following out:

…my battlefield commission during my Army days; the actress (not yet a legend) who joined me for lunch one day in Hollywood and stayed for a week and a half; the work of fan fiction in which I play a minor operative of Karl Rove’s; the incident that got my real-estate license suspended indefinitely; the time I caught (so to speak) a fly ball with the side of my head (only minor injuries); and, of course, meeting Morgan Fairchild.

Oh, wait. Not all of those are fake. Still, if you see something like this under the name of, oh, G. Pruitt, be suspicious.

“You know, the trouble with My Little Pony is, well, she isn’t slutty enough.”

From Playmates, which also produces Disney Fairies under license — presumably from Disney, not from Oberon.)

(Via the incensed Princess Sparkle Pony.)

The Atlas Life building at 415 S. Boston in Tulsa, now an office building with 35 percent occupancy, will be transformed into a 120-room Courtyard by Marriott hotel.

Maurice Kanbar sold the 1922 building to Missouri-based SJS Hospitality for $1.7 million. The location is spiffy: between the Mid-Continent Tower and the Philtower. The conversion will cost about $15 million and should take about two years.

I got yet another flyer from a mortgage company looking to drum up some refinance business, and they had this humongous data box on the side that contains “Property Value Est.” and “Housing Zone.” The “Value Est.” is $91,683, which is $2800 more than the County Assessor came up with last year and about five grand short of this week’s Zillow Zestimate. Conclusion: plausible. The “Housing Zone” is a four-digit number, which by some strange coincidence is duplicated in the address label: it’s the +4 part of the nine-digit ZIP code. Conclusion: trying too hard.

Last I looked, the SuperSonics were still in Seattle, right?

So how is it that the newly-designed NBA.com sub-site for the Sonics mentions Seattle only in the title bar of your browser?

Geez, why didn’t they just Photoshop out the KeyArena logo on the floor while they were at it?

Addendum: They’ve added a new picture to the rotation, with a fellow (appears to be Damien Wilkins) with “SEATTLE” woven into his waistband. Still, there’s no other reference to the town; this could just as easily have read “CALVIN KLEIN.”

Unless somebody fell into the machine where they melt down the old shoes into new material, or something like that. This is “Desire + Triton” by Melissa, and it’s made from some plastic material called Melflex, which is not your grandmother’s PVC by any means:

Melissa Shoes are made from MELFLEX plastic, a patented, hypo-allergenic, recyclable, and extremely flexible PVC. The shoes are totally cruelty free and devoid of animal products. The Brazilian-based company is totally rad in its recycling of 99.9% of factory water and waste, and they also go the distance by recycling overstock styles into next season’s collection. Even better? Melissa Shoes employees are paid above average wages and benefits.

I suppose I could argue that 99.9 percent might be technically only partially rad, but I suspect it’s far better than the industry average. And since the shoe is “extremely flexible,” it’s also presumably free of cruelty to your feet — unlike, for instance, this atrocity. The price of $58 is also at least reasonably uncruel.

(Via Popgadget.)

As I’ve mentioned a few times already, we have a property-tax assessment cap in this state: the assessed value can go up by a maximum of 5 percent per year, regardless of actual market value, unless there is a change in ownership or a substantial change in the property itself.

Senator Jim Reynolds (R-OKC) has been pushing for a lower cap, and this is as close as he’s gotten so far: the Senate, by a 25-22 vote, passed Reynolds’ Senate Joint Resolution 59, which would create a ballot measure to set the cap at 3 percent.

Now I never met a tax cut I didn’t like, even if it’s not really a cut but a slowing of the rate of increase, but this perplexes me somewhat:

“This legislation came straight from my constituents who are begging for relief from increases in property taxes,” said Reynolds. “This is an especially burdensome tax for many low-income and older people in my district and throughout Oklahoma.”

Reynolds said the five percent cap on property value assessments was supposed to limit yearly increases, but it has not worked in the way property owners thought it would.

Weird. It’s worked exactly the way I thought it would.

What I really want to know is this: what am I going to do with a whole two percent? On my somewhere-below-$100k house, this is about a buck ninety a month. I’m spending that much on a frickin’ basketball team.

Not that I’d turn it down, but I’m wondering if maybe it might be more pertinent to Reynolds’ stated position to legislate some exemptions for those who are feeling the pinch more than I am.

The March of the Carnival of the Vanities goes ever on, at least for the next few weeks or so, when presumably the April of the Carnival will begin. I’m looking forward to it, if only because of the random statistic thrown out by the National Weather Service’s VHF radio service this morning: of the five months with the greatest recorded snowfall since Oklahoma City meteorological records began, three of them were March. (Thanks, guys. We’re under a winter weather advisory even now.) And frankly, I’m tired of getting up every morning to freezing temperatures — around 273 degrees Kelvin.

Been there, done that, had the T-shirt altered:

57% of gamers had engaged in gender swapping, and it is suggested that the online female persona has a number of positive social attributes in a male-oriented environment.

I could have told you that and I’m not even a gamer.

(Via Belhoste.)

“And Aubrey was her name,
A not so very ordinary girl or name.
But who’s to blame?”

Um, what? Not a girl, you say?

Oh. Never mind.

The Coyote sez you’re screwin’ up his laptop:

It is hard for me to imagine a piece of spyware or malware that puts as many spam messages on the screen, exhibits so many bad behaviors, or is so hard to remove as Norton itself. In the middle of a 30-minute task that was within 30 seconds of completion, Norton just rebooted my computer for some reason. It spams me with messages every startup, keeps adding its own toolbar to my browser, and I am having a terrible time getting it off my computer. Norton is perhaps the worst spyware I have ever had on a computer. Except maybe for the McAfee trial version on my last laptop.

To the sewers with it!

Five songs in succession on satellite radio:

• Miss Murder — AFI

• Sorrow — Bad Religion
• No More Sorrow — Linkin Park
• I Hope You Die — Bloodhound Gang
• Lie — Black Light Burns

And the inevitable conclusion:

It makes me think that someone may have just been dumped….

Wait a minute. Satellite radio lets the hosts pick their own playlists? Coolness.

More to the point, while I am insufferably pleased with myself for recognizing all five of those acts, if not necessarily all five of those songs, I really don’t know how I’d run a twenty-minute set of Songs for the Dumped. (Well, I suppose I’d have to include “Song for the Dumped” by Ben Folds Five.) Being the sort who tends to turn anger inward, I’d probably opt for brooding stuff like the Frankie Valli B-side “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine (Anymore),” which became a massive Spectoresque wail fronted by the Walker Brothers. Suggestions are welcomed, not that I expect to need them for personal use.

Tamara K. contemplates HDTV:

Has anybody ever been sitting around and thought “Y’know, if only this vapid, content-free crap was more crisp and colorful, I’d totally watch it”?

Well, maybe not consciously.

Jonny Lieberman poses a question: “How much horsepower is too much?”

Unless you routinely drag race (and I’m talking, you know, all the friggin’ time) what on earth do you need 700 hp for? I’m not in any way suggesting we cap output, I just want to know who’s buying these beasts? And why?

You’d want to know, of course, how Mr Lieberman’s ride tests out, and he tells you up front:

My car has 224 hp. I’m suddenly mature enough to not bother racing people at stop lights (especially since that CTS-V humbled me). I only use all my car’s strength when I’m getting on the freeway or when I’m at a red light in the left hand lane and need to quickly get over to the right. And you know what? It’s more than enough.

Given those same criteria, the vehicle I’ve driven which exhibited the highest degree of indifference to how hard it was being called upon to work was a 2007 G35, so I figure that 306 hp is about as much as I’d ever need.

On the other hand, Gwendolyn, with an earlier, smaller version of the same engine, is no slouch, so I am not inclined to complain about her more modest 227-hp output, especially since I can remember no instance when I’ve been called upon to use all of it.

Then again, 227 hp might be marginal, or worse, if you have two tons or more to haul around, and if you have a minivan or a pickup truck, you probably do.

The proper response, of course, is “Don’t do that.”

It is not, however, a particularly useful response, but there it is. This morning, about two and a half hours into the workday, I picked up a box of forms, and suddenly froze in position: I could move, sort of, but I really didn’t want to, because when I did, I felt waves of distress cascading across my shoulder blades.

Don’t worry. Take a deep breath. So I did. And it hurt worse.

After about half an hour of wondering just what it was I’d done, I was packed off to some industrial clinic, where I was informed that it was just a strain, nothing more. They gave me a bottle of muscle relaxants, and the above advice: “Don’t do that.”

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being reminded that I’m nowhere near as indestructible as I’d like.

A complaint from Stan Geiger:

According to Wikipedia, Oklahoma City has a population of about 540,000. So, roughly speaking, 8 percent of the citizens of Oklahoma City just stuck the other 92 percent with a tax increase. That’s hardly a case of majority rule.

Well, around 25 percent of the citizens of Oklahoma City are under 18 and can’t actually vote, so there’s no point in blaming them.

On the other hand, the law specifies that ballots are counted only for voters who actually cast them, so if there’s some Nixonian silent majority out there presumably keeping its mouth shut, you’ve got to wonder why they don’t bother showing up at the polls, the only place their opinions actually matter. (About 30 percent of registered voters in the city turned out on the 4th, which is about twice the average for a city election.)

As a followup to the question of “How much horsepower is too much?” I decided to sit down and determine just how much I’ve had over the years. Here are the numbers:

• Susannah (1966 Chevrolet Nova): 3.8L OHV inline-6, 140 hp

• Dymphna (1975 Toyota Celica): 2.2L SOHC inline-4, 96 hp
• Deirdre (1984 Mercury Cougar): 3.8L OHV V-6, 120 hp
• Molly (1993 Mazda 626): 2.0L DOHC inline-4, 118 hp
• Sandy (2000 Mazda 626): 2.0L DOHC inline-4, 130 hp
• Gwendolyn (2000 Infiniti I30): 3.0L DOHC V-6, 227 hp

Only the first two had actual carburetors; the Mercury had something called “central fuel injection,” which used one injector for the entire intake, and everything afterwards had port fuel injection. The two Mazda engines were basically identical, though the newer engine had distributorless ignition, and Mazda had moved away from hydraulic valve lifters in favor of something manually adjustable.

When I got married, my wife was driving that Toyota; we got rid of my old Nova and bought a newer one, which I didn’t include here because she ended up driving it and eventually owning it. Unsurprisingly, it went unnamed. The powerplant was your basic small-block Chevy V-8, in 5.0L displacement (305), with 140 hp.

If you happened to notice that those two distinctly-different Chevrolets got the same number of horsepower, well, they didn’t really: the ’66 was rated by the SAE gross method, which was measured at the flywheel with nothing but the bare minimum of attachments. The newer SAE net measurement included everything you could reasonably expect to be running off the engine, including exhaust components, the alternator, and emissions gear; it was adopted in 1971. I’m guessing Susannah actually put out about 110 hp by the newer standard. (SAE recently tightened up its standards; as with the gross-to-net change, there is no specific conversion factor.)

Or something like that.

[Safe for work, perhaps less so for one's digestion.]

When last we heard from Rep. Sally Kern (R-OKC), she had come up with the dubious notion of creating a State Library Material Content Advisory Board, which would be tasked with making sure our precious little snowflakes didn’t have any encounters with Teh Ghey.

After that little outburst, I figured she’d fade into the shadows once more. I figured wrong. And after a couple hundred search-engine queries with her name in them, I decided to go see what she’d gotten herself into this time, and happened upon this:

Studies show, no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted for more than, you know, a few decades…. I honestly think it’s the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam.

Really? The biggest threat? This seems a trifle, um, overstated. In this corner, we have your GLBT (add letters as needed) types. In the other corner, we have your standard Islamic terrorists. Let us contrast and compare:

Item the First: You’ve offended members of the group. How does the group respond?

• GLBT: Denounces you and, if you’re an elected official, supports your opponent.

• Islamists: Cuts off your head.

Item the Second: The group wishes to get the attention of the American public. What action taken by them is the most visible?

• GLBT: Holds the occasional Pride Parade.

• Islamists: Flies airplanes into buildings.

Item the Third: Summarize the changes in American law desired by the group.

• GLBT: Extension of the rights and privileges of marriage to include them.

• Islamists: Extension of the rules delineated in the Qu’ran to include everyone.

Bonus question: Where would you rather be on a Saturday night?

1. 39th and Penn, Oklahoma City

2. Riyadh

Thank you for playing.

(Via J. M. Branum.)

Update, 9 March, 2:40 pm: Fritz identifies the real threat.