Well, psychological climate, anyway:

First, there is certain alienation of individual bloggers accompanied by consolidation of various “party groups” and increased numbers of their commenters. Few years ago it was generally welcomed to use someone else’s blogroll as a walk into his inner circle, to put yourself into his shoes (or reading glasses) — not only to understand that person better, through his preferences, but as a means of widening your own perspectives without immediate commitment. Now this activity is tolerated, at best, and sometimes pointed out as impertinence or even considered suspicious. And when I go reading the “secondary” blogrolls (listed on the margins of the blogs on my own roll) I see changes, too: general-interest bloggers who in the past attracted lively discussions under almost every post, are now gathering, maybe, 1 or 3 responses — in a month. It’s not that their observations and interests became boring, it’s that life became more difficult for everyone, and there is not much point in endless chatting on topics one might live without. The general mood changed, too: we all are more pessimistic, gloomily focused on immediate tasks … teeth are clenched in perseverance while we put on a cheerful mask of camouflage de jour.

I’m willing to entertain the possibility that my own observations and interests became boring, but that implies a time when they weren’t.

I do see some of this activity, and some of the inactivity as well, though I’m not so sure it’s a result of some sort of cultural malaise. Certainly a lot of us don’t have as much time to devote to this sort of thing as we used to: I don’t, though I don’t seem to be turning out significantly less product. Yet. Shifting alliances and such, however, are a reality in blogdom. And if I’m part of anyone’s “inner circle,” I apologize for throwing off the center of gravity.

Not referring, in this case, to an article of clothing; rather, a collection of brief observations to fill up the space allotted.

Always Miller Time floats the idea of disaffected Raptors forward Hedo Türkoğlu in Oklahoma City:

Oklahoma City has some cap room and could get Hedo.

If Hedo Türkoğlu was smart, he would sign with the Thunder and play with Kevin Durant. Hedo would easily slide in at the power forward position.

Oklahoma City would have their own big 4. Hedo, Kevin Durant, Jeff Green, and Russell Westbrook would be hard to contain.

Of course, Jeff Green’s already playing at the four; unless it’s intended as the beginning of Uncle Jeff’s transition to Big-Time Sixth Man, I don’t see this happening. Türkoğlu, at 6-10, can certainly man the middle, but he’d cost more than Nenad Krstić and Serge Ibaka combined.

On the other hand, Toronto appears to be getting an Oklahoma City castoff:

P.J. Carlesimo has an agreement in principle to join the Toronto Raptors as an assistant coach under Jay Triano, according to league sources.

Carlesimo last served as a head coach with the Oklahoma City Thunder but was replaced by Scott Brooks midway through the 2008-09 season. Prior to that, Carlesimo served as an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs under Gregg Popovich.

Carlesimo spent this season working for the Spurs as a color commentator on their radio broadcasts.

Nice to see the Peej getting back to the seats of power.

A proposal by Base for a new logo for NASA:

The logo for How To Destroy Angels, a musical project by Mr and Mrs Trent Reznor:

Is there a worldwide pixel shortage looming?

The Booth Babe says she’s “often accused … of being completely self-involved, vain, shallow and full of myself,” and muses:

I have wondered more than once — pretty much every day, actually — if I would be accused of the same sins were I a male product specialist writing the exact same observations, replacing the male pervs with female.

I don’t think I would. In fact, I think the male readers who currently bemoan my attitude would be sending me internet high-fives.

I’m thinking this is a variation on the standard male dichotomy, though in this case the two incompatible characteristics are babeliciousness and brains: there are guys who are simply unprepared even to admit that the two can exist in the same space. Meanwhile, the very nature of the Babe’s job pretty much demands that they must coexist: she has to know her product material cold, including the stuff that isn’t in the brochure, and she has to meet a presumably-arbitrary standard for eye candy. Drop someone like that in front of those guys, and they’re compelled to shoot down one factor or the other. Perhaps both.

Which may explain some of this:

So I’m not sure where a lot of the vitriol comes from. Is it because I take the occasional shot that bruises the fragile male ego? Is it because a certain type of male can’t reconcile the idea of an attractive female who has no sexual interest in him actually being intelligent?

Some of them will never forgive her for describing herself as “attractive” and yet somehow managing to spurn them; if she’s actually hot, they “reason,” surely she must be hot to, um, trot.

And there’s that other atavistic crap: women drive girlmobiles and can’t possibly understand the finer points of direct injection or MacPherson struts. Having once observed a woman repairing an incapacitated Porsche, a task I couldn’t do if you spotted me three service manuals and a rack full of Snap-Ons, I know better than that.

Cynics might suggest that I’m jockeying for position in the hopes of winning the Babe’s favor. Not a chance. It’s extremely unlikely our paths will ever cross, and besides, I don’t do “hope” all that well.

After the decidedly-mixed reviews on that $350 sandal last week, perhaps it’s time I went in the other direction. This is “Naples” from Okabashi, the leading casual-shoe manufacturer in all of Buford, Georgia, and it will run you $14.99 in any of three colors. What’s more, it’s dishwasher-safe:

Okabashi footwear is dishwasher-safe and machine washable. We recommend the dishwasher because it does a better job sanitizing. Just use a normal cycle, as the hi-temp settings could be a little too hot.

(Note: The following sentence may never be uttered again.) Even I might consider some of their shoes, if they had my size, and if I owned a dishwasher.

I don’t dare quote any more of this; you must read the whole thing, preferably while no one else is around to hear your immediate response. And you will have an immediate response. Trust me.

Scenario: I’m looking at the SonicStage “My Library” column, noting that it contains 770 songs, and that the actual folder from which I do the imports contains, um, 589 songs. Something is a trifle askew somewhere. No problem; I’ll clear the Library, dump the folder, copy all the files over from the Walkman, and everything will be nice and sync-y once more.

Or not. Actually, SonicStage refused to import even one track from the Walkman. I cranked open an Explorer window and headed for the dreaded OMGAUDIO folder, and somewhere under Sony’s crufty directory structure was a crapload of .oma files, which turn out to be unprotected ATRAC3 files. (Protected ATRAC3 files, which I’d have had I bought anything from Sony’s now-defunct online music store, apparently have the .omg extension, which if nothing else qualifies as keen editorial comment.) And SonicStage won’t import them from the player.

So: no backup, technically. I’m reasonably certain I have all these tracks stored elsewhere; for that matter, I think I’ve copied all of them to the iTunes install on the work box, which means they’re only a flash-drive session away, assuming I use the larger (8 GB) drive. (The Walkman holds only 4 GB.) Still, a company that goes to this much trouble to complicate my existence is going to get as few of my dollars as I can possibly manage.

Mission, Kansas, a tiny sector of the massive Kansas City metro sprawl, has bad roads and not enough money to make them, um, less bad. The solution? A so-called “transportation utility fee,” which has been informally dubbed the “driveway tax”: the number of trips that begin or end on your little strip of concrete will be guesstimated, and you will write your check accordingly. It’s about as popular as you’d think it might be.

An unsigned editorial at KansasCity.com asks:

Should the fee be the same for big houses as well as small homes? And what of the wisdom of imposing a fee on trips, one that would rise with inflation. Would critics be right in branding it a freedom-of-movement tax?

Mission has been plotting this for about a year now. A pertinent passage from Council minutes:

Robert Hartman, Hartman Hardware, stated that he does not believe that a Transportation Utility Fee has been authorized in the State of Kansas. Mr. Scanlon [City Administrator] stated there is no legislation that currently prohibits the City from doing this so Home Rule may be exercised to establish the Transportation Utility.

Or, as suddenly-single Al Gore might say, there is no controlling legal authority. Once they invoke this sort of justification, you know they’re emotionally wedded to the concept, and if they don’t get what they want, there will be the local equivalent of threatening to shutter the Washington Monument.

Mr Hartman, from the hardware store, commented at the time that the city is “taxing him to death.” This is, after all, one of the things that governments do best.

If you’re constantly banging your shins into the furniture — and only if you’re constantly banging your shins into the furniture — you might be able to get away with this:

Then again, a commenter at Rose-Kim Knits grasped a wholly-different concept for this, um, garment:

So if you’re costuming a production of Twelfth Night, you’ve got Malvolio’s cross-garters right here. Wear them over yellow tights, and he’s set to be the butt of ridicule.

(Fillyjonk sent me this link, knowing it would peg my WTF meter.)

The police could be spending less on idling by the side of the road, simply by, well, not idling:

Anti-idling technology will save the Ottawa Police Service 1,764 litres of fuel a year per car — enough to drive across Canada four times.

The technology, which includes auxiliary batteries to run electronics, a small combustion motor to provide heat, automatic vehicle start up and shut off and idling monitoring and recording equipment, was installed in two patrol cars in 2009.

Before the technology was installed, an analysis showed that the average time the engine idled in a patrol car during a 10-hour patrol shift was 6.7 hours.

Fuel consumption being a major factor in any police budget, this is not an inconsiderable savings; payback period for the $2000 (CDN) equipment package, say the researchers, is a mere 18 months.

(Via AutoblogGreen.)

Emily Virgin, a clerk for a Norman law firm, has announced she plans to run for the House seat currently held by Rep. Bill Nations, who runs into the Wall of Term Limits this year.

Since March, I have walked the neighborhoods of House District 44, talking and listening to voters. They have voiced their thoughts, concerns, ideas and suggestions and I have learned much. Voters want quality jobs with better pay and better benefits, quality and affordable health care, an education system second to none, and to protect our children and seniors from abuse and neglect.

While searching for solutions to difficult and far-reaching issues, we must be keenly aware of the unprecedented economic circumstances which confront Norman, Oklahoma and the nation. I believe we can provide for our needs and also be realistic about our limited funds and resources. We clearly are in tough times, but we cannot afford to throw in the towel and abandon essential programs and services.

Virgin, a political newcomer, is 23. The official filing period begins next week; I suspect she’ll draw some Democratic opposition. The primary is July 27.

At some point this year, this site will record its two-millionth visitor, and inasmuch as several thousand folks came by to read the tale of a librarian at Harvard who claimed she was sacked for being too attractive, I’m not above working the same sort of story at a different institution.

This is Debbie Lorenzana, who no longer works for Citigroup. Gothamist explains why:

Lorenzana says she was fired from Citigroup last summer after finally getting transferred out of the department where her troubles started. Her job title was business banker, providing services to small businesses. After some time on the job, the managers called her into a meeting and, according to her account, told her, “‘Your pants are too tight.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, my pants are not too tight! If you want to talk about inappropriate clothes, go downstairs and look at some of the tellers! Some tellers would wear their pants so tight, it was like they had a permanent wedgie.’” But because she signed a mandatory-arbitration clause as a condition of her employment, her harassment case will be settled by an arbitrator, not a judge.

Her suit claims that, “as a result of her tall stature, coupled with her curvaceous figure, she should not wear classic high-heeled business shoes, as this purportedly drew attention to her body in a manner that was upsetting to her easily distracted male managers.”

Males “easily distracted?” Who knew?

As for our local tellers, I have no idea as to the state of their pants, since I only see them from here up. [gestures] Some of them are likely this attractive, but none of them are likely to cause rapid rotation of the ol’ Site Meter, if you know what I mean.

Update: The Other McCain offers a photo of Ms Lorenzana in a more form-fittting outfit.

“Well, I didn’t plagiarize. The student who wrote the assignment for me did.”

File under “unclear on the concept.”

(Via Fark, where it bears the DUMBASS tag.)

Really, all you need from this is the first sentence:

Two Australians are being sent to Bangladesh to teach slum dwellers how to blog.

Nice to know everyone’s priorities are in order.

(Via Tim Blair.)

About six this morning, I was dashing outside to retrieve the newspaper before the rain started. I looked over at the ginormous stack of Shingles ‘N Stuff over by the driveway, and thought, No way are they coming out today.

I’d left for work before the roofing company called me to advise me that no way are they coming out today, what with the storms all morning. It was nice and clear at noon, but of course the day was half gone by then.

Speaking of the newspaper, the Big Headline this morning was “Losses from Oklahoma’s May storms likely to top $1 billion.” At the time I saw it, I shrugged: what’s a billion these days? The Feds can spend that in a matter of minutes.

But eventually the math demanded to be done, and assuming that I have somewhere around the average amount of damage — just on the near side of $10,000 — then more than a hundred thousand people were hit by either the funnels on the 10th or the ice cannon on the 16th. Maybe both. Under the circumstances, I suppose I ought to be thankful I’m getting my stuff repaired during the first week of June — provided, of course, it doesn’t rain.

At least, I think that’s what they’re trying to convey here:

You can practically feel the epicity.

The taxman is sleepless in Seattle:

King County Assessor Lloyd Hara is studying whether thousands of properties have been significantly undervalued for tax purposes, and whether their owners should be billed for underpayment — even though the owners may have paid their tax bills in full.

Because the county has the authority, in cases of “manifest error,” to bill landowners for three years of past taxes, millions of dollars could be at stake.

Hara has been working closely with tax consultant and former Assessor Harley Hoppe, who has touted back taxes from underassessed properties as a solution to the county’s projected $60 million budget shortfall next year.

So basically, he’s willing to admit to millions of dollars worth of “manifest error” to save his unworthy hide.

Or maybe not so much. After the Seattle Times reported on Hara’s little scheme, he did a backpedal worthy of Lance Armstrong:

“We all know King County is in a financial pinch,” Hara said in a statement. “But this office, while I’m Assessor, is not going to be nickel and diming every taxpayer in some crazy attempt to balance our budget. We can do better than that.”

To his credit, he didn’t claim to be misquoted.

(Spotted by Jenn, who was not impressed.)

Andrew Ian Dodge has favored us with a Foggy May Carnival of the Vanities, the 376th of the series, even though it’s June.

Things certainly may seem foggy at Citigroup, whose CitiFinancial unit has just announced the closing of 376 branches in North America. (This is apparently not connected to the sacking of Debbie Lorenzana.)

A handful of sports scribes are calling for MLB to credit Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga with a perfect game, what with umpire Jim Joyce admitting to blowing the call on what would have been the 27th out.

Not so fast, says the Baseball Crank:

The Tigers didn’t protest the game (I don’t think, offhand, that a protest can be pursued by the winning team or on a safe/out call on the bases), so the one precedent (the 1983 pine tar game, when the league reversed an on-field decision to strip a home run from George Brett, requiring the game to be replayed from that point) doesn’t provide any support. And doing so just to preserve one player’s individual accomplishment is antithetical to the point of team sports, in which we celebrate individual achievements that are reached within the flow of the game. It’s not as if the league ordinarily does anything about blown calls even when they decide pennant races or postseason series. Galarraga will be remembered as the guy who earned the distinction, and in a way that’s close enough. Like Harvey Haddix, he’ll go down in history in a way that Roy Halladay and Dallas Braden won’t.

It’s not like we don’t understand blown calls here in the Thunderworld. And besides, Crank’s point seems obvious to me, if only because I actually do remember Harvey Haddix, pitching for the Pirates in 1959, who retired 36 batters in a row, only to lose to the Braves in the bottom of the 13th. As a kid shuffling stats, I found this more fascinating than, say, Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

Addendum: Dawn Summers, to say the least, disagrees.

First, the background:

Earlier this week, a pair of sisters in Utah were heading to their car as they left a Macey’s grocery store (not to be confused with the similar-sounding Macy’s department store) and discovered a plain duffel bag containing around $17,800 in cash and nothing to identify the owner. Did they go on a shopping spree? Bury it in the back yard? Nope; they called the police.

The Consumerist, after telling this story, asked its readers: “What would you do?” The definitive answer, from commenter Erich:

[I]t would be a difficult choice. On one hand, turning it in would be the right thing to do.

On the other hand, that’s almost a year and a half of mortgage payments… but in the end, my stupid conscience would get the best of me, and I’d turn in all $10,000 of it.

Oh, by the way, they did find the owner.

Miriam doubts that red-light cameras in Delaware are doing all that much good:

This is nothing more than a scheme to shake money out of the pockets of Delaware residents. If I had wanted to pay more in unreasonable charges I could have stayed in New Jersey.

Meanwhile, Las Cruces, New Mexico, which has embraced the technology, has no explanation for an increase in accidents:

Comparing a year’s worth of data before the devices were installed at three intersections to a year after, the number of collisions increased 13 percent from 53 to 60. The largest increase was in property damage accidents while injury collisions did not reduce significantly. The numbers would have looked even worse had the city included results from the intersection of Lohman and Telshor where officials claimed “construction” caused the significant increase in accidents. On the other hand, the city finance department estimated that the cameras would generate $5,012,847 in revenue through fiscal 2011.

Perhaps Las Cruces has been overrun with New Jersey expats.

Arizona, except for the Navajo Nation up near Four Corners, spurns Daylight Saving Time, which fact has always earned it a couple of Smart Points in the back of my mind, given my general aversion to screwing around with things for the sake of nonexistent gains.

Unfortunately, this sensibility doesn’t seem to extend to fiscal matters:

[T]he actual reason for my rant is a note I got from the Arizona Department of Revenue. Apparently they have a program where large filers have to do a special report to pre-pay June sales tax collections by June 29 (rather than by July 20 when they would usually be due). As is so often the case, the law has been changed such that a special requirement for large filers had its threshold changed such that small-medium filers like myself also now have to play. This is a sort of 13th report one must file (we file reports monthly) and the processing of it takes a lot of private time, plus the state has to hire a number of temps and pay overtime to receive this filing.

So why the special requirement? Well, Arizona is on a July-June fiscal year, so June 29 is just about the end of their fiscal year. And they are on a cash accounting basis (like most governments) so any cash that comes in the door, even if it is for a pre-payment of a future liability, counts as current period income. This means that the state is spending a lot of overtime money shifting income by 21 days just to make its current period look better.

And in fact, this is worse than DST, which at least “gives you back” the hour it stole:

[I]t only works once — the first time. It will make the first year this trick is applied look better, but then every year after will go back to being the same, with July losses to the prior year offset by June gains from the forthcoming year. In fact the only way this game can work twice is if the threshold for pre-paying is lowered — which is why I am having to fill out an extra form and pay a large bill 3 weeks in advance. Arizona is looking for another one time gain. And the larger the gain, the harder it will be to unwind this stupid costly process in the future.

Incidentally, said sales tax has just been increased by a percentage point, for a period not to exceed three years. What are the chances that the additional levy will be actually allowed to expire in 2013?

It’s been a while since I drove through Pennsylvania, but not so long that I’d forget a sign like this:

The executive director of the University Area Joint Authority, which is doing sewer work in the general vicinity of Penn State, suggested that this might actually not be a prank:

It does also have meaning for highway conditions. When it first starts raining, there is that oil sheen on the surface of the road. That is a term used.

Which of course explains why this particular message is so common, since America has lots of roads and, in some areas at least, lots of rain.

I suppose it’s better that drivers should perform this presumably-simple check than engage in dubious behind-the-wheel activities like texting.

(Via The Truth About Cars.)

Two thousand square feet of shingles, fiberglass plus asphalt, applied in the summer sun, using some sort of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Tar! sealant. The olfactory result?

“That’s odd,” said the guy supervising the job. “Usually it’s just the women who smell it.”

I am sufficiently anal (“That’s a polite word for what you are” — Annie Hall) to look (or sniff) for things that aren’t a hundred percent. For instance, while fitting a new flue head, they knocked loose the draft diverter on the water heater. (And they’d never have known this from up top, believe me.) About a forty-five-second fix, but were I not, um, sufficiently anal, I’d not have noticed this, and eventually the gas would blow out a wall or three.

I also ran the attic fan for half an hour, not really expecting to dispel the faint odor of whatever it is, but mostly to see if anything had fallen into the blades. It was scarifyingly rattle-y for the first six minutes or so, after which a single tink, and the sound changed back to the usual low roar. Bits of debris from the new upper decking, plus one actual nail, which landed in the hall.

The guys did run the magnet over the yard in an effort to retrieve nails; I didn’t find any while mowing the front yard yesterday, and by “didn’t find any” I mean “well, there was this one complete coil that wound up under a shrub.”

There are things to do yet: replacing the little spinning-ball ventilator, and redoing the gutters. Most of the really nasty stuff, though, is over and done with. I think. Keep in mind that what I know about roofing is right up there with Al Gore knows about setting an example.

Writer Alan Caruba floats the notion that Al and Tipper Gore are separating purely as a subterfuge:

There was, Mr. Gore told everyone, a climate crisis, and in the process, he grew rich, hailed [as] the first “carbon billionaire” for his various investments. As bad as the bursting of the housing bubble has been, the next bubble will be a very green one. And, at the heart of it will be the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Al Gore, and his partner in crime, the U.N. climate change program.

If Al Gore and Tipper are legally separated, it will likely provide a measure of protection for the millions he has. This, I suggest, is probably the real reason for the separation. It is as coldly calculated as his global-warming lies. Even their forty-year marriage must be sacrificed.

I suspect Mr Caruba may be right about the next bubble — technologies that rely so heavily on tax credits and such are not, you should pardon the phrase, “sustainable” — but I have my doubts about the larger premise. It is indeed true that Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) has called for an investigation into some of Gore’s financials, but how likely is it that there will be an investigation? Chances are zero this year, and not much better next year unless Congressional Democrats are turned out by the dozens.

(Note to John Boehner: if 100 incumbents are actually sent packing in November, I may actually have to consider switching my registration to the GOP. I think, though, I have a better chance of landing a date with one of these right-wing hotties than of seeing the Republicans make more than perfunctory gains.)

Besides, there’s a built-in ick factor associated with the motivations behind any marriage failure, and I’m not particularly fond of ick.

(Via John J. Ray.)

And I mean for good, Dementians and Dementites:

This weekend is the final airing for the syndicated Dr. Demento Show. The show’s syndicator, Talonian Productions — which is owned by Dr. Demento — has told the affiliates that this is the end.

In a simple email to its few remaining stations, the email stated “Dr. Demento and his management have decided to no longer offer The Dr. Demento Show on terrestrial radio stations and to concentrate on offering the show via internet streaming only.”

Which comes with a hefty (by Net standards) fee: $2 a week. Were there any really great wacky wax being put out these days, I’d be tempted to sign up; heck, I actually follow “Weird Al” Yankovic on Twitter. (He’s at @alyankovic, should you wish to do the same.)

I tend to think of automatic transmissions with a manual shift gate as being a relatively recent innovation; I never drove one until a couple of years ago, when my Infiniti was in the shop and the dealership lent me a G35 to play with. It did not occur to me that these things go back more than four decades:

Now you see the sexism inherent in the system, circa 1964. (And the flip side of it: I add extra crush points for women who can drive a stick.)

I used to have a mid-60s Chevrolet, but it had a two-speed Powerglide. On the column.

(Via John’s Old Car and Truck Ads.)

While we worry, sort of, about the Grecian formula for bankruptcy, it turns out that seven cities in the US have spectacularly-bad credit:

Last quarter, Moody’s Investor Services declared the debt issued by Harrisburg, Pa., and Woonsocket, R.I., to be junk, or below-investment grade. Meanwhile, Fitch Ratings currently has four other cities in the basement — Detroit and Pontiac, Mich.; Harvey, Ill.; and Littlefield, Texas — while Standard and Poor’s has one — Central Falls, R.I.

As Ed McMahon might have said: “How bad are they?”

Moody’s knocked the rating on Harrisburg’s general-obligation bonds three notches to B2 — five steps below investment grade. To put that into perspective: Moody’s rating on Greece’s government debt sits at A3 — still investment grade.

Central Falls gets a C from S&P, which is one step above actual default.

Should anyone be concerned: Oklahoma City’s bonds are rated at Aaa by both S&P and Moody’s.

You might be a bit skeptical of the rating services these days, but be assured, there aren’t any toxic mortgages mixed in with the municipal bonds. Not even in Harrisburg.

(Spotted at Anchor Rising.)

Yours truly, four years ago:

While it is indeed true that there is no single place in the Sooner State from which you can swing a dead cat and hit restaurants of twenty-seven different ethnicities, and that there is no surplus of waifish Goth girls with art-history degrees, not everyone — not even everyone of college age — aspires to live inside a Bertolucci film.

There is, however, an abundance of dead-cat swingers:

One common argument liberals use when asserting that we should give in to the forces of “diversity” is to point at some tony urban area that has at least one Ethiopian restaurant and say “See? If not for Diversity™ the only restaurants we’d have would be Denny’s and McDonald’s!” In other words, liberals are focused mainly on their stomachs. The idea of being in a city without a decent Thai restaurant drives them frantic. As long as they can point to a Cambodian eatery or a Syrian café in their town they can reassure themselves that they are among the civilized. Their greatest fear is to be stuck in some flyover burg where the only food available is exactly like the stuff they were raised on in their bland, white, upper middle class childhoods.

Looking out my front door:

Distance to nearest Ethiopian restaurant: 5 miles.

Distance to nearest Denny’s: 6.4 miles.

I conclude that where I live is, by definition, hip. (The McDonald’s I pass by on weekdays, about two miles away, is closed for remodeling.)

You probably couldn’t sell these in contemporary Germany, which means that if the likes of, say, Helen Thomas has a craving for a smoke, she’ll have to order these from India.

(Plucked from the sidebar at American Digest.)

Until such time as we’re offered a government job not to do it, we’re continuing to run this weekly compendium of weird crap from the referral logs.

manual626mazda1988speedodoesntwork:  Neitherdoesthespacebarapparently.

amvubmlmzxigd2fybmvz:  Yeah, that’s easy for you to say. (Weirdly, this somehow translated into “Jennifer Warnes.” Did it really need encryption?)

“women with midget fetish:”  The Lollipop Guild was evidently much happier than we’d heard.

expensive sinkhole grows north of downtown Omaha:  Must be a zoning thing. Most of the expensive stuff in Omaha seems to be west of downtown.

old young lesbian love “chanel and laura”:  Evidently the age mismatch wasn’t a problem.

70S CRAP:  Let the record show that we survived both Nixon and Carter.

slut in birkenstocks:  Consider the possibility that you may have misjudged this hippie chick.

do hippies eat animal crackers:  Not while wearing Birkenstocks.

vanishing cream turns u invisible:  U wish.

what rhymes with politician:  ”Mortician” comes most immediately to mind.

our race has many superior qualities compared with other races:  ”Humility” comes most immediately to mind.

A scene from early in World Tour ’04:

And as I passed Poky Feeders in Scott City, Kansas, I admit it: I yelled “Eat, dammit, eat!”

Of course, that was before I saw this.

For me, it began with “Society’s Child”:

Come to my door, baby
Face is clean and shining, black as night
My mama went to answer
You know that you looked so fine
Now I could understand the tears and the shame
She called you “Boy” instead of your name
When she wouldn’t let you inside
When she turned and said
“But honey, he’s not our kind”

Of course, to me, this was still kinda theoretical, since at 13 I wasn’t actually dating anyone of any color, and I seldom saw any black girls anyway, South Carolina having thus far failed to expel that stubborn old bird Jim Crow.

Came another year and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and another year and the very quiet desegregation of Charleston’s Catholic schools. And suddenly things weren’t quite as theoretical anymore.

Cut to the early 1990s, the setting of Juliette Akinyi Ochieng’s first novel, Tale of the Tigers (Carmel Coast Publishing, 2010). The dreaded word “miscegenation” seems to have fallen into deserved desuetude, but dating remains anything but post-racial. Nor did all the darts come from the other side:

Felice couldn’t count the times she had been called black and ugly as a child. Nor could she count the times that, as a young woman, she had been told that she was pretty, to be so dark.

This sort of thing didn’t concern Kevin, but then, he was a football star, and people were loath to mess with him — except, of course, for the little matter that he was a white kid, and some people had a problem with the very idea of Kevin and Felice as a couple.

It’s a simple tale being told here, but the complexities of race, how we deal with it and how we fail to deal with it, make what could have been a cut-and-dried polemic into an engrossing story, and Ochieng manages a tricky balancing act: she calls out racist behavior, calls it what it is, without feeling compelled to demonize those who behave that way. When attitudes give way to action — well, that comes later in the story.

People who never once in their lives looked longingly at someone of another color may claim not to understand this book. But here’s the catch: human relationships are often fraught with peril, and you can substitute a lot of words for “color” — “religion,” “social caste,” “educational level” — without affecting the truth of the matter. And that’s the strength of Tale of the Tigers: it never takes its eye off the truth.

(Review copy purchased by me directly from the author. A slightly-different version of this review appeared on Amazon.com.)

About a year and a half ago, I noted with some amusement that the Kelly Clarkson single of the moment was listed in the iTunes Store as “My Life Would S**k Without You.”

Since then, other people have noticed this s**ky Apple practice. WFMU’s Benjamen Walker does a podcast called Too Much Information; one episode title, derived from a passage in Acts 9, was rendered in iTunes as “Kicking Against the P***ks.”

Similarly, WNYC’s Radiolab series, which looks into scientific phenomena, got into Asterisk City when they did a show about s***m, which when I was younger were referred to as “s***matozoa.”

Since neither of these is particularly offensive to normal people, by which I mean “people who don’t work for Steve Jobs,” I conclude that Apple is simply being p***llanimous.

Dr. Boli tests your political smarts:

John has four members of city council in his pocket. Mary has three members, but one of them is the president of the council. Whose street will be repaved first?

1. Neither one has an advantage, because in a democratic government all people are equal under the law.
2. John’s street will be paved first, because he has numbers on his side.
3. Mary’s street will be paved first, because you don’t get to be president of city council without knowing where the bodies are buried.
4. The president of city council will have his street paved with Belgian block, lined with elegant gas lamps, and bordered by herringbone-pattern brick sidewalks, and neither John’s street nor Mary’s street will be repaved at all ever.

I am, of course, duly impressed that Dr. Boli is so well-versed in Tulsa politics.

One story you always hear about Cuba is the vast quantity of pre-embargo American cars still on the road, held together by spit and baling wire and chewing gum and sheer force of will. I always wondered if any of them had been spirited out of Havana to Moscow in the traditional Soviet fashion.

Now I’m thinking “maybe,” if only because of the presence of this lovely Studebaker Golden Hawk, vintage 1957 or so, at the Legendary Rally of Vintage Cars in the Russian capital in late May:

And who was that passenger? I don’t know, but the least I can do is get a better look at her:

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Hardly anyone thinks of the American experiment with Prohibition as a success, but if you shove it over to the Fail side of the ledger, you have to account for the following anomaly: since when does Washington abandon a program just because it doesn’t work?

Stacy McCain explains it thusly:

Prohibition was not repealed because it failed. Prohibition was repealed because the feds wanted whiskey tax revenue to pay for the New Deal. Compare and contrast:

• Prohibition — Speakeasies, jazz, flappers, Calvin Coolidge, gangsters in cool pinstriped suits with fedoras driving V-8 roadsters.
• New Deal — Alger Hiss.

Okay, it might be a trifle more complicated than that.

And there exists, says McCain, an actual justification for the War on (Some) Drugs:

The War on Drugs serves a valuable social purpose, by ensuring that lots of stupid people go to prison. There are some people so stupid that they don’t need to be on the street.

It would probably help if people would quit voting for them, too.

From a Woot Bag O’ Crap, 26 May:

1 Olive Green Wine Bag (holds up to four bottles) [$5.00]
1 Kittrich Officially Licensed NBA Playing Cards (with New Jersey Nets logo) [$3.98]
1 Powerful Greetings Disney Winnie-the-Pooh 4 AA Battery Gift Pack [$9.99]
6 Digital Blue Cinderella Director Pack Software for Disney Flix Video Cam [$89.94]

Total crap: $108.91

Total price: $3 (plus $5 shipping)

Not that I’m any kind of judge.