The most maddening thing, of course, is that during the Quiet Times, my traffic went up about twelve percent. Obviously I should post less.

So why start again? Well, for one thing, the old database, with seven thousand and odd items, was getting cranky. For another, it's not like anything is missing: all the old posts are still archived and are available at their original URLs. And the last time I ran an export of said database, it clipped off at the 18-MB point for some reason, meaning that if I reimported it, I'd have to port over a couple months' worth of entries anyway, and I've already put enough work into this thing.

However, my string of consecutive days with posts remains intact. (It's at 2,266, if anyone cares, and why should you?)

Stuff from the old templates will be gradually reintroduced. Right now, I just want to get moving again.

My thanks to Liz Lubowitz, at whose designs I sneaked a peek, and to Melody, who held down the fort in my enforced absence.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled bloggage.

The state of Maine is resisting efforts to give it a second area code, preferring to stick with 207.

TamsPalm, the Palm OS Blog, presents Carnival of the Vanities #207, and since there's only so much real estate on a Palm screen, the carnival is nicely divided up into sections, in case you're reading it on the go.

A couple weeks' worth of old posts in the archives still have comment windows, because I haven't yet gone in to edit them out; however, the windows don't work anymore, so if you're getting glared at by MT if you try, that's why.

Eventually I'll get around to cleaning that stuff up and putting up a page of archive links. (Update: You can now access all the old archives, by category or by month, here.)

In fact, I was seriously thinking of chunking this look entirely and going to a new one, but I figured I had enough people peeved at me already.

I posted this at, um, a dating site:

It is with great relief that I announce that it did not.

Or is it? Hertz is offering something called the Green Collection, but it's vaguely chartreuse at best:

Actually, none of the Hertz "Collections" qualify as entirely true to the adjective given. Their Fun Collection, inexplicably, includes things like the Chevrolet HHR, a PT Cruiser ripoff that resembles a '49 Suburban, and, well, the PT Cruiser.

Still, 28 mpg on the highway sounds impressive, especially for something that qualifies as a mid-sized sedan — if you haven't driven any recent mid-sized sedans.

I think I have the RSS thingamajig working now. The URL has changed, however: it's now at http://www.dustbury.com/index.xml.

Is there any interest in an Atom feed? If so, I'll see if I can work one up.

(Title stolen from the Oklahoma Gazette.)

File under "Terribly Catchy": from the Dawn Eden Archives, "You Did Me Wrong", written and sung by Dawn herself, circa 1990, in splendid medium-fi, worthy of your favorite girl-group mix.

You really should play it twice and let it sink in. It's that nifty, and it takes only 4:18 for the twin-spin.

A tip of the bonnet to Joe Ward, who plays all those instruments behind her.

Rocket Jones actually has an apology for a post title, which happens to be "It's my party and I'll die if I want to":

Which, of course, makes the title perfect, since, as anyone who's seen said crappy horror movies knows, you would die too, if it happened to you.

They're called TerraCycle, and they go one step beyond what most of us think of as recycling.

Really. TerraCycle sells an organic fertilizer which is basically, um, worm poop: they feed table scraps to earthworms, collect the residue, and — this is the neat part — they sell it in used beverage bottles.

That wasn't quite the original plan, says Popgadget:

File this under "I wish I'd thought of that."

Reportedly, this comes from the Policy and Procedures Manual of the Tulsa Police:

I'm just cynical enough to wonder how much of this is wanting to avoid trespassing on BCIS' turf — these are Federal laws, after all — and how much of it is wanting to avoid confrontation with open-borders advocates.

On the upside, now we know that overstaying one's student visa is "deplorable."

(Via Meeciteewurkor.)

Programming is an unusual art form: it fights back. Part of the collateral damage is the bug. (If your immediate response is "That's actually a feature," you've been doing this too long.)

And the smaller it is, the harder it is to get a grip on. Terry found this anomaly in Firefox:

But combined, it blew up. CSS is not my strong point, as should be obvious, but I'm wondering if maybe those two parameters overlap slightly: bolding the text changes its size, after all. Still, two em is a fair amount of real estate on screen, and it's not like she was using Double Secret Ultra Bold or anything.

Just email them a copy of the article and let them figure it out.

For some reason I can't imagine this on a German car: it's a Hello Kitty exhaust pipe. I don't know if it's a one-off or if it's actually in production, but the ad campaign, if the latter, would seem to be obvious: Puts the "cat" back in "catalytic converters"!

James Frey, the Milli Vanilli of memoirists, and publisher Random House will settle various class-action lawsuits filed against them by aggrieved readers of Frey's A Million Little Pieces, which was billed as "nonfiction."

How readers will be compensated:

A word to librarians: lock up this title now, before the patrons start ripping up your circulating copies.

(Via The Consumerist.)

Update, 10 am, 9 September: Chase at Taste the World thinks this is a good enough idea to extend to other forms of deception.

This can't be good:

The House of Mouse is late again: we've had this sort of "technology" in Oklahoma City for years. If you take NW 36th westbound from Kelley to Lincoln at exactly 47 mph (which is a tad in excess of the speed limit, so don't do that), you get a pretty fair transcription of Ron Bushy's drum solo in Iron Butterfly's "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida".

John Owen Butler finds one saving grace in this scheme:

Think we could interest the makers of Accutane^® in sponsoring the pockmarked surface of NW 50th between Pennsylvania and May?

From the "Monologue" section of the Oklahoman's editorial page today, attributed to www.inopinion.com:

These revolutions, incidentally, will not be televised.

Zillow.com lets another $2819 out of the price tag here at the palatial Surlywood estate; the Zestimate, once pushing $120,000 for no discernible reason, is now down to $105,082.

At this rate, the numbers should be at least somewhat plausible in two or three weeks.

(Previous Zestimates recorded here.)

Detroit Lions defensive-line coach Joe Cullen is under suspension for Sunday's game with the Seahawks, partially because he placed an order at a Wendy's drive-thru in Dearborn without any clothes on on the 24th of August.

As grievous offenses go, this one is pretty trivial compared to the other charge against Cullen: he was busted for DUI last week. The Lions, in a statement, called both incidents "alcohol-related misdemeanors."

Wendy's presumably didn't offer to Biggie-size anything for Cullen.

A year ago, Oklahoma Natural Gas Company offered what they called a Voluntary Fixed-Price Plan, under which you would pay $8.393 per dekatherm for the next twelve months, regardless of the actual price of natural gas. I passed, noting that gas, at the time, was about a buck and a half cheaper than that.

It didn't stay that way, though, as the numbers show:

• November: 2.4 used at $11.044; total price $26.51; VFP price $20.14; loss of $6.37.

• December: 4.4 used at $11.550; total price $50.82; VFP price $36.93; loss of $13.89.

• January: 9.7 used at $12.012; total price $116.52; VFP price $81.41; loss of $35.11.

• February: 6.4 used at $9.589; total price $61.37; VFP price $53.72; loss of $7.65.

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

• April: 4.6 used at $8.660; total price $39.83; VFP price $38.61; loss of $1.22.

• May: 2.0 used at $8.781; total price $17.56; VFP price $16.79; loss of $0.77.

• June: 1.2 used at $8.486; total price $10.19; VFP price $10.07; loss of $0.12.

• July: 1.1 used at $7.520; total price $8.55; VFP price $9.53; gain of $0.98.

• August: 1.0 used at $7.566; total price $7.82; VFP price $8.67; gain of $0.85.

• September: 0.9 used at $7.577; total price $7.06; VFP price $7.82; gain of $0.76.

• Cumulative: 41.3 used at $9.939; total price $410.49; VFP price $346.89; loss of $63.40.
  

(Rounding errors lurk.)

It's not on their Web site yet, but the flyer with the new bill contains the details of next year's VFP: it's $9.25 per dekatherm. I have until the 20th of October to either sign up or start whining for another year.

"It was turning into a hazard," he said, and I suppose it was awfully close to the power lines at that. So last week he brought out the chainsaw, with the results you see. (Click to embiggen.) Yesterday most of the detritus was hauled off. Admittedly, I have something of a reputation as a treehugger, so I wasn't exactly overjoyed at seeing it come down, but hey, it's their tree, and for all I know, clearing this space might actually help with the process of selling the house, which is presumably uppermost in their agenda right about now. Still, when something you've seen every day for three years disappears, it takes a while for the image to right itself in the brain and the correction factors to be applied. In another three years, I might well forget about it — until, of course, I browse the archives for something or other.

Say, from 1 to 100.

(Suggested by Venomous Kate.)

On New Year's Day, I issued a batch of predictions. For the Oklahoma Redhawks of the Pacific Coast League, I projected the following:

Actual results:

Considering the fact that the 'Hawks got off to a 9-18 start, 74-70 doesn't sound all that bad, and nobody came close to Round Rock this season anyway. (The Express finished at 85-59, 11 games in front.)

Still, the 8-ball is a tad cloudier than I'd prefer.

Governor Henry introduces the Oklahoma Centennial Stamp, to be issued next January:

(Photo by the Oklahoman's Nate Billings, from the AP wire. Inexplicably, this wasn't to be found at NewsOK.com.)

Forget these sandals, if you can. What catches my eye is this statement:

Are shoemakers looking for faces now?

Then again, I don't suppose anyone is going to write "Nicole Richie has become the new foot of Jimmy Choo."

Amazingly, I have some new roses coming in, which reminds me that today is World Naked Gardening Day, a time to give the sunshine a chance to do for you what it does for your flowers. (Yeah, eventually they wilt, but they're outside 24/7 and you're not.)

Last year's commentary on WNGD proved to be surprisingly popular, and I need not repeat it here, except to echo one of the cautions: you might want to have something on when you bring out the Weed Wacker.

And someone asked if I'd ever been, um, damaged during activities of this sort. Well, not with the string trimmer; but once I dropped a rake on my foot, and one of the tines landed exactly between two sandal straps. Still, this is an instance where neither shirt nor pants would have saved me.

Update, 8 pm: This chap seems to be getting into the spirit of things.

Generally, I avoid enclosed retail compounds, at least partly because of some as-yet-undiagnosed phobia, but mostly because what I'm looking for can usually be had elsewhere, perhaps at a slightly lower price. Still, I wound up at Penn Square today, mostly because the Foley's signs have come down and the Macy's signs have gone up, and I was curious to see if the store looked any different under its new branding.

The answer, apparently, is "Sort of." There seems to be slightly less clutter, fewer displays sticking into the aisles, and there are areas of the floor where you can tell something used to be there and was taken away. Still, the market positioning — upscale, but not that upscale — remains much as it was. And there is logic behind this, I suppose: on the lower level of the mall near the Macy's entrance, the local Mercedes store has parked a red C230, the bottom of the US Benz line, which practically defines that position, inasmuch as for about the same money you can pick up a top-line Hyundai with more space, more features, and a complete lack of gotta-have-it factor.

My actual shopping, I should note, was done in faraway Edmond, at another unlikely venue: Spring Creek Village, where I dropped in at the New Balance store, of which there are only two in the state. (The other is at Tulsa's Utica Square, which seeks similarly-bucks-up customers.) Being a Target kind of person at best, I don't normally feel 100 percent in venues like this, but I reasoned that I stood a better chance of finding what I wanted, which was a close approximation to my old-and-busted NB 572s, at an actual company store.

What I came away with was the 925, which seems to have been just discontinued in favor of the similar 926. It's much like the 572, with a better-grade upper and more of a support system below. And, mirabile dictu, they had it in a 14 wide. I will, of course, keep these guys in mind when it's time to replace my 587s. While I have a certain psychological resistance to paying a hundred bucks for a pair of shoes, the NBs I've bought have shown surprising durability, considering the minor detail that they have to haul me around, and I figure, for the 2½ years I expect these to last — I got nearly three out of the 572s — that's a fairly-insignificant three dollars and change a month. (I have one other pair of NBs, a semi-dressy loafer whose number I forget, but given the number of times I do things that demand dressiness, they will likely outlast me.)

Spring Creek Village, incidentally, is very nice, decidedly low-key, and for me anyway, a more pleasant experience than any of the Big Malls, despite its lower concentration of bored young women in abbreviated costumes. (Note to Oklahoma City movers and/or shakers: You need a cluster like this if you expect to continue to compete with the 'burbs for serious retail dollars, and slapping something down amid the clutter on Memorial Road isn't going to do the job.)

Lowest gas price seen today: $2.169 (!) for regular unleaded, at 63rd and Meridian.

Way back in September 1956, IBM built a hard drive.

The IBM 350 Model 1 was huge: 68 inches tall, 60 inches wide, 29 inches front-to-back. The drive contained fifty metal platters, two feet across, each of which was subdivided into a thousand sectors storing 100 characters — bytes, more or less — each, for a total of 5 MB. The disks spun at 1200 rpm. By 1958, they'd built a 10-MB version in the same space.

Nowadays, of course, you'd wonder about a box the size of a Sub-Zero fridge that had the same capacity as a handful of floppies. But for the 1950s, this was space-age stuff, and a good thing too, since the actual space age was starting up right about then.

The 350 was produced through 1961; it was superseded by the 1301, which could store an astounding 25 MB.

Big Blue probably never imagined in those days that in a mere fifty years, it would be possible to store 250,000 MB — the size of the drive on my current primary PC — in a space smaller than an issue of TV Guide, and I mean the old TV Guide, and not the Fall Preview Issue either.

Four Weeks Magazine is — well, let them tell you:

I suppose it would be difficult to make this a print publication, inasmuch as you'd have to send it to a quarter of the subscribers each week.

(Via All Things Jennifer, where this question is posed: "Why?")

"Mathematics," says Jason Rosenhouse of EvolutionBlog, "is unique in its ability to bamboozle lay audiences, which makes it well-suited to creationist ends."

Mathematician John Allen Paulos explains how this should be so.

Not to mention the fact that when one path is taken, all the alternatives to that path are summarily erased and can't be counted in the aggregate. (If the first Powerball number is, say, 10, combinations that don't contain a 10 are out of contention for the Big Bucks; if you have a 10, your chances have just improved markedly.)

Besides, probabilities don't quite combine in the manner we tend to think. For instance, the chance of someone standing next to you having any particular day as a birthday is 4/1461 (which is easier to look at than 1/365.25), or 0.274 percent. The chance that two people in the room have the same birthday obviously increases with the number of people you have, but it becomes a better-than-even bet when the twenty-third person comes in. (Really.)

My own thinking here is that God understands the numbers better than we do.

(Via white pebble.)

Oklahoma City has no Beltway to speak of, but it does have a loop of sorts: the not-really-circular area enclosed within Interstates 40, 44 and 235. (I, as it happens, am out of the loop.)

There's a sidebar to this Sunday Oklahoman story which defines the "inner city" as NW 63rd to SW 44th, Meridian to Martin Luther King/Eastern, a zone eight miles by seven with 160,000 of the city's 541,000 people.

A term like "inner city," of course, comes with all sorts of contemporary (or leftover-Sixties) connotations, not all of them necessarily pleasant. Still, this seems to be a reasonable approximation of what I'd consider the city core. I went back to the 1940 city limits, which are well within this zone: the northern boundary was around 36th, and the western edge of town was right around where I-44 runs today.

My preferred line of demarcation runs right along the original Grand Boulevard sort-of-circle, parts of which have been superseded by the present-day I-44. (The apparently-quiescent Criterion Group preservationists also used Grand as their boundary.) The disadvantage, of course, is that hardly anyone pays attention to Grand anymore; it's just one more road that's not on the grid.

That Oklahoman article itself, incidentally, deals with future development: at the present rate, the 600-square-mile expanse of the city will be pretty much filled up some time between 2050 and 2100. Population numbers are harder to quantify, but I think it's unlikely we'll end up with numbers like present-day Houston, slightly smaller at 580 square miles but already boasting two million residents.

This is a ride worthy of an X Games event:

Yeah, but just imagine the sheer volume of her CV.

Because, you know, it's important to get back into the swing of things.

• An upsized combo meal at Whataburger will take a month off your lifespan.

• The advantage of having 19-year-olds learn poetry is arguable.

• Google has more listings for "ex-liberals" than for "ex-conservatives".

• The Red Hot Chili Peppers are an instrument of torture.

• Jennifer Aniston's legs have been scientifically proven to be the best in Hollywood.

• Speaking of legs, apparently those aren't really Emily's. (Addendum, 28 September: Got Detroit says they are, and, well, they've seen her and I haven't.)

• All poop scoops are not created equal.

• So far no one has confirmed that the doofus from Orange County who joined up with al-Qaeda is really working for the CIA.

• On the other hand, Anderson Cooper would be a really great CIA operative.

• Don't ever spam Karl Rove.
  

Ask yourself: "Is our bloggers learning?" Some of us is.

Well, we've gotten the actual content to the point where it's just as long as the sidebar (depending on screen width), for the benefit of those of you who just love to scroll.

Also, the 500th Vent went up this weekend. Seriously, you have to wonder about anyone who puts five hundred anything on the Web. (We will not mention the thousands of previous blog posts here, because — well, we just won't.)

I had notes and outlines and text fragments and cross-references and all manner of stuff ready to go into a full-blown screed here, but to what purpose? This isn't a day to point fingers: this is a day to bow heads.

So I pray, and hope you will do the same, in memory of those who were taken away five years ago.

               — Delmore Schwartz

Somewhere around 6000 people come here every week, and they're not necessarily coming specifically to hear me pontificate. Sometimes they're looking for stuff like this:

"over 30" "forget about sex":  About what?

classical music dreary mournful defeat:  Obviously not a Strauss waltz.

women judge mens penis size on nudist beach:  Like they don't check you out elsewhere?

how to make a girl blush:  Have her read the previous item out loud.

How to use the word Don't:  If you have to ask, you don't need to.

Snipe Shipping S.A. Panama:  Make your snipe hunt a success!

Laura Ingraham, Monica Crowley and Ann Coulter:  <carnac>Name three women who are less chirpy than Katie Couric.</carnac>

girls what do you like better cut or uncut guys?  I can see no reason to ask me this.

"Peter Noone" "misdemeanor":  Second verse wasn't same as the first.

what is crestfallen:  Tom's condition after he dropped the toothpaste.

boobiethon photos unedited:  They don't edit any of them. However, you have to donate more money to see the more explicit ones.

"happy thoughts and fuzzy bunnies":  It perplexes me no end that I am the only result for this search.

www.dustbury.com fame:  Um, what fame?

In the current Entertainment Weekly (#895/896), Allstate Insurance has an ad (page 119) which asks "What's your road sign?"

"The fact is," they say, "a Virgo is more likely to get into an auto accident than any other astrological sign." These are the overall rankings, "from best to 'maybe you should walk':"

I'd hate to be the actuarial type who has to corroborate this stuff.

And while looking for some sort of corroboration, I found this, dated 28 June 2005:

Contrariwise, this article, from 27 June 2005, claims that Geminis are the worst drivers, with Capricorns the best.

I am, of course, skeptical of all this stuff, but you should expect no less from a Sagittarius.

On those not-quite-infrequent-enough occasions when I have to have automotive repairs done, I search for TSBs: Technical Service Bulletins, those handy addenda to the factory service manuals that cover the problems that weren't necessarily anticipated beforehand. (My subscription to Alldata's online manual includes all the latest TSB updates.) Sometimes — not always — they're the next-best thing to a recall, because they indicate that the automaker knows about this problem and has a fix that doesn't require hours upon hours of hyperexpensive diagnostics: if A and B, then perform C.

There exists, in fact, a TSB for Gwendolyn's minor indigestion: if code set=P0420 and drivability issues=none, then there are two choices for C: if the ECU is not at current release level, flash its little EPROMs; if the ECU is at current release level, replace one particular oxygen sensor (of four) and the front pipe assembly.

It was the latter in her case, so she's getting new hardware. The front pipe, I regret to say, contains all the pre-catalytic-converter stuff, and costs more than the actual cat. (And since it's not the actual cat, it's not covered under the Federal emissions warranty, and yes, I took this up with the service manager; force of habit, I suppose.) Still, I feel vaguely better paying for real live parts than I would paying for a lot of part-swapping and other guesswork.

No, not wedgie issue. Pay attention.

Eric Sapp sees the potential:

And what issue might do that? Why, pr0n, of course:

I've regulated streaming video on my cell phone: I've got a phone that won't receive it.

But Sapp has a point: when the big-bucks and the Dr. Dobson segments of the GOP base are in conflict, bet on Mr. Moneybags to win out.

Frosty Troy (The Oklahoma Observer, 10 September) quotes an unnamed "former TV reporter":

Frosty's been harping on this for at least twenty years; I sent him a particularly heinous example of non-news from Los Angeles back in 1988. Things have not improved a great deal.

And another thing:

That's scary, if nobody in Tulsa, where there's more serious news/talk competition than there is in Oklahoma City, bothers to position a reporter at the Capitol.

This came in as a Google search last night: member of congress senile or sickness.

Nice to know we have a choice.

Once there were gold cards, then platinum, even occasionally titanium, and finally Visa and MasterCard opted for nonmetallic descriptions for their high-end cards, Visa issuing "Signature" cards and MasterCard offering a "World" card.

But, as James Bond might have said, the World is not enough. MasterCard now has a World Elite card, issued by HSBC on behalf of Saks Fifth Avenue. Benefits:

I don't expect to see many of these at the drive-thru at Church's Chicken.

It seems that Heather B. has it bad for Steve J.:

I wonder if I should send this to confirmed Dellophobe Jeff Jarvis.

The New York Times Company will sell its nine television stations and refocus on its print and Internet properties.

The official company statement:

And they've been expressing concerns to investors:

Even allowing for the fact that all such statements to investors are primarily intended as CYA devices, it's no particular secret that NYT Class A stock has been tanking for almost a year, and the divestiture would put some cash in the company coffers while investors are staying away.

NYT operates television stations in eight mostly middle-sized markets, all of them solo operations except in Oklahoma City, where the company owns KFOR-TV (an affiliate of NBC) and KAUT (an affiliate of MyNetworkTV). There is no indication so far as to whether the stations will be dealt as a group or sold off to individual buyers.

"Maintaining some intrigue," says the AskMen Web site, "keeps the spice in dating."

Neil Kramer's wang begs is determined to disagree:

Geez, and I feel uneasy about padding out a mere résumé.

What I don't know for sure is whether the organ in question is serious about these suggestions or is simply dicking around.

(Via Michael Blowhard. Really.)

News item:

Shorter National Republican Senatorial Committee: "If we're going to have a Democrat in this seat, we might as well have a Democrat who will caucus with us."

I'm waiting for a reaction from Joe Lieberman.

Marcus Claudius Marcellus, a Roman general during the Punic Wars, was a three-time winner of the spolia opima; he was ambushed and killed on a reconnaissance mission in 208 BC.

But this, of course, was Before Carnival. The Carnival of the Vanities is four years old — 208 weeks — and this week Zeuswood and Stingflower, the contemporary keepers of the flame, offer a diverse collection of hot stuff and a tribute to some of the folks who've been along for the ride since the early days.

Historical note: This was the very first post to the very first Carnival.

The not-entirely-ill-fated M/V Cougar Ace will be unloaded later this week in Portland, Oregon, and Mazda, as announced here, will see which of the 4700 or so vehicles on board is fit for sale.

Autoblog parses the Mazda press release:

I covet the CX-7, but maybe not so much that I'd take a chance on one that's been parking over by Davy Jones' locker.

Despite its Dr. Evil-esque price of one million euros, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 isn't making any money for its manufacturer, Volkswagen: development of the 1001-hp, sixteen-cylinder supercar was frightfully expensive, and even if there were enough of them to go around, where are you going to find a place to drive one anywhere near its 253-mph top speed?

The finance angle, at least, has been addressed. Automobile Magazine (October) reports that Putnam Leasing is now offering a 60-month lease on the Veyron. Terms: $400,000 up front, $23,595 a month, maximum 2500 miles a year.

It would be, I think, unkind to mention that this comes to $1,815,700, rather a bit more than a million euros at the present exchange rate — or that it doesn't include tag, title or tax.

Still, if you've got to have a machine so fast, so profligate, that it can empty its 100-liter fuel tank (26.4 gallons) in twelve minutes flat, this is your ride, and please call me when you take delivery.

Stories are circulating that leftish radio network Air America Radio is flirting (in a nonsexist manner, of course) with bankruptcy; if they do in fact go under, their affiliates might find themselves scrambling for new programming.

The following formats might draw comparable, or even higher, audience numbers:

10. All Def Leppard, All The Time
    
9. The British Invasion: Songs of the War of 1812
   
8. American Idol Rejects
   
7. Emergency Alert System tests
   
6. Disco Karachi (live from Pakistan)
   
5. The Expurgated Howard Stern *
   
4. Radio NASCAR
   
3. Pat Buchanan's All-American Radio Xenophobe
   
2. The Golf Channel
   
1. Paul Harvey saying "Good day!" every twenty seconds
   

* At an estimated fourteen minutes per day, this alone would not be sufficient to fill a daily schedule.

Dear Sarah:

There is no guarantee that you will live longer if you avoid Sidecar, Marlboro Lights and Taco Bueno.

It will only seem longer.

And if it takes years off your life, so what? It's the last years, the ones where you spend half your time in the hospital and the other half trying to decipher that last letter from Medicare. How much do you think you're going to miss that?

There's nothing wrong with trying to lead a "sensible" existence. But fercrissake, don't beat yourself over the head for occasionally behaving like a real person once in a while.

Like toadstools after a rainstorm, the signs sprout before an election: plastic and wire, sometimes seemingly placed at random, sometimes positioned for maximum irritation value.

No, they're not going to be banned, but a change to the Municipal Code was taken up this week at Council and will be heard by the Planning Commission today.

From the Council agenda packet:

Which is less earth-shattering than it may seem:

Now that's a shock.

Something else I found in the Council packet: the very first bit of lawmaking by the nascent City of Oklahoma City — then legally a village — on 22 July 1890. The ordinance set up four wards, as follows:

This was proclaimed Ordinance No. One.

Interestingly, the document to which this was attached as an exhibit hints that the eight-ward system, adopted in 1966, might not have been graven in stone:

Which, of course, leads to further questions: do we need twelve wards? Will Council Member So-and-so be "more accessible" if he has 45,000 constituents instead of 67,500? And how much gerrymandering can we expect if new lines are to be drawn?

My thinking, in order: not necessarily; not necessarily; probably a hell of a lot.

In July I bestowed QOTW honors on Automobile's Sam Smith, for his description of what happens when you hit the Sport button on the Audi RS4:

This description did not sit well with at least one reader of the magazine, who sent an email impugning, well, something:

"If you have to ask," as Satchmo once said, "you'll never know."

As for Smith, he's still working the intoxicated-mammals turf. On the early-Eighties Bentley Mulsanne Turbo, in the October issue:

Not that I'd ever claim to be above such descriptions.

And if you're in China, you've probably got 'em:

And to think we complained because our ads said they tasted good, like they should.

This fall Francis Tuttle Technology Center is offering a course in feng shui:

Okay, it may not be as immediately useful as, say, Spanish for Hotel & Restaurant Personnel, but I'm sure the demand is there.

Yet to be determined: if there's a demand for copywriters who don't use "their" as a singular pronoun.

Sean Gleeson searches for a word that fits people who don't identify as either liberal or conservative, and neither "centrist" nor "moderate" will do:

"Moderate" never did impress Chris Lawrence much:

I noted at that time that I was "definitely for liberty and equality, and violently opposed to hard work."

But this doesn't make the lexicographer's task any easier. Once again, Sean Gleeson shoulders the burden:

But since some of these seem to lack quantifiability or seriousness or curb appeal, here's the term of choice: Hybrid.

Me, I think I like "goulash," but this may be because I skipped breakfast.

News Item:

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is "dismayed":

I can appreciate Boxer's dismay: whatever the alleged benefits of media consolidation, they are, I think, outweighed by the inevitably higher level of media homogenization that results.

The report claims that locally-owned stations put on more news:

Of the major-network affiliates in Oklahoma City, only one can be construed as "local": KWTV, the CBS outlet, owned by Griffin Communications LLC, whose holdings include two other stations, both in Tulsa. I avoid watching TV news as a general rule — bad for my dyspepsia — but if there's any indication that News 9 (or Tulsa's The News on 6) actually put on more news than their competitors, I'd like to hear about it. (And if there isn't, I'd like to hear about that too.)

(Disclosure: Yours truly was once interviewed by News 9. Good thing it wasn't twice.)

Last year, Michael Clingman, secretary of the state's Election Board, expressed some interest in acquiring some touch-screen voting machines, apparently thumbing his nose at the ancient wisdom, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." At the time, I suggested that this was at least partially motivated by the desire to get the Feds to pay for the odious devices.

Steven Roemerman has now spoken with Clingman about the future of voting contraptions in Oklahoma, and I am somewhat reassured:

And with good reason, too, given the unreliability demonstrated by the most popular electronic voting machine.

I grumbled back in July that Dana Orwig, Democratic candidate for House District 87, didn't have a Web site, and when she dropped by the palatial Surlywood estate, I asked her about that.

Now she does, which puts her one up on her opponent this fall. (VoteWorthen.com comes up 404 at this writing.) Issues she's supporting are here.

From WikiHow, How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger. It goes something like this:

Oh, it gets scarier:

I wrote on a regular basis in a text editor for six farging years, and still do the non-MT pages in (gasp!) WordPad.

Oh, yeah, like I'd actually have a date.

(Scene: The spectacular Master Bedroom at the palatial Surlywood estate. No lights, except for a dim rectangle near one corner of the room.)

(Found by Monty. Didn't discourage her either.)

Now that I think about it, it's a perfectly legitimate question:

"Can they put Jack FM on AM?"

Apparently, they did, for a while anyway. Lou Pickney's VarietyHits.com, which tracks Jack and Bob and Sam and all those other characters, reports:

I mention in passing that KJAC was the first Jack FM station in the US, following a successful launch in Canada.

"One Gleeson Plaza" is the new designation for Sean and Phoebe's place, and it has a certain upscale sheen to it, which makes sense since it's only a stone's throw from the fabled Blog Building.

It's an American thing, I think, to want our surroundings to bear pleasant-sounding names, although The Onion is reporting that Chicago is running out:

Oklahoma City is currently processing plats and such for Oakdale Valley, Quail Ridge Estates, Settler's Ridge, Silver Leaf East, Somers Pointe, Country Hollow, Marble Leaf, and Robin Ridge, among others.

Most of these are innocuous, but enough with the "Pointe" business already: "pointe" is a ballet position, not a term of location.

Which, in turn, reminds me of this from five years ago:

Include "Pointe" in said codswallop.

Of course, here at Surlywood, we pay attention, not only to this world, but the next:

Sounds almost like a trip to Vegas, doesn't it? (And what happens there, I understand, really stays there.)

No argument from me:

And they're floral-scented, too.

"What do women want?" asked Freud, and then proceeded not to answer his own question. Not that I have any answers. And American industry has not always responded well: for instance, the mid-1950s Dodge La Femme was as capable as any top-line Dodge of that era, but it was glitzed up with Detroit men's ideas of girliness, with "accessories" such as a rain hat, bag and umbrella, which stored behind the front seat. The La Femme moved a mere 2500 copies in two years, or about as many workaday Dodges as fell off the transporter on the way to the dealership.

On the presumption that putting women in charge makes a difference, I betook myself to 10909 NW 36th Terrace this afternoon, a featured home in this year's Parade of Homes, designed by a woman: Carolyn Schluter, head of Raywood Homes. Happily, she was on hand to take questions, and I took off my shoes — the place was apparently completed on Thursday and we didn't want to mess up the floors — and took the Grand Tour. (If she had shoes at all, I never saw them.)

And if there's anything especially feminine about this house, it's flexibility. Men, according to stereotype anyway, want things in their places and that's that. They, or at least I, didn't anticipate Schluter's "keeping room," which is just off the kitchen — entirely too handy for those of us who are subject to snack attacks — and which she envisions as an informal gathering place for the family. It also makes a heck of a theatre: she's built an HDTV into the wall above the fireplace, and you have to look to see the surround speakers. But I spent more time in the kitchen, largely because it's actually designed with some sense of utility: there's the ubiquitous island, yes, but it's positioned to create distinct yet easily-accessible workspaces, a necessity for those huge family gatherings with too many cooks. The sinks are deep enough to accommodate any cooking utensil I've ever seen; the microwave is built into the far side of the island, on the sensible basis that it's more likely to be used when there isn't a major production going on elsewhere in the kitchen; the barrier between the cooktop and the island disappears into the countertop at the flick of a switch in case you need something just beyond.

Okay, this is gee-whiz stuff, which naturally appeals to guys, right? Maybe, maybe not. In the utility room, there's a sink with a cabinet, and one drawer of that cabinet pulls out to reveal: a nearly-full-sized ironing board, which somehow was folded into half the space it ought to take up.

Out back, accessible from both the "keeping room" and the master bedroom (yes!), there's a decently-sized patio with a built-in fire pit. There's a smaller bedroom and a den/office up front; upstairs, two more bedrooms and an open area that could be a central playroom.

It is a measure of how well this floorplan works that I seriously underestimated the square footage, putting it around 2400. (The official number is 2859.) Too cozy to be that big, I misreasoned. The exterior is as pointy as the market demands, but the arch over the entrance is a nice touch, and the door is cut to match its curvature, which is even nicer. The price, $309,900, is a bit out of my reach, but I can't imagine this place sitting unsold for too long. (Mental note: Buy winning Powerball ticket, commission slightly-smaller version of this house.) There's an interview and a description of the home in the Real Estate section of the Oklahoman; you can read the text (no pictures, though) here.

And for the requisite Guy Thing for the week, if such this be: with the completion of a new facility for Firestone, their old service center, the last vestige of the old Atkinson Plaza, is finally coming down. (We do love us some wrecking balls.)

Lowest gas price seen: $2.039 for regular unleaded, at a 7-Eleven on NW 39th.

One of the factors that drove Sean Gleeson to create the "One Gleeson Plaza" address extension (which I mentioned here) was, well, factors, and I mean that literally:

Do any of you have a house number (or post-office box number) that is a prime? The house I reported on yesterday does; I don't, though there are two on my block.

And if you don't feel like doing the math, here's a list of the first thousand primes, from 2 to 7919.

Most of your high-zoot (even medium-zoot) fragrances have wispy yet evocative names: Femme Fatale, Winter Kiss, Midnight Rain. Viktor & Rolf, up there in Amsterdam, decided to keep the evocative and lose the wispy; their scent is called "Flowerbomb," of which Peppermint Patty says:

All that for a measly $95 for 50 ml, a buck ninety for one milliliter, which is only slightly more than ink for my HP DeskJet at work, which goes for $1.84/ml and presumably doesn't smell as good.

V&R now have a scent for men, which bears the curious name "Antidote." I admit to being at least slightly curious, especially since the ineffable Rufus Wainwright has penned a tune for it:

And let's face it, nobody's going to write a song about Old Spice. (Carmina Burana doesn't count.)

There once was a time when it mattered:

In retrospect, given the explosive growth of blogdom and the proliferation of methods for getting noticed, it's perhaps remarkable that the "celebration" made it to its fourth birthday. Nothing in Bigwig's original manifesto suggested anything more than a temporary upheaval of the status quo:

I did, and I sent this, and some discussion flared up, and Bigwig subsequently observed:

It worked for four whole years, in fact, and spawned so many sub-Carnivals that the original was eventually forgotten: who's gonna go to the Alamo when there's a party on the Riverwalk?

So #209 will be the last. Proposition 209, you may remember, was the controversial California Civil Rights Initiative, passed in 1996, which was controversial largely because its first section — "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting" — didn't allow the Usual Suspects to stack the deck. One of the reasons the Carnival survived for so long was simply that it didn't stack the deck: if you sent something that you thought was your best work of the week, you got your link for it. (It is, of course, true that not every host was equally devoted to this egalitarian cause; the result was a series of "Avignon Editions".)

Zeuswood is philosophical about all this:

I am, to no one's surprise, not exactly happy with this development — I was all ready to go figure out just what it was that led Emperor Severus to travel from Rome to Scotland in 210 — but I understand why it's happening, and when the ride ends, you have to decide whether it was worth the trip.

Which, of course, it was.

Update, 19 September: Could it be that the reports of the Carnival's death were greatly exaggerated?

When I was a kid, I thought the coolest thing in the world would be the ability to become invisible, and inevitably some things I have written over the years reflect this interest.

On the other hand, I never intended to be invisible only to Technorati.

Been there, hated that, says Diane.

Arvydas Macijauskas, who spent most of last season on the Hornets' bench and was cut loose this spring to sign with the Euroleague's Olympiacos basketball operation, has torn his Achilles' tendon in an exhibition game with Skafati, and will be out for two to three months, maybe more.

Macas, who earned $2.5 million a year in the NBA, is being paid €9 million (about $11.4 million) over his four-year contract with Olympiacos.

It's called the Stable Marriage Problem, and it goes like this:

It would appear that the answer, at least theoretically, is Yes:

Suddenly I find myself, um, disengaged.

Here's a Java-based scenario to illustrate how this is supposed to work.

The online-dating service OkCupid has developed something called "The Stranger Arranger", which ostensibly works along these principles:

The list (which, I need hardly mention, never has included me) actually links to the methodology, based upon the number of questions they've answered and the conclusions that can be reached therefrom. (There are 2300 questions in the pool; I don't know if anyone has answered all of them. I've answered 190.) I suppose it's possible for people to fib, but they say it doesn't help to do so:

And, well, at least it isn't government cheese.

Traffic was off a smidgen this week, but that didn't stop the hardy searchers from sending their requests down the line and into my referrer logs.

worlds sexiest female 10 year old:  It is highly improper to lust after ten-year-old girls unless you're about ten yourself. Maybe even then.

will there be any 103 Dalmatians?  Those puppies have jumped the shark by now.

What's in the sack?  If it's four in the morning, me.

what is the privates sector:  From about here down.

chaz republican:  Not.

what's the importance of the witnesses verifying the resurrection:  Would you believe it otherwise?

wife and i like being nude in our yard, neighbors complain:  Two words: higher fence.

single women cop flak for being attractive:  And quite unfairly, too, I think.

republican women in pantyhose:  Not a reliable indicator, in my experience.

humor and meanness:  Don't leave home without them.

3x5x4 fanfiction:  Short stories, I assume.

Where wise men never go:  Between Al Sharpton and a camera.

Stop fumbling with that bra strap. Secrets of the one handed bra strap release revealed by an expert:  I don't even want to know what he's doing with his other hand.

I like big developments as much as the next guy — unless, of course, the next guy is the one who plans to make his fortune on them — but for those of us who aren't in the real-estate game, it's the small stuff that makes an inner-city area more interesting and more livable.

Michael Bates offers a case in point: the Gypsy Coffee House in Tulsa's Oldtown. The name comes from the long-defunct Gypsy Oil Company, whose building was boarded up in the 1970s and more or less abandoned.

New owner Bradley René Garcia took over on the last day of 1998 and faced a massi