Whoever said this was a boring game?

I've heard of guys bashing the bishop in the bathroom, but they weren't playing chess.

Deadspin comments:

Geez. And I thought the most exciting thing to ever happen in chess was Alexandra Kosteniuk.

Gene Roddenberry's idea for Star Trek was inclusive and embracing: the Federation was open to all. (Well, except Romulans, Klingons and such, and even the Klingons came around eventually.) It seems inevitable, therefore, that at some point there must have been a redneck or two at Starfleet Academy. You'd spot him on the bridge immediately:

Just let the Borg try to assimilate that.

(Via Dr. B.)

TulsaNow says the Oil Capital has enough asphalt, and has a map to prove it: for instance, Cincinnati between 10th and 13th is an almost-uninterrupted stretch of parking lots.

From the CORE proposals [link to PDF file]:

We hear the same noises in Oklahoma City, particularly regarding Bricktown. I have never had any trouble finding a place to park downtown, even during big events like the Festival of the Arts, which draws something like 100,000 people a day, but no one believes me. More to the point, downtown activities continue to draw crowds, which should tell you that parking isn't that much of an issue at all.

A view from Indianapolis by Aaron Renn:

It's as simple as this, says Renn:

To get people into the city center, for a few hours or for the rest of their lives, you've got to give them something they want. Oklahoma City, after years of downtown desuetude, finally has a handle on the idea that they have to offer an experience that can't be had in Edmond or Yukon or Moore. And an irreplaceable part of that experience is the connection to history that exists only in those classic buildings with their inimitable architecture. (Edmond is busily sprucing up its old downtown, precisely for this reason.)

Michael Bates has a seven-minute video put together by TulsaNow to illustrate their point. But Joni Mitchell saw this coming decades ago: before the pink hotel, the boutique, or the swinging hot spot, they put up a parking lot. Then, as now, we don't know what we've got 'til it's gone.

Is there a market in the Americas for Nissan's little snotwagon? And no, that's not uncalled-for verbal abuse, either:

Green? Now that's just cruel.

I warned you about this two years ago, though I admit I didn't anticipate this:

Maybe they can sell them in Russia.

Ernest Hemingway, it is said, once came up with a short story — a good one, yet — that ran all of six words: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." As nanofiction goes, if it's not the standard-bearer, it's pretty darn close: how much of a tale can you tell in half a dozen words? There's "In the beginning was the Word," same length, but not what I think of as fiction.

Caterina Fake is collecting samples from her readers. Here are some I particularly liked:

They do seem to be somewhat sad, don't they?

(The best short story I ever wrote took a whole 804 words.)

Which means we're approaching four hundred of these odd requests from Actual Searchers Worldwide. Perhaps they found what they wanted, or perhaps not.

difference between Traditional newspaper versus craigslist:  You can't get a puppy to go on craigslist.

100 ways to look stupid:  I claim expertise in only 70 or so.

how to empty a checking account:  Writing lots of checks has always worked for me.

gummi aprons sex:  I can't help but think this was an attempt at a Googlewhack; these three words have seemingly nothing in common.

take my yolk:  Please. (So saith Humpty Youngman.)

rejected otter pop flavors:  "Manatee" was turned down out of hand; they never could get "Beaver" to come out right.

why am i so normal:  All your perversities average out.

hate good looking men:  Perhaps there's a chance for me after all.

condom mnemonic devices:  You might try tying a knot in one end.

why do redheads have attitude?  Who's gonna tell them they can't? Not me.

on the streets of pittsburgh pennsylvania then again maybe not:  "How do you get error messages from Mapquest?"

minot state fair north dakota keith urban kicks canadians out before he sings:  Maybe they scare Nicole?

suppository ass:  You certainly wouldn't to chew one.

Whataburger Walter Cronkite:  "And that's the way I ordered it, Monday, October second, two thousand six."

Vaspers the Grate takes a trip to the glorious city of Louisville, and comes up with an idea for your local Convention and Visitors Bureau:

I dunno about the rest of you, but I travel a bit (25,000 miles this decade so far), and I'd like to know stuff like that.

Inevitably, it being still fairly early in the day, this list will include some things I actually learned yesterday, and possibly the day before that. (As George Carlin says, the day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.)

• Not one major-league pitcher won 20 games this season.

• You can't trust just anyone to do a proper Brazilian.

• I suppose I've never played TI Invaders.

• Apparently I. F. Stone was not getting paid off by the Soviets after all.

• Jesus Camp: not about Jesus, not about camp.

• The Hornets have sold over 12,000 season tickets for their second season in Oklahoma City.

• You've seen those Civil War reenactments? How about a reenactment of Brief Encounter?

• The Prophet Mohammed: now available in bobblehead.

• That drug that's supposed to be "undetectable"? Not.

• And that fish mounted so proudly on the clubhouse wall? Probably fiberglass.
  

More when I feel like I need to post but don't actually have any material.

British TV chef Jamie Oliver has been on a crusade to encourage healthier eating by children. And he's being heard: last year Her Majesty's Government agreed to put up £280 million toward the improvement of school meals.

Friday night Oliver appeared on Jonathan Ross's talk show on BBC One, and Ross suggested, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that maybe people who live in council estates ought to refrain from spawning:

The BBC reported 61 complaints about the Ross remark.

This idea does not strike me as feasible. If people in council housing need lead, there's always a paint chip or two nearby, and it wouldn't achieve the desired results anyway. And I don't think it would fly Stateside, either: while the minions of the Nanny State are generally happy to impose goofy rules, most of them would consider it beyond the pale even to suggest that public-housing tenants — or, indeed, anybody — ought to screw less. Not even Bloomberg would go that far.

(Via Fark.com.)

The Governator issued a flurry of vetoes at the end of September, including a bill which will have to be killed in lots of other places:

Muses Laura:

If he does, and if it should actually get on the ballot, I think we in the other 49 states should be allowed to vote on it. It would, after all, be consistent with Umberg's [lack of] logic.

Computer-related stuff that's been on my mind of late:

• Everybody should subscribe to the Daily Bitch feed, not just because it's Monty (though that's a good enough reason in itself), but because if you ever want to link to something of hers, it's a lot easier to pull the URL from your feed reader than to try to figure it out from the actual site. (And I should know.)

• Does anyone know a reasonably-effective way to get someone who's put out X good podcast(s) to hurry up with Episode X+1 already?

• I have this weird idea that EPROMs should not vomit up their contents just because you hit the power switch at a funny angle. Big Blue apparently disagrees.

• Has anyone on earth ever successfully run a Lotus Notes client with 256 MB of RAM?

• I'd still like to find a way to record CD-Rs at slower speeds than offered by my software. (Yeah, I know: get new software.)
  

I don't know if this will end up as another series. Yet.

Unlike some, I got the room:

According to Oklahoma County data, the property unofficially known as Surlywood is a one-family house that covers 1,060 square feet, on a lot of 11,025 square feet.

By contemporary standards, that's a lot of lot. (It's also rather a lot to mow, but everything in life has trade-offs.)

The Supreme Court has declined to hear Acosta v. Texas, in which Mr Acosta sought to have overturned a Lone Star ban on the manufacture, sale and advertising of "obscene devices," otherwise known as sex toys. Counsel for Acosta had pointed out that similar laws in other states had already been declared unconstitutional.

A Texas appellate court had previously ruled that actual use of the items was not forbidden, prompting this remark from Matt Rosenberg:

I think I speak for rather a lot of us guys when I say "Ewwwww."

Incidentally, if you're going to smuggle these contraptions into Texas, you might want to stop at six: possession of more than half a dozen is construed as intent to promote, which is a misdemeanor.

The single largest collection of dildos in Texas, of course, is in Austin, at 11th and Congress.

Terry Teachout's Cultural Convergence Index is simple enough, yet fiendishly complex: there's no obvious, or even concealed, pattern to it. As the man himself explains:

Sometimes, we like things because, well, we like them, without regard to whether it fits into some particular school or tradition or era or whatever. The true value of the Teachout Index, I'd say, is that it reminds us of this fact without having to slap us in the face with a damp carp.

John Salmon of Mystic Chords tried his hand at the Index today, which is what prompted this post.

And if you're wondering if I were going to do this, you're about twenty-seven months behind: see Vent #397 for my own results. (I agreed with Teachout roughly half the time.)

A soon-to-be-former Reno resident says goodbye to her old home town:

This letter appeared in the Reno Gazette-Journal last Tuesday; in the print edition, though not in the online copy, it was followed by an "Editor's Note": "Good riddance."

The next day, the inevitable apology appeared.

In days of yore, it wouldn't have been so inevitable. From yours truly, a couple of summers ago:

(Courtesy of Romenesko, by way of Fark.)

News item: "Beginning October 3 and continuing through December 31, any customer that purchases or leases a designated Volkswagen model from the new 2007 line — including Jetta, Jetta GLI, GTI, Rabbit, New Beetle and New Beetle Convertible — will receive their own completely customized First Act GarageMaster electric guitar that will play seamlessly through the car's existing audio system. The 2006 Jetta, Jetta GLI, GTI, Rabbit, New Beetle and New Beetle Convertible will also come with a custom-made First Act GarageMaster guitar."

Buick, meanwhile, is frantically trying to find Tiger Woods and photograph him with a ukulele.

Dr. Jan signed off this post as "a 3.5 year breast cancer survivor."

In a not-necessarily-unrelated story, this is my fourth year as a donor to the Boobie-Thon. One of this year's photos reads: "3 year survivor / 34 years old." Cancer doesn't check your ID to see if you're old enough.

And just in case the presence of survivors isn't quite enough of an incentive for you, here's a more-frivolous pitch I made back in Ought-Four:

Last year's donations totaled over $9000. Can they make five figures in their fifth year?

You know where to click.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft will be in town next week: he'll be signing copies of his new book Never Again. And this book might draw rather a lot of interest locally, since one of the chapters is titled "The Botched Prosecution of Timothy McVeigh."

Nolan Clay reports in the Oklahoman:

The prosecution was not impressed:

Not all of the public was so assured.

Ashcroft also noted that he was concerned about McVeigh's post-execution reputation:

In that, at least, they were successful: the only mentions McVeigh gets these days are from apologists for Islam, who are anxious to point out that McVeigh, unlike ninety-nine-point-something percent of modern-day terrorists, was not in fact a Muslim.

Ashcroft will be appearing at the Wal-Mart Supercenter (!) in Edmond on Wednesday, 11 October, at noon. Note to women: you might want to be careful with the cleavage.

Oklahoma City has adopted new animal-control laws for the first time in twenty-five years, and it's going to take a little more time to fine-tune at least one of them.

Upside: There is no presumption that, say, a dog is "dangerous" because of its breed. Downside: Who gets to define "dangerous"? So the section on "aggressive behavior" (§ 8-132) is on hold until a Council subcommittee — with input from citizens and animal-welfare groups, if Sam Bowman (Ward 2) has his way, which seems only fair — can nail down a definition that will pass muster and/or avoid litigation.

Carrie Coppernoll from the Oklahoman:

Other provisions are less controversial. The city has posted the changes [link to PDF file] to its Web site.

About half the country can dial 211 for information about social services in their area.

And if you can read this, you can easily reach Carnival of the Vanities #211, the first (and still the oldest) weekly blog compendium, anchored at Silflay Hraka, and inexplicably containing something of mine.

The big story around here at the moment is that "Wild Bill" Kerr of Passionate America tracked one of Mark Foley's IM "buddies" and found him working for the Ernest Istook gubernatorial campaign here in Oklahoma City. (How big? A chap from the Oklahoman called me, hoping I had Bill's phone number. I don't.)

I guess the good thing about this is that the Foley experience didn't sour the poor lad on the sport of politics.

Update, 5 October: The Oklahoman's take.

Crank it loud when I'm gone:

"Every Breath You Take"? Seriously? Has anyone ever actually listened to this song? Sting supposedly once said it was a metaphor for government surveillance, and I want dead family members watching me about as much as I want Alberto Gonzales watching me, which is to say Not Much.

Inasmuch as I am aging at an appalling rate — one whole year every twelve months or so — it's probably time for me to pick out a playlist to celebrate my own demise. I think it ought to have things like this:

• (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones
  
• Mystery Train - Elvis Presley
  
• 7 Rooms of Gloom - Four Tops
  
• No More Mr. Nice Guy - Alice Cooper
  
• When I'm Gone - Brenda Holloway
  

And I'd be much obliged if someone dug up Nat "King" Cole's "That Sunday, That Summer." It bears no actual resemblance to life as I know it — but oh, how I wish it did.

Death to Comic Sans, says Julie Neidlinger:

All I can say is that whatever mail client I have at hand, the very first thing I look for, and toggle on if I find it, is "Read all mail in plain text," the way God and RFC 822 intended.

For the benefit of our data-entry types, I spend about twenty-five minutes a week producing card-stock signage for freshly-opened document bins, generally 8.5 by 4.625 inches. In an effort to provide some semblance of variety, I rotate seven different colors of stock, with contrasting ink colors when available, and I bring in a different font each week from the 75 or so I have available that are actually readable from across the room. (Black Chancery is out.) I think I used Comic Sans once, and nobody liked it.

TRIP, The Road Information Program, has once again reported on the costs of bad roads, and they are considerable. Where are the worst?

In an appendix to the report, I find that TRIP considers 19 percent of Oklahoma City-area roads to be Good, 12 percent Fair, 26 percent Mediocre, and an appalling 43 percent Poor, missing the Top Ten by only a couple of percentage points. According to TRIP, these roads cost the average local motorist $568 per year in depreciation, component wear, tire wear and poorer gas mileage. (The San Jose driver, facing roads even worse, shells out $705; the marginally-less-horrible roads in Tulsa run up a $527 tab.)

A report on the state's Interstates only, issued earlier this year, bore less bad news: the freeways aren't nearly as bad as the surface streets. On the other hand, congestion, especially in urban areas, is growing rapidly.

By Tragic Christian, in a guest post at The Dawn Patrol:

To the above, I append this comment from Jill:

What can I say? Show me a minefield, and sometimes I want to dance.

I've never been to the Marshall County (Tennessee) Memorial Library, but I'm willing to bet that they've got some books on the shelves (in the 400s if they use Dewey Decimal) in rather a lot of languages besides English.

God forbid the locals should find out:

I am sorely tempted to go buy a non-English book and have it delivered to the library (310 Farmington Pike, Lewisburg, Tennessee 37091) just out of spite. The Annoyed Librarian might approve:

Maybe a novel by Gabriel García Márquez. That ought to shake them up a tad.

These guys at Penn:

Now that's what we need: student inactivism.

(Via Jonah Goldberg.)

By some standards, I (or my lovely doppelgänger, about whom too much has been said already) achieved Fixture status in the local BBS scene in the middle-to-late 1980s. However, it must be said that while there were plenty of users in my chronological cohort, most of the headlines were inevitably made by, so to speak, punks half my age.

Except for Jack Flack, who was one-third my age.

Flack's memoir Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie, published under his ostensibly-"real" name of Rob O'Hara, is now out and about, and it's about as unfiltered a history of this era as I'm ever likely to see: yes, there were some, um, illicit activities going on, and O'Hara knows copyfests and krackage as well as anyone in this time zone. Today, of course, is (sorta) different:

And woe betide he who pronounces that last word as though it were a city in Mexico.

(Find Commodork at lulu.com. And do read this: it's an overview of that very subculture, written by Flack himself.)

This is the city's wish list for the area surrounding the new Interstate 40 alignment:

A fairly tall order, but this is what the Mayor's steering committee came up with yesterday. (More detailed overview here.)

Regular readers will remember that I was not thrilled with this particular alignment of I-40, mostly because it effectively isolates Union Station from the existing multiple rail lines that could make it into an instant (well, comparatively speaking) rail-transit hub. It's probably too late to change any minds at ODOT, but the committee is at least giving lip service to "consider[ing] alternate modes of transit."

None of this is going to happen immediately; that vaunted boulevard, for instance, won't even be started until the new I-40 loop is finished, which will be late 2008 at the earliest. And the success of the plan, I suspect, will be at least partially dependent upon whether the traditional power structure insists on wielding its traditional power, or has enough sense to get out of the way.

Then again, I retain a measure of hope, if only because I was here through the Bad Old Days, and we've made rather a nice recovery since.

Lynn is tired of those [word redacted] snakes coming up through the bathroom:

Complain? Not me. Here's why:

Sheesh. Even Kate has sworn off venom.

Life is but a walking shadow, so what choices do we have? Steph Waller explains the options:

I seem to be combining both (a) and (e); other idiots tell different tales.

Seen on the street by Gail:

Sounds like the troll who hangs around under the Belle Isle Bridge.

A letter in this morning's Oklahoman:

It's been thirty-six years since I last set foot in a chemistry lab, but it seems to me that there's no particular reason why you couldn't.

Okay, we've had twelve months of this, and it cost me sixty dollars and odd.

To recap: Last October, with gas prices in flux, Oklahoma Natural Gas Company offered to sell gas to its customers for a Voluntary Fixed Price of $8.393 per dekatherm, which struck me as a fairly crummy deal, inasmuch as gas was selling in the $6.50 range at the time. So I passed, and gas promptly jumped off the farging scale, as follows:

• 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.

• October: 1.1 used at $7.665; total price $8.71; VFP price $9.54; gain of $0.83.

• Cumulative: 42.4 used at $9.887; total price $419.20; VFP price $356.43; loss of $62.77.
  

This year's VFP is $9.25 per dekatherm. I'm still debating whether I want to commit myself to this program or not. (Deadline is the 20th.) Clearly, if we're going to have $11 or $12 gas, I need to lock in this price. But are we going to have $11 or $12 gas? If I knew things like this, I could quit my job and live off the stock market.

According to this thing, I am more popular than McGehee, but not as sexy.

I need hardly point out that Jeff Goldstein beats us both.

(Via the inordinately-lovely Miss Cellania.)

Though seldom this much:

Like writing $14,400 worth of checks a year wasn't enough of an annoyance in itself.

I don't know Florida (or anybody's) law for certain, but I'd bet that the former Mrs Roach's transition to manhood does not invalidate the existing divorce decree. And this could open up a whole new can of worms: if Rhonda Ron [sample name used only for illustration] is still attracted to men, there won't be a remarriage (which presumably would end the alimony payments) under existing law.

The operative word here, of course, is "existing."

(Via Bitter Bitch.)

The government of Mongolia wants to trademark the name and image of Genghis Khan:

In fact, the Ulan Bator airport is being renamed for him (as noted here during the summer). But the Mongolians (I guess we don't call them "Mongols" anymore) don't want outsiders appropriating Genghis:

It won't stop there, says Lemuel:

In the best of all possible worlds, this would be the result:

"Adolf Hitler," "Nazi" and "National Socialist," or any combinations including same, are registered trademarks of Mike Godwin. All rights reserved. Use without prior permission strictly forbidden.

But I suspect Godwin probably doesn't want anything to do with this sort of thing.

Which leaves me only one question: which Third World hellhole — Iran, Cuba, or the Gaza Strip — will be the first to name a landmark for Jimmy Carter?

Springtime in New York: what better time for romance? It's about time, thinks Haley Walker, and you can't blame her: a few years back she and daughter Vera fled Austin, Texas and "psychotic" husband Roger, with little more than the shirts on their backs — and about six hundred pairs of designer shoes.

Haley has done fairly well for herself. Upon her arrival in the Big Apple, she waited tables at a restaurant, which turned out to be a front for a money-laundering operation for Romanian mobsters; when the ringleader was tossed into the slammer, she was the only person on staff who had any idea of how actual restaurants were supposed to work, and by default she became the manager. Now the restaurant's a success, the daughter's turned thirteen, and maybe, just maybe, it's time to dip one Jimmy Choo-clad toe into the dating pool once more.

This is the setup for Theresa Rebeck's Bad Dates, the season opener for the Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre, and in true CityRep tradition, they're working without a net: Bad Dates is a 95-minute monologue, the musings of Haley Walker in her Manhattan bedroom as she reflects on the perfidy of men, the mythos of Mildred Pierce, and the value of quality footwear. And the dates? Bad, bad, and finally, at long last, worse.

The genius of this particular play, I think, is establishing Haley as an expat Texan, as fiercely independent as any native New Yorker, but maybe too wistful to immerse herself in that legendary Manhattan cynicism. It also makes an already difficult role more so, since at any given moment there are two or three or more emotions being juggled and only one person to convey them all. And in this production, that one person is Oklahoma City native Stacey Logan, who's spent enough time on the Broadway boards to know where the Southwest and the Big Apple intersect, and whose timing is Borscht Belt-perfect. Logan's Haley is utterly believable: you share her excitement when she goes out, and her disappointment when she recounts the horrible story of what happened when she did. (Pacing is critical here, but director Michael Jones maintains a steady hand.) And remember that jailed Romanian mobster? He's not going to stay in stir forever.

It's hard for me to talk about Bad Dates, simply because I've been someone's Bad Date more than once (and someone's psychotic husband once). But I laughed out loud at the funny stuff, of which there is an abundance, and I was moved by the suddenly-scary events of the second act. The crowd this afternoon was smallish — something about a football game, they tell me — but appreciative. And you've got until the 22nd to see it yourself.

In the 1960s and 1970s, audio manufacturers played games with specifications, because they perceived that what hi-fi buyers of the time wanted was Really Good Numbers. Eventually the FTC stuck its beak into the proceedings and decreed a standard for power output: that "280-watt" amplifier would become "42 watts RMS per channel, all channels driven, 20-20,000 Hz, ± 2 dB, 0.5% THD, 8 ohms." As with other Federally-approved numbers — cf. "EPA city mileage" — this tells you some things and doesn't tell you others. This particular amp sits in my living room. If I fed it nothing but sine waves, I'd presumably get exactly the numbers the Feds ordered. Music, however, isn't continuous tones: it's peaks and valleys. And for very brief peaks, the box might actually deliver more than 42 watts: as much as 70, in fact. Given that this is a four-channel amplifier, you can multiply 70 x 4 and suddenly there's that "280" rating. But that rating, too, conceals a lot: mostly, that the difference between 70 watts and 42 watts is only about 1.66 dB. And none of those numbers will tell you what you really want to know, which is "How does it sound?"

Back then, there were two markets for sound equipment: hi-fi and lo-fi. Today there are three: Real Crap, Average Crap, and Hideously Expensive But Good. A catalog from a dealer catering to the latter arrived this past week, and its cover photo tells the story: a rack of gear that cost as much as my house, off to the side a tube-powered amplifier, and seated off to the right, a fashion model, presumably expensively dressed, her expression suitably dreamy. I'd hazard a guess that guys who blow $100k on audio gear probably might not date a lot, but not being a member of this class, I could be wrong, and besides, the young lady is quite lovely, which tends to mess with my capacity to rationalize.

And I have to admit, I like the idea of a $13,000 turntable. (Tonearm sold separately.) At the very least, it hews to the idea that the closer you get to Utter Perfection, which of course is denied us mere mortals, the faster the price goes up, a characteristic found in most other activities as well. Most of those dollars seem to have gone into making sure that no stray vibrations of any sort find their way to the stylus and thus into your speakers, a laudable goal. But still: thirteen thousand dollars? I paid $12,400 for a car this past summer. (Don't ask me about its alleged "200-watt" audio system.)

I must disclose here that some of the accessories in this catalog are items I actually own, and there are a couple of them I could see adding to the arsenal, had I a few zillion dollars to spare; this gizmo, for instance, actually de-warps records, assuming you haven't done something foolish like leave them in the sun. And that amplifier of mine is now thirty-one years old, ready for banishment to the dreaded Auxiliary System. I doubt, however, that I'm going to put out five or six digits for new sound equipment: contemporary CDs are mastered for Maximum Loud, and the hell with dynamic range; most of my other new acquisitions are MP3s and/or AACs, which are compressed anyway; and how much good will the finest equipment do for a scratchy old 45? (Dave Marsh once said that the sound of Gary "U.S." Bonds' "Quarter to Three" possessed "peculiar unity": "I've played it on stereo systems ranging from $49.95 to $10,000, and the equipment makes no difference.") Of course, should someone discover that high-end audio does in fact enhance one's ability to lure beautiful women in short black dresses into one's home, I'll grit my teeth and write the check.

Since the subject is bound to come up somewhere, here's the Official Personal Watercraft of the American Revolution. (Portrayal by professionals. Do not try this at home.)

I am advised that Lydia, the Tattooed Lady bore its insignia, or something.

The 5th Annual Blogger Boobie-Thon raised $9260, about twenty bucks more than last year — in two fewer days.

For some inscrutable reason, there was some backlash this year, mostly from people who (1) manifestly didn't understand the concept and/or (2) thought it was unseemly to look at someone's rack. Robyn dealt with this sort of thing with dispatch:

Cue the crickets.

See you next year.

Dynamo Dave explains how to use a feed reader, complete with Bloglines screenshots. If you've been wondering about this yourself, this is a good, nontechnical primer.

I think the last year I followed the pop charts to any great extent was 1986, after which I decided that I really didn't care anymore. And I don't think it was my age, which was thirty-three, so much as the sheer boredom that oozed out of pop radio back then. The ooze has since been supplemented by waste, sometimes toxic, which hasn't exactly encouraged me to come back to the dial; I haven't had a real Favorite Single of the Year since Alanis' "You Oughta Know", which wasn't even released as a single at first.

I still haven't gone back to the radio, but them thar Intarwebs have made finding music a lot more interesting, and I've even got a possible Favorite Single for this year, and it hasn't even been released yet: "Rehab," a glorious Sixties-soul tune by Amy Winehouse, who wasn't even thought of in the 1960s. (She's only twenty-three.) For now, presumably until someone finds out it's there, you can see and hear it on YouTube. I give this one an easy 90; as reworked Sixties soul goes, this might be the best I've heard since Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer," which came out in (yes!) 1986.

Three dozen times I've gone to the well, and the bucket keeps coming back up, filled with stuff like this:

dick no dickless:  For Dick's sake, make up your mind.

socially inept men:  At least I've dropped out of the top 50 for this search.

Beyerstein could probably teach at FSU:  And give up Majikthise? I hope not.

10 inch penis posibility:  It's a stretch, but not unheard-of.

anakin skywalker sewing patterns:  "Luke, I am your seamstress."

homemade porn in bucks pennsylvania:  I know only a handful of people in Bucks, and they have better things to do at home.

vickie mcgehee:  No, I won't believe it for a moment. I won't.

low man on the totem pole mean:  I'm pretty low down. Mean, too.

100 ways to look stupid:  And we have 100 Senators. Coincidence?

mermaid copy protection:  I haven't figured out how they reproduce in the first place.

what happened to ponds vanishing creme:  It disappeared.

why dont women like pantyhose:  Try putting some on someday.

fake fur hydrocarbons:  Well, they gotta make it out of something.

when is my mazda 6 clutch worn:  Never after Labor Day, or on formal occasions.

autofellatio is considered a divine act:  If someone sees it, expect to hear "Oh, my God!"

You do not want to watch me during a test drive. I don't think I'm particularly hard on a car, but it's going to have to be able to do some pretty weird-looking things to get me to sign the check, and this means scary roll angles, braking at odd times, and 30-mph curves at 55 or so. While I consider these things essential to determining the vehicle's suitability, I don't think the general public benefits by having to see them take place on local surface streets, and other drivers may well be put into a state of shock, which doesn't enhance anybody's safety.

The city of Naperville, Illinois now takes a step forward with its new municipal test track, intended for customers of the dozen or so local dealerships. Here's what it offers:

Except for maybe a high-speed straightaway, this is just about everything I'd want. Right now, the only thing locally that comes close is the franchise-mandated test course for Land Rovers behind Bob Moore's Autoplex. (I came this close to climbing it one day, mistaking one of its paths for the entrance to the Infiniti service department next door, which demonstrates further the value of getting me off the road.) I'm not saying that Oklahoma City, or its car dealers, should pony up the bucks for a replica of the Nürburgring, but there has to be something better than just flying down the Broadway Extension.

"Some businesses, things and people," says Miriam, "just seem to naturally belong to one political party or the other." A few of her examples:

Obviously none of this is graven in stone, and I expect protests on some of them — since when is mayonnaise Republican? — but there is some sense to it, perhaps.

My own thinking:

Democratic: Volvo, Panera Bread, TJ Maxx, Lifetime.

Republican: Buick, Burger King, JCPenney, ESPN.

Green: Segway, Whole Foods, Goodwill, C-SPAN.

Libertarians, of course, buy what they damn well please.

Not the same as pie in the face. Pay attention here.

Step 1:  Select a color of yarn for each digit.

Step 2:  Ascertain the digits of pi, keeping in mind that you'll run out of yarn but you'll never run out of digits.

Step 3:  Knit.

Step 3.14159....:  Apply directly to the forehead.

Chance that I would recognize this pattern, were I to see it on the street: next to nil, since I'm not at all proficient at counting rows.

But you gotta love it: a hat with a secret message.

The Top Ten Good Things about the North Korean nuclear test:

10. Keeps the DPRK from being demoted to the Axis of Feeble
9. Japan contemplating new, improved Godzilla
8. Pyongyang, as a member of the Nuclear Club, is now liable for back dues
7. Opportunity to recalibrate Richter scale
6. South Korean arms trade profitable again
5. It will take 10 years to save up enough aluminum cans for a second test
4. Test site may actually be warm this winter, unlike rest of country
3. President Ahmadinejad of Iran no longer a lock for Dork of the Year
2. Beijing now wondering why they actually backed these loons
1. Finally got that idiot Mark Foley off the goddamn front page

(Disclosure: I have not quit my day job.)

I admit to being a sucker for off-kilter love stories — even off-kilter teenage love stories, if they're done with some degree of finesse. Laura Whitcomb's A Certain Slant of Light has so much finesse it nearly slipped away from me, but I was able to maintain some semblance of a grip right up until the only possible ending that made any sense.

"Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you're dead." And so she was, her own life having run out a century before, bound to a succession of "hosts" who are never aware of her existence, final disposition of her case evidently still pending. While looking after "her" English teacher, she's somehow seen by one of his students, and she must find out more.

He, like her, is Light, assigned to this in-between world. Yet he somehow has a body:

This seemed more plausible to me than I thought it would. And eventually the want overwhelms the rules, and she finds an "empty" body of her own:

Two people, both long dead, now pretending to be the teenagers whose bodies they inhabit. It's not hard to see where this is going, but it's difficult not to feel something for them, so long deprived — or for the departed youngsters who had no idea what they were giving up. It's a fascinating story, more than a little bit creepy in spots, and, I'd say, worth the extra effort it demands of the "young-adult" audience to whom it's pitched. How did I wind up with this book? I wish I knew.

Some things at Google just don't add up. For one thing, they're willing to pay $1.65 billion for YouTube. And this past weekend, CEO Eric Schmidt came up with this curious statistic:

Based on this assertion, and given the inexplicable yet verifiable fact that I have more than one reader, I have to assume that there are some blogs out there that aren't even being read by the people who write them.

For example:

A Google search for "i don't read my own blog" garners 39 hits. I think I might have about 39 regular readers.

Boy, do I know what this is like:

Been there, done that. The bank in question used to make an easy thousand dollars a year from my card accounts. No more.

Ethnic diversity, we are told, is a Good Thing, and to some extent, I have to agree: I have no desire to live among a bunch of people who are exactly like me, assuming that there exists a bunch of people who are exactly like me, which is something I don't really want to assume.

But there's always been a serious downside to it, and now it's being quantified:

My vestigial leftist reflex immediately came back with "Yeah, so there are xenophobes out there. We're not like that." Which suggests further research — say, busing churchgoing NASCAR fans into Berkeley.

And Putnam isn't by any means calling for re-isolation:

This strikes me as fatuous. "Us" is already under construction, and always has been; these things happen on their own, and efforts to direct the process are not guaranteed to produce the desired results, as Putnam's own research presumably shows.

Or, as Rachel says:

Think of it as the Law of Unintended Consequences in action. Or you can just snicker at this:

Some choice. "Ghazanfar" is evidently Arabic for "Morton". And while we're on the subject, veils suck.

Motor Trend reports (via Autoblog) that Porsche's ageless boxer six is now pushing the limits of development:

And the purists (some of whom work in Stuttgart) wouldn't dream of trying to squeeze the Panamera's V8 under the 911's tail.

Some of the comments caught in the crap-filtration system around here lately are attempting to be cordial in the process of leeching linkage. Examples:

Since obviously the scum who wrote this originally can be considered a complete loss, I'm taking some pleasure time to empty out the trash.

A Louisiana Googler wanted to know if there was really such a street as "Memory Lane."

As a matter of fact, it's just down the road from me, off the 3900 block of NW 50th. (Google map here.)

If you're looking for the Heartbreak Hotel, though, it's at the end of Lonely Street, which doesn't intersect 50th at all.

After all, it's a preseason game, and the first preseason game at that.

Still: Hornets 84, Mavericks 81, and as we all know, the Bees never beat Dallas.

And here it is:

I'm just as thrilled as you think I am. Maybe even less.

Inasmuch as Technorati is giving me the Claude Rains treatment of late, I've replaced their search box with one of Google's — it's in the "Usage notes" area on the frontpage sidebar — which should produce marginally more reliable results.

Actually, I'm happy with anything that produces results at all these days; just about every day, there's a half-hour (more or less) period when this site is all but inaccessible. If it happened at the same time every day, it might be a bit more understandable, but no. I assume that it's related to lingering Dreamhost issues that are being gradually addressed. On the upside, response time has improved markedly in the past sixty days, though at least some of that is due to reducing the size of my database by 95 percent, an idea for which I claim no credit.

Remember when there was always room for this stuff?

As biohazards go, this is inarguably small-scale. Had this been spinach salad with mayonnaise, there'd be Chernobyl-level anguish.

(Via The Consumerist.)

A chap from Edmond is, says Cosmopolitan, one of the "hottest guys in the U.S.", and he'd like your vote in their Bachelor Blowout, as it were.

Josh Walters, 23, who teaches at Summit Middle School in Edmond, represents Oklahoma in the magazine's list of 50 studmuffins, and he looks, well, like this.

And he admits to one bit of puzzlement about women:

This, sir, is why you're teaching geography. Mountains and streams don't do things like that.

(Those of you who may be seeking the very antithesis of hot — oh, wait, you're already reading me.)

Or, in Celsius, 100.

Why Gabriel Fahrenheit set the boiling point of water to 212 degrees is not known for certain. I've always believed that one summer day in the 1720s he went outside for a moment, then dashed back inside and sputtered: "Gott in Himmel! It must be a hundred degrees out there!" Six months later it was colder than Prussian beer; he decided that this was zero, and from those two points he constructed the entire scale.

The 212th Carnival of the Vanities is decidedly less bogus than this story, and packed full of bloggy goodness besides.

Lileks explains one way to make your campaign ad more effective:

Of course, There Is No Cabal.

Terry Michael, on the question of whether House Speaker Dennis Hastert should step down:

And who's to blame for all this foofaraw, anyway?

I'd dispute that "sex-sophistication" business — I submit that we're no closer to understanding all of its ramifications now than we were when Delilah gave Samson a buzz cut — but otherwise, I bark in general assent.

And speaking of Mr Foley, Nolan Clay of the Oklahoman said this with a straight (I think) face:

"Former" male pages? What, are they female now? Or somewhere in between? If that's the case, "lurid" doesn't even begin to scratch the surface, as it were. (Daily Pundit's Bill Quick caught this.)

I should point out that a friend of mine sent me this; despite a certain resemblance, personality-wise, I did not write it.

This goes on for quite a ways, inasmuch as it deals with life in the Groves of Academe, which is similar to The Industry only in that it goes out of its way to accommodate people who in the real world would be asking you if you wanted fries with that. This is, incidentally, another way you can tell I didn't submit that question: the idea that I'd be looking for something "meaningful" for my last decade is wholly foreign to me. Not being one of the nine people on earth who have their actual Dream Jobs, what I look for is something I can put out of my mind the moment I walk out the door.

Or, better yet, the moment I walk in the door.

I missed the first half of the announcement, but someone was droning on the radio this morning (right after Morning Edition; I don't think it was a national NPR spot) about how "everything we do is either health-creating —"

[pregnant pause]

"— or not."

Yeah, that ought to narrow it down.

Addendum, 13 October, 6 pm: I've identified the program; the description on screen is a little bit less terse.

As you all know, the lesser of two evils would still be lesser.

(Darth Rove snickers in the Eighth Circle.)

Were you to make a list of Things That Just Don't Happen, I wouldn't at all be surprised if you included "insurance premium decreased," though in my three years at the palatial Surlywood estate, this actually did happen once.

Make that twice. Despite a four-percent increase in coverage (an inflation rider of some sort), insuring the little box on the curve will cost $100 less this coming year.

This being a mere eight bucks and change per month, I am going to use that sum to bump up the coverage another fourteen percent, splitting the difference between what the assessor thought the place was worth last year and what Zillow.com thought the place was worth last week (which is now a smidgen under $100k).

Taxes? I figure they'll go up $30 or so.

Especially blogs by teenagers. Here's why, from the Restored Church of God:

Current mood: chortling.

And how dare those little...those little...non-adults have a "tendency to want to have a voice"! Who do they think they are? Us?

Oh, wait, we're not allowed either:

My luck, that asshole Moloch will be late with the frigging checks again.

(Link and title swiped from Cruel.com.)

Miriam is on the road, and I have to assume she's packed plenty of shoes:

This caught my eye because for the World Tours I pack, yes, four pairs of shoes. These are, however, sixteen-day trips, which leads to the next question: in the unlikely event that I ever acquire a real live traveling companion of the female persuasion, will I have to get a larger vehicle just to accommodate her wardrobe needs? (I currently drive an Infiniti I30, which is considered more-or-less mid-sized.)

Someone, I forget the name, once said that the essence of rock and roll was "happy songs about sad things," and I filed that away with "jumbo shrimp" and all the other oxymoronic things I'd heard — until the day I realized that those premises weren't contradictory at all.

Exhibit A: The Moody Blues, "Your Wildest Dreams," 1986. Full of bright synth bits, decidedly upbeat, and a major downer: