With everybody defecting to satellite or shuffling their iPods, allegedly there's no audience left for good old FM, let alone even-older AM.

But wait:

San Francisco-based KYOU ("Open Source Radio") says that's exactly what they do:

This does not necessarily have anything to do with the fact that I finally got around to replacing my 31-year-old microphone last week.

Normally I use this space to deny responsibility for things, but I don't think I'm going to get away with it this time.

The starting point:

I make no claim to being less fearful, but I did weigh in on this matter:

Apparently this bifurcation of mine she deemed to be the solution; for now, from the same writer, there is The Dust-Up, which will indeed be more personal and less bloggy. And if that name sounds vaguely familiar, I suppose you can blame me.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 made some people suspicious, including me. And it didn't help when the Oklahoma State Election Board put out an RFP for a "Telecommunications-based Statewide Voting System" earlier this year.

A LiveJournal member, curious, wrote the OSEB and asked what was up, and was told:

And that "telecommunications-based" system? Here's how it works:

I believe this calls for a "Yay us!"

(Via Batesline.)

We definitely have a wiener here: How to Calculate Pi by Throwing Frozen Hot Dogs.

Of course, if you insist on including the buns, you will be off by approximately twenty percent.

(Via Rocket Jones.)

This can be considered the reverse-angle shot to this one from yesterday afternoon, following a night of high winds and blowing snow. Temperature was a balmy 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

That slight bloom in the center is an artifact from the flash. (Sunrise was around 7:20, so it was still way dark when I shot this.) Not visible, off to the right, are the redbud trees and the strings of lights hung upon them, mostly because I thought it was a bad idea to run electrical stuff when the cord and the plug are under half a foot of concentrated wetness.

The camera, incidentally, is six months old.

If they'd played 49 minutes, they'd have won it. Unfortunately, the game runs 48. The Hornets were down 18 halfway through the third, and responded with an actual offensive show, which no one expected in the absence of Peja and D. West and Bobby Jackson, whittling that Chicago lead away, but they never got closer than two, and the Bulls finished on top, 111-108.

Did I mention offense? Rasual Butler dropped in 33 points, a new career high, including seven 3-balls. Chris Paul got his third triple-double: 25 points, 18 assists, 11 rebounds. Marc Jackson, playing both forward and center at times, scored 15; Jannero Pargo scored 18 off the bench. But the real killer, if you ask me, was whoever spooks the guys at the charity stripe: the Bees took 40 free throws and missed 13 of them.

The Bulls weren't any better at the line, but they got even more treys: 12, five of which were hit by Andres Nocioni, who scored 31 points and pulled down 13 boards. In the Battle of the Swapped Centers, P. J. Brown outscored Tyson Chandler, 3 to 2, but Chandler ruled the backboards, hauling down 11 rebounds to Brown's three.

At least we know this team can score without the big guns. And they'll need to, since they're going back on the road for another one of those killer West Coast trips.

Andy Dokmanovich comes up with a metaphor for recent BMW 3-series styling in a letter to Car and Driver:

By coincidence, or maybe not, the letters page was illustrated with a lovely Bill Neale drawing of the vehicle I'd prefer to that overwrought Bimmer: an Infiniti G35 in Arrest Me Red. And apart from that color, I'm pretty sure that the aforementioned girl next door (who actually is a few blocks and half a lifetime away) would prefer it too.

From today's Oklahoman's Land Sales list:

Power Alley Parking is Marsh Pittman's parking facility northeast of the Bricktown Ballpark, and Pittman and the Wisconsin-based Raymond Management Company are joining forces to develop a nine-story Hampton Inn on that block of Sheridan.

The project has been on the drawing board for three years already, and is scheduled to open, says Raymond, in the summer of 2008. The inn will feature 200 guest rooms, hot Continental breakfast, complimentary wireless-high speed Internet access, business center, indoor pool and whirlpool, exercise facility and meeting space. It will not, however, have its own restaurant, which, given the vast number of eateries already in Bricktown, is no big deal. And the inn's location near the ballpark means that at least some of the rooms will have a nice view of right field. Hampton is a mid-priced Hilton brand, which means that this hotel won't likely be cannibalizing guests from Hilton's higher-zoot Skirvin, opening this spring. The picture was swiped from Raymond's Web site; I'm assuming it represents what they expect the place to look like when it's finished.

(If Richard Mize, the Oklahoman's Real Estate Editor and an occasional visitor to these pages, is wondering if anyone ever reads those little columns of raw data, the answer is Yes.)

The latest dubious dingus-embiggener to hit the mailbox is something called "Man XL," and inasmuch as I was no great shakes, so to speak, when I was forty, I have no reason to want to pay to relive those times.

Incidentally, one Dr Oz, apparently one of Oprah's posse, has recycled the old story about how losing 35 lb is the equivalent of gaining one inch. Were this at all reliable, you'd see guys lined up around the block for stomach stapling and other arguable ventures. Certainly the year I lost 30 lb (this would be 2004) didn't end with anything resembling six-sevenths of an inch of newfound wangage.

I presume, therefore, that this is an old wives' tale, which makes sense inasmuch as Oprah's audience is largely composed of old wives — and old ex-wives. I accord it the same credence I give to that business about shoe sizes, and inasmuch as I wear a size 14 double E, I consider myself in a reasonable position to render judgment thereupon.

One of the unfortunate facts of life is that while snow is white, and my car is white, the combination of the two is a dingy grey, and it got more so as the day wore on. I might have attempted to clean off the windows at the gas station, but the squeegee was still frozen solid inside the little bucket o' slop they provide as a low-cost water substitute, so it's another Windex Weekend.

I wasn't too successful at dodging all the potential sources of slush, but I did manage to avoid hitting any of the fresh crop of pavement craters that have opened up this weekend, usually adjacent to previous craters which have been patched once or twice already. Most of the ones I found, to absolutely no surprise, were along NW 50th west of Pennsylvania, a stretch of road so legendarily bad that the city, which ran a small surplus this year, is actually promising to use some of the overage to fix it next year rather than wait for a city vehicle to disappear into a hole, never to be seen again.

The Del Rancho on Britton Road has closed, sort of. In fact, it's moved across the street and down a block, and it's no longer a traditional drive-in: the new facility is about the size of one of those seasonal snow-cone shops, and it has a drive-through and one curb-service space (if there are any others, I couldn't see them from the westbound lanes). Cutting expenses, I suppose. Still, better this than tampering with the Steak Sandwich Supreme; it's as sacred as the B. C. Clark jingle.

Bob Moore has relocated the Mazda dealership one very long block east to 130th and Kelley; as I passed it, I got the feeling that, given the vast sums I'd spent there, I'd financed this move myself. I'm not sure what's going to happen to the former location, though it's obviously being turned into something else; my best guess is that it's going to house Moore's Saab store, which is currently bunking with the Cadillac/Land Rover people down the block.

And around the corner from me, for a limited time only, are the remains of a snowman (he presumably looked better when he was new, but who among us didn't?) carrying a sign which reads, prophetically enough, "The End Is Near."

Giving no thought to mere traffic considerations, McGehee stands firm against Britney Spears' uncovered sissywhoha.

And by "against," I mean "in opposition to," not "adjoining." Just to make that clear.

(If the above link doesn't work, try this one.)

Addendum, next morning: "Britney Spears' Crotch" would make a great name for a snarly, Violent-Femmes-ish garage band, suggests Andrea Harris.

When I was ten years old, one of the most compelling records I'd ever heard jumped onto the radio and demanded my attention. Matt Lucas, a name I hadn't heard before, had taken a song I had heard before — "I'm Movin' On," by the country legend Hank Snow — and turned it into a wild rockabilly jump which, I said, many years later, "simulated the song's railroad train at least as successfully as, say, Arthur Honegger's Pacific 231."

Lucas eventually found that quote on the Web, perhaps found it amusing, and over the next couple of years, let me in on what he was up to. Most recently, it was cutting a bunch of tracks in Chicago with a solid backing band and some genuine legends, including guitarist James Burton and harpist Charlie Musselwhite. Lucas says there's enough stuff in the can for a second CD, so I figure if I want to hear it, I should encourage sales of the first, issued by Ten-O-Nine Records as Back in the Saddle Again.

Which is no problem for me, since it's a damned fine album. Starting — well, actually, finishing — with that Gene Autry chestnut, Lucas has put out a sterling example of what the pigeonholers insist on calling "roots" music, some of it country, some of it blues, some of it pop, and all of it performed with verve. Lucas is past 70 now, but he can still belt out a tune, and it's no surprise: after all, he's been doing this sort of thing for fifty years or so. Some of the delights: Lucas' own update of his 1963 hit, now called "Still Movin' On"; the bluesy take on Jimmy Reed's "Little Rain"; Burton's gritty guitar on "Little Sister," the Doc Pomus/Mort Shuman Elvis hit from way back when, and solo on Ike Turner's "Cuban Getaway"; the shuffle that turns out to be "Sheik of Araby". (Don't laugh. Even the Beatles did this one, in their audition for Decca Records before their eventual signing to EMI/Parlophone.)

I did miss hearing Matt on the drums, but he says the session engineer wasn't quite prepared for a drummer who also sings. Not to worry: Jon Hiller knows his way around this stuff. The production is clean without being sterile, and the energy never flags. Pour yourself a cold one, then pop Back in the Saddle Again into your CD player. I bet even your beer will taste better.

At least ten people in the Hague are recorded for posterity on the satellite photos of Google Earth either partially or entirely unclothed.

Just as a precautionary measure, I punched my own coordinates into the mapping system. Nothing to see. Fortunately.

Mrs. Bluebird tries to connect with her class by bringing in a subject they know, with dismaying results:

The teacher admits that no, she doesn't own any of the gaming systems. The students gape open-mouthed: they'd never dreamed it was possible that anyone over the age of 10 didn't have at least a PS2.

Wait until she tells them that there were times in the distant past, when dinosaurs still walked the earth, when nobody had video game systems.

Seattle-based Jones Soda Co., which, like most manufacturers of soft drinks, switched from cane sugar to high-fructose corn syrup for cost reasons, will switch back to the real stuff in 2007, with the complete product line, including its non-soda drinks, reformulated (re-reformulated?) by summer.

Jones CEO Peter van Stolk, on the change:

And you gotta believe a guy who can sell sodas in Green Bean Casserole and Turkey & Gravy flavors knows from "different taste," right?

My one regret, of course, is that Jones, all by itself, isn't big enough to persuade the government to abandon sugar-price supports.

(Via Girlhacker.)

Britain's Channel 4 is working up a series called Virgin School, a "reality" series about a twentysomething student who attends a Dutch "sex school" and ultimately is deflowered (or whatever the term is for a guy) by a sex therapist.

TV Squad's Adam Finley wonders why they bothered:

It's like driving. Fifty percent of the population is below average, but damned few of them will admit to it.

Now is the time on dustbury.com when we dance through the referrer logs and laugh at some of the sillier things found therein.

Gilligan kept screwing up those rescues:  Of course. Otherwise, the series would have ended in six episodes (a three-hour tour).

Muslim names suited for virgos:  Islam rejects astrology in general, a decree from the Prophet himself — who reportedly was born on 26 April 570, making him a Taurus.

popeye's last name:  No one knows. Poopdeck Pappy said he couldn't remember it. (Rumors that it might have been "Garden" have so far been unfounded.)

bikini search engine:  You might try Booble.

baristas nude:  I think they're required to wear aprons.

i disagree with i think therefore i am:  How about "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together"?

what have I done wrong god:  If you have to ask, you probably already know.

is squid an aphrodisiac?  If it were, they'd charge a lot more for calamari.

how to accept a marriage proposal - not to appear overeager:  "Yes, I will" works pretty well.

What happens in men's locker rooms:  Two words: "towel snapping."

guacamole dip kraft firestone:  Yes, it does taste rather like a steel-belted radial.

Pros and cons of having a nuclear facility in palm springs:  Pro: cheap energy, limited greenhouse effect. Con: George Hamilton will drive by and wind up looking like Chris Rock.

does pepperoni contain maggots:  Not intentionally.

Nowadays it's all bar-coded, but in the days of wine and vinyl, records were catalogued with numbers that sometimes made sense and sometimes didn't. In fact, I once vowed that if I ever owned a record label, I would number its releases according to the Fibonacci series, a notion I abandoned when it became obvious that the second release, like the first, would be #1, and the third would perforce be #2. Besides, avoiding giving a record the number 1 was a standard practice, if only because it was a dead giveaway to the guy at the radio station who might or might not play your record that your label was brand-new and therefore the chances of your having a hit were fairly minimal.

Some curiosities I've noticed over the years:

• Dave Marsh once noted that the Crows' 1953 R&B classic "Gee" was the second single (following Vola Watkins' "Seven Lonely Days") on George Goldner's Rama label, and indeed I've been able to find no earlier releases on the label, which had only just begun operations. "Gee" was released as Rama 5.

• One thing Marsh was definitely wrong about was Musicor, which, he said, was started by Aaron Schroeder to release Gene Pitney's one-man demo "(I Wanna) Love My Life Away," issued as Musicor 1002. There was a 1001: the novelty record "Sick Manny's Gym," credited to "Leo DeLyon and the Musclemen." DeLyon, I'm guessing, is the same guy who did zillions of animation voiceovers.

• According to legend, Berry Gordy started the Tamla series with 54024, in an homage of sorts to his first hit as a producer: Jackie Wilson's "Reet Petite," which was issued as Brunswick 55024. I have some doubts about this, since two different records have been reported to be Tamla 54024 — which, for Motown, wasn't that unusual an incident — and Gordy's first independent production, Marv Johnson's "Come to Me," which he licensed to United Artists, was initially pressed as Tamla 101. Further, Barrett Strong's pre-"Money" "Let's Rock" came out as Tamla 54022.

• Some co-owned labels combined their numbers: Smash and Fontana through 1964 or so; London and Parrot around 1962-1965; all the Motown labels starting in 1982.

• Stereo LPs presented all sorts of inventory issues. The simplest approach was taken by Capitol and RCA Victor: they changed a letter prefix. Some labels, like Elektra and Decca, prefixed a digit, usually 7. Columbia's pop series wound up as CL-[number] mono and CS-[number plus 6800] stereo. London and Liberty had entirely separate numbering sequences for mono and stereo, but eventually found it simpler to bring them into alignment. (Example: Mantovani's 1962 Moon River and Other Great Film Themes was issued on London as LL 3261/PS 249; the next Mantovani LP, Classical Encores, was LL 3269/PS 269.)

• In 1982, the Warner-Elektra-Atlantic group began numbering their singles backwards. Fleetwood Mac's "Hold Me" was issued as Warner Bros. 29966; the next single issued from Mirage was "Gypsy," which came out as WB 29918. By mid-1985 they were down into the 28000s. The rationale for this was to make sure that when regular catalog lists came out, the newest stuff would be at the top. Really.
  

I, of course, have learned my lessons well. The next CD I grind out on my personal custom imprint will be 111129-2; it is the seventy-ninth disc in the sequence.

Isaac Schrödinger suggests that one benchmark for liberty in Islamic countries will be pornography:

I'm not sure I buy that last paragraph — we're awash in smut here in the Civilized World, and I fail to see any substantial lessening of sexual tension — but it's got to be awfully hard to hide the average explosive belt under a tight tank top.

In researching the weird search-engine stuff, I go back through 3000 to 4000 visitor records, and I'm not just looking at Google and Yahoo and Ask results; I'm also looking for unexpected linkage and browser trends.

For those who may be curious, about 28 percent of visitors here use some form of Firefox, and 11 percent have upregraded Microsoft's Internet Explorer to version 7. Most of the rest are on IE 6, but two of last week's callers were on game systems: one on a Sega Dreamcast running Planetweb, and one on a Nintendo Wii using Opera.

I suspect that this place doesn't look too swift on the Dreamcast, which presumably hasn't been updated in a while, but I'm guessing that Opera on the Wii looks pretty much like Opera on any other platform.

Saint Kansas, commenting at The Dawn Patrol, has happened upon a quintessential rule for conducting interviews:

On the face of it, this might seem to be a taboo, and maybe it is. On the other hand, there are ways to handle such things. In the July '85 Playboy Interview, Rob Reiner came out swinging, so to speak, in the very first paragraph: "Under no circumstances will I reveal the size of my penis."

For myself, I've never been asked either, and don't expect to be — and as it happens, the answer I would give is the same for both: "I wouldn't mind a little extra."

Governor Henry, noting that there was a heck of a lot of snow last week, has canceled the burn ban for the four counties where it was still in effect.

This is not to say that we're permanently off the hook:

And it's not like we're out of the drought or anything: we're still running 20-25 percent below normal on rainfall here in the middle of the state, and other areas aren't doing even that well.

Jacqueline Passey has disappeared from Wikipedia, and she's not exactly upset about it:

D-listers like myself aren't likely to be included either. But after reading this, I did sit down and ponder the question: "Do I know anyone who might rate a page in Wikipedia?"

Specifying as a condition of "know" actual physical existence in the same room at the same time, I decided that there might be two.

And I was right, sort of.

Fred knows from comfort food:

Which is, of course, true. You can fry just about anything: okra, squash, ice cream, Snickers bars.

Refried beans, I should point out, are not actually fried twice, though I really ought to try that some day. My grandmother used to dish them up with sizzling fideo and follow with pan dulce.

I don't think she ever fried a pickle, though.

The Allow Card is a prepaid Debit MasterCard pitched to parents of teenagers. It comes with a fistful of parental controls, of which perhaps the neatest is the ability to block out specific types of merchants. The limit, of course, is how much is loaded into the card at any given moment.

I'd probably feel better about this if the proponents weren't also suggesting it as a fundraising tool.

Miss Cellania has a list of Automotive Acronyms, of which perhaps the best known is Ford: "Found On Road Dead." (At least, I think it's the best-known; the only time I ever actually heard it spoken was while I was trying to get an old Mercury started in the parking lot at Heritage Park and a couple of clowns in a Pontiac tossed it at me as they whizzed by at 14 mph.)

I offered my standard (okay, maybe it's automatic) rendering of "Oldsmobile" — "Old, Leisurely-Driven Sedan Made Of Buick's Inferior Leftover Equipment."

Other old favorites:

• Acura: "Another Car Using Rice Additives"
  
• Dodge: "Digs Own Damn Grave Eventually"
  
• Fiat: "Fix It Again, Tony"
  
• Honda: "Hugely Overpriced Non-Domestic Automobile"
  
• Hyundai: "How Your Usual Nerd Drives An Import"
  
• Kia: "Korea's Incompetence Amazing"
  
• Mazda: "Major Asshole Zipping Down Alleyways"
  
• Saab: "Shape Appears Ass-Backwards"
  

And it took a while, but I finally turned up one for my own car: "It Never Found Its Niche: It's Truly Inconsequential."

(A truly prodigious list can be found here.)

And it causes you harm, that's a moray.

Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) was speaking to the Columbia (SC) Rotary Club, and he came up with this sensible observation:

And no, I don't think he plagiarized this address, since it also contained this howler:

John Ray complains about said howler:

Which may well be true, but (1) South Carolinians, having lived with the likes of Strom Thurmond, know race-baiting when they see it, and this wasn't it, and (2) the Jesse Jackson wing of the party is busy these days complaining about comedians, fercrissake.

If nothing else, this indicates that Joe Biden isn't submitting his material for vetting by the Democratic groupthink committee, which must be considered a Good Thing.

Sarah's still waiting for the Most Wonderful Day of the Year:

There's only one thing that can put a stereotype out of its misery: the counterexample. Nothing silences "They all do that" faster than someone who doesn't do that. We don't have a lot of blue-state girls? Be a blue-state girl. And be unapologetic about it. There's a strong populist streak here, and always has been. (Two words: "Woody Guthrie.") And if someone from distant Stuffy Heights says "You're from Oklahoma? I never would have guessed," you've done your part. Next time he'll think twice before spouting off like, um, an intolerant moron.

One more thing: don't worry about the "twang." We were not put on this earth to sound like network-news correspondents.

And now, back to your regularly-scheduled reindeer games.

There may have been four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, but there are forty million leaves in Montclair, New Jersey.

As if finding the marriage of true minds hadn't already proven difficult enough, here comes another impediment:

I note here that I closed on this place the day after my 50th birthday — and that someone would have to be just this side of Beyond My Wildest Dreams to get me to give it up.

David Hasselhoff, Roger DeBris is you:

Didn't we meet him on a summer cruise?

(Via Lawren.)

What's cooking chez Scott Chaffin, True American:

(Title explained here.)

There are appropriate outlets for the electric range and for the dryer, but otherwise, my house is not wired for 220.

Kehaar hasn't been wired for much of anything lately, but still he manages to put out the Carnival of the Vanities, now in its 220th weekly edition.

What's that? You wanted more about the number? Okay, how's this? Four consecutive prime numbers — 47, 53, 59 and 61 — add up to 220.

At the beginning of this month, Texas began collecting tolls on a stretch of State Highway 121, from Carrollton to the Denton County line. And no, there aren't any tollbooths:

About time they did something useful with a traffic camera. Of course, you'll pay more without the toll tag, but this is pretty much the rule with any toll road these days.

Will we ever get something like that here? Steven Roemerman asked the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority:

I guess he's right.

The Oklahoman's Darnell Mayberry predicted that the Hornets would go 0-3 on this road trip; the team was not happy to hear it, and said so.

Mayberry was philosophical:

Cut that man a check. The Bees stayed close to the Lakers throughout the first three quarters last night and then pulled away in the fourth to score a 105-89 win. Chris Paul led all scorers (yes, even Kobe) with 26; Rasual Butler and Jannero Pargo came up with timely treys and scored 22 and 21 respectively. CP3 and Desmond Mason put together double-doubles, and Tyson Chandler, as usual, led all rebounders with 12.

It is a measure of the sheer awesomeness of Kobe that in a game where he estimated he was maybe 50 percent at best — he'd sprained his ankle Monday against Indiana, but thought he was ready to play — he still pulled down 24. And Bryant had kind words for Paul: "I love his game."

Busy weekend coming: at Seattle on Friday, then Golden State on Saturday. Let's hope the Bees are still pissed at Darnell.

Update, 9:35 am: Hmmm. The Oklahoman story on the game was written by ... John Rohde?

While I have been known to do unspeakable things like defend Thomas Kinkade, I'll be the first person to tell you that sometimes it's the function of art to shake you up a bit. (I attended, for instance, this exhibit, and wrote about it here.)

"Shake you up a bit," though, stops well short of what Jennifer went through:

This was, I believe, the desired effect. From a promotional page for the same artist, and possibly even the same exhibit:

Jennifer recalls:

A little of that, I submit, goes a long, long way.

The artist in question, apparently, is the visual equivalent of Jandek, a few of whose recordings I have heard over the years, despite warnings from Irwin Chusid, who says things like this about him:

And yet Jandek has made forty-eight albums at this writing. (Corwood Industries, Jandek's record label, is normal in one respect, anyway: they started numbering with "0739".)

There is, I conclude, a market for this sort of thing. The Muses, I assume, have their off-days, or a fairly warped sense of humor — or, conceivably, all of the above.

Given the fairly-indisputable premise that there is an abundance of asshats in show business, there exists an ongoing debate over whether this is because they're just naturally attracted to showbiz, or because showbiz, owing to its nature, eventually inspires people to degrees of rectal millinery.

Those of you who got better grades than I will recognize this immediately as the old nature vs. nurture controversy, scaled up to marquee size. In the past I have remained resolutely in the center, acknowledging equal contributions of both.

Now I'm not so sure. In the mail this week was a card with a stylized photo of a blue-eyed child and the caption: "You knew early on that you weren't like everybody else."

"So did we," it continues on the inside, and then it gets right down to the real nitty-gritty:

There follows the usual stuff, a card to fill out to indicate my "preferred means of contact," and the summary: "The Infiniti Inner Circle. It's exceptional. Just like you."

And it occurred to me, after I stopped guffawing at this, that a daily dose of sucking up at this level might turn anyone into a veritable fedora of the fundament.

(Disclosure: Gwendolyn has, in fact, 92,497 miles.)

Dawn Eden talks to the Washington Times, and there are ... rather a lot of ... apparent ... gaps.

Since she isn't disowning the Times interview, I assume that the points she made were not affected by the nefarious practice of Dowdification.

I link to this purely for its amusement value, and there's plenty of it, what with the bald assertion that there have been "460,000 Additional Motor Vehicle Fatalities Since US Supreme Court Banned School Prayer in 1963." (There's even a graph, just in case you had any doubt.)

Then again, that's a side issue: what this fellow really wants is to get people who shouldn't be driving off the roads entirely. On the face of it, this isn't a bad idea, until you look at the people he thinks shouldn't be driving:

• Anyone who's black;
  
• Anyone who's female.
  

Jalopnik linked to this drivel because, they said:

And, well, the least I can do is to help.

A few days back I put up a brief piece about this year's Bad Sex in Fiction award.

It occurs to me, or at least to someone, that the award might actually be superfluous, because "all sex scenes are gratuitous":

Such a tease, that Lois.

But the real reason that they're extraneous is that they never seem to have anything new to say:

Human anatomy, after all, is pretty well standardized. Once upon a time the characters were portrayed as breaking the laws of North Podunk; today they're portrayed as breaking the laws of physics.

(Which, of course, may explain why Lois Lane and Superman ... um, never mind.)

Consumer Reports' auto-reliability ratings are known nationwide, and while some swear by them, others swear at them. (An example of the latter is here.) While their data for cars I have owned have tracked fairly well with my own experience — and yes, I do fill out the questionnaire every year — obviously anything I could report is too small a sample for any kind of meaningful statement.

I have noticed, though, that they've changed some of the methodology. Used to be, there was a definite range for each colored dot: the "white" ("average") dot meant a failure 5.0 to 9.3 percent of the time, and that was that; half-red and full-red dots were better, half-black and full-black dots were worse. To make this work, you had to compare it to their statistical Average Model, which had dots of various colors in each of the problem areas surveyed.

The new system, detailed in the 2007 Buying Guide, is on a relative scale, and all vehicles of a given model year are considered as a group before the dot is assigned. They're not giving out the actual percentage ranges anymore, and maybe that's just as well, since I never found them especially useful. They did state, however, that black dots, full or half, will not be issued unless the actual problem rate is 3 percent or higher, which seems reasonable: if the average for such-and-such a subsystem overall is 1 percent and the same subsystem on Brand X fails 2 percent of the time, you're still looking at a fairly-negligible risk, even though it's by definition worse than average.

Under the new system, Gwendolyn and her sisters draw 11 red or half-red dots, three white ones, and one of the dreaded black ones, under the heading "Ignition". (This is consistent with at least one other survey I've seen.) Still, no survey can tell you for sure the one thing you really want to know, which is "Is this going to happen to my car?"

There's a scene in Bel Kaufman's novel Up the Down Staircase in which an obsessed teenager sends a love letter to the English teacher who is the object — the direct object, one assumes — of her fantasies. He grades it and returns it to her; despondent, she throws herself out a window.

This is not to suggest that Lindsay Lohan's New Manifesto is a plea for self-defenestration or anything like that, but Go Fug Yourself is happy to oblige, just the same.

And if nothing else, this suggests that for all the badmouthing Britney gets, she's at least a better writer than La Lohan.

Something I quoted from Premiere's Libby Gelman-Waxner:

Perhaps Libby was more prescient than she thought:

Well, you have to figure that Armageddon isn't going to start in Indianapolis, but apart from that, what's wrong with this picture?

I hope Ms Gelman-Waxner collects at least a "Suggested by" credit.

You know, guys, you could be a lot more successful with your phishing if you didn't come up with stilted, unintelligible crap like this:

I kindly ask you to bite me.

The late John Lennon occasionally seemed like a character out of Dickens, putting aside his possibly-feigned misanthropy just often enough to wish you well. Despite my own discomfort with the season, I figure I can at least act interested for the next few weeks.

One thing that helps is "White Christmas" — not the weather report, but the Irving Berlin megahit — and while it's forever associated with Bing Crosby, my own favorite version was cut by the Drifters back around 1955. It's still in print, or whatever the term is for recordings that are still available, but you don't have to hunt up an old 45 (unless you want to, in which case it's Atlantic 1048); an old friend/regular reader has kindly passed along the link to a Flash animation set to this classic R&B arrangement, and this seems like a good time to share.

On the other hand, she also sent me some fruitcake, and you're not getting any of that.

Just about two years ago, I made some noise about Malcolm "Yugo Your Way" Bricklin's plan to bring over Chinese cars for the North American market.

Well, put that on hold for the moment: Bricklin's Visionary Vehicles and China's Chery Automobile are no longer Best Friends Forever. Instead, Bricklin will cherry-pick (sorry) a variety of Chinese manufacturers, perhaps including Chery, in search of suitable vehicles to sell over here for cheap. A Visionary spokesperson says that Bricklin will select three Chinese partners in the first quarter of 2007.

Meanwhile, Chery is talking to DaimlerChrysler about a possible small Mopar-branded car, and Shanghai Automotive, builder of the Roewe, has a tie-up with General Motors. I have to figure that one way or another, we're eventually going to get Chinese cars here, even if they're old British cars built in Oklahoma.

In 1999, the then-hapless Los Angeles Clippers scored three points in the second quarter in a game against the Lakers, the second-worst quarter in the history of the NBA. Halfway through the second at Seattle, the Hornets had scored only two. The Bees recovered somewhat in the next six minutes with 13 more points, but they were down 49-33 at the half. In the third, the Sonics faltered, and the Hornets came back to within three, but a 12-point fourth quarter doesn't beat anyone: Seattle takes this one, 94-74, despite the absence of Ray Allen.

Not a whole lot good happened for the Hornets. Only two players scored in double figures: Chris Paul had 16 points, Desmond Mason 10. Tyson Chandler did rule the boards, pulling down 13 rebounds. But the real problem was turnovers: everyone who played had at least one, and the final total was a frightening 25.

As for the Sonics, they were erratic without Allen, though Chris Wilcox filled in well. The future of the franchise may seem to be in doubt, but I don't believe that it's been a factor in the team's actual play.

The rubber game of the Bees' road trip is tomorrow night at Golden State. At this point, I'm making no predictions.

Because everybody just loves gratuitous grandchild photos, here's a couple of them. First, Laney contemplates that mysterious girl in the mirror; next, Jackson observes from a safe distance. (Bigger versions are just a click away.) Clearly they've gotten this hair from their mom: there aren't any carrot-tops on my branch of the family tree.

And speaking of Alicia, she's been very good about delivering photos to us Distant Relatives, and this seems like as good a time to thank her. I couldn't ask for a better daughter-in-law. (After all, it takes a remarkable woman to put up with one of us Hill guys. Ask any of us.)

Lee Hazlewood is dying, and that somehow seems wrong: it's like he's been here forever. Certainly that voice of his, instantly recognizable yet utterly mysterious, must have originated somewhere in the eternal. Even people who weren't Lee Hazlewood, which is to say everyone, somehow managed to sound like Lee Hazlewood when they did his songs (cf. Sanford Clark's "The Fool," penned by Hazlewood under the nom de disque "Naomi Ford").

This much you and I know: Hazlewood teamed up with Nancy Sinatra in the middle Sixties and wrote "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," a song so full of attitude not even Jessica Simpson could screw it up. The Nancy and Lee duets are legendary, especially the folk-psych "Some Velvet Morning", which continues to defy explanation — until you note that Hazlewood has a granddaughter named Phaedra. "And how she gave me life," indeed. Then again, Phaedra was born in 1998, thirty years after "Some Velvet Morning."

(Aside: One song that turns up on the soundtrack to Allison Anders' 1996 Brill Building exegesis Grace of My Heart is "Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder," a lovely duet by Tiffany Anders and Boyd Rice which evokes the dark shimmer of "Some Velvet Morning" as few other recordings have, or can.)

Hazlewood's Sixties solo albums range from collectible to just this side of the Holy Grail; some of them are finally finding their way onto CD. And his presumed last album is titled Cake or Death. Only Lee Hazlewood could capture the human condition in thirteen characters — including spaces.

(Via Donna, who once asked me if I had a copy of the Sinatra/Hazlewood duet "Sand." I did.)

Given my underly-generous budget and known tendencies toward parsimony, some may have wondered why I'd actually spend the long dollar to have my car serviced at the dealership, generally the most expensive option when you have a choice.

But I can't always be sure I have a choice, since I've done no survey of local independent mechanics to see which of them won't frown (or jump for joy, which is probably worse) when a seven-year-old Infiniti comes through the door. And there are distinct advantages to letting the dealer do the dirty work, not least of which is the fact that he either has the parts on hand or can get them quickly.

What's more, the timing works for me: I can drop off Gwendolyn at seven-thirty and still manage to stroll into 42nd and Treadmill before anyone notices. And the dealership has a major incentive to get the work done in a hurry, inasmuch as they've lent me a G35 in the interim and they'd like to have it back at some point. I might see things differently were the number of persons in this household greater than 1, but since I have to do all this stuff myself, I figure my time makes up for the higher number on the sales slip.

But staff expertise is worth paying for even if you don't have to pay for it. I pulled up at the New Balance store in Spring Creek Village today and requested, deadpan, a replacement for my old 587s. She didn't even bat an eye; she suggested three models which had the features of the 587, and recommended the 1122 as being the closest approximation to my out-of-date shoes. On the off-chance that this was being suggested mostly for its marginally-higher price, I pointed to one of the others, and I tried it on. Good enough, but not great. For comparison, I requested the 1122, and it was indeed closer to what I was used to. Sale made. (It is theoretically possible to order discontinued styles, but inasmuch as I take an outlier size — 14 EE — I am not hopeful about the prospects.) And while $120 is a fair chunk of change for what is, after all, a pair of running shoes fercryingoutloud, some stores charge even more than that, and I have qualms about ordering shoes online, even though NB's 14 EE is usually spot on. (Amazon.com has them for just under $100.)

Not everything went quite so well today; my favorite car wash (it's in the Village) wasn't overly busy, and I had traces of last week's snowstorm to remove, but neither of their change machines would cough up any quarters for any of the $8 worth of bills I tried. I hate when that happens.

Update, 8:30 pm: If you think Infiniti service is pricey — which, by the way, it is — try tending to a Ferrari.

Obviously I can't keep track of everything that happens in this town — I have a day job and the occasional need to sleep — but I do regret missing Borat Sagdiyev's address to Oklahoma City officials.

Yes, really. Carrie Coppernoll reports:

What did Borat say? For the benefit of those of us in the US and A who missed it, here's a transcript of his speech before the city fathers, complete with audio — the meeting, as usual, was broadcast live over cable channel 20 — and a brief news clip (audio only) from KWTV which identified Sacha Baron Cohen in the context of Da Ali G Show.

And City Council requests that members of the general public limit their speeches to three minutes. Purely coincidental, I'm sure.

A week ago I was grumbling about something called "Man XL", yet another Product of Infinite Bogosity which promises to expand the distance from foreskin (where present) to base. I have continued to receive occasional spams promoting this stuff, but none were noteworthy until today, when one arrived with a link to a surprising-looking URL: mullahs.net.

It is, of course, highly unlikely that anyone in the Iranian inner circle is actually running this operation, but there's something sort of poetic about the notion of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad trying to move bogus wang pills in a desperate attempt to keep the reactors running.

Both the Hornets and the Warriors started the night at .500, so it probably wasn't too much of a surprise when the first half ended in a 45-45 tie.

Then Desmond Mason, who had had almost half of those points, didn't appear for the third quarter, and no one knew why. Eventually the story came out: a dental problem, presumably dating from late in the second. But by then the Warriors were on the move, and when Mason returned near the end of the third, Golden State had piled up an eleven-point lead, which would only grow in the fourth. Mason, bottled up, could manage only two more points, Byron Scott threw in the towel at the four-minute mark, and the final was an uninspiring 101-80.

The scary aspect to this was that if you factor out Mason, who hit 10 of 11 from the field, the Bees shot a miserable 34.4 percent. Despite this, Jannero Pargo managed a double-double off the bench — 15 points, 12 rebounds, and even 8 assists — and Rasual Butler picked up 13 points including three treys. But Golden State had five players in double figures, with Mickael Pietrus scoring 22 to lead the Warriors and Andris Biedrins earning the double-double.

The Hornets are now 1-2 against Golden State, with the final game coming next month. Cleveland comes to the Ford Center on Monday, and your guess is as good as mine as to how they'll contain LeBron. Two games follow in New Orleans, against the Spurs and the Mavericks.

Venezuela is raising customs taxes by 15 percent on a number of imports, including Scots whisky, razor blades, sailboats — and toilet paper.

Fausta suggests a plan which will benefit both suffering Venezuelan consumers and an ailing US newspaper:

And just how, precisely, will they save money?

The downside? The Times, so far as I know, is not known for its absorbency.

News Item: Liberal man sentenced to more than 20 years for kids' deaths.

You mean they're handing out sentences based on someone's political stances now? Sheesh. You'd think that —

What?

That's not what that means at all?

Oh. Never mind.

Having somewhat depleted my supply of Schick Super Twin disposable razors (as discussed here), I was forced to seek out a fresh bag, and for some reason, they were unusually hard to find at the usual supermarket. Eventually I spotted them on the very bottom shelf, almost all the way into the toothpaste section.

What's interesting here is that Schick makes an identical (except for color) ST for women, and its vertical location was near the very center. After looking over the entire razor display, I concluded that:

1. Guys are more likely to spend too much for razors, and therefore the hyperexpensive models are given prime viewing space;
   
2. I'm not too proud to shave with something pink.

Price for a bag of 10, either variety: $7.99.

LiveJournal's apparently will suggest "Vulgarians" for "Walgreens", demonstrating convincingly that somebody once shopped there.

A comment of mine on the November blizzard:

Note to self: You are wrong, dekatherm-breath. The guy didn't come to read the gas meter until the 4th of December, so I got to pay for 34 days' worth of service, including those wretchedly-cold days, on this month's bill, which exceeds last December's bill by ten percent or so despite a one-third drop in the price of gas.

None of these figures, of course, will include the service charges, delivery fees, and all the other neat stuff they have to increase the take, inasmuch as they're not allowed to turn a profit on actual sales of gas.

Burbed.com has a listing for a condo on Male Terrace in Fremont, California. That's a condo, not a condom.

Then again, I could be wrong:

For someone's sake, I hope said transit isn't, um, rapid.

I assure you, I wouldn't keep going to this particular well were I not absolutely certain I'd find something worth bringing up.

buy roddenberry's dill pickles:  Sandwiches. The final frontier.

novelty stores for purchasing butt plugs in oklahoma city:  Of course, "novelty stores." You think people would look for them at Best Buy?

all the things i never said:  Maybe they're on Google.

mind control tammy wynette illuminati:  Stand by your fnord.

"lou rawls" proctology:  I guess love really is a hurtin' thing.

jokes about women turning 50:  Bad idea. Trust me on this.

"involuntary celibacy" "support group":  Nice idea, but I don't think I'd go there looking for dates.

where have all the children gone:  Gone to my yard, every one. When will they ever learn?

turnstile cromulence:  Embiggens the subway ridership.

when do you change the timing belt infiniti I30:  When you feel like throwing money away, since it doesn't have one.

tampon wedding dress sheffield:  Waste not, want not.

why does the "soulmate calculator" need my cell phone number?  Read the fine print. It sends all its data via text message, which you get to pay for.

mayonnaise hair news:  You should not have mayonnaise in your hair.

do bats have hair on their wings:  I told you to keep those bats out of the mayonnaise.

why does 2005 grand prix GXP have bad front tire wear?  Front-wheel drive and 295 horsepower? What do you think?

how to make your penis taste better:  Two words: "flavored condoms."

when to leave kittens alone:  When Little Willie John tells you to.

"six toes" sexy:  I'll take your word for it, but I'll bet it's hard as heck to get her to wear sandals.

Over at Mystic Chords, John Salmon links to a YouTube video of Alison Balsom performing Paganini's Caprice No. 24.

Balsom plays trumpet, not violin, so Salmon offers this caveat:

I'm sure such people exist, but I am not one of them. In fact, I've heard this Caprice on piano and guitar — here's a guitar version — and I assume I'd enjoy hearing it on any instrument with comparable range.

Then again, range (I'm guessing) may be the issue for some people, since transcriptions are often in a key different from the original. If you generally dislike transcriptions, I'd like to hear why.

I once suggested that a Banana Republic store might be a good fit for Bricktown, and people looked at me as though I were proposing to tear down the Acropolis and replace it with a Long John Silver's. "There's one in Utica Square," I argued, but nobody wanted to hear about things that worked in Tulsa; the No Chains sign is up.

And that's not necessarily a good thing, says Virginia Postrel:

And yet we want those stores; we just don't want those names on them.

The argument is always "It would put our local retailers out of business," even if we have no such local retailers.

Meanwhile, the IHOP in the middle of Bricktown flourishes.

Beauty, like every other form of currency on the planet, is unequally distributed, and being a fan of going for what you really want, and not being a fan of what passes for egalitarianism these days, I find myself sort of endorsing this manifestly unfair enterprise:

Inasmuch as it would take plastic surgery, or metallurgy, or cosmic radiation, or something, to bring me up to a 3, I'm obviously not a candidate for this service. On the other hand, it won't have any effect on my own activities, or lack thereof — those who do qualify are not likely to have been looking my way otherwise — and I persist in believing that if you're looking for a trophy, the most logical approach is to go to, well, a trophy shop.

(Via Fark.com.)

Addendum, 12 December: Rachel notes that this isn't exactly a new concept.

The last time the Environmental Protection Agency tinkered with their gas-mileage ratings, back in the 1980s, they didn't do anything about the methodology; instead, they applied a fudge factor "to account for factors not included in the tests".

Beginning in 2008, they will improve the quality of that fudge factor. From deep within the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers' new Your Mileage Will Vary site, the nature of the changes:

Of course, no two people drive exactly the same way, so you still may not reach the numbers on the label.

The following minor bits of historical data may be of interest:

• Sandy: EPA 22 city, 28 highway; actual over 55k miles 23 city, 29 highway.
  
• Gwendolyn: EPA 20 city, 28 highway; actual over 5k miles 21 city, 28 highway.
  

Of course, I drive when it's cold, with the A/C on, and with the pedal in close proximity to the metal.

Maybe we should just play those stronger teams; we seem to do so much better.

It was close all night: tied at the half, Hornets down only one after the third. But in the fourth, the Bees played D, and played it tenaciously; LeBron James managed no points in the quarter, and the Hornets dropped the Cavaliers, 95-89.

And get this: Byron Scott only played eight, and all three of the bench personnel scored in double figures: Jannero Pargo with 15, Marc Jackson with 14, Hilton Armstrong with 12. Chalk up another double-double for Chris Paul, who scored 30 points and served up 11 dimes; Tyson Chandler got his usual 10 rebounds and blocked four shots; Desmond Mason, who kept King James bottled up all night, got 12 points.

The Cavs played hard — four players, including James, in double digits, and Anderson Varejao bettered his career high with 17 — but tonight, it wasn't quite hard enough. And the memory of that last game with Cleveland, in which LeBron sank the game-winner in the last second, will be allowed to fade away.

The next two games are in the Big Easy: the Spurs on Thursday, the Mavericks on Saturday. After that, Florida beckons.

If there's a religious gender gap, what's behind it? Bryan Caplan takes a stab at it:

I'm not inclined to go hunt down a stake and a bag of Kingsford just yet, but something about this seems a little disquieting, despite the distant echo of the ring of truth.

(Via Michael Katsimbris.)

I don't think I'm in the target market for a plug-in electric car: I can see owning one as a second vehicle for short jaunts around town, but my garage accommodates only a single car, and it's got to cover most of my conceivable needs.

That said, I think they'll sell fairly well eventually, and while I have my doubts about them, at least they're not going to kill the power grid.

They're not going to save any money, either, but that's not the issue:

I've always suspected that the main reason the Toyota Prius dominates hybrid sales is its unquestioned hybridness (hybridity?): there is no non-hybrid version to dilute the branding. Previously in these pages:

Honda will happily sell you a hybrid Civic or Accord, but apart from the smallish Hybrid badge, it's indistinguishable from its gas-powered brethren. People want to be identified with this sort of thing, and inasmuch as I have an OG&E Wind Power placard in my front window, I'm hardly in a position to make fun of them. If what you want is the cheapest possible personal transport, you ignore all of this and buy something like a Scion xB, which hauls tons (well, kilograms) of stuff, sips fuel abstemiously, and costs thousands less than a Prius, but you won't get that warm green feeling inside.

It is generally accepted that when you masturbate, God kills a kitten.

Now comes this:

Putting this all together:

1. Jacking and/or jilling off = kitten dies.
   
2. Voting in the Weblog Awards = kitten dies.
   
3. Therefore voting in the Weblog Awards = jacking and/or jilling off.
   

Excuse me while I sponge off my mouse, so to speak.

Fayetteville, Arkansas is enlisting children to look for city code violations: