Woot pulled off a suitably wack little stunt today: at midnight, they had the much-desired Brisket of Cow, though priced, not at the usual $1, but at $1 million plus $1. (Screenshot here.) I went ahead and ordered the damn thing anyway, just to see what sort of excuse they'd come back with when my MasterCard was duly declined for $1,000,006 including shipping.

They came back with this:

Nicely done, gentlemen.

Update, 12:35: They put the "I want one" button in Bounce Mode just before 12:30, just to add to the general level of perturbation, and some members of the community are arguing that it was, in fact, possible to buy the Blistered Old Crow, had you followed the simple instructions which were hidden in plain sight. Which, if true, makes this even better a stunt.

We're not doing such a great job of financing teacher retirement: the state system has never been more than 60-percent funded, and is now running in the vicinity of 49 percent.

Kurt Hochenauer reports on a possible new approach to funding:

Text of the measure (Rich Text format) is here. Says Doc Hoc:

I'm sure I could vote for this measure without affecting my status as a tax-cutting right-wing meanie. And it sailed through the House, 98-3; I'd be very surprised if it died in the Senate, though the wild card here has to be Governor Henry, who's currently in "I have a veto and I'm not afraid to use it" mode.

Sometimes it's the filler that packs the punch. From an unattributed blurb in this morning's Oklahoman classifieds:

Well, that "half live alone" business, as it happens, is not exactly true, and "compromising lifestyle" is a phrase that simply screams "We are not serious," but just the same, single women are indeed buying more houses these days, and single men have been stuck around the 10-percent level for decades.

Another possibly-arguable set of premises from the same article, this time a list of "common trends" among these women:

Except in the condo/townhome market, just about everything is "2 bedrooms or more," and in Oklahoma City in particular, three out of four sales to everybody fall under $200,000. (January median price was $123,383, report the metro Realtors.)

I should point out here that the palatial Surlywood estate was acquired from a single woman; I suppose I should have asked her what she saw in the place. (She has since bought a larger house not too far away.)

Some days it seems you just can't reason with a dealership:

I suspect the rivets in one's jeans are more hazardous to leather than mere denim itself would be, though I have no expertise in coefficients of fabric friction other than, you should pardon the expression, seat-of-the-pants estimates.

I did, however, pull out Gwendolyn's manual to see what Infiniti had to say on the subject, which turns out to be nothing: unlike Acura, Infiniti, at least in 2000, did not see fit to exclude upholstery from warranty coverage. And after 95,000 miles, including about 7,000 miles so far under my decreasingly-fat arse, Gwendolyn's leather seats are in excellent shape.

Mark Ashley, writing for Consumerist, suggests a solution: "Drive naked." Um, not on leather, Marcus; besides, there's always going to be someone who finds your lack of pants disturbing. (Solution to solution: throw a bath towel over the seat.)

You know the tune:

(Courtesy of Punctilious.)

It's two, two, two movies in one!

(Seen at Brad Sucks.)

If you're just tuning in — and where have you been? — this is a weekly exercise in which we look at what was sought by Googlers and Askers and Yahoos and such, and make fun of as many of their searches as possible.

clothing optional beaches in oklahoma:  Wait a minute. There are beaches in Oklahoma?

don't start sentences with it:  It just wouldn't be proper.

suppository fanfiction:  Right. Like there aren't enough assholes in real life.

hoosier daddy in donald duck voice:  Now, now, we don't talk about Unca Scrooge's trip to South Bend.

how much is my vintage McDonalds item worth?  If it's an actual sandwich, probably not much.

gorgeous person in distress:  There's about 60 percent of contemporary fiction, right there.

maureen dowd siblings:  "Are there any more like you at home?" he asked fearfully.

is infiniti i30 a chick car:  Mine isn't. In fact, it doesn't interest the chicks at all.

nudist wears pantyhose:  Must be a work day.

backplane sex:  Is this how you get motherboards?

weed whacker powered bicycle:  You might not want to ride this while wearing shorts.

average women naked photos:  On average, women won't pose for naked photos.

creep ogles tall women:  The creeps I know don't discriminate on the basis of height.

Present-day revisionists have managed to inculcate the notion that the post-JFK 1960s and the Nixon 1970s were all revolution, all the time, and the fact that I don't remember it that way at all doesn't count, because after all I've sold out to The Man. (Actually, I just live down the street from him.)

One thing I did remember learning during that period is that I didn't understand the female half of the species at all, a situation which has changed hardly at all in the intervening decades.

With the dubious and possibly unattainable goal of addressing both of these issues at once, I have made a small investment in research material: I bought about a hundred back issues, roughly 1964 to 1975, of American Girl, a monthly magazine published (until 1979) by the Girl Scouts of America, and I will be going through them over the next few months looking for stuff that might possibly be relevant in some small way to my 21st-century existence. And, of course, whatever I find, I will duly wedge into this little text box.

In the meantime, here's a pertinent observation by David Warren, dated yesterday:

He finds evidence in his old high-school yearbooks:

As the Beach Boys never sang, "Help me, rhombus."

Been there, ran over that:

Next time, waste 'em. Might as well get some satisfaction out of it.

I make the turn into the onramp, and it's not ten feet before I discover that traffic isn't going anywhere, and of course there's no Plan B: I can't back up, and the ramp leads to one place only.

So I merge in at about 15 mph, and I start wondering where the hangup is. I decided it was probably two miles ahead, where a section of pavement, pounded by rain last week, finally separated itself from the roadway, leaving a crater worthy of the dark side of the moon. (Which wouldn't surprise me, since there are spots on 50th, closer to home, where telling your asphalt from a hole in the road is all too easy.) Fine, I said to nobody in particular, I'll just get off at the next mile and take the surface streets.

Then I saw the black-and-white in the median, a car with its rear in the air well off the shoulder, an 18-wheeler a couple hundred feet ahead, and I realized that there was no hazard at all: it was the phenomenon known as "rubbernecking," a bunch of people slowed to a crawl in gleeful anticipation of seeing the carnage for themselves.

And upon this discovery, I put the Venturi effect to work and shot through a narrow opening in traffic, putting this discouraging vision behind me as quickly as Gwendolyn was willing to permit.

It occurred to me shortly thereafter that if this had truly been the Venturi effect, a partial vacuum should have been created; I consoled myself with the knowledge that plenty of them already existed, between the ears of the schmucks I'd left in my wake.

But no pix yet, reports daughter-in-law:

For those keeping score, this is grandchild #4. As for the name, hey, I'm just happy they didn't name him after me.

By now, everyone knows how to get out of a car gracefully without showing your underwear. Maybe. Used to be, the tricky part was getting into the car:

At the time, there presumably weren't any high-slung models, so don't try this with a Ford F-150.

And yes, there are instructions on debarking:

This would seem to imply a bench seat. Interestingly, the illustration accompanying this wisdom seems to be a drawing of a Jaguar E-type, in which case, um, well, you're on your own, sweetheart.

[From "Key to Car Dates" by Kitt Gerard, American Girl, August 1968.]

Apparently this is. (Translation: "I want one too.")

There's no real overlap here: Woot doesn't do any business in Constantinople Istanbul. (Heck, Woot doesn't do any business in Juneau.) Still, you have to wonder when the lawyers are going to show up.

The restoration of the Underground has been completed, though there's one thing more that needs to be addressed: the Underground needs its own Web site as a promotional tool. Otherwise, it's likely to be overlooked, and not in a good way either.

Perhaps Downtown OKC, which at least has a map, can lead the way.

Bloodwise, I am type A, and Rh-positive.

If this works out, I won't have to care anymore:

And, less A and B, you're left with O, the "universal donor" — provided you can get past that tricky Rh factor. Plasma, of course, is another matter.

(Seen at I See Invisible People. Title comes from this.)

By some probably-not-all-that-coincidental coincidence, the first RedHawks home game of the season is scheduled for the same night (Friday the 13th, yet) as the last Hornets home game in Oklahoma City. I have to figure that this took some doing, since the 'Hawks are on the road for their first eight — four at Memphis, four at Nashville — before coming home and playing four more against the Redbirds. I may have to stay home with a blanket over my head. On the upside, Bobby Jones is back as manager, which can't be bad.

New ticket prices, if there are new ticket prices, haven't been posted yet: last year, general admission was six bucks, field boxes ran $11, and club level was a mere $15.

Despite the return of demigod Michael Redd, Milwaukee had dropped six in a row before tonight, but the Hornets kept them under wraps during the first half, taking a 67-56 lead and giving up only one personal foul (by Desmond Mason, on Redd). What's more, Tyson Chandler had his double-double by halftime.

As everyone knows, the time to score on the Bees is during the third quarter, and the Bucks duly pulled to within six, courtesy of long-ball prowess and nine Hornet turnovers. To kill time in the fourth, Sean and Gerry tried to analyze Rasual Butler's shooting, Vaillancourt suggesting that in the absence of other explanations, Butler's streakiness could be attributed to astrological factors. Rasual promptly dropped in two consecutive treys, half of a 12-1 run for the Bees, shutting down that line of thought. And the Bees won it 119-101, their highest point production all year.

Still, Redd outscored everyone, dropping in 27 of the 46 points scored by the Bucks' starters. Lynn Greer and Ruben Patterson paced the bench with 19 and 10 respectively.

But the Hornets ruled the boards, outrebounding Milwaukee 47 to 25 — Chandler got twenty, alongside 18 points — and after that fourth-quarter spurt, they wound up with nine 3-balls, same as the Bucks, and on five fewer attempts yet. David West was deadly, hitting 8 of 11 from the floor and 8 of 8 from the line, for 24; Desmond Mason was right behind with 21. Chris Paul scored only 8, but dished up 14 assists; Butler, Jannero Pargo and Bobby Jackson were all in double figures off the bench.

Short road trip, this; the Hornets come back to the Ford tomorrow to host the Sonics. The Suns will be in town Friday.

I suppose, if I were absolutely, positively determined to pay the least amount of money for stuff, or at least to persuade myself that I was paying the least amount of money for stuff, I could drag myself into a Wal-Mart.

But then I might run into someone like this:

This is one of the few times I've ever felt any empathy with Mark Morford.

I was never a great Yoko Ono fan, but neither did I understand the rather shabby treatment that she got at the hands of various Beatlemaniacs for many years: yes, she was a few degrees off plumb, but so was John, and if clearly he was the greater musical talent, she made a pretty decent Muse for him, and her own musical explorations weren't the horrorfests they were made out to be. (Well, except for "Don't Worry Kyoko," which was sort of what you'd get if you'd tried to replicate Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music with actual flesh.)

Two lengthy articles about Ono showed up at my desk this week, a new interview by Tony Sclafani in Goldmine (not on their site yet), and a two-year-old (at least) piece by Joshua Rotter for MacDirectory. (Yoko, in case you were wondering, used a G4.) What these pieces have in common is the same Michael Levine photo, in which Ono appears in a dress as short as anything sold on Carnaby Street in the Sixties. I have no idea when it was taken; it was startling, and it certainly didn't reflect the classic Johnandyoko bagism shtick, but what the hell. Ono is seventy-four now; she's paid more than enough dues and should be able to do whatever she pleases.

Follieri Capital, which specializes in financial products for Roman Catholics, and Washington Mutual have teamed up to offer the World Missions VISA, which is being launched this week via major advertising campaigns in Catholic publications. One percent of card purchases will be donated to the Church's Society for the Propagation of the Faith, founded in 1822, which supports Catholic missionaries in 120 countries. That's the World Missions VISA. Don't leave Rome without it.

Shel Silverstein wrote, and Johnny Cash sang, a ballad about a boy who grew up with the name "Sue," and you'll remember that Sue grew up bitter and resentful — eventually, weapons were involved — as a result. I have no idea whether this sort of thing will happen to a girl named Metallica or a boy named Jihad, but I don't think it's really useful to have laws against such names: "Earning the lifelong resentment of their ill-named progeny should be punishment enough."

Keep in mind that my daughter came this close to being named for a Beatles song — one by McCartney, at that — and I have a grandchild named "Gunner."

Jacqueline Passey takes a phone call:

Well, okay, not everyone does that web thing. We have customers at 42nd and Treadmill who don't.

(Aside: Those people, incidentally, cause us little trouble. It's the clowns who think they know what they're doing who produce ninety-point-something percent of the grief. There was a time when I would actually speak to them and attempt to help them salvage something from their wasted lives. Never again.)

We might infer from this that Ms Passey's employer deals in low-tech wares, like yarn or organic foods or something like that.

And we would be wrong.

They were carrying out the bodies all night, or so it seemed. Tyson Chandler's turf toe reasserted itself in the first quarter, and he withdrew; Desmond Mason caught an elbow under the eyeball in the second, sending him to the bench; Chris Wilcox, whose elbow it was, discovered shortly thereafter that he was in pain; Devin Brown took a pop to the ribs in the third, but returned. And, of course, Peja Stojakovic and Ray Allen are out for the duration.

After falling behind 21-19 at the 12-minute mark, the Hornets gradually built up a lead; they were up 78-65 after the third. The Sonics promptly went on an 11-2 run to pull within four; both teams went cold, and with 80 seconds left, it was 84-82 Hornets, which means that in 10:40 the Bees scored a whole six points. In the next minute, nobody scored anything. The Sonics got the ball back with 23 seconds left, used 21 seconds to score a bucket, and suddenly it was overtime — which, of course, meant the Hornets' troubles were over, since they hadn't lost a game in overtime all season.

I kid, but not too much: there's something about those little five-minute periods that concentrates the Bees' minds in a way 12-minute quarters don't. They rolled up a 10-point lead, courtesy of seven from Bobby Jackson (out of 18); the Sonics whittled it down to five; the final difference was nine, 101-92. Maybe sometime they'll explain how the Hornets could score 17 points in five minutes after scoring six points in 12 minutes.

It was a good night for double-doubles: David West (18 points, 14 rebounds), Marc Jackson (13 points, 12 boards), and Chris Paul (11 points, 10 rebounds, and 9 assists, almost the triple) all shone. Still, none of them could touch the Sonics' Rashard Lewis, a hard man to defend, who scored 27 points and grabbed 10 boards. And the radio guys, trying to see if it would work a second time, made fun of Rasual Butler's shooting; Butler may or may not have heard them, but he scored 16 anyway.

So the Bees are now 35-40 with seven to play. (Last year they finished 38-44.) The first five playoff spots are filled: right now it's the Lakers in sixth (39-35), the Nuggets in seventh (37-36) and the Clippers in eighth (36-37). The Lakers play the Clippers later tonight; last I looked, the Warriors, in 9th (35-39), were beating the Rockets. Assuming Golden State wins, they'll remain one game in front of the Hornets, so both of them are hoping that the Battle of L.A. ends with the Lakers victorious. And, lest we forget, of those seven to play, two are against the Clippers.

Meanwhile, there's another obstacle: the Suns, who will be here Friday.

First shot of Gunner, born on the 28th of March. Still has that rich tomato-ey glow. (Runs in the family, I think.) Personally, I think Alicia and Russ were trying to save some money on birthday parties, since Laney's the 29th of March and Gunner's the 28th. (That's my story, and I'm sticking to it as long as I think I can get away with it.) Oh, and don't even think about calling him "Gunsy." (Addendum: I really think they're going to quit after three, but then I really thought they were going to quit after two, so pay no attention to me.) (Further addendum: For some reason, I decided that this picture would look better somewhere other than hung off the right edge of the page, so I moved it in. Wouldn't be the first time I made some dubious aesthetic judgment.)

So I got home, booted up the box, went outside and shoved the lawn mower around for while, came back inside, and discovered a Critical Update. Oh, joy, another one, I thought, looked it over, installed it, rebooted.

Came this:

The .exe in question is the audio-control interface for the Realtek integrated audio, which the new Windows hotfix promptly hosed. So there was yet another download, this time manual, dammit, and on the next boot the DLLs showed up where they were supposed to be.

Still: Sheesh. It's times like I this I yearn for the gentle SYS calls on the old Commodore 64.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 237, which represents employees of the City of New York and some Long Island municipalities, is the single largest local in the Teamsters union.

By comparison, Carnival of the Vanities #237 is a tad on the small side, but sometimes it's not the size that matters.

Oklahoma County District 2 Commissioner Brent Rinehart and his 2004 campaign manager, former Representative Tim Pope, were hit with felony charges this afternoon: conspiracy against the state, knowingly accepting a contribution to a political candidate through an intermediary or conduit (three charges), money-laundering (two charges) and perjury (six charges).

The conspiracy charge involves a promotional piece called the T-Bone Tribune (not to be confused with this T-Bone Tribune), which was misattributed in Ethics Commission reports to a PAC which also served as the "intermediary or conduit." The perjury charges involve underreporting of campaign contributions. (Complete court document in PDF format here; lesser charges were filed against certain of Rinehart's donors.)

The Oklahoman had been on this story for a while:

And Pope was in hot water earlier this year, having been fined $4500 for his noxious automated phone calls trying to undermine District 1 Commissioner Jim Roth, who is, shall we say, not Brent Rinehart's best friend.

Pope, at least, used to have something resembling a level head. Rinehart's, I suspect, has always been flat.

Update, 6 April: Rinehart and Pope turned themselves in this morning: bail for each was set at $24,000. They are scheduled to appear before Judge Carol Ann Hubbard on the 17th of May.

If you're traveling through the Philippines and find yourself visiting the South Cotabato Provincial Hospital in Koronadal City, you might want to curb that desire for a smoke, because the hospital staff will send you some place you might not want to go:

(Via Interested-Participant.)

GM's Maximum Bob Lutz was complaining this week that the Bush administration's plan to tweak fuel-economy standards upward would ultimately raise the price of a motor vehicle by $5,000.

"This technology does not come for free," said Lutz, and of course that's true, but how much technology does come for free?

Besides, there are plenty of other upward pressures on vehicle prices: the demand for new gadgets; new safety gizmos, some useful, some perhaps less so; the rising price of raw materials; the rising price of labor.

Me, I'm not worried so much. I owned, in succession, two Mazda 626 sedans. The 2000 model weighed about 200 lb more than the 1993, had a dozen more ponies under the hood (from a mostly-identical engine), and offered about 8 cubic feet more interior room. I got 23 mpg from the '93, and 24 mpg from the '00. Small incremental improvements, while they don't necessarily make for good ad copy, really mount up after a while.

Or I could look back at my old '75 Toyota, which struggled to get 19 mpg from its 2.2-liter 96-hp four-banger (with a stick, yet), and compare it to my current car, which weighs 700 lb more, boasts 227 hp from a 3-liter V6, and gets 21 mpg. With an automatic. Not to mention vastly cleaner exhaust.

Or I could simply mention that Honda and Toyota and friends aren't grousing in public: they're simply handing out new specifications to the engineers.

Quote of the Week contender from Pete Guthier: "You let these idiot legislators start making one thing illegal because it's connected to something else, and the next thing you know, everything is illegal."

Like, for instance, sodium bicarbonate, otherwise known as baking soda:

Logically, a dihydrogen-monoxide ban should be next. There's already plenty of support for it.

(Via Bitter Bitch.)

The last few lines of Bus:

By Alison E. Ruffley, then thirteen, of Tenafly, New Jersey, in American Girl, May 1971. I have no idea if it was this Alison E. Ruffley, or even this one, but it's the thought that counts, right?

Well, actually, it was forty years ago come June, but these things require some lead time:

(Note: The album wasn't released in the States until the second of June 1967. Incidentally, the CD version came out on 1 June 1987 worldwide.)

Me, I'm hoping for an appearance by the one and only Billy Shears.

So you're getting ready to play the Phoenix Suns, who have won 56 of 75 games, and you're missing your starting center, your starting point guard, and your chief cutter, all of whom were beaten up in the last game. What do you do?

The Hornets shuffled the lineup, or what was left of it: Jannero Pargo started at the point, Rasual Butler at small forward, Marc Jackson in the middle, and while they probably weren't going to win this one anyway, they actually did win three of the four quarters by two points, and if they hadn't fallen behind by 14 in the first quarter, they might have pulled it off. As it stands, though, they lost by eight, 103-95.

And all the starters finished in double figures, led by David West with 17 and Marc Jackson with 16. The Bees actually outshot the Suns from beyond the arc (7 of 17), but the Phoenix offense, paced by Leandro Barbosa with 26 including six treys — aside from Barbosa, the Suns were 2-21 shooting the 3-ball — was overpowering when it had to be. Steve Nash concentrated on support, but still got the double-double: 15 points, 12 dimes.

Tomorrow night in Minnesota, and it's not a whole lot colder there than it is here. With six games to go, the Hornets are three games out of a playoff spot: not mathematically eliminated, but not in an encouraging position either.

I think we can retire that "Hyundai = bargain brand" business once and for all.

Consumer Reports has reports on four small SUVs in the May issue. The biggest news is that Hyundai's Santa Fe in Limited trim is now considered the second most desirable vehicle in this class: it outpoints Toyota's four-cylinder RAV4, but trails the V6 version (which apparently has never been called "RAV6"). This is a very creditable showing for the Korean marque, but here's the kicker: of the twenty small SUVs which CR has tested recently, the Hyundai had the highest price as tested: $30,745, one of only three vehicles breaking the $30k barrier. (The 16th-place Jeep Compass Sport is the cheapest, at $21,660.) Admittedly, equipment levels inevitably vary somewhat, but it wasn't that long ago that Hyundai was competing almost solely on price. Not anymore.

And if they can play alongside Toyota and Nissan, what's to stop them from playing alongside Lexus and Infiniti? Not a thing. Besides, they still have the best TV spot around.

I don't track my FICO score too closely. I do know that it jumped a bit after I bought the house, a bit more after I no longer had a car payment to deal with, and then sagged about the time I had to start dealing with car payments again. It has never occurred to me to start taking extraordinary steps to prop it up.

Especially steps this extraordinary:

This, of course, assumes that Warren Buffett is too busy to notice Donnie Deadbeat's presence on his credit report, and maybe that's a fairly safe assumption. Usually "authorized users" tend to be family members — say, daughter away at college — but they don't have to be:

The idea that the not-inconsiderable sum paid by the debtor for this dubious FICO boost might be applied more usefully to reducing his debt doesn't seem to enter into the picture. And to think we were surprised by mortgage fraud.

(Via Fark.)

You might remember this from February, when I said something to the effect that "committed typewriter fiend Andrea Harris might want one of her own after she sees this." Well, she's seen it, and she wants it. I wonder what she'd think of RSS feeds via telegraph sounder. (Me, I want this rotary-dial GSM cell phone, just to see how T-Mobile, which is desperate to sell me some high-zoot electrotoy with a camera, an MP3 player and a medical tricorder, would react to its presence.)

Update, 8 April: Tam likes it too.

Update, 9 April: Tam's readers seem to like it too; we've picked up 440 565 hits from View from the Porch at this writing. This is more than twice as much as I've ever gotten from that other person in Knox.

While the Oklahoman works on rolling out NewsOK Beta, a smaller paper in the British Isles has gone for a simpler approach. The Buckinghamshire Advertiser, owned by group operator Trinity Mirror plc and selling 20,000 copies daily, has converted its Web site to a Movable Type blog, complete with RSS feeds and links for Digg, del.icio.us, and Reddit. Of course, all the traditional sections — News, Columns, Sport, and such — are rendered as MT Categories.

Peoria Pundit Billy Dennis says this is "more evidence that print is doomed":

I'm not entirely convinced that print is doomed: you can't line a birdcage with a Web site. Yet. And there are still people who have no particular interest in these here Intratubes. What's more — well, here's how Eyebrows McGee tells it (previous link, scroll to comments):

By coincidence, the Oklahoman sent me a renewal form today for my print subscription.

A few weeks back 42nd and Treadmill hired a man, tall, lanky and youngish, to work one of the Customer Service stations, which might have been a wise decision, given the tendency of some of our more obnoxious customers to try to drive the female staff to tears or worse; I have to figure that anyone who can face down a clutch of murdering insurgents has nothing to fear from that bunch. (Surely whatever they're paying him, it isn't enough; I've answered phones there before, and it is a dispiriting experience at best.) In an effort to get an answer for one of the callers, he wandered into my den of inequity earlier this week — for some reason, they always call during break time — spotted the open MT interface, put two and 3.21 together, and asked, "You write that?" Apparently he'd discovered the site during his none-too-copious free time in the Land of Sand. I am, of course, always surprised to find that anyone reads this stuff.

Cut to this afternoon, while I'm filling up my grocery basket. I have a weekly Anti-Shyness Exercise, if you will, which calls for me to strike up a conversation with at least one woman I don't know. This has generally not been difficult, but the ginormous pre-Easter crowd presented obstacles of its own. And then one thing happened which hadn't previously: the woman I don't know struck up the conversation with me. Turned out to be a reader of this very site, who recognized me from a photo I'd left over at MySpace. (Whether this is a defense of MySpace, or a major security issue, is left as an exercise for the student.) We stretched this into a discussion long enough to inculcate despair in shoppers who just wanted a loaf of bread, dammit, because I am, of course, always surprised to find that anyone reads this stuff.

Or so it looked early on: Minnesota shot over 60 percent in the first half to nail down a 57-51 lead. The Hornets recovered and then some in the third, outscoring the Timberwolves 29-18 and going up by five. In the fourth quarter, seemingly no one could score: through seven and a half minutes, the Bees picked up a mere six points, the Wolves only five. It was 96-94 in the last second, and the Wolves' Hail Mary shot at the buzzer fell away, leaving the Hornets with an unattractive but necessary win.

Minnesota had six players in double figures, though Kevin Garnett didn't get there until the very end. Reserve guard Rashad McCants led the Wolves with 17; the Minnesota bench was good for 45 points, and the Big Ticket had a lowish 13 points and a solid 12 rebounds. The Wolves tried 23 treys, and made 14 of them.

Chris Paul led all scorers with 18, and ten dimes to boot. Also with a double-double: Marc Jackson, with 15 points and 11 boards. (The Bees attempted thirty from beyond the arc, and connected on eight; Marcus Vinicius, who played six minutes, got one of them, his second of the season.)

Five to go, and two of them are against the eighth-place Los Angeles Clippers, who will be at the Ford Center Tuesday. (The last Oklahoma City game is Friday, against the Nuggets; the season ends with three on the road, against the Rockets, the Kings, and finally the Clippers.)

Driving, we are always told by the state Department of Always Telling Us Things, is a privilege, not a right. I'm okay with that. But maybe it's a privilege too seldom withdrawn:

I think I've seen these people, and no, I wouldn't mind if their privileges were withdrawn.

This, though, seems a trifle strong:

I mean, all four tires? Come on.

And out from under one particularly scuzzy rock crawled the perpetrators of a Denial of Service attack on the host's nameservers, making this site (and a few thousand others) inaccessible for about three hours this morning. (Exactly one person got through during this period, a testimonial to superior network knowledge, and yes, I know who it is, which is why I said that.)

As it happens, I didn't notice this until later, a byproduct of not being near the computer at that hour of the morning.

Some of these you may already know.

• There are advantages to having a girlfriend with a short name.

• Bicycle reflectors in New York State: one color only.

• The $100,000 hybrid is coming.

• Had Dr Seuss just now finished The Cat in the Hat, it would never get published.

• If you must drive drunk in New Jersey, drive a Zamboni.

• There is at least one Web site more exciting than mine.

• Here's a roller coaster with an inappropriate name.

• There's a difference between "24 hours" and 24 business hours.

• Not every Cingular staffer is a complete and utter tool.

• How many ninjas are hiding in this room? As many as want to be.
  

Part Twelve will appear eventually.

File under "Boy, I couldn't do that": Ann Althouse drives from Austin. Texas to Madison, Wisconsin in one day.

That's 1235 miles, half again as long as my single-day record. (Albuquerque, New Mexico to Redondo Beach, California, April 1988, 806 miles by my odometer.) And I was absolutely exhausted when it was over, thirteen hours after it had started. It is worth noting that on no day during any of the World Tours did I log more than 600 miles. At my present state of (d)evolution, I figure that even if my nerves don't give out, my bladder will.

Cartoonist Johnny Hart, who created the B.C. comic strip in 1958, has died at his home in Nineveh, New York at the age of seventy-six.

Today's strip seems somehow appropriate.

There are a lot of pages under this domain — ten thousand or so — which means that there is a truly prodigious amount of search-engine traffic. Inevitably, this means that there will be some requests that come across as slightly weird. In this series, we look at those for which "slightly" may not necessarily apply.

accident in oklahoma that shut down southbound I-35:  Be more specific. We get those 24/7.

what happens to salad dressing when expired:  It's said to have "bought the ranch."

porn star with "five inch" penis:  You'd think those guys would be, um, too short.

snow white porn:  You'd think those guys would be, um, too short.

"southern california" superficial selfish:  You say that like it's a bad thing.

cheerios palmistry:  Much more difficult than doing it with Post Alpha-Bits.

omen hit deer in car:  You will soon meet a stranger who will identify himself as an insurance adjuster.

book value of 1975 AMC Pacer:  Almost certainly a paperback.

"Invisible Woman" makeup:  Nothing too obvious.

Dennis Hastert bikini wax:  This started with a thread on Democratic Underground; one poster remarked, "There are things that humans were not meant to know." I have to agree.

wives doing blowjobs:  I thought they became wives so they wouldn't have to do that.

"just friends" frustrating:  Tell me about it. Better yet, don't.

Lortons Puppy World:  What happens when Tulsa no longer has a daily newspaper.

how to cure phlegm:  Rub it with a mixture of salt, sugar, and potassium nitrate, then store it for no more than six months.

how to put tampa into the vagina with yogurt:  I expect St. Petersburg will have something to say about that.

Finally, since I'm still getting requests for shots of Nancy Pelosi's legs, here she is with President Assad of Syria:

I refuse to speculate on whether she's had a bikini wax.

Here's why:

It's been doing this for about five months now; I figure I've pushed my luck as far as I dare.

There are, theoretically anyway, nineteen different phases of a blog discussion before it finally peters out, and Paula Scher has illustrated the path in a New York Times "Op-Art". Even reduced, this is fairly huge (100k), so it's going beneath the jump for the time being. (The individual archive, of course, doesn't have a jump.) Thanks to kottke.

The so-called Tax Freedom Day for Oklahomans comes this Thursday, 12 April, two and a half weeks before the national average (on the 30th) and 5½ weeks before the 20th of May, when the besieged residents of Connecticut finish their obligations.

The latest ever Tax Freedom Day was the 31st of December, in the former Soviet Union.

(Noticed at The Consumerist.)

While rumors swirl about how the domestic automakers are an endangered species, their dealership networks are definitely shrinking: last year, Detroit dropped 462 dealerships, and so far this year they're down 480 more.

I suspect most of this shrinkage is in highly-competitive metropolitan areas where it's been dog-eat-dog and beyond for years. At least with GM and Chrysler, the goal seems to be consolidating as many brands as possible on the same lot: Hudiburg, which has been selling Chevrolets here since forever, added Pontiac and GMC some years back; now they've moved the Buick line, once dualed with Nissan, to that same lot. (The Nissan dealership remains on I-240.) Group 1's Smicklas Chevrolet, which absorbed the old Gandara Buick on May, has since dropped Buick altogether. Bob Moore, the last tenant of the infamous Lynn Hickey lot at I-44 and May, moved their Dodge store into their Chrysler-Jeep facility on the Northwest Distressway last year. Bob Moore also acquired the Saab franchise last year and now sells the odd Swedemobile alongside Cadillac in their humongous Broadway cluster.

The downside of multiple lines on the same lot, of course, is that it makes badge engineering distressingly apparent: when you have two or three (GM has had as many as five) variations on the same theme, people tend to snicker, especially if there's an obvious attempt to differentiate by price. This is, I'm pretty sure, why you tend not to find Lexuses at Toyota stores. On the other hand, there's not much overlap between Acura and Honda, or lately between Infiniti and Nissan.

Dr. Weevil asks:

I have no idea, but it sounds like a reasonable question to me, and maybe a wider airing will elicit an answer somewhere.

Okay, it's not that huge, and it's not technically a buy yet, but still:

Which is right after the KeyArena lease expires.

There are two ways to look at this: that Clay Bennett and friends are actually serious about getting a new facility in the Seattle 'burbs, or that Clay Bennett and friends are just going through the motions so it won't look so bad when they move the Sonics out of town. At the moment, I'm more inclined to believe the former.

Ja'Rena Lunsford at the Oklahoman seemed surprised at the results of a data dump by Men's Health that gave Oklahoma City's drivers a D, ranking 74th of 100 cities. Lunsford was especially critical of the third-place ranking given the City of New York, observing:

I've driven very little in the Big Apple, but I think Lunsford is underestimating their mad driving skillz: the fact that traffic moves at all struck me, in the middle of it one day, as well-nigh miraculous.

Of course, like all drivers, I consider myself above average. (And at least I have one piece of evidence to back me up: no moving violations in the past quarter-century.)

On a possibly-related note, some months back, Car and Driver put out some research of their own, in an effort to determine which states were most driver-friendly. I duly downloaded their 800k spreadsheet worth of data, and discovered Oklahoma right near the middle: 22nd place. (Alaska, a wide-open space indeed, took first; the District of Columbia was dead last.) The Sooner State picked up points for relatively low levels of traffic and for higher-than-average speed limits, and lost points for very high truck traffic and for below-average pavement quality (which, as Tom Elmore reminds us, is a direct result of very high truck traffic). And C/D editor Csaba Csere has a very Lunsford-like response to one of his data points:

Boston drivers in the Men's Health report placed 34th, scoring B-minus. Last time I drove through Boston, I remember thinking I'd rather be in New York.

Well, not anymore: the gas stations along the Turner Turnpike will shut down on the 23rd, leaving the two "service plazas" with a place to eat, but no actual motor fuel.

A spokesman for the turnpike said that the station operator declined to renew the lease on the two stations.

It is possible to exit at Bristow — I've done this — and gas up, then return to the turnpike; presumably it's possible at Wellston. There is no apparent rush to sign up a new operator for the stations.

Mike Duncan
Republican National Committee
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003

Dear Mr. Duncan:

Thank you for your kind letter and invitation to participate in your "GOP Census." I must point out, however, that inasmuch as I am not a registered Republican, the "Dear Fellow Republican" salutation notwithstanding, it might be inappropriate for me to respond positively at this time.

Sincerely,

CGHill

The first quarter was something to behold: the lead changed hands half a dozen times in those twelve minutes, and it ended with both teams shooting .500, a mere three fouls in aggregate, and the Hornets up 26-25. By comparison, the second quarter was horrific: the Clippers continued to shoot .500, while the Bees apparently had doused themselves with Rim Repellent (Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.) at some point, managing a mere 15 points and retreating to the locker room down 11.

Then the third, and Devin Brown rolled out 14 points in the first six minutes, and the Hornets outscored L.A. 29-14, taking a four-point lead going into the fourth. And with 20 seconds left, they still led, albeit only by two, and the Clippers had the ball; ten seconds and one dunk later, it was tied at 87. Jason Hart fouled Chris Paul, who sank two free throws; Eldon Brand got a last-second bucket to tie it at 89 with one second left, and overtime duly ensued. As we all know, the Hornets don't lose in overtime: Bobby Jackson dropped in two free throws with 33 seconds left to put the Bees up by seven; Corey Maggette shot a 3-pointer in response; with 11 seconds left, Chris Paul managed to miss two free throws; Jason Hart hit a bucket to pull within two; David West hit one of two from the line, Maggette got the ball — and threw it to Devin Brown. Hornets 103, Clippers 100, and the playoff race isn't quite dead yet.

Both teams, depleted by injuries, played only eight men. (Well, James Singleton officially played one second for Los Angeles.) D-West got seven of the Hornets' 14 points in the overtime, and finished with 33. Devin Brown tied his personal best with 25, and Chris Paul added 17 with 10 assists.

The Clippers, however, outrebounded the Bees, 50-42, and both Chris Kaman and Eldon Brand recorded double-doubles, Kaman with 10 points and 12 boards, Brand with 37 points and 10 boards. Corey Maggette, who hit two of the Clippers' four treys, wound up with 24.

So Golden State, which had the night off, occupies eighth place in the West at 38-40; the Clippers, 37-40, are half a game back; the Hornets, 37-41, trail the Clippers by half a game. (The Warriors, however, own the tiebreaker over the Bees.) I'm thinking we need more overtime: in games going beyond regulation this season, the Hornets are 7-0.

Someone texts Rita, and then some:

Another reason, I suppose, to hold on to my photo-unready phone for another few years.

Black's Beach, near San Diego, is perhaps the largest stretch of clothing-optional (or clothing-nonexistent) beach in the States; it is difficult to get to, but staggeringly popular. Dave Cole of the Black's Beach Bares group passed out a questionnaire to women visiting the beach last summer; the results have now been published (no illustrations, ya perv), and some of the findings caught my eye:

• Age range: 17 to 66. (Average: 34.7.)

• 90 of 98 respondents described their beach visit that day in positive terms.

• One of the more common negative responses: creepy guys, possibly with cameras.

• While most of the women were from Southern California, there were visitors from as far away as Atlanta and New York.

• "My cell phone got drenched by the tide."

I don't know if I could do this, though this is at least partly due to the fact that it's a hard climb down to the actual beach, and I don't do climbs (in either direction) especially well.

(Via Elendil.)

Venomous Kate contemplates a career change:

God forbid that the judicial system should have anything to say about weather.

Oh, wait....

Maybe it's just me, but I persist in my old-fashioned belief that when a vendor presents you with a product for testing in your work environment, it is that vendor's responsibility for providing some semblance of documentation for said product, especially if it's a product of a type you've never used before and even more especially if it has an interface somewhere between unintuitive and haphazard.

Oh, and he was late, too, but that's a different issue.

(While we're on the subject: Would it be so hard for the manufacturers to post a copy of the operator's manual on their Web site?)

Well, this is weird. At bootup, the cursor darts upward regardless of mouse position and keeps doing so until the Alt key is pressed. I assumed at first it was a bad mouse, but the same thing happens with both PS/2 and USB meece. Spyware scan (because I'm paranoid) produced nothing, and of course Microsloth has no new drivers for any of these critters. Any suggestions? ("Get a Mac" is already chalked on the board for Future Reference.)

The Mayfair Market still stands, for now, on the southwest corner of NW 50th and May, though its days are clearly numbered. ("We might make it to the end of the month," a checkout person told me.) Everything other than tobacco products gets discounted 20 percent at the register; the post office has closed up, and things which turn over quickly — produce, fresh meats, bakery stuff — are in short supply. They did have, I noted, one box of actual unfrosted blueberry Pop-Tarts, which I duly snapped up.

Is it too much to hope that the CVS store being shoehorned onto this lot actually ends up looking like it belongs there? Probably.

Just in case you thought Ben Domenech or Kaavya Viswanathan or the CBS Evening News staff invented the concept:

Toni Lorenz, then a fifteen-year-old intern, wrote that for the May 1973 issue of American Girl.

Best Buy is being sued by a San Gabriel Valley woman and her mother. It seems that the woman had ordered an in-home repair from Best Buy's Geek Squad unit; when the tech arrived, he was directed to the hardware, while the customer went off to take a shower. When she emerged from her ablutions, she found an unfamiliar cell phone in the bathroom, set to record video.

The woman's younger sister came up with the idea of swiping the chip from the phone. They took it to a retailer and had it installed in another phone, where they discovered the recording of the shower scene. According to the suit, the tech tried to get the chip back from her, offering discounted services as an incentive.

A couple of things bother me about this:

1. Since when does anyone ever get any kind of service discount from Best Buy?

2. I've been a small-g geek long enough to know that when you're working on something important, you don't get distracted by — wow, who's that?

(Via the Consumerist.)

And neither did she, apparently:

(Spotted at Boondoggled.)

Woot is spreading.

Earlier this month, I made note of a Turkish knockoff of America's most deranged e-commerce site. Today, Trini spotted a German variation on the theme.

Cyberport.24, unlike Woot, does two items over two days, but otherwise they're working the same turf: electronics and gadgets, probably manufacturers' overruns, at prices that simply invite disbelief. If nothing else, this proves that you can't keep a good marketing shtick down.

Courtesy of the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons Enthusiasts and Historical Society of the United Kingdom:

Of the boxes I have, the one that hews closest to this particular line is Phil Spector's Back to Mono 1958-1969 box, issued by Abkco back in the Pleistocene era (okay, 1991) for an appalling $80 list and now widely available for about a quarter of that. (Disclosure: I paid $65 for mine.) Departures from perfection: the essays by David Hinckley and Tom Wolfe (yes!) are seriously readable, but while they capture Phil, they give the actual music semi-short shrift — and would it have been so hard to toss in just one of the infamous throwaway B-sides like "Tedesco and Pitman"?

Oh, and the sound is kinda fuzzy, and, as per the title, mono only. (Then again, Spector's bounce-and-keep-bouncing recording technique doesn't lend itself particularly well to stereo mixing, though most of the hits did appear somewhere in stereo at one time or another.) And yes, Spector made records throughout the Seventies, but they were either (1) remarkably unsuccessful for some reason or (2) done on behalf of various Beatles and therefore not available for a compilation.

Nominations for Great Box Sets will of course be happily accepted.

Road buffs revile Interstate 238, a two-mile stretch of freeway in the East Bay area near San Francisco, because of its nonstandard numbering: by rights, it ought to connect somewhere to Interstate 38, and there is no Interstate 38, not in California, not anywhere.

On the other hand, there's a good reason for this week's Carnival of the Vanities to be numbered 238: there have been, well, two hundred thirty-eight of them so far.

The ever-annoying Joe Francis has announced plans to open a chain of "Girls Gone Wild" theme restaurants.

A word of advice if you're calling for reservations: don't order the crabs.

(Seen at Modestly Yours.)

And oh, occasionally they didn't see us fall:

Or, in my case, usually the rubric B F D.

Somebody else's excellence, of course, always managed to eclipse mine:

It's been five years since last I played, and be it noted, I did score that freebie. Perhaps I should wander into Chuck E.'s myself one of these days. (What a friend we have in Cheese's, eh?)

(Note: This week you get the two-for-one special.)

The problem with that Imus remark, I've suggested (for instance, here), is that it simply wasn't funny.

But at the heart of the matter may be something much worse:

Me, I'm checking my eyeballs for planks, just in case. (Thank you, Juliette.)

Meanwhile, reporting from outside Victim Central:

And thank you, La Shawn.

Lynn, on the subject of being wrong:

Which is why I strive never to be wrong at work, and confine my questionable ideas and fuzzy thinking to this space. (Lynn, of course, is right about this. I think.)

If you're in China, you're under 18, and you spend more than three hours at a time gaming online, the Chinese government is about to screw with you:

Reportedly, 13 percent of Chinese youth under 18 are considered "addicted" to online games.

Next: Beijing tries to fix the exchange rate between the yuan and the Linden dollar.

(Via Hit & Run.)

Not that I have any particular reason to want to go to Renton, Washington, but if I had, it's gone now:

No more lamb fries for you, darlin'.

The RedHawks were rained out, and I couldn't bring myself to watch the Hornets' last game in the Ford Center, knowing it was the last game in the Ford Center.

Which it almost certainly is. They jumped out to a 13-point lead after the first quarter, watched Denver's big guns narrow it to three at the half, to one with two minutes left. Finally, with half a minute to go, the Nuggets took a three-point lead, and made it stand up: final, 107-105. Unless the Warriors go totally troppo for the rest of the season, this is it.

The story wasn't just 'Melo and A.I., either; yes, they combined for 54 points, but the real killer was center Marcus Camby, who blocked nine shots while rolling up a double-double, 15 points and 11 boards. And let's not overlook guard Steve Blake, who scored ten and served up ten assists.

The Bees had plenty of attack, with 16 offensive rebounds to the Nuggets' ten, and David West came up with 31 points and 13 boards. Marc Jackson also had 13 rebounds, and 13 points to boot. But a cold spell came late in the fourth, and seemingly nothing would warm it up again.

Tomorrow, the first day of the Bataan Death March season-ending road trip, at Houston. The Rockets, who are 0-3 against the Hornets this year, will presumably be looking for payback.

Plug-in hybrid research continues apace, and it's reached The New York Times, which has added to its fleet a Dodge Sprinter van with an experimental powertrain using lithium-ion batteries, a small five-cylinder diesel engine for backup, and a 220-volt power cord.

A similar van has been tested in Paris by FedEx [link to PDF file] with a gasoline engine; it's been averaging 25.4 mpg, not bad at all for a delivery vehicle which travels essentially no highway miles. The batteries can run the van for up to twenty miles before the engine kicks in. There's also a bus version, which is currently under trial by the Kansas City Area Transit Authority.

The Times experiment is co-sponsored by Con Ed, the New York Power Authority, the Electric Power Research Institute and DaimlerChrysler.

Horton Hears a Whom Department: In 1956, CBS debuted a quiz show on Tuesday nights with the provocative title Do You Trust Your Wife? If this sounds vaguely sexist, well, maybe it was: host Edgar Bergen (yes, that Edgar Bergen) presented the list of categories to the married-couple contestants, and then the husband would decide whether he or the Mrs. would take those questions. Neither the jackpot ($5200, paid in $100 installments weekly) nor the looming presence of Mortimer Snerd endeared the show to many viewers, and in the fall of 1957 ABC picked up the show, turned it into a daytimer, installed Johnny Carson (yes, that Johnny Carson) as the host, and streamlined the title to the shorter but less grammatical Who Do You Trust?

Carson (and his announcer, one Ed McMahon) departed in 1962 to take over some obscure NBC show; Woody Woodbury succeeded him, but Who Do You Trust? finally died in late 1963 and stayed dead — until now:

I'm waiting for Bill O'Reilly's version of Truth and/or Consequences.

(Via E. M. Zanotti.)

This is the last day of Architecture Week, as proclaimed by the Central Oklahoma chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and for the fifth consecutive year they've held a Tour of Notable Buildings or something like that. So I set out on this cold February April day to see what they had to offer. In the order visited:

1) 614 West Sheridan Avenue
This newly-remodeled building along Film Row west of downtown is the home of Raffiné Interiors and Tietsort Design. The building itself goes back to 1950