Last fall I posted something about TerraCycle, which produces an organic fertilizer from, um, worm droppings. (Do they really drop? I mean, we're talking worms here.)

Scotts, now the manufacturer of the Miracle-Gro line of fertilizer products — they acquired it in 1995, subject to an FTC decree that they get rid of their old line — is now suing TerraCycle on two grounds. One of them seems a bit preposterous to me: the product packages, Scotts' claim to the contrary, look nothing alike, and TerraCycle's containers are almost infinitely variable anyway, inasmuch as they're actually used beverage bottles. The other may be more serious: TerraCycle is claiming results equal to or better than synthetics like, well, Miracle-Gro, and Scotts won't stand for that. (Complete complaint here: PDF, 177 pages.)

TerraCycle has set up SuedByScotts.com to tell its side of the story, and sent out PR announcements to various newsies — including the Oklahoman's Steve Lackmeyer, who put his copy out on the paper's blog, to be found by the likes of me.

(Disclosure: Earlier this year I actually bought a different Scotts product. I was not particularly impressed.)

Brandon Dutcher of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs comes up with a story to explains Brad Henry's suddenly-busy veto pen:

"I'm not sure that it's true," says Dutcher, "but it's certainly plausible." Not to mention consistent with a century of wheeling and dealing.

(Via BatesLine.)

Yet it persists:

Then again, any stamp you buy and don't actually use represents pure profit for the Post Office, so it's not like it's a complete waste of time.

Or maybe not. Today's City Council agenda calls for spending $72 million from the 2000 General Bond Obligation Authorization, a little more than half of which will go to road projects. None of these are in my back yard, exactly, but some of these are major: $2.8 million will go to doing something about NW 164th from Western to Penn, which is spectacularly sucky. About half a million will be spent on Wilshire from Kelley to Bryant, which is slightly less so. (The complete list is here.)

And this item looked interesting:

One Park Avenue, of course, is the Skirvin Hilton, which opened in late February. No wonder this has an Emergency declaration.

(All links are to PDF files.)

Also on the Council agenda today is a change to the Historic Preservation ordinance which strikes me as worthwhile: all public hearings will now be recorded on video and retained for at least 60 days; all participants giving testimony will be sworn; anything reasonably related to an individual case will be admitted as evidence; all such evidence will be made available to the Board of Adjustment in the event of an appeal. (The Board is not required to hear additional evidence at that time, but may do so at its discretion.) All such appeals will be on the record.

I expect this to pass easily: the Historic Preservation Commission, the Planning Department and the Municipal Counselor have all signed off on it, and the proposal originated with a member of the Board of Adjustment in the first place.

(All links are to PDF files.)

Two weeks ago:

And it didn't, either; in fact, at an average 57.4 degrees, it didn't make the Bottom Ten, though it was still well short of the normal 59.7.

Still, this is yet another example of how truly screwy Oklahoma weather is, and why any prospective Worldwide Weather Czar will go quietly (one hopes) to pieces while trying to understand the local climatological models.

Pontiac is running a four-page ad in the buff books this month, black with illumination seemingly right out of the sun's corona — Toyota never does this, and they used to sell a car called Corona — and on page two, you are asked, RANK THESE, FASTEST TO SLOWEST. The choices:

• Porsche Boxster
  
• Audi TT 2.0
  
• Speed of Light
  
• Pontiac Solstice GXP
  
• BMW Z4
  

Knowing what you know about advertising, and what Scotty told you about the laws of physics, you'd probably guess that on the next two pages, the Poncho comes in second, and you would be correct. But there's this: YEAH, BUT LIGHT CAN'T CORNER.

Okay, kinda goofy. But this is the first Pontiac ad I can remember in years that, well, I can actually remember. And the first commandment of advertising, after all, is Get Their Attention.

There are dozens, hundreds, thousands of songs about winding up in the sack together. Are there any songs about not winding up in the sack together?

Well, there's at least one:

You might be forgiven if you thought that the Oklahoma Legislature was utterly afraid of tattoo artists: while they finally got around to letting the decorators ply their trade, they also stuck them with some locational limitations. The law provides, for instance, that no tattoo parlor can be located within 1000 feet of a school, a church, or a playground, a restriction consistent with — well, nothing, really:

In February, the Association of Body Art, a tattoo trade organization (and who knew there was one of those?), filed suit against the state; yesterday, an Oklahoma County District Judge ruled that the distance regulations, and the requirement for a $100,000 bond, were unconstitutional.

I presume that neither bars nor strip clubs will have to move in the wake of this decision.

Sonics-watcher Peter Nussbaum has inevitably been watching the team's new ownership, and he says he's seen this pattern before:

I can find only one flaw with this premise: Bob Irsay actually called Mayflower.

As a proud BOFH, I see it as my bounden duty to defend our IT departments against those horrible wretched nasty creatures known as "users."

Except, of course, when we pull stunts like this:

All this needs is "Yeah, we did just upgrade Lotus Notes. How did you know?"

At least, I think that's the idea here:

Might as well trade in the car, while we're at it.

In three Canadian provinces, you can find franchises of 241 Pizza, which opened its first location in Toronto in 1986. The name was intended to suggest, well, two for one.

The Carnival of the Vanities isn't offering a two-for-one deal. Yet. It is, however, still dishing up select bloggage from the last week, as it has for 241 weeks now.

My generation? Maybe the one before.

(A reader recommendation. I have some, um, remarkable readers.)

I am not hopeful about Senator Jim Inhofe's not-necessarily-new immigration bill, partially because, well, it's Jim Inhofe's, but mostly because it's called ENFORCE: The Engaging the Nation to Fight for Our Right to Control Entry Act.

Stupid acronyms contribute to stupid governance, and this particular example is flagrantly ugly, charmlessly kludgy, insipidly, nonsensically, grotesquely stupid.

I've pretty much stayed out of the flap over at Digg.com, where DMCA takedown notices have been thicker than London fog, mostly because I couldn't figure out a way to work "09 F9 11 20 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" into casual conversation.

It would be different, of course, if I could sing it. Besides, Lileks has already explained the matter:

Pizza, I suspect, actually comes second.

Incidentally, one of the hex bytes in the string above is, um, wrong. No points for so noticing.

Yours truly, last fall:

It might look something like this:

Indeed. Of course, all that handwork keeps the price high: we're talking sixty-five grand for a Prius, fercrissake. But I still believe there's a market for a Lexusized Prius. And even if the only buyers turn out to be people who are desperate to be seen as green but who wouldn't be caught dead in a Toyota dealership, that's more than enough to turn a tidy profit.

NewsOK.com is now serving up its new site design, which officially is still in beta. I looked at it a couple of weeks ago, and deemed it a smidgen cleaner, though apparently one of the major goals is to make sure you see at least one 600-pixel-wide ad before you scroll. And one horrid feature has been made slightly less so: they still have the exploding Flash ads popping out of nowhere, but so far they haven't actually made it impossible to click on the menu bar, which the old interface did.

B-minus, maybe a solid B. So far.

(Update, Cuatro de Mayo: The menu bar is hosed under the area defined by the exploding Flash ad, which of late has been sold to the Oklahoma Lottery. This is not endearing.)

I own three watches. The Helbros, acquired in 1966, stopped working in 1980 but still looks pretty good. (It's been to the repair shop once; a new crystal was installed some time in the middle Seventies.) At the time, the combination of penury and hardware lust led me to acquire a Casio digital watch — pace Megadodo Publications, I still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea — which is still in use today, though its band (a knockoff of the Speidel Twist-O-Flex) is seriously worn and the pins that hold it in place, well, don't.

As usual with me, Plan B took precedence over Plan A, and I purchased an Abacus "atomic" watch from Woot. It was incredibly bulky compared to my old Casio; more to the point, it had a Rolexoid bracelet that Fossil, Abacus' parent, had thoughtfully prepared for the wrist of one of the Kansas City Chiefs. I spent about an hour and a half resizing the band, mostly because I had only the vaguest comprehension of how to work the pins. I wasn't even sure that "pins" was the proper term.

A few minutes of Googlage led me to the storefront of The Watch Prince, which patiently explained that these things are properly called "spring bars." What's more, they actually offered a tool to compress the skinny little troublemakers, for a measly nine bucks. It looks vaguely dental, except for its matte black finish, which is probably useful if you have bad eyes since it contrasts with the band and the watch itself. I had to have one, even though I'd finished redoing the Abacus' band, simply because at some point in the next 40 or 50 years I may have to do this again.

While I was at the site, I picked up some spare spring bars (a stunningly-negligible dollar a pair), and just for the heck of it, dialed over to the bands and ordered a genuine Speidel Twist-O-Flex for the old Casio. The Prince, reasoning from my shopping cart that I didn't have a farging clue, threw in two sets of bars to fit the Speidel. The Casio is now back in play, the Abacus is sitting on my dresser downloading a time signal from WWVB, and I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should have the old Helbros fixed.

The palatial estate at Surlywood was constructed in 1948, which may mean that I am fortunate indeed:

I think I've just been talked out of some vinyl trim.

More on the sheds, from Elaine Brownell's Master's thesis:

And now, of course, they're right on top of one another, so to speak.

Cesar Pelli, you'll remember, designed Tulsa's BOK Center. Is it all skin, no structure? Guess we'll find out soon enough.

In the meantime, when visitors ask me about the house, I will continue to explain, "It comes from the period when they'd learned how to build one-story houses with a certain degree of panache, but before they figured out how to make them all alike."

For every Monopoly, every Scrabble, there are hundreds of board games that for whatever reason Never Quite Made It.

Just now showing up on eBay is the original (there are no copies) of Toad J. Simpson's Get Away With Murder Game. From the description thereupon:

As part of the deal, the buyer will be assigned copyright to the concept and characters; it's the whole package. If you ever wanted to make your own game, perhaps this is your starting point, and to borrow a phrase, should the idea fly, you must bid high.

The Hilton Garden Inn hotels are pushing something called the Garden Sleep System, a sort of superbed, billed as an order of magnitude better than what one usually finds in a hotel room.

Hilton put out a press release to trumpet the results of a sleep survey they'd ordered; Christopher Elliott reads between the lines, and finds:

To be honest, I never give it much thought at all, except for the choice between Queen and King. (I stay at about a dozen different hotels each year during the World Tours.) And anyway, there are other factors besides mere bedding:

Hilton also mentioned that about 20 percent of men (they give no figures for women) sleep in the buff at their facilities, which may or may not explain the concern over sheets.

(Via Upgrade: Travel Better.)

Dear Mr. Cleaver:

Lorem Ipsum was not available for comment.

(Via Jason Toon.)

This is the third of four frames in an animated GIF advertising Schick's Quattro for Women razor, which I spotted today while browsing Popgadget. (That "Energizer" tag might seem odd until you remember that the battery maker acquired Schick and Wilkinson Sword in 2003.) I had to ask myself, "Self, are you that easily distracted by a nice pair of gams?" (Yes.) I suppose it's a good thing they're not taking things too seriously. To make sure they weren't, I wandered over to their Web site and found something called Quattro Lingo, which introduces some new terms into the vernacular. I was most amused by this description: when you "intentionally go without shaving before a date as a way of making yourself behave," you're said to be wearing a "chastity pelt." I have no idea what Dawn Eden thinks of this notion, though I'm sure she'd endorse behaving oneself.

Okay, I missed this, but I don't intend to miss this.

Even though it's technically more work.

If you've been on the Net for any substantial length of time, you've almost certainly seen the Joe Cartoon about the frog in the blender.

And if you haven't, well, maybe the Peruvians have:

Now when they start offering this at Starbucks, then I'll worry.

(Via Scribal Terror.)

KAKE-TV in Wichita has extensive video footage of the tornado that destroyed Greensburg, Kansas late last night, and truth be told, I can't watch more than a few seconds of it: it's that horrendous.

The town of 1600 was evacuated; so far, four deaths have been reported, but not everyone has been accounted for.

Blogger Patsy Terrell writes, from about an hour away in Hutchinson:

Here's a Google Map of the storm's approximate path, courtesy of GIS/space blogger LordKingSquirrel.

And KSHippyChick posts some lightning shots, and reminds us:

It's going to be a long day on the Plains.

Update, 10:30 pm: Patsy Terrell continues to follow the story:

That phone number is 620-672-3651. The current death toll is nine.

Citroën's 2CV was to France what the Volkswagen Beetle was to Germany or the Austin/Morris Mini was to Britain: a low-end transportation device that unexpectedly turned into an icon. Designed in the 1930s, the first production 2CVs appeared in 1948, with front-wheel drive, an air-cooled flat-2 engine delivering a modest 9 hp, and windshield wipers powered by the speedometer drive. Eventually the little twin was expanded enough to kick out 30 or so horses, which accelerated the 1100-lb 2CV, um, eventually.

The last 2CV was produced in 1990; the Beetle and the Mini were still being made, albeit in small quantities. When VW introduced the New Beetle and BMW acquired Mini and gave it a complete updating, it seemed a shame that Citroën wasn't thinking about bringing back the 2CV.

Now they are. Presumably based on Citroën's C3, the new 2CV will be pitched as a premium product, where once again it will be competing against the Mini and the New Beetle. Powerplant? Maybe a new hybrid diesel. No sense in producing a retromobile unless it's fully up to date. And don't look for it here: PSA Group, which owns Citroën (and Peugeot), doesn't have any firm plans to sell anything in the States. Yet.

(Via Autoblog Green.)

Actually, I got rather a lot done today, terrain-wise, considering the stiff winds and all. After finishing up, I hit the shower, got dressed, and dragged myself off to the grocery store, and to prove that timing is everything, approximately two minutes after I'd left, the Yard Guys came by and punched several hundred holes in the topsoil. Just as well. And the rain started up later this afternoon, so we'll see if any additional moisture makes it down to where the roots are. They noted a heck of a lot of crabgrass; on the other hand, last time they were here, of the eleven "controllable" weeds on their list, I had five of them, so evidently four are more or less under control. And I've noticed that some of the bare spots out front, among my chief sources of despair, are indeed starting to fill in around the edges.

It dawned on me while pushing the mower that I probably overpaid for the darn thing, not so much for its Honda-sourced engine but for its front-wheel drive, which I think I've used once this year: most of the time I leave the drive disengaged and just push, even uphill. On the upside, it's still running in its fourth year, which, given the way I tend to treat mowers, is sort of remarkable. It is, however, on its second blade, and twice it's tried to throw a wheel. (The wheel is attached to the height adjustment, which in turn is bolted to the frame; this bolt doesn't like to stay as tight as I'd prefer. It's always the same wheel: left rear.) And it's taking very kindly to the three-dollar-and-odd premium gasoline it's getting, as it damned well ought to be, if you ask me.

Former Monkee Peter Tork says the Prefab Four would be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by now were it not for Jann Wenner:

Maybe he'll have better luck with his current band.

(Via Fark.)

Clearly, it does not love me.

Last night I was going through one of my periodic bring-the-notebook-up-to-speed sessions, a process which involves, among other things, gathering all the inevitable software updates. One of these was for the Java runtime, version 6, update 1. Having had no Java-related problems, I went ahead and installed it.

As always at the end of these sessions, I checked to see if I had any disk space left, and found a lower-than-anticipated 5.6 GB left. (The drive is a 20 GB, which means of course 18.6 GB.) After cleaning out temp files and other detritus, I pulled up the Add/Remove Programs applet to see if there might be anything I wouldn't miss, and what do I see? Six previous Java runtime updates, dating back to the days of the Ink Spots, each sucking up more than 100 MB. You'd think, inasmuch as there's an automatic update function, that the installer would remove the previous version; but no. I suppose it's a good thing that all these separate versions play well together.

Anyway, armed with this knowledge, I duly trashed those six installs, which bought me back about 0.7 GB, some of which I used up on Trillian.

Some of us would consider ourselves fortunate were this to occur:

And, of course, Not Available:

Yeah, there are some serious Thou Shalt Nots involved, and we won't go there. But it gets more complicated:

Were I to adopt this as a policy, I'd never speak to women at all. This is obviously not acceptable, at least to me; the women might feel otherwise.

Once seen on a T-shirt: "Since I gave up hope, I feel much better." Purely in the romantic sense, this has worked rather well for me: I don't have to worry about jeopardizing a future relationship because, well, there isn't any future relationship to jeopardize. Thus freed from the burden of trying to avoid screwing up, I do much better, or at least less horrendously. Okay, there's no obvious payoff at the end: but I feel that I've gained something from the experience, even if it's only the satisfaction of not having bored her to tears.

As regular readers know, I am subject to deep and inexplicable crushes. I used to worry about this. Now it's more like "Enjoy it, what there is to it that can be enjoyed. Just don't be a jerk about it."

Speaking of which:

Complete? No. But I think you should give her a chance to respond to you in some small way. You can't assume that she's interested, or that you could persuade her to become interested; however, she's off to the daily grind just like you are, and if she comes away from that 20-minute stretch thinking that, well, at least somebody appreciates me today, perhaps you've done her a kindness, which needs no justification. And it's a fair trade, since if you're anything like me you're getting memories which will stick with you indefinitely, possibly useful as part of the evaluation should someone actually available show up.

And who knows? Four years from now, you'll meet on the D train, and her divorce will have just become final, and — no, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Oklahoma doesn't have a front license plate, and some cars sold here are never equipped with a bracket for mounting a front plate — though plenty of people have those brackets installed anyway and fill the space with various pleasantries of dubious artistic merit. (Gwendolyn, originally registered in Missouri, has a bracket, upon which I have mounted a picture of a goldfinch. Imagine that.)

One plate I see on a regular basis around here is easily explained but never really defended. It's always on a Volvo, it's sized like a European plate, and it says simply: SWEDISH. Well, duh. I've more than once grumbled "No shvit, Sven" upon seeing the silly thing. And it is silly: is there anyone who doesn't know where Volvos come from? And why do you never see it on a Saab? (Okay, it makes no sense on a 9-7X, but still.)

Should I ever find myself with the keys to a Hyundai, I think I will have a KOREAN plate made up to these specs, just to gauge the reactions from passersby.

Courtesy of Happy Catholic, the Top Ten ways the Bible would have been different if it had been written by college students:

It is not true, however, that part of those forty years in the desert was spent at Burning Man.

The commencement speaker at St Louis University this spring will be Zen master Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra.

Of course, if people don't want to go to the commencement, you can't stop them.

(Via Fark.)

What we have here, basically, is an excuse to go back through the last week's worth of visitors (we're talking around four thousand or so), weed out the ones who got here through search engines, and them mock a dozen or so that seem mockable. It's a nasty job, but somebody's gotta do it.

floppy penis jumping jacks:  That, um, goes without saying. (Next time, go without saying it.)

does anyone know what interior home door vents are:  Nope. Nobody knows. There's been research funded by the National Science Foundation, but so far nothing.

oklahoma sheds:  On average, once a year.

"nudism" "google earth":  "Good lord, it's a satellite! Get inside and get your clothes on!"

seven of nine naked pictures:  Who has the other two?

i hate pharmacists rude overpaid customer service:  Somebody didn't get his tranqs.

why does my suburban's fuel gauge needle shake:  It's trying to keep up with the gas consumption.

are detentions on your permanent record?  The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires that they be deleted after seven years.

where is Hilary Bullings?  She's taking a shower. Call back in about 45 minutes.

iq score locker number:  No correlation. Then again, I had locker #12.

when will mazda 626 transmission fail:  About 5:30. I suggest you call for a service appointment early.

six feet tall 34dd:  And I thought I was picky.

Oklahomans have good manners:  Damn right we do. Now sit down and shut up.

Two complaints about recent films that you may have heard, maybe even have spoken before:

• "Everything worth seeing is already in the trailer."

• "There's no story, it's all special effects."
  

Not at all intending to address these issues, Britain's Team TV has something for you called V3:

In the meantime, you have 63 seconds of stuff which fits right into the mix at the multiplex. (You'll need QuickTime to watch it.)

Or maybe not so much. This is the pitch:

This is simple enough, I suppose. And so is this:

And that Rank approaches infinity (not really, but you know what I mean) because they have garnered no links. My two side blogs have earned Authority of 1 and 3, which puts them — well, nowhere special.

(Via Sophistpundit [65].)

Note: Slightly reedited to remove non sequiturs and signs of having ditched Statistics 203.

The Transportation Security Agency apparently has no respect for the Mile-High Club:

So much for "You are now free to move about the cabin." Although I have to admit the "he wasn't feeling well" excuse adds considerably to the sheer risibility of the case. (How was she feeling?)

Yet another reason to drive, I'd say.

(Via The Consumerist.)

I'd be willing to bet the Star Tribune would never have bumped Lileks off his column had he been, oh, let's say, a transsexual sportswriter.

I console myself with the thought of, say, Norm Coleman dispatched to Zimbabwe to cover Robert Mugabe — in the Strib tradition, with two coats of whitewash.

Bonus quote from Bill Peschel:

Incidentally, the old Star-Journal and Tribune ad Lileks is using for Bleat art this week boasts daily circulation of 400,000. Currently, the Strib claims 361,172. Somehow I don't think this is going to help.

A bill before the California Assembly would rewrite all those old statutes that contain the words "idiot," "imbecile" or "lunatic".

May I suggest: Decelerated-American.

I've spent rather a lot of time over the years prescribing remedies for the ever-ailing General Motors, and most of them boil down to the same thing: develop some cars that are good enough to sell without two grand of incentives sitting on the hood. One thing that's standing in the way of this goal is the fact that the General is vending vehicles under eight different brands, which can't possibly be efficient. (Toyota, on its way to ruling the world, has three.) The Timekeeper calls for euthanasia for four GM marques:

To some extent, GM is already thinking this way: the Pontiac-Buick-GMC dealership is becoming increasingly popular. And if Americans won't embrace Buick, the Chinese have, which suggests that Pontiac is ultimately more expendable: if we're going to have low-end hot rods, they should be Chevrolets.

Losing Hummer would be a bit more problematic. The brand has two major constituencies — people who drive over rocks for the fun of it, and people who want to tell Al Gore to go pound sand — and while their overall numbers are small, their loyalty is unquestioned. Best of all, they have no unique vehicles (the short-of-milspec H1 has been put out to pasture), yet a crummy H3 commands more cash than its Chevy cousin. This could be GM's Jeep if they played their cards right. (Yeah, I know: big "if".)

A Saab/Opel merger, though, makes sense, since they're basically working the same turf. Frankly, I'd rather see someone buy Saab outright and bring it back to life, but I have no reason to think the General would consider selling it, especially since Volvo is actually making a few bucks for Ford. And the Opel connection is clearly helping Saturn, which now has a nice lineup that (mostly) doesn't cannibalize Chevy sales.

I still don't see why they need both Chevrolet and GMC trucks, though: are we supposed to believe that the bowtie boys are, um, amateur grade?

The longest losing streak ever in NCAA Division I-A football is 34 games, by Northwestern University, ending in 1982.

In 1983, I started predicting the Playboy Playmate of the Year, and my losing streak is now up to twenty-four years. Any day now I should get a smirking email from Susan Lucci.

The rain continues to fall, and one unwanted artifact from the Bad Old Days has returned with a vengeance: the outside wall of my office at 42nd and Treadmill has returned to High Porosity once more, and the floor, from the wall to about four feet in, is soaked. (Don't ask about the carpeting.) This hasn't happened in over a year, and I have to assume that whatever was done to divert the flow back then has somehow come undone in the interim.

Still, it's better than this:

This bridge on SE 17th near Central is, shall we say, under the weather. (Photo from NewsOK.com; I'm not going out in this stuff.)

One common theme around these parts is "Timing is everything." Fred First, a man very much attuned to time — he wrote a wonderful little book called Slow Road Home: A Blue Ridge Book of Days, which I continue to recommend — might have questioned his timing this week:

Well, yes, actually I do, but I have at least journeyman weather-geek credentials. ("First on the block to own a VHF weather radio" is just one of them.) And on the next-to-last day of March we got about 10 percent of our annual allotment. (Another six percent fell yesterday morning, mostly while I was trying to sleep.)

Vaguely related to this: a sister of mine once lived in El Paso, Texas, which has a reputation for aridity. The ongoing local shtick goes something like this:

Girlfriday has pictures (and more pictures) from South Dakota.

Thirty-nine bottles of beer left on this Austrian jigsaw puzzle, assuming of course you can figure out some way to take down and pass around the fortieth. This showed up today on Ben de İstiyorum.com, a storefront in Istanbul patterned (though less so lately) after Woot, for about twenty-four New Lira (about eighteen bucks US) plus shipping. I recognize maybe a third of the bottles represented; feel free to take a guess at any of them. Piatnik, formally Ferd. Piatnik & Söhne, has been making puzzles and games since 1824; they have puzzles with up to six thousand pieces, and, of all things, a deck of playing cards based on The Da Vinci Code.

Then again, there are times when it really helps:

This does not work. I ordered a small pizza once. They asked me if I'd like it cut into six slices; I requested four, inasmuch as I can't possibly eat six slices of pizza, even with immaterial toppings.

What we need next: Statistical analysis of what pieces you're likely to get when you order a three-piece chicken dinner.

(Via The Consumerist.)

Ah, the perils of lead time:

I have to admit, I'd probably be a bit more appreciative if there didn't happen to be "diverse water resources" pooling on my office floor to a depth of 3/8 inch right about now.

(Rainfall for yesterday and today has totaled 4.27 inches; today isn't quite over yet.)

So Mona Lisa goes to L.A., and — well, see for yourself.

(Via Lynn S.)

One of the great tragedies of life is that Mystery Science Theater 3000 never got a chance to do Battlefield Earth.

Now they will, sort of. RiffTrax sells downloads (usually $2 to $3) of actual MST3k-style riff sessions keyed to somewhat-contemporary motion pictures, starring Michael J. Nelson (MST3k head writer and latter-day host) and usually either Bill Corbett (Crow T. "I'm different!" Robot) or Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo). Sometimes both of them. The idea: you cue up your (possibly rented) copy of the DVD, and when you hit Start, you turn to your MP3 player and fire up the RiffTrax. You can try some samples here. It's not quite the same as it ever was — no Robot Roll Call, no Commercial Sign, no "Push the button, Frank" — but if you ever wanted an MSTed version of The Matrix, The Fifth Element, or (yes!) Battlefield Earth, you're in luck.

Mitt Romney was unavailable for comment.

And if you insist on having your video and audio in the same package, behold: The Film Crew.

(Via David Darlington.)

Electronic Body Music, a hybrid of industrial music and electronic punk, is a term concocted by one of its leading practitioners: the Belgian group Front 242.

Exactly what genetic factors contributed to the Carnival of the Vanities, I can't say, though I can say that edition #242 is up.

Disclosure: This edition contains something of mine.

G. K. Chesterton, anticipating 2007, way back in 1920:

(Via Dawn Eden.)

WiseGeek calculates that the extra 0.9 cent tacked onto the price of a gallon of gas mounts up quickly:

I think it's interesting that they rounded up the number of barrels to the next integer, but still, we're looking at $1.7 billion or so for an entire year, just from that nine-tenths of a cent.

They took it one step further: what if the price were jacked up, not by $0.009, but by $0.0099? Another $14 million for the month, another $170 million for the year, and besides contrarian cranks like me, hardly anyone would even notice.

Personally, I get annoyed when I see prices like $2.99⁹: it's three dollars, dammit, and you should have the stones to say so.

(Via Outside the Beltway.)

Picking three songs for a radio (or podcast) set is something of an artform, and the best such are very good indeed. (I have a few tucked away for possible future use, which, if nothing else, will appall my brother, who did actual time as a Radio Guy.)

One criterion for "best" is sheer effrontery — who in the world would have thought of that? — and accordingly, I award props to Monty for her Sammich set last weekend: two Bread tunes, with Meat Loaf in between. Delicious, in a couple of senses of the word.

Remember prunes? Of course you do. Except that they'd rather you called them "dried plums."

The remarkable success of this top-down attempt to force the language into another direction, whether it wants to go there or not, has inspired many. Why, it's even made it to television:

The minor detail that none of those vaunted New Technologies actually would require DRM, of course, can be found nowhere in the wild, wonderful world of ZitterSpeak.

Still, if they can sell Simpson's Individual Water Absorb-A-Tex Stringettes — and let's face it, we could use some flood preventers here in Soonerland this week — surely they can sell Zitter's "enablement," assuming the language mavens don't hurl at the very sound of the word.

(Via The Consumerist.)

Take your hyphen and shove it, says Marko:

(Also applauded by Tam.)

Both high schools in Norman will offer instruction in Chinese this fall, which strikes me as a fairly sensible thing to do (which Chinese? Standard Mandarin?), though I'm not quite sure I buy this rationale:

I am, of course, in favor of being self-serving, but I don't see English being dethroned as the world's lingua franca any time soon, population figures notwithstanding.

Still, Asian influence is growing in Oklahoma. While fumbling around the Web, I turned up this application for the school-lunch program in Oklahoma City schools in Vietnamese. [Link to PDF file.] There being about ten thousand folks in town who trace their ancestry to Vietnam, this seems like a reasonable accommodation. (English Language Learner services are offered by the district in Vietnamese, Lao, and Spanish.) The state school with the widest variety of language instruction might be Booker T. Washington High in Tulsa, which offers eight languages: Chinese, Russian, French, German, Latin, Spanish, Italian and Japanese.

(Norman story via Tailgate Politics.)

It will only take a few moments of your time. Your information will be used only to improve the quality of our online offerings, and —

Oh, wait a minute. Never mind. We don't really want to know about you.

Usually inscrutable, it is:

Indeed. And while we're on the subject, how exactly does The Best Of differ from Greatest Hits, anyway?

As it happens, my automotive music for yesterday was a C-90 I recorded circa 1992, crammed reasonably full of Temptations tracks. This is not too difficult a task, since the Tempts charted fifty-five titles on Billboard, not counting joint efforts with other Motown acts; the hard part, of course, is cutting all that down to an hour and a half (or even less on a CD). The advantage, just as obvious, is that you get to hear them all again while you make your selections.

To see what might be considered Greatest Hits these days, I consulted iTunes, and lo and behold, the range is even narrower than I feared. (Then again, your local oldies station might play "My Girl" and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" and "Beauty Is Only Skin Deep," maybe; forget those other 52 tracks.)

And now, needless to say, I'm going to have to work up a Temptations compilation CD, which will, I suppose, be the contents of this tape minus 12 minutes or so. Earlier in the week I was listening to a Marvin Gaye tape, which deserves similar treatment. (Perhaps to follow: Supremes and/or Four Tops packages.)

Update, 13 May: Presenting: Surrounded by Temptations.

Rather a lot of people are going to:

(Previous discussion here.)

Interesting question from Syaffolee:

I'm not persuaded that it would be. At the very least, we need half our lawyers to keep the other half busy. (According to the old joke, the only lawyer in a one-horse town was almost starving to death — until a second one hung out his shingle.) And do we already have enough writers? "Everywhere I go, I'm asked if the universities stifle writers," said Flannery O'Connor. "My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."

What we do need, I think, are people skilled with the pen (or the keyboard), but who don't necessarily think of themselves as writers. (In other words, someone like me, except with talent.) One of the happier byproducts of this whole blogging thing is that people are getting the sort of drill they used to get in English comp. Over the course of twenty-two years online, my style has gone from "well-nigh unreadable" to "not especially sucky," which is more of an improvement than you'd think. I am not much of a storyteller — I'm certainly not in Sya's league — but I do have some small facility for the short, pointed sub-essay.

Then again, my eyes glazeth over within mere seconds of cracking a law book.

Do compact fluorescent bulbs present an unreasonable hazard? Maybe, maybe not. (I lean more toward "not," myself, but that's just me.) Still, it's not like we otherwise never have any dealings with dangerous stuff:

Actually, I wouldn't call it a "primary" component: it makes up maybe one percent of your average tankful, and the EPA proposes to reduce this by 45 percent starting in 2011. Still, gasoline is nasty stuff, quite apart from that highly-flammable vapor, and we've learned to deal with it. I have no doubt we can learn to deal with CFLs. If nothing else, they remind us that ultimately everything is a trade-off.

Inasmuch as it had rained ten of the last eleven days, I wasn't at all looking forward to popping open my office door this morning, and my apprehension proved to be eminently justified: the floodwaters, measured previously at a 3/8-inch depth, were now up to a full inch. Friday being my busiest day of the week, I contemplated closing the door and going back home, and let them deal with this crap. Finally I pulled out my Standard Resignation Letter, updated some of the particulars (for those poking around, it's screwyouguysimgoinghome.odt), and confronted the Prince: "If I have to swim this morning," I said, "I'll be walking this afternoon." At least one four-letter word was used: "Feds." I didn't mention that the one room in which you don't want standing water is the room in which you have six figures' worth of hardware, but it turned out I didn't have to.

A plan was hatched: we would hook up a couple of submersible pumps, one of which would empty out the room. The second would be used to drain The Swamp, a stretch of unimproved land along 42nd that presented three problems:

• It's infested with all manner of nasty stuff;
  
• It's higher ground, and gravity still works;
  
• It's on the wrong side of the fence.
  

Still, short of moving the sun a few thousand miles closer to the earth in the hopes of drying things out, which was never seriously considered as an option, what else could we do?

This plan went through several modifications in a hurry, and strips of the by-now-ruined carpet were pulled up to reveal by-now-ruined tile which no one had seen before. (The building is about 50 years old, the firm just short of 40.) El Jefe brought in a fresh new Shop-Vac; later in the day, a dehumidifier showed up. By three o'clock, the de-carpeted floor was pretty dry, the equipment was moved away (except for the dehumidifier, which was still running last time I looked), and the sun had come out.

Of course, half an hour later, as has happened on eleven of the past twelve days, the rain started again.

Still, it was a fine effort, worthy of kudos all around, most of which I delivered in person before the downpour began.

An idea from Joe O'Rourke:

Only if you believe speed limits have something to do with traffic flow. Mostly, speed limits have to do with revenue.

It is indeed true that cars are more capable than ever. There has not been, however, a corresponding increase in driver skill, and there are more distractions than ever.

(Aside: Now here's a brainstorm worthy of the name: a cell phone/emergency flasher interlock. You take a call while driving, and your flashers come on. This will remind you that you're driving, you nincompoop, and it will warn the rest of us to stay the hell out of your way while you're incapacitated. I ask only 15 percent of the take.)

The rational way to set speed limits is to observe the actual drivers, then set the limit at the 85th-percentile speed, whatever it may be. There are going to be some roads — rural Interstates, most likely — where 80 or 85 mph would make perfect sense. On the other hand, going faster than 60 or 65 on Oklahoma City's Crosstown Expressway can be construed as a death wish, if not for yourself, then surely for your car's suspension parts.

Which brings us back to O'Rourke:

Neither does Oklahoma. On the other hand, I'd love to do the Kansas Turnpike at 90, at least as far north as Topeka. (Eastbound, where it becomes I-70, is another matter entirely.)

The best automotive writers combine adrenaline and grace; they can transport you to the Brickyard or the Nürburgring or wherever, and make you feel you're behind the wheel, or at least right next to behind the wheel.

There are few newspaper slots for the best automotive writers, though, which means that there's room for syndicators. The Oklahoman buys a package from Wheelbase Communications, mostly written by Malcolm Gunn. Generally, Gunn's historical stories come off better than his new-car reviews, generally because there's no sense of immediacy — the star on a Gullwing Mercedes is in no danger of tarnish — and therefore no compulsion to come up with ghastly sentences like this:

Now "ground-breaking content" suggests there's a backhoe blog out there somewhere. Weirder is the description of Cadillac's revival: did the CTS pull this off "singlehandedly," or did it merely help? You can't have it both ways.

Verbiage such as this doesn't transport me to the Brickyard or the Nürburgring; it doesn't even transport me to the Cadillac dealership (which, conveniently, is next door to the Infiniti store).

There have been times in recent history when "Ricki Lake is doing a magazine cover in a swimsuit" might have been a cause for alarm in some circles. Still, here she is on Us Weekly wearing a size four.

A couple of things perplex me about this incident. For one thing, there's the cover subheadline "It's a time of self-acceptance right now." Because, of course, you can't possibly accept yourself if you weigh 250 lb. (Disclosure: If I weighed 250 lb, the first good Oklahoma windstorm — you never have to wait very long — would pick me up and drop me somewhere in [fill in name of remote location based on wind direction]. If you don't believe me, ask McGehee.) Besides, the next Administration is busily planning the new Federal Bureau of Body Mass Index Enforcement, so we can probably assume The Artist Formerly Known As Tracy Turnblad is less fearful these days.

Then there's this, from the magazine article:

Which, it is reputed, is actually bad for your health, though I've long suspected that one reason it fell into disfavor in some circles was its tendency to draw attention from random males of the species. Personally, I blame Sharon Stone.

By which is meant that I didn't go much of anywhere today, but today still demands some sort of accounting, beginning at about 9:15, when I finally forced myself out of bed, mostly because I had to leave a bag of food for the postman. Local letter carriers were helping in a food drive for the Regional Food Bank; the usual person on this route comes by on Saturday between 9:30 and 10, and given the number of strays that wander about at night, I wasn't about to put it out the night before, even though very few cats carry can openers and such.

In retrospect, I probably could have waited another hour before firing up the lawn mower: there was still a noticeable quantity of dew after 10. Then again, it had been twelve days since the back yard had been mowed, and it rained eleven of those days. I pondered briefly the possibility of getting some sort of Urban Wilderness designation, then remembered that I'd probably be spending the rest of my life getting permits for this or that. And it took 65 minutes instead of the usual 40 or so, mostly because I kept sinking into the ground.

The postman did pick up the sack, and one of the things he left me was a nice little card telling me about an Alaskan cruise this summer, aboard Holland America's Amsterdam. I know from nothing about cruises, but I figured that if I wanted to go to Alaska, July was probably a good time to do it, especially in view of the fact that this cruise had been arranged by those wonderful folks at Bare Necessities. (Decision: Wait until I can talk someone into going with me. May take a while.)

I wandered over to the Post Office, where the Regional Food Bank's trailer was picking up what the carriers were dropping off. I also splurged for some of those Forever Stamps, which were more impressive-looking than I had anticipated — or maybe it was just that I liked the idea of a stamp that says USA FIRST CLASS FOREVER.

I went on to the grocery — they, too, were taking donations for the food drive — and by the time I got back home, most everyone on the street had mowed out front. In keeping with my Rule of Lawns (never have the best, or the worst, lawn on the block), I wheeled out the mower again and knocked out the front yard, which proved to be marginally drier. I believe this is only the second time I have ever done both lawns in a single day, and I'd just as soon not have to do it again.

A few days ago on this post, McGehee had said this:

And sure enough, in the grocer's case, prepackaged wings were going for $1.99 a pound, thirty cents more than for thighs.

We open with See-Dubya of JunkYardBlog quoting Dawn Eden:

Which drew this comment from presumed JYB reader "ck":

Michael Bates weighed in with this response:

This thread, of course, is of maximum interest to yours truly, being as how I am fifty-three years old, and during the last twenty years there has been only one brief entry on my, um, dance card, which mathematically guarantees a ten-year dry spell.

In other words, my mental state right about now, were I to accept ck's assertion, should be positively reeking of Chiroptera residue. It's not. In fairness, though, he's never seen me, and even if he had, he might not know that I have no particular sense of entitlement anyway.

News Item: Zimbabwe has been elected to head the UN's Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) despite strong objections from Western diplomats. They had said Zimbabwe was unsuitable because of its human rights record and economic problems. It is suffering food shortages and rampant inflation. But Zimbabwe has dismissed such criticism, calling it an insult.

Columbia University announced today that Dr. Sanjaya Shekar Malakar of Seattle, Washington will be named Professor of Ethnomusicology within Columbia's Department of Music, a position originally created for the distinguished Dr. Willard Rhodes, who died in 1992. Dr. Malakar's multi-ethnic background and long record of persistence in the face of hardship should serve him well in his post at Columbia.

George Carlin turned 70 this weekend, and I suspect his influence has only grown since he was DJing for Wonderful WINO Radio forty years ago.

Way back in the early 1980s, for instance, he anticipated this:

(Via Fillyjonk.)

I yield the floor to Tamara K., who says it better than I ever could:

I think she might be underestimating the number of mouth-breathing idiots, but otherwise, this is spot on.

So I sat down this afternoon and paid all the bills that had come in since last weekend, dropped the to-be-mailed stuff in my briefcase (clearly a stretch of the term) for the morrow, filed away the copies of those bills that were paid online, and now looking over to the side of the desk, I find that my Large Stack of Paper now consists of the following:

• One Target 10-percent discount coupon, earned as a reward for using my Red Card.

• One window envelope which presumably belonged to one of the bills, but I can't tell which one.
  

I was sufficiently panicked to go pop open the case and make sure that the actual envelopes being used seemed at least somewhat appropriate. (In other words: does the return address show, and is there a stray bar code on the actual envelope that will cause it to be mailed to some place in Delaware?) I will, of course, eventually throw it away, but for at least a few more minutes, I will be wondering just where the system failed.

This is actually the 68th in the series; the very first of these compendiums was titled "Do I look like freaking Jeeves?" What's more, rather a long time passed before this became a weekly feature. Still, that first intro is worth remembering: