... for you to pee on.

Perhaps surprisingly, Triumph is not involved.

(Via Tinkerty Tonk.)

Admittedly, that's a tad misleading, since the format isn't actually dead. On the other hand, it seems like every year a commercial station that used to play classical music starts playing something else.

In Milwaukee, that "something else" is ersatz jazz:

This is news you wouldn't even tell Tchaikovsky.

Two observations:

• "Smooth jazz" is neither smooth nor jazz.

• A 2 rating evidently isn't enough to sustain a format anymore. And the top-rated commercial classical station in a major market — KDFC in San Francisco — pulls around a 3.5.
  

I should note that there was a brief period when you could tune in "smooth jazz" in Oklahoma City; it was on my first group of presets at the time, although I reserved the right to push the next button at the first sign of the strangled-duck noises made by Kenny G. I wouldn't mind if it returned, subject to the same provisions. And anyway, our classical station, noncommercial as it is, isn't going anywhere.

(Via triticale.)

Realty affiliates of The Prudential produce a freebie magazine with real-estate listings in this market and some others; sometimes I remember to pick one up on the way out of the supermarket.

On the cover is a nice faux-Spanish Mediterranean west of Edmond near the Rose Creek golf course. It's quite lovely in that slightly-overwrought way — too derivative to make Architectural Digest but more interesting than the palace-from-Dallas stuff that prevails in the newer 'burbs — and is priced high enough to insure that any prospective owner won't flinch at the prospect of a Titleist bursting through a first-level window. It's located on Shorerun Drive, and the first time I saw that I read it as Sho Rerun Drive, like they were repeating the first season of The L Word or something. Now I've been out this way once or twice (call it 170th and May), and I don't think of it as being, well, on the shore. The usual Google check (I'd drive out there myself to take a look, but I just got out of the shower) produced a suitably-dated satellite picture; apparently Shorerun Drive runs by the shore of a water hazard, or maybe a retention pond.

Which, by the standards of Oklahoma City suburbs, makes this an unusually-appropriate name for a street: in Edmond, for instance, there are more streets named Oak something, or something Oak(s), than there are actual oaks.

Addendum: Apparently this sold in mid-June, for not too much below the asking price, which explains why I couldn't find a picture in the agent's portfolio of listings.

"Why did you shoot at us?"

"You have Avril Lavigne ringtones."

The coveted John Salmon endorsement:

Hmmm. Let's see:

And there's one other advantage: you'd have freaking Fox Mulder on the premises, a boon to today's conspiracy-theory-driven politics.

We must emphasize that each of these items is a real query, posted to a major search engine during the past week, which led the searcher to one of the ten thousand or so pages on this site; from the hundreds of queries, we've specially selected these for maximum smartass-remark potential.

nair for men on penis:  You don't want to be a smoothie that badly.

what benefit does the light train transit have:  It doesn't weigh as much, therefore it doesn't use as much fuel.

can i put mayonnaise in my hair:  The Condiment Police won't bust you, if that's what you mean.

into you she is:  So Yoda gives dating advice now?

mac sucks put gum in the floppy drive:  That would suck with just about any operating system.

bodice ripper fantasies:  Honestly, I don't know anyone who fantasizes about having her bodice ripped.

Mutt Lange buys Dr. Phil:  Must have been a present for Shania.

is it illegal to clean houses in the nude:  Not necessarily, but you can't assume the occupants of those houses will approve.

"lindsay beyerstein" "penis size":  I've never met Lindsay Beyerstein, but I'd be willing to bet she doesn't have a penis.

can a woman use a epilator in islam:  Not on her eyebrows, anyway.

joseph lieberman at nudist beach:  Gosh, he's more independent than I thought.

"tears on my pillow" and "maureen dowd":  Love is not a gadget / Love is not a toy.

condoleezza rice pedicure:  If you're gonna wear Ferragamo, you might as well do it right.

will the salon wax my rectum:  Not until they're done with Condi's pedicure.

They're called GRAIN, and this is what they're about:

And they take a dim view of the Rush to Ethanol:

And we've heard that word "expropriation" before:

They can, however, play a significant role in pushing up food prices, which doesn't strike me as a particularly useful goal.

When I was still in school, back during the Pleistocene era, they took the trouble to impress upon us the value of crop rotation and the folly of expecting the same land to produce the same stuff year after year after year. But hey, we can't waste time on that sort of thing: we need fuel, dammit.

Sheesh. I think I need a drink. Which, incidentally, would contain ethanol.

(Via Hippyshopper.)

Well, okay, they do, but mine hasn't, and, well, I refuse to play Mr Hardware Early Adopter Guy for Apple, especially if it involves getting involved with AT&T.

Besides:

None of these features is worth the expense to me, and I speak as someone who just ordered a lawn mower off Amazon.com, fercrissake.

And Venomous Kate grills a pretty mean blogger.

(Okay, I'm not that mean. Come to think of it, I'm not the least bit pretty, either.)

TV Guide polled its Web readers: "Who do you think has a greater chance of bouncing back professionally?" The choices: Isaiah Washington or P*** H***** (I can't even bring myself to type her name).

Fifty-five percent of the respondents voted for H*****, which compels me to ask: "Bouncing back to what?" What exactly is it she does, beyond the production of headlines and carbon dioxide?

I have to figure that neither S. Duncan Black nor Alonzo G. Decker ever imagined that their company would be selling something like this: it resembles an electric drill (which Messrs. B and D invented ninety-odd years ago) in no way except for the fact that it has a power cord.

Still, one of these LawnHogs will be taking up residence at the palatial Surlywood estate as soon as Amazon.com can get it on a truck and into my hot (okay, tepid) little hands. Lowe's Web site has it for the same price, but Amazon was giving away free shipping, and they claimed to have it in stock; Lowe's won't tell you if they have any on hand until you actually push the Add to Cart button. Besides, this gives me more than enough reward points on Amazon's Visa to get me a $25 gift certificate.

Yes, I have an extension cord. There's a GFCI-equipped outlet on the front of the house, another just inside the garage, so I'll have a place to plug in the beast. And I'm sure I can find a use for the approximately 1.2 gallons of gasoline that won't be going into the old mower.

Been there, been subjected to something like that:

Of course, I went through this in 1972, arguably a nastier time to be joining the Service. But it's perversely gratifying, I suppose, to see that the same sort of effort to rip the new arrivals out of their comfort zones is still being made today.

And best of all, this chap is heading for the Judge Advocate General's Corps. An officer, natch. We lowlifes in the bottom enlisted ranks always assumed that butterbars and such were getting an easier time of it: sometimes it was quite a while before we learned otherwise.

Sicko took in a modest $4.5 million in its first weekend, a bit under some of the wilder predictions, but still within the Exhibitor Relations Top Ten (at #9). On the other hand, it's not like Michael Moore spent Jerry Bruckheimer-level money on it, and apparently Moore, or at least his agent, is one sharp negotiator:

According to traditional Hollywood accounting, if you get profit points at all, they're out of the net, after every conceivable cost has been deducted. Moore's getting gross points, most likely more than enough to constitute what some of us in different walks of life used to call FYM. He says so himself:

Which is an exceedingly comfortable position to be in.

If you're going to blame PayPal's debit-card unit for two consecutive declines — and the abuse you heaped upon our poor, unsuspecting customer-service people indicates that you are — you probably ought not to use that same card again the same day.

Which, by the way, was declined. Again.

As far as the NBA draft goes, this year marks the beginning of the era of "one and done": high-school graduates can no longer place their names in the hat until they turn 19, which generally means one year of college before jumping to the ostensible Big Time, a major change from the thirty-year-old Oscar Robertson Rule which stripped away most draft restrictions.

Robertson himself has misgivings about "one and done," but perhaps not the ones you'd think:

And maybe the NBA, which has an obvious interest in this sort of thing, can kick in some of those scholarship dollars along the way.

(Noticed by Henry Abbott.)

It seemed improbable, but there it was on the water bill: PLACE BULKY AT CURB BY 6AM (WED) 07/04/07. The first Wednesday of the month is our usual day for Bulky Waste pickup, so that wasn't a big deal, but it's the Fourth of July, fercryingoutloud.

So yesterday afternoon I wheeled the old lawn mower to the curb and folded down its handle, lest anyone think I was just taking a break, hoping the city would pick it up in the morning. I needn't have worried: it's not 6 am yet, and already someone has hauled it away.

The new one, says Amazon, has been shipped.

The National Weather Service outpost at Will Rogers World Airport, where official readings for Oklahoma City are obtained, reported no rain on the 3rd, the first time they've issued such a report since the 12th of June.

Which means that it rained on twenty consecutive days. (Total June rainfall was 10.06 inches, about twice the usual.)

Time has run out for lyricist Hy Zaret, who died this week about six weeks short of his 100th birthday.

Zaret put out lots of words over the years, but the ones you probably remember were the words he put to Alex North's theme for the 1955 motion picture Unchained, notable both for containing serious emotional content and for never mentioning the film's title even once in the lyric.

"Unchained Melody," as it was called, hit the charts in four versions in '55; Les Baxter (Capitol 3055) took it to Number One, but his version was more or less an instrumental (there's a brief chorus), leaving the vocal prize to Al Hibbler (Decca 29441), who coaxed it to #3 and bestowed upon it pop-standard status. Lots of people recorded it over the next decade or so; Phil Spector tossed it into a 1965 Righteous Brothers session as the B-side to "Hung On You" (Philles 129), the intended follow-up to "Just Once in My Life." But "Hung On You" never broke Top 40, and DJs turned the 45 over to find, not the usual Spector throwaway instrumental, but a lovingly-produced Bobby Hatfield solo performance in front of the Wall of Sound at its lushest. (This being a B-side, rumors persist to this day that the other Righteous fellow, Bill Medley, actually produced it; I have my doubts, though Medley's production for the Brothers' post-Spector discs for Verve demonstrates his mastery of the Wall.) "Unchained Melody" climbed to #4; its inclusion in the 1990 romantic fantasy Ghost led Verve to reissue the single, which reached #13. (A re-recording by the Brothers also charted, reaching #19.)

Zaret, of course, approved. He was reportedly not amused by a George Martin-produced version by the Goons, which Parlophone stuffed back into the Abbey Road vaults before it could see the light of day, prompting the Goons to move to Decca. The recording finally surfaced in 1990, and apparently not even Dr. Demento would play it.

(Note: MP3s expire eventually.)

An idea from Randy Rager:

Top Ten ways the government would be different if the capitol were moved to Oklahoma City:

10. Supreme Court fall session begins after the football season
    
9. Congress gets a cost-of-living decrease
   
8. K Street lobbyists lined up on 23rd
   
7. New "Capitol Oaks" subdivision in Edmond
   
6. Ted Kennedy could see some really deficient bridges
   
5. World Bank opens branch in Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market
   
4. Mary Fallin demoted from Representative to Delegate, takes six months to notice
   
3. A Congressman's girlfriend jumps into the Bricktown Canal in the dead of night
   
2. Maryland refuses to take back the District of Columbia
   
1. Finally, funding for the Gary England Monument
   

Not to discourage them or anything.

Or at least priced like that. Lachlan shakes her fist at the Automotive Gods:

Which seems like a lot of money to pour into a Ford Focus, fercrissake, but just about anything you drive these days is going to run up some serious bills when it breaks down, and sometimes when it doesn't. When I bought my current ride at 88k, I expected to fork over $1500, maybe $2000 to get it back into tip-top shape; it turned out to be twice that. (Geez, they have a lot of emissions equipment in these damn cars.) On the upside, there's no timing belt, the regular 90k service was under $500, and most of the 105k service is the replacement of the original spark plugs, which admittedly cost fifteen bucks apiece, but there's only six of them.

I did, however, look around for a Focus maintenance schedule, and it doesn't look that horrible:

The timing belt shows up at 120,000 miles.

It occurs to me that (1) Lachlan is female and (2) it's not unheard of (though it is reprehensible) for service shops to put the figurative screws to female customers.

Disclosure: When I went car-shopping in 2000, I test-drove two Foci, and came this close to buying one, but wound up with a Mazda 626.

I suppose I might as well face it:

74%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Mingle² - Online Dating

(From Steph Waller, who evidently has more of a life.)

You already know how I do it: with a piece of pricey hardware to block most incoming calls. Here's a more-amusing alternative:

Apparently it's still possible to buy a Caller ID unit with a voice box, though I have no idea whether its voice is pleasant, or even female.

And this, in turn, suggests a new Google application: a Caller ID box which connects to Google and immediately returns the appropriate information. Ultimately it could be incorporated into a VoIP phone or even a Web-enabled cell phone.

Or how about this: the box connects to whocalled.us and sends up a query. If there's a match in their database, the call is automagically hung up before you ever hear the ring.

I reprint this Oklahoma Gazette item with a certain level of sadness:

For "decades ago" read "in 1921." Here's what I said in 2004:

The current building dates to 1958. The furniture store next door, I assume, is equally doomed.

Not a function of taquitos for lunch, but of a so-far-unresolved conflict: World Tour '07 is supposed to begin Tuesday (I have medical stuff to take care of on Monday) and I am no nearer to setting an itinerary than I was a month ago.

The basic criteria are as follows:

• Thirteen or fourteen days. Fifteen at the outside. (I've noticed I start to run down rather seriously after fifteen.)
  
• At least one pass through the Kansas City metro. (This is primarily to visit the Younger Generation.)
  

One possibility under consideration is a sort of Reverse Trail of Tears route, which ends up somewhere close to North Carolina. Advantages: there is much of this area I have not seen in years, if at all; roads tend to get interesting as the mountains get closer; a lot of bloggers along the way. Disadvantages: a lot of this may end up on I-40; if it doesn't, I may run perilously close to a sixteenth day; a lot of bloggers along the way.

I've also considered a Trans-Texas Tour, looping through the Lone Star State. Advantages: I never get tired of Texas; the variation in scenery is considerable; Texas road discipline is something to respect. Disadvantages: Texas in the summer is either hot or damned hot and the endless rains won't help; tricky to make that loop through Kansas City.

Other possibilities present themselves, but these are the front-runners right now. Suggestions are welcomed.

It is said that 20 percent of the customers cause 80 percent of the work, and where I work it's more like 13/87. There is, of course, nothing that can be done about it.

Or is there?

There's a simulated buckpass here, in the form of the passive voice — "the decision has been made" rather than "we have decided" — but otherwise this is the sort of thing I would love to do to certain of our stragglers: "You are causing us more trouble than you are worth. Go away."

I expect Sprint will be reviled for this action, if only because it's shown up on Consumerist, where denouncing Evil Corporations is a way of life, but in my capacity as a person who (1) doesn't make incessant demands of the firms from whom I buy service and (2) has to put up with an amazing number of people who do, I'm giving them somewhere around 2.25 cheers.

Pepsi-Cola has introduced something called Diet Pepsi MAX, which contains 46 mg of caffeine per 8 ounces, a jolt just this side of, well, Jolt. They're pitching this stuff as an antidote to the Great American Yawn, and according to their survey, as recounted by Popgadget:

That last, I think, I'd rather not have known.

Oh, and one hundred percent of women who have dated me have yawned during the proceedings. (Warning: this may not be statistically significant due to painfully-small sample.)

If you were wanting to compare caffeine counts, try this.

Just a little something I found in the City Council minutes:

The ATTACHMENTS are attached, not to the minutes, but to the agenda; apparently these beverages are for use at municipal golf courses.

And no, you can't have a Pepsi. Not even at Earlywine.

This is, in fact, a Bentley Continental GT with Hyundai badging. And not just on the deck lid, either: the familiar H also adorns the nose and the wheel hubs. What's more, "Hyundai of Bel Air," the ostensible dealer named on the plate frame, does not actually exist.

Precisely why someone would do this is something of a mystery. Autoblog (which has more pictures) speculates:

I suppose the next step would be to affix a HYBRID badge.

Joanna looks at both sides of the issue and decides we should dump the penny:

Still, she has ideas for the least-valuable coin in your pocket:

It's either that or melt them down into clean copper clappers, an idea that leaves me with that zinc-ing feeling.

Andrea Harris scalps Ursula K. Le Guin:

Point of order: if the Chinese do Macbeth, do they still refer to it as the Scottish Play?

Well, the mower arrived yesterday, and by the time I got it home (thank you, Trini) the rain was coming down half-fast and semi-furious, so it stayed in its cardboard box.

Today there were traces of solar radiation, so I performed the ritual unboxing and stretched out the extension cord. Initial findings in the front yard:

• The 12-amp motor is just about as powerful — or, depending on your point of view, just about as unpowerful — as the 6.5-hp gas motor that committed suicide last week.
  
• The 19-inch swath is narrower than I'm used to, and where the stuff is really thick it takes two passes.
  
• The machine weighs practically nothing, and by nothing I mean a hair over 50 lb, barely half the mass of its predecessor, so its lack of self-propulsion is no big deal.
  
• This is the first time in my life I ever wished I had a skyhook at my disposal.
  

I think I could get used to this pretty easily, once I figure out a reliable system for keeping the cord out of my way.

Thirty months old, and already he's wearing glasses? Bad eyes must run in the family or something. Anyway, here's Jackson, just shy of 2½, getting a good look, which would have been a better look had there been a real camera instead of a cell phone handy.

Disclosure: I got glasses at fifteen. Horn rims, because I aspired to wear tweed jackets and date girls who could write sonnets on short notice.

In general, I've been a fan of cable barriers in highway medians, if only because they're substantially less unsightly than the usual concrete blocks; I said so here, though an incident in which an 18-wheeler on the Lake Hefner Parkway managed to get through one of them caused some concern locally.

Which, I assume, motivated an Australian fellow to send me a comment that was unrelated to the topic to which it was affixed, but which I hated to throw away, so I'm reprinting it here:

The Australian fellow in question identified himself as Daniel Chmura, who is a transport engineer for Brifen's Oz branch, so his interest is clear. And frankly, I was impressed with the video (it requires QuickTime), though a car weighing maybe 1500 kg is going to be a lot easier to restrain than a tractor-trailer rig: laws of physics and all that. That single incident aside, the cable barriers (mostly built by Brifen) have done well here, as they did in an extended test in Indiana.

I should point out that motorcyclists in various parts of the world have objected to them, occasionally suggesting a similarity to a cheese slicer; their deployment has been stopped in Norway. All I can say to that is that our bikers don't seem to be running into them.

In 1990, Jeff Jarvis invented Entertainment Weekly, and one controversy immediately sprang up: their reviews were summed up by a straight-outta-high school letter grade, a grievous affront to the creative community — especially the segment of the creative community who got C-minus or below.

Over the years in EW, there have been a number of A's, even an A-plus once or twice, and rather a lot of F's. I've read every issue — I was one of the very first subscribers, and make of that what you will — but I don't remember ever seeing an actual F-minus.

Until issue #943, in which Ken Tucker describes "a book that should never be published":

I think I've just been talked out of writing a memoir.

As for the rest of the mag, my favorite section is getting to be Alynda Wheat's What to Watch, which I suppose is an odd choice since I seldom watch much of anything on television, but her single-paragraph distillations are always fun, and she doesn't even have to assign letter grades. On the Food Network's new series Simply Delicioso:

This is a show it would never occur to me to watch, and yet suddenly it appears almost ... interesting. Which, of course, makes me worry if Ms Wheat is in fact the creature I fear most, the woman who can talk me into anything.

In the summer of 2005, Jack FM came to New York, and Michele said this:

I wonder what she'll say when it comes back:

And it's not hard to see why:

Explanation of title: "Alternate Title" was a record by the Monkees. In the US, it was titled "Randy Scouse Git", but this probably would not have gone over well among some of the snivelling little rat-faced gits in the UK, hence the "Alternate Title." And frankly, I had no reason to believe anyone would think kindly of the first title I'd chosen for this piece, which was "Jack off next week in NYC."

Getting tagged by David is one thing; getting tagged by David while he's getting tagged by Lachlan is yet another. Either way, I know when my number is up, and the number this time is 8.

First, the damn rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
   
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
   
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
   
4. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
   
5. Don’t forget to leave them each a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
   

So be it.

1. HABIT: I have just about given up milk for my breakfast cereal. For that matter, I've just about given up breakfast for my breakfast cereal. Instead, I pour out a tumbler full of granola or Grape-Nuts or whatever (maybe Cheerios, but nothing presweetened) and drink it as though it were a beverage while I sit here typing in the evenings.

2. FACT: When I joined the Army back in '72, there was a block on the form for Preferred Duty Assignments, one in the continental US, one overseas. The overseas choices were listed by theater: there was, you may remember, a war going on in the Pacific, and being (I assumed) something of a wuss, I checked the box for Europe. You were allowed to pick any of the 48 applicable states for the CONUS posting; being (I assumed) something of a smartass, I checked Rhode Island, knowing that actual assignment there was extremely unlikely. After basic training, I ended up in central Massachusetts, a short bike ride from Rhode Island, and then at a NATO base. Be careful what you ask for.

3. FACT: Once upon a time, I had a reputation as an early adopter: in 1974, I bought a pocket calculator with an 8-digit LED display, an AC adaptor, the four basic arithmetic functions and not a whole lot else, for the princely sum of $109.95. Today you can get far more capable machines than this at the dollar store. The number of Beta tapes around here testifies to the value of getting rid of that reputation.

4. HABIT: The figure "8" is usually written as a continuous curve, and when I was studying the fine art of writing, we were told to start at the top, sweep to the left, downward toward the right, sweep to the left and then complete the loop. Approximately half the time I actually do it that way; the other half I do it "backwards." I attribute this to the delusion that occasionally reversing a task will ward off age-related deterioration. (While I am legitimately fast on a 10-key pad with my right hand — I am a northpaw, so to speak — I will often do a string of calculations on the office adding machine with my left, for possibly-related reasons. Speed is lower, but accuracy is comparable.)

5. FACT: I complain as bitterly as any woman when I break a nail. (And I file down the rough edge as soon as practicable.)

6. HABIT: If I have to be up early the next day, I cut off my caffeine consumption by 5 pm or thereabouts. I can't prove that this makes any difference, but I do it just the same.

7. FACT: While I'm not at all averse to running around the back yard in my birthday suit, I don't go barefoot back there. Most obvious reason: one and a half sweetgum trees on the premises.

8. FACT: I've done lots of these, and generally I've managed to do them without asking you to follow suit; the "damn rule" notwithstanding, I am doing so here.
   

Of course, if you want to, I won't stand in your way.

Cerulean Studios had a recent security update to the Trillian IM client: ever since installing it (on two different machines), I can no longer connect through Trillian to Yahoo Messenger.

And apparently it's not Cerulean's fault:

I'm setting a deadline of right now for my intention to avoid using Yahoo Messenger ever again.

We're about halfway through the 24 Hours of LeMons, not to be confused with any haute-shaute French event: this is a race for cars worth $500 or less, not including the mandatory safety gear. Last year's inaugural event was won by Road & Track's Team Corsa Uber Fantastico in an '82 Corolla, completing a full 1189 half-mile laps, sort of, and beating out two groups of Frito Banditos, a team from "Eyesore Racing," and something called "Pirate Ninjas With Lasers" (which wore number 86½ for some reason).

Autoblog is attempting to live-blog the whole affair.

Houston Rockets center Yao Ming will marry Ye Li of the Chinese national team on the 5th of August. Both Yao and Ye had played for the Shanghai Sharks in their younger days; they've been dating for about eight years.

Yao is the tallest current NBA player, at 7 feet 6 inches; Ye is listed at 1.9 meters, a shade under 6-3. My first thought was "Is this the tallest couple ever?" Well, no, they're not:

Mr. & Mrs. Long? Now that's truth in advertising.

Anyway, all the best to Yao and his lovely bride.

Two kinds of people in this world, says Blythe:

Despite the fact that the very first record I ever bought was a Stones single ("Satisfaction," in the summer of '65), I am more of a Beatles person, if only because I bought everything they put out, whereas I bought only most of the Stones' stuff. There is inevitably some overlap, if only because the Stones' second single was a Beatles song: "I Wanna Be Your Man." (In the States, the first Stones release was their third single, "Not Fade Away," their Buddy Holly remake, which was issued here with "I Wanna Be Your Man" on the flip.)

Blythe also lists her top ten Beatles tracks, two of which are also on my list, which follows in no particular order:

• "I Saw Her Standing There"
  
• "I Feel Fine"
  
• "In My Life"
  
• "What You're Doing"
  
• "Here, There and Everywhere"
  
• "Strawberry Fields Forever"
  
• "I Am the Walrus"
  
• "I Will"
  
• "Here Comes the Sun"
  
• "Let It Be" (45 version)
  

I hasten to add that this in no way constitutes a bid for a date.

When does the World Tour actually happen?

It begins on 10 July, and continues for somewhere between two and three weeks, though closer to two.

What makes it a World Tour, exactly, since you're not leaving the States or anything?

Two things: it's awfully damned long, and much of it is through relatively unfamiliar territory.

How long is "awfully damned long"?

I expect somewhere between 4000 and 4500 miles.

You've done this five times before. Why do it again?

Because I can. More to the point, it's good for me to get out of town, and it's good for my car to get a serious workout once in a while.

Will you be blogging every day?

That's the plan, anyway. You can still read the reports from 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005. (The 2006 version ended in semi-tragedy.) I have Wi-Fi capability, I carry a spare CAT 5 cable, and if all else fails, I have a dial-up.

What's the shape of this year's route?

It's an irregular polygon.

How much of this is copied from previous World Tour FAQs?

Rather a lot, actually.

Is there any chance you'll say "Screw it" and not go home?

I would have to be extremely fortunate, in the winning-lotto-ticket sense, or extremely smitten, in the "I've been waiting for you all my life" sense. Don't count on either of these actually taking place.

How come it took so long to post this?

Two factors: I couldn't reconcile my desire for a shorter Tour with the fact that I've seen most of what's close by, and I have lingering concerns about my car, which has performed admirably on 400-mile days in the past but whose ailments, once manifest, tend to be hyperexpensive to cure.

What finally made you settle on a route?

An offhand (maybe) remark by Andrea Harris on this post:

I can't believe you'd actually plan a whole trip over an offhand (maybe) remark.

That's not a question.

Beth envisions a world of transpo-pods:

And the payoff is huge:

I suspect it would take a lot more than robot cars to create this Utopia. For one thing, they'll be operated by computers, and computers crash. Rather a lot more than cars do, in fact. If anything, this will force the price of insurance upwards.

Besides, some of us crazy fools like to drive.

For some reason, this feature has picked up an occasional fan, but I suppose I can keep doing it anyway. If you're new around here, this is what happens: I comb through the last week's worth of Site Meter listings, note the arrivals from search engines, and make fun of the goofier ones. It's a good way to kill a Sunday evening, and it gives me a fresh post on a Monday morning.

pictures of a kid getting a reactal themometer stuck up their butt:  Obviously this person isn't anal about spelling.

marie antoinette transvestite:  "Let them wear drag."

the bustiest senior citizen in america who is she:  The winner, who prefers to remain anonymous, is a 94-year-old widow living near the Teton Range in Wyoming. She still has her original bison-hide implants.

horrible looking cakes:  Maybe someone left them out in the rain.

Vickie's Valences:  Minus three, alongside nitrides and phosphates.

sex with bag over head:  So much for sucking face.

"big flaring nostrils" -dog -cat -bird:  Perhaps you should put a bag over its head.

What do a Cadillac Escalade and C3PO have in common?  You probably shouldn't park either of them near the Mos Eisley Cantina.

definition of doomaflatchie:  It's like those thingumabobs and those other gizmos.

mean bitches crushing mens balls:  Yeah, I'd say that's mean.

yogurt of the eighties:  Surely it's spoiled by now.

5 inch penis is satisfying:  "And who do you expect to satisfy with that?" she asked. "Me," he replied.

president united states america country marine corporation bank of america corporation buyers at 6% wait for buyers at 3% conceal buyer human flesh livers penis and hearts bank of satan chruch employees masonic members 59th lodge israel trade switzerland from murder incorporated liberia human flesh language of human consumption locate correct address bank of america within san francisco california human flesh buyer corruption bribery the popatoe industry as front money increase too buyer human body parts for satanic rite cheifton dinner buyers consumers bank of america canobolism employees location usa fbi gov directer 14155537400?  Somebody's working on a Conspiracy Theory of Everything. (The phone number, as it happens, reaches the FBI's San Francisco office.)

And I don't have a whole lot of principal, which brings down my overall results in The New York Times Social Class Calculator.

Nor am I alone. Erica notes:

In their case, it's likely because they simply don't own a lot of the stuff that is considered "wealth." I have more of it, I suppose, but I also have more debt than they do (two words: "Surlywood mortgage"), so I come out around the same place. I may own six figures, but I also owe six figures. (Fortunately, what I own is still more than what I owe.)

And I used to have the same obsession with class as the Times has:

Fortunately, I got over (most of) it.

In 1485, the Tower of London was first surrounded by Yeomen Warders, whose functions included looking after any prisoners in the Tower and keeping an eye on the Crown Jewels.

The Warders (there are thirty-six of them, one of whom is designated Chief) all come from the ranks of the Royal Armed Forces, where they served with distinction for at least twenty-two years. For the first 522 years, they were all men.

Not anymore:

The admission of a woman into the ranks of the Beefeaters did not sit well with some traditionalists:

Then again, she paid the same dues as the men at the Tower, served the Crown just as long, just as honorably. I really don't see why this would be an issue, unless they're worried about whether she has the capacity to behead someone, a one-time duty of the Warders that has long since fallen into desuetude. (There have been no prisoners held at the Tower for half a century, and no executions since 1941, when German spy Josef Jakobs faced, not the mighty blade, but a firing squad.)

Last week Venomous Kate asked me for "three things that make a blog suck," and this was the first:

To test this theory, take a peek at this page from a WordPress blog operated by the National Endowment for the Arts. I suspect a peek is probably all you'll need.

(Swiped from Don Surber.)

This is almost believable:

Of course, if he is the final member of the species, there remains the question: "To whom is he saying this?"

Similarly: Frederic Brown's short story Knock, which begins like this:

(Seen at A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance.)

Because, well, it's not like I'm going to have a whole lot of stuff today otherwise.

Shreveport, Louisiana — 400.2 miles

I note with limited glee that I disregarded the route proffered by the New! Improved! Yahoo! Maps, and saved a whole half mile in so doing.

The magic number today was 115, as in "Will I get farther this year than I did last year?" And I admit to breathing a bit easier after the 115th mile. At that point, of course, it started to rain.

It had occurred to me that I'd never actually driven the Indian Nation Turnpike, so I gave it a spin. It's a nice little road, a bit over 100 miles, posted for 75 mph, and given that it's a toll road, the state maintenance on it is slightly less haphazard than on those crummy "free" roads. Indeed, two interchanges appear to be getting an upgrade this summer. Where the turnpike ends, US 271 kicks in, and almost immediately the sun came out. (Didn't last.)

First stop of any note was in Mount Pleasant, Texas, a pleasant (well, it is) little town where 271 crosses Interstate 30. I'd been there once before, mostly because I'd married a girl from there. (We all know how that worked out.) The north side, near a probably-artificial lake, has some really spiffy new homes; downtown is pretty much your standard small town in Texas with a lot of the age spots covered over. The chatter around the lunch counter was about half drawl, a quarter Spanish-accented, and a quarter actual Spanish, so that much hasn't changed.

Two bits of weirdness today. Just east of Longview I encountered an appliance-white Ford Crown Victoria with a ginormous antenna on the back and a Louisiana plate, doing a solid 74. Something official, I figured, and dropped back a hair. Suddenly it lurched over into the left lane, and as we rounded the curve I saw what was going on: a rest area disgorging half a dozen trucks at once. He knew. I got close enough to pull alongside and read the legend on the door: Halliburton. Not knowing which version of the death ray they had on hand, I did not further challenge them.

And as I was entering the hotel, a teenaged girl, teasing her little brother, released some spinning-top toy into the air. Gravity introduced itself, and the plastic whatever-it-was landed with a thump on top of my head. Children and parental units looked equally appalled; I said something to the effect that it couldn't hurt me where it landed.

Toll report: Indian Nation Turnpike, $4.75.
Gas mileage: 26.5 mpg.

I picked up a copy of The Times here in Shreveport, and took a look at the editorials: one actual editorial (on the burial of the N-word), one local column, Leonard Pitts and Jonah Goldberg. Not too unusual an array.

But on the second page of the section (which is dubbed "Conversations"), there is a complete list of all the columns carried by the paper, on what days of the week they appear, and, if syndicated, a "liberal" or "conservative" tag as appropriate. Ellen Goodman (Wednesday) is "liberal"; Michelle Malkin (Saturday) is "conservative." I wouldn't argue with any of these, particularly, though David Broder (Friday) is marked "liberal/moderate," which almost demands a "Since when?" Still, this is a peachy idea, and kudos to The Times for implementing something I haven't seen anywhere else.

Remember this? Alvy Singer has to see the entire film from the beginning:

Over the years, I've been described in terms of comparable politeness. Case in point: over the weekend, it suddenly occurred to me that I might have Done Something Wrong on my last day in the salt mine. I emailed the two people who would have to straighten out this mess, explained my inexplicable lapse, and recommended the appropriate fix. I was subsequently informed that I had done it correctly in the first place.

Which ultimately means only one thing: I will probably not be featured on Brian J. Noggle's QA Hates You blog, which exists to demonstrate that there are people far sloppier than I am. "Those who can, do; those who can't, QA."

Since there is some peripheral interest in where I'm going, here's what's mapped out so far (actual hotel reservations are lagging by a couple of days so far):

• Central Mississippi
  
• Southern 'burbs of Atlanta
  
• North side of Orlando (where Disney ain't)
  
• Somewhere else in Georgia (considering Savannah)
  
• The Old North State Marathon (westward starting at Raleigh)
  

And thence into Tennessee.

Details on request, or watch this space.

Philadelphia, Mississippi — 727.8 miles

Two anomalies this morning before I ever got underway. First, the father of the two kids in the Infamous Spinning Top Incident caught me at the door and offered profuse apologies, and said "I know you said it was no big deal, but they have to learn not to do stuff like that." With this sort of thinking around the house, I think they'll learn just fine. Besides, what is life without the occasional risk?

About twenty-five feet later, I looked over at Gwendolyn's flank, and the left rear tire seemed flatter than usual. (I've had radials long enough to know that appearances can be deceptive, but work with me here.) I muttered something under my breath, popped open the console, and withdrew my pencil gauge. The results were discouraging. And if you were thinking "Yeah, but this is the kind of person who brings a freaking air pump with him," you get the gold star. (It hadn't lost any more air by the time I gassed up, so I assume that this was just a failure of my pre-launch countdown procedure.)

Two universities live, cheek by jowl, in the middle of northern Louisiana, and I saw them both: Grambling, an historic black college, is only a few miles from Louisiana Tech. Tech is neat, almost antiseptic; Grambling is rambling, and the legendary old football stadium has seen better days. (On the other hand, the new Assembly Center is pretty spiffy.) I saw lots of Tech students, not so many at Grambling, but everyone seemed bright and neatly-pressed, probably because it was still pretty early in the morning and the humidity hadn't kicked in yet. Were I the cheapskate I profess to be, I'd probably wonder why these schools, five miles apart, weren't merged. But their missions are altogether different, and I certainly wouldn't want either of them to go away.

Canton, Mississippi is the home of Nissan's US truck plant, which you'll find out quickly enough if you come up 55 from Jackson: the exit right before Canton proper is marked "Nissan Dr." The plant itself is huge, and has the capacity to produce 400,000 vehicles a year. (And if you want the tour, you need to request it a lot earlier than five minutes after you arrive.) Canton itself is full of "Home of Nissan" banners, but there were a lot of other manufacturers' trucks downtown, although I did spot two Infinitis in one block, one of which was a loaner from the Jackson dealership.

Mississippi 16 is a lovely, if unchallenging, two-laner that starts in Canton and took me to Philadelphia, a town of about 8000 that probably wouldn't have so many hotels were it not for the Choctaw Nation reservation just to the west, a veritable Casino Heaven if you like that sort of thing. Me, I shrug.

Homeowners Association: brilliant invention or instrument of torture? Joel at the Oklahoma City Real Estate Blog has looked at them from both sides now:

Which presumably explains why they've ended up in a blog. Not being a member of an HOA, I really can't say much: we have a Neighborhood Association around here, but it's not in a position to micromanage things for the residents. And there isn't a whole lot of "poor behavior" around here, either; most of what there is can be traced to nonresidents skulking about, or to a small segment of apartment dwellers (we have a fair number of apartments, but few actual thugs) on the edge of the neighborhood.

Whatever your perspective, consider this a call for dialogue. (I have readers who sell real estate, and I'd particularly like to hear from them.)

No, I'm not feverishly looking for new topics each and every evening; when I left on Tuesday I had four or five posts still in the can, and rather than face the possibility that the less I post the greater my traffic, I'm gradually releasing them into the wild.

Newnan, Georgia — 1056.5 miles

Old 80 and I go back a long way. I can remember being sprawled on the floor of a VW Microbus (to the extent you can sprawl at all in a VW Microbus, which isn't much) all along Old 80 from Savannah to God knows where. Probably Shreveport. We made this cross-country run I don't know how many times, and somehow Old 80 became more than just a road: it became a memory.

The eastern edge of Mississippi twisted itself into the leading edge of Alabama, and something was different somehow. It didn't take too long to figure out what it was: one of the last segments of the old two-lane was being upgraded to a full-fledged four-laner. This will no doubt improve the road; it may even make it safer. But it basically killed the emotional connection: it's as though they'd actually continued building I-20 along Old 80 instead of detouring it through Tuscaloosa and Birmingham on the way to Atlanta. This may not perturb you particularly, but I'll miss the way it used to be.

One thing I won't miss is I-65 through Montgomery. There would be suicide on a Guyanese scale in ODOT had Oklahoma City's soon-they-say-to-be-supplanted Crosstown Expressway deteriorated to this point: the speed limit is down to 45, and even that's a pain in the ball joints.

Just beyond the Georgia line, I filled up Gwendolyn's tank with another shot of 93 octane, a rare commodity back in Soonerland. (We're a quarter-mile above sea level, which I assume is the reason most vendors offer 91 at the most.) She seems happy with it, returning almost 28 miles for each gallon, and it's not much more expensive than the alleged premiums in Oklahoma — except in Georgia. The person who had filled up at this pump before me left her receipt behind, and I don't know why. I do know, though, that in the three hours and odd between her fillup and mine, the price went up six cents a gallon. I blame McGehee.

Newnan, focal point of the McGehee Zone, is named for road engineer Alfred E. Newnan, whose I-85 project has been going on for what seems like decades. But don't bother asking him about it: he'll just shrug and say "What — me hurry?"

At least once in your lifetime you should eat at a place which has a Lewis Grizzard special on the menu, especially if Alan Jackson used to wait tables there.

McGehee confessed to some misgivings about the recommendation, but here in the real world, I wouldn't pass up such a thing. (And we had a wonderful time; I swear he almost cracked a smile.)

Once in a while, my broadband connection at home refuses to serve up some Web sites. And by "some," I mean this: about two-thirds of the sites on my blogroll become inaccessible, but the others work just fine. This happens just often enough to be annoying.

So I'm considering pointing my router to OpenDNS, bypassing my ISP's DNS server. If any of you have tried this particular expedient, I'd appreciate hearing about it. (Not that I'm going to be doing this any time soon, what with being on the road and all.)

Noontime in Alabama:

"Doesn't look like rain," I said to her as she was cleaning up tables.

"Too bad." She shook her head. "We need all the rain we can get."

I told her where I'd come from, and that we'd had a year's worth of rain in less than seven months. She asked if we were going to plant rice next year. I said I'd certainly suggest it.

In the meantime, fashionable Oklahoma women (yes, there are such, now shuddup) have begun wearing these:

Click to embiggen. (Thanks to S.M.)

Through the first three days, I've traveled 1056.5 miles. How does this look compared to previous Tours?

Remind me to order a "Slacker" T-shirt.

Longwood, Florida — 1539.2 miles

Things started out innocently enough. I had gotten to within a hundred miles of the Florida line when I saw Hugh Hefner's trademarked Rabbit on a billboard. Who knew that (1) there was a Playboy Outlet Store (2) in Georgia? I pulled up, decided the place looked too depressing, and drove off. What's within, said this traveler:

Apparently I didn't miss much.

Closer to the border was a place advertising thousands of books, none over $3. Which is true, sort of: they have two storefronts, one at each end of the strip, and one of them has more conventional (and higher-priced) remainders, but the other one is indeed $2.99 and under. (Yes, I hit them both.)

Then I entered Florida, and there was a billboard that read "Welcome to Florida. Mortality rate 100%. Are you ready?" Pertinent Bible verse affixed near the bottom. Then the rain started. And got worse. Visibility dropped to zilch. I said, mostly out loud, "Do I really want to die this way on Friday the 13th, fercrissake?" So I pulled over and waited it out.

Interstate 75, incidentally, is like the New Jersey Turnpike with crummier pavement; getting off of it was the single most relaxing thing I did all day. And due to people testing that mortality rate, it took an hour to get across Orlando. I suspect, though, that this is the norm for Mausplatz.

Toll report: Florida's Turnpike, $3.00; total $7.75.

At 1 am Saturday (Central), and for several hours thereafter, this site will be offline while the hardware is physically (as opposed to virtually) relocated.

Things should be back to normal by daybreak.

Hardeeville, South Carolina — 1835.7 miles

Actually, things started out pretty well: breakfast with the Twisted Spinster.

No, really. And her vaguely pixie-ish appearance would seem to conflict with that whole Right-Wing Death Beast thing, but that's not important. What matters here is her demeanor, which is Seriously Genial. Besides, she can discourse on a ginormous (there's that word again) number of topics, something I always appreciate. (And she got a ride from Gwendolyn, albeit short.)

There's more to tell, but my wireless card isn't working (again), and there's no local dialup number to be had, so I'll have to pick this up tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll pull another post from the can so you'll have something to read.

There is one universal pronoun in English, and, like an infinitive, it takes two words: "your ass".

Seriously. Maybe.

Tomorrow, barring catastrophe (I use that phrase a lot these days, I've noticed), I begin the North Carolina Slag. First stop, for no good reason, is Fuquay-Varina, mostly because I've always been curious about a town that would keep a name like Fuquay-Varina. (Mental note: Here's an excuse to go to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico next year, or whenever.) This will be followed by a run to Asheville, and then into deepest Tennessee. If you're on the way and would like my cell number, drop me an email.

Addendum: Because I wanted to know:

And now you know.

So this evening I met up with the lovely (well, she is, dammit, and I refuse to believe she's that old) Deb from Boondoggled, and not only can she put up with me for an hour or two, she's a pretty fair raconteur (I refuse to turn this into "raconteuse") in her own right. Over Mexican food and beverages I will not describe, we swapped tales about all manner of things, a task made easier by the fact that most of her pre-Suthun life was spent in good ol' Oklahoma. (There's a funny Wayne Coyne story, but I'd rather she told it.)

Which means that the middle of the day, which was marked by thunderstorms and traffic and more thunderstorms, will eventually be forgotten, while the memories of two remarkable women (here's the first) will remain. I wouldn't have it any other way.

But no, I'm not working for the Giuliani campaign team.

Besides, that's his middle name. (I've read Molly Worthen's book, and even reprinted an anecdote therefrom.)

Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina — 2166.8 miles

No rain, and no impediments to high-speed driving, so I got here about an hour before check-in, decided not to wait around, and backtracked about seven miles to a coin laundry. Five days' worth ran me a solid $6.75.

Also no bars: contrary to T-Mobile's coverage map, either there is no GSM 1900 east of about Nashville, or they lost their roaming agreement with whoever does have it. Either way, I got no phone, so I dug out a TracFone (I do try to anticipate these things) and put myself through the activation process, which is a genuine pain. The phone, or Fone, is kinda cute: it's a Moto V170.

Oh, about that "high-speed" business: I didn't think I was going that fast, and I made several stops along the way, yet the desk clerk seemed amazed that I could get from north of Savannah to south of Raleigh in five hours forty minutes. It's only 300 miles, for Pete's sake. (Today's mileage total reflects both the retrace to the laundry and a tour of downtown Fuquay-Varina and nearby Holly Springs, which pushes the day's work to about 331.) I don't think I ever once (okay, twice) hit over 80 mph.

Overheard in a Wal-Mart: "Why is it 'men's wear' but 'women's fashions'?" I suspect this will be someone's thesis someday.

Tonight: meeting with Dr. Weevil; other possibilities present themselves.

Erudition I expected; a puckish sense of humor I expected. But I didn't envision the man's capacity for pizza, which exceeds even mine own. (The operative word is "hefty": we ordered a large, they brought a small followed by a large, and we did make a dent in the big one before senses were regained and/or acid reflux was remembered.)

And I didn't count to be sure, but I suspect he has more books than I have blood cells. What's not to like?

I may be on the road, but the Googlers and Yahooligans and whatever keep coming, so, with apologies to Russell Cardwell, here we go again.

good pair of nude hose that look invisible:  Might as well get a can of spray and be done with it; at least it won't run. (You hope.)

how to tell the difference between a girl finch and a boy finch:  I'll just bet it's somehow pecker-related.

scoreboard bedroom light:  I wouldn't know. I seldom score there.

"nine years old" 36c bra:  If it's that old, you might as well throw it away.

cocaine lye:  But J. J. Cale told me she don't lye.

used jockstrap lou christie:  No wonder the gypsy cried. She could barely breathe.

male enhancement 5 seconds:  If it's only 5 seconds, it's not much of an enhancement, is it?

is modern lyric writing just blither:  No. It also contains bathos, pretentiousness, and dubious rhyme schemes.

claims adjuster nude:  Honey, that wasn't a claim he was adjusting.

is there anyone who likes working in retail:  That character who wangled the 90-percent employee discount, maybe.

What Is Octagon Soap Used For?  Among other things, washing stop signs.

transvestite women welding while at weddings:  Insert "hot rods" joke here.

girls in bikinis knock on my door and ask for condoms:  Right. Sure they do.

r'lyeh mcgehee:  Cthulhu comes to Coweta!

Asheville, North Carolina — 2462.4 miles

First order of business after leaving Fuquay behind was breakfast with Bigwig, who tore himself away from the usual sysadmin stuff to trade stories and reminisce about blogs gone by and stuff like that. (You could tell he was a sysadmin just from the uniform. I'll let you wonder about that.)

Today's route will make life complicated for the cartographers in our midst. I took US 64 west from the Triangle to the Triad. (North Carolina: The Threesome State.) From Thomasville, more precisely, NC 109 north to Winston-Salem (didn't see so much as a pack of camels), and west on I-40, partially to see if it was as drab as Jennifer warned (it was) but mostly because Interstates have that Holy Grail of travelers: rest rooms. I was sufficiently bored by around Statesville to drop onto US 70, which was mildly entertaining for a few miles but eventually reconnected to I-40. And then, mirabile dictu, the Interstate became interesting: the ups and downs and almost-off-camber curves made poor Gwendolyn have to work for her BP Ultimate, and truckers were falling by the wayside left and right. (Mostly right.)

Still no official phone coverage, but I have the little Dispos-A-Phone up and loaded with 120 units, which may or may not be minutes, so I'll at least have some form of voice connectivity for the next couple of days. I have five months to use it up. And since it has a 919 area code, it will be interesting to see how much they're going to soak me for roaming. Cute little Motorola, it is; unfortunately, its ultrasleek design makes it a poor choice for leaving it on the car seat. One good curve, and NC has plenty of them, and the phone is under the seat. (Another disadvantage of automotive leather.)

A thunderstorm brewed up about ten minutes after I got here; the rumbling seems so much louder than usual. Of course, I'm in the mountains: I'm closer to the source.

Random statistics: I have spent $274 so far for gas. Total expenses, here near the halfway point, are hovering around the $1000 mark.