As determined at the front door:

2000:  0
2001:  0
2002:  0
2003:  0
2004:  0
2005:  5
2006:  0
2007:  9

Let it be noted that I spent twenty minutes trying to get the porch light to stay on long enough to accommodate those nine little monsters. (It has one of those light-sensitive gizmos on it which lately hasn't been sensitive to anything at all.) Eventually it paid off; in fact, I had to kill the switch to shut it down.

I'm starting to see more kids in the neighborhood generally, which I hope is the beginning of a trend. I think we have something to offer in this corner of town: relatively-affordable housing stock in better-than-average shape for its age (sixty years), proximity to shopping, and one of the better city schools within walking distance.

In the best of all possible worlds, they'd be 24/7/365. We're not there yet by any means, but this is kind of heartening in a perverse sort of way.

Earlier this week I dropped a check payable to me in the night depository at Monolithic Bank and Trust Company (Member FDIC). Historically, I knew to expect a certain amount of hold time, and that the bank would send me a letter telling me exactly when that hold time would expire.

Which, it turns out, is the third of November. A Saturday.

They're still not accustomed to this sort of thing — if I pay most bills using their online facility on Saturday night, it will be Monday before the actual payments are posted — but this is progress, however small.

One other promising sign: If you also have one of their credit cards, you can pay the bill online up to 8 pm Eastern on the due date and it will still be on time. However, perhaps to offset this advantage, they're twiddling the due dates so they don't always fall on the same day of the month. (I've experimented with this: a bill paid at 6:55 pm Central was in fact credited the same day. Wait ten minutes, though, and you might as well wait 24 hours — or 23:50, anyway.)

There will be no 2009 Ford Crown Victoria at your local blue-oval vendor; retail sales have dwindled, and Ford will offer the car for fleet sales only after the 2008 run is complete.

Its sister under the skin, the Mercury Grand Marquis, which is produced in smaller numbers but which sells better at retail, will continue, at least for a while, along with the tarted-up Lincoln Town Car: all three vehicles are assembled at Ford's St. Thomas, Ontario plant, which is expected to remain open at least through 2010.

Disclosure: My ex drives a Grand Marquis, though not with the de Sade package.

The Casper Rockies, Rookie League affiliate of the Colorado Rockies, have decided that the merchandising take would be better with a more distinctive name, and will play next season as the Casper Ghosts.

Team owner Kevin Haughian says the change will help create an identity for the team beyond just being a Colorado farm club:

There is precedent: the former Albuquerque Dukes, taking a lead from The Simpsons, are now the Isotopes.

I'm wondering if Wendy, the Good Little Witch, will show up as a, you should pardon the expression, batgirl.

(Via McGehee.)

And this is the place to see them:

The page at the link actually says the 14th, but the email they sent out to film fiends says the 7th, which is consistent with the usual first-Wednesday schedule. Inasmuch as actual ethanol is involved, you must be at least 21.

In 1890, John Philip Sousa composed a march for the Corcoran Cadets, based in Washington, DC. The actual Cadets unit, founded in 1883, survives today as the 257th Army Band, District of Columbia Army National Guard.

This week's Carnival of the Vanities, the 257th in the series, has been designated by keeper Andrew Ian Dodge (may he live a long and happy life) as "Impending," although it's actually already up.

Kathleen Wilcoxson, who represents Senate District 45, is about to be term-limited out of office — 2008 is her twelfth and last year — and three Republicans are competing for her seat. (Democrats seldom even bother to file for this seat.) Mike McCarville has the numbers on their fundraising activities, and former Oklahoma City Councilman Jerry Foshee raised the most money during the reporting period ending 30 September; he's also spent the most.

He spent eight and a half bucks? Granted, the election is 53 weeks away, but I'm wondering whether this guy is God's Own Skinflint or just a big fan of The Producers.

Stephen Browne of Rants and Raves talks to Dr Ali Alyami, head of the Center for Democracy & Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, a US-based institution that hopes to change the rules in Riyadh.

The Center, it appears, has its work cut out for it:

And what do the Saudi royals want?

The Center's agenda:

So far, our politicians seem to be more or less evenly divided between "disregard" and "surrender."

Stephen Browne said he posted the interview at Rants and Raves "because there isn't a lot of interest elsewhere." Let's see if we can't stir up a little.

Back in September I called attention to a new Chevrolet Malibu ad campaign with the pithy lead "WE'RE TIRED OF BEING A FOREIGN CAR IN OUR OWN COUNTRY." The bow-tie bunch isn't giving up, either: the newest installment says "IT'S EVERYTHING YOU NEVER THOUGHT IT WOULD BE," a shot at all those folks — a group which on occasion has included me — who wouldn't be caught dead in a domestic automobile. (The 'Bu is built at the Fairfax plant in Kansas City, Kansas.)

Motor Trend, meanwhile, has declared the Malibu "the most important new Chevy sedan in decades," though what makes it important to them might sound a mite unusual:

I'd like to see a rear-wheel-drive Impala myself, but I can't imagine GM wanting to cannibalize its own sales. Besides, the biggest problem with a rear-drive Impala is not the Malibu, but GM's need to crank up its Corporate Average Fuel Economy numbers, which a full-sized two-ton sedan will presumably not enhance. And the Malibu can probably sell well enough on its own, given MT's declaration that it "makes segment-leader Camry and the just-launched Accord look decidedly lumpen."

If I seem to be harping on the Malibu a lot these days, it's simply because I think we're better off with an American auto industry that actually sells cars. And GM, after years of wandering in the desert, might actually be starting to find a path that leads somewhere: the General is cutting production on the hot-selling Buick Enclave in an effort to keep demand high and incentives out of the picture, a trick the imports have long known. "Nothing destroys the value of a new product faster than overproducing," says GM car czar Bob Lutz. If the Malibu is a big hit, you can probably expect more artificial scarcity.

Mark Peters runs a blog called Wordlustitude, which he describes thusly:

Enough to get him onto the blogroll right there. Yesterday's word:

Actual citation:

Between that and Googlage, I think I've done more than my fair share of knackering the vernacular.

In the current radio ratings, Spanish-language station KTUZ-FM dropped from a 4.2 share to a 2.4, and management says it's because of HB 1804:

Interestingly, Tyler has a billboard around town (I saw it along I-35 near NE 63rd) proclaiming that the local Latino market is 300,000 strong — and "we reach them all!"

Jesse Walker, writing for Reason's Web site, on bureaucratic attempts to stifle Halloween and such:

And almost invariably does.

Oklahoma City's voluminous zoning regulations are contained in Chapter 59 of the Municipal Code, and as the city gets bigger and new classifications are introduced, Chapter 59 becomes more cumbersome and impenetrable.

So it is with something of a smile that I report that City Council is ready to throw out the entire thing and replace it with something sort of organized. On the agenda for Tuesday's Council meeting is a complete rewrite of Chapter 59, and [following link goes to PDF file] the City Manager explains why:

The present Municipal Code lookup has acceptable search, but the sheer prolixity of the Code means you're going to get all manner of unrelated stuff you didn't want. If they're breaking out Chapter 59 separately and giving it its own interface, it's bound to be at least something of an improvement.

No property will be rezoned as a result of the new ordinance, though there's one substantive change: newly-platted property falling under the classification of Planned Unit Development will require the developers to submit more specific planning details, and the city proposes to collect a $500 fee for a PUD site review. Approximately 100 such reviews per year are anticipated.

The new ordinance, if adopted, would go into effect 27 December 2007, one month after final hearing.

Fetiche just bought a pair of these, and I figured I'd give the rest of the resident shoe critics a chance to look them over. This oxford is called "Panama," it's by Michael Kors, and I liked the detailing on it, hinting at somewhere between the classic spectator pump and the sort of old-school wing-tip things out-of-touch shlubs like me wear to the Jersey Shore. The crinkly leather is a nice touch: makes it seem a tad less stiff without going too far into the realm of the flexy. You can't see it at this angle, but there's a little hardware logo at the top of the heel, for the benefit of those who simply have to know where these shoes came from. (I used to cringe at such things, but inasmuch as rather a lot of my shoes have large slanted Ns on them, I feel I have no right to complain.) I can't help but think this might be nicer in a slightly lower heel — say, three inches instead of four and a half — but then I'm not the target market for this shoe by any means. Zappos will sell you these in grey, chocolate or black for $132.95.

If your taste in fiction runs to the Utterly Implausible, you could read a sheaf of political-party platforms, or you could browse profiles at Match.com:

On the other hand, a character who describes himself with a straight face as "complex" perhaps realizes that what he meant to say was "You'll find my moods mercurial and my desires incomprehensible," and maybe even dimly suspects that this might not actually qualify as a turn-on.

I admit to being unable to write 250 words about myself — not 250 persuasive words, anyway — but for the record, I have never watched even one MTV Spring Break Special, and I am, yes, well into my 50s.

Bill Quick's poking around in a secondhand store, and happens upon some classic furniture: a pair of side chairs in the style of Danish designer Kurt Østervig, which turn out to be actual original Østervigs.

Of course, he snapped them up; turns out he doesn't have the space for them, and so he's letting them go. If there's a lesson in this for me, it's this: brush up on those Mid-Century styles and designs, which seem so utterly compatible with my post-WWII house.

A couple of years ago, I wrote up a short piece about a Zero Energy Home being built here in town, and I made this observation about the price:

It won't happen overnight, of course: the payback period is measured in years, and anyway we have rather lower real-estate prices here than prevail in, say, the Twin Cities:

Far less energy, no doubt. But "far less expense"? Let's ask Chad the Elder about that:

I believe the technical term for this is "cost-defective."

Of course, the buyer didn't do all this to save money: he did it to set an example for the rest of us poor slobs, which is far more important in the long run, right?

In an effort to protect the remains, archaeologists have removed King Tutankhamun's mummy from its sarcophagus and placed it in a climate-controlled container inside Luxor's Valley of the Kings.

Tutankhamun's tomb was opened in 1922 by British explorer Howard Carter; over the next four years researchers managed to remove the golden mask fused to the king's face and separate the various treasures buried with him, and in 1926 the body, somewhat the worse for wear, was returned to the sarcophagus.

In the intervening years, increasing tourism has brought heat and humidity into the tomb, prompting the move to the new sealed box. A CT scan of the remains in 2005 suggested that the king died of complications from a broken leg. He was all of 19 years old, and had reigned for nine years.

Would you believe ... M.C. Escher's car?

(Swiped from the Australian Sceptics mailing list by Zoe Brain.)

Not being much of a gambler, I never knew someone like this even existed:

You'll find one in Jana DeLeon's novel Unlucky. As the author explains:

And there was additional research involved:

That figures.

A statistic from Playboy's Raw Data (December):

Given the need for magazine lead time, I figured this had to have been out for a while, and sure enough, it has. The study was commissioned by author/career counselor Rachelle Carter (Make the Right Career Move), and here's what she found:

And just in case you were wondering:

Based on my own experiences, I'd have expected a lot more than one out of six.

The new Hakia service combines a search engine with social networking: you can ostensibly meet people who've searched for the things in which you're interested. This might even work, though I don't think I want to meet the people who generated the searches reported here each week.

"tall beautiful women" nude:  Not at all picky, this guy.

my boyfriends 10 inch erection hit the steering wheel:  Tell him to wear pants when he drives.

Rep. Ronald V. Dellums niggardly:  Not so, and you're a blackguard for even suggesting such a thing.

How much money is saved per family on daylight saving time?  As a general rule, not a damn cent.

walgreens 60000th store washington dc:  What'll you bet it's right across the street from a Rite-Aid?

sticky, slimy brown gel like stuff under skirt of trailer:  Uh-oh. Somebody just backed over a wino.

pantyhose fur stiletto silk transvestite fiction:  I'd say that just about covers the genre.

dating uses bases to represent relationship second base is boobs:  Of course, she could be waiting for a sacrifice fly.

why is it bad to live in a flood plain:  Hint: they're not named after Curt Flood.

spammer punishments:  Declining stocks, expensive drugs, full-priced software, and an ever-diminishing wang.

how to disown a team in the nba fantasy team at nba.com:  Sell it to Clay Bennett.

(general motors) (tampons) (sexual harrassment):  Well, then, how about a Hummer?

She can quit any time. Maybe. Here are the approved Belhoste warnings for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Bundle, and for gosh sakes, take them seriously:

Some day, perhaps, they will come up with a "Hero" package appropriate to my talents, or the complete and utter lack thereof. (No, this isn't it.)

"We urge you to invest some more time researching unfit sites."

This was the entire text of a spam TrackBack received here this weekend; the proffered link points to a vendor of antiperspirants. (No, they get no link here.)

And while it's certainly fun to look at unfit sites once in a while, there are more than enough fit ones to occupy my time, thank you.

My current ride has a 3.0-liter V6, not the biggest engine I've ever had at my disposal but certainly the most muscular: 227 ponies (6400 rpm) and 217 lb-ft of torque (4000 rpm). Still, this is last-century technology, especially compared to something like this:

We'll be getting this engine eventually, in the 5-series sedan and the X5 sport-utility thing. With the shift (finally!) to low-sulfur fuel here in the States, I'm hoping we'll see performance-oriented diesels affordable by mere mortals before too long.

A couple years ago, I tracked down a copy of Born Grown, a history of Oklahoma City written in the middle 1970s by Roy P. Stewart. This was the immediate post-Pei Plan era, after extensive clearing of downtown had begun but before there was any noticeable uptick in actual rebuilding. (It would be two decades more before downtown was upgraded from "dead" to "breathing.")

Brian J. Noggle has happened upon a history of Webster Groves, Missouri, from the same period, and while he's fascinated by the actual, you know, historical stuff, he has more important things in mind:

Which, after all, is the whole idea — almost:

I wish I'd known that thirty years ago.

The current Consumer Reports tagline is this: "Expert · Independent · Nonprofit." They've registered it as a trademark, even.

They're still dependent on one ancient piece of marketing shtick, though: the 2008 Buying Guide, should you buy it in a store, will cost you $9.99. Not ten bucks, but one cent less than ten bucks. The usual explanation for this is that people read prices from left to right (duh), and somewhere in the back of the mind, the difference between $9.99 and $10.00 looks like a whole lot more than the meager penny it is.

Yeah, we know, everybody does it. (Well, my dentist doesn't; if he presents me with a bill for $200, it's for $200 and not for $199 and change.) For a publication which ostensibly seeks to create smarter shoppers, though, this is a discouraging lapse in standards.

Especially not real estate these days:

Is this proposal greeted with unanimous enthusiasm? "Let me take you down," say some folks:

McGehee notes:

Yeah, but they're just the owners: what rights do they have, anyway? Obviously this is nothing to get hung about.

The greenback is kinda brown these days, and while government figures go to great lengths to indicate otherwise, the real culprit is not hard to spot:

Not to mention the deterioration of the dime, which is now made of some nickel/copper combination that's worth less than either alone, if only because of the expense of separating the two.

Although the W-2 for the wages of this sin can be found elsewhere in the piece:

The price of this house has risen thirteenfold and change; the taxes have gone up twenty-two times.

Of course, these numbers were recorded in the Vampire State, as Akaky Bashmachkin calls it; your mileage may vary, though probably not enough to make you want to break into song.

This is the FitFlop, which is being sold (for $49.95 $49.99) as "a workout in a shoe":

I assume this is the sort of wobbleboard you don't quite fall off of, and not the wobbleboard you hear in all those wondrous Rolf Harris records. Still, I'd rather deal with these than with any of those horrid sandals with plastic cobblestones they try to sell as instruments of massage: I actually own a pair of such, which is the primary reason why I never buy shoes online anymore.

(Via Shoewawa. And no, I don't know why I seem to be doing so much shoeblogging lately.)

SAGA Zone is sort of Facebook with wrinkles: it's a social-networking site where the minimum age is fifty. It's run by Britain's SAGA Group, which seems to be like AARP without all the lobbyists; I suppose this should work just fine, with the caveat that advanced age does not necessarily imply advanced maturity.

(Via Emalyse.)

T-Mobile and its parent Deutsche Telekom have trademarked magenta.

Riff Raff was unavailable for comment.

(Via Fark.)

Not Maurice Ravel's, though he has a small role to play in this tale of someone whose time ran out far too soon, by the inimitable Akaky Bashmachkin.

If Blogspot is acting up, you can read it here. One way or another, though, you must read it.

In case you thought the issue of term limits was settled, you might want to think again:

"How so?" you may ask.

Having studied (via textbook, anyway) the operations of Oklahoma government, I have to agree that it does take a while to learn the legislative process. And this is certainly true:

But even as Easley's SJR 35 seeks to remove term limits, SJR 33 by Randy Brogdon (R-Owasso) seeks to extend them to other state offices:

And Brogdon isn't buying Easley's bit about lobbyists:

I'm waiting for someone to come up with a Senate Joint Resolution calling for term limits on lobbyists.

Bill Peschel's talkin' 'bout "Shaft":

Damn right. Even if it's played on ukuleles.

When Al Franken announced he was running for the Senate, the first thing I thought — apart from the visions of Stuart Smalley dancing in my head, which mercifully departed quickly — was "Geez, what would his fund-raising letters look like?"

Now I've gotten one, and, well, meh.

At least it starts out well, addressed to "Dear Person I'm Asking For Money." There are two mentions of the "Republican slime machine," which always makes me think of You Can't Do That On Television, which routinely slimed know-nothings (not to be confused with Know-Nothings). And Franken says that he is less beholden to guys with big bucks than, say, Norm Coleman: "In the third fundraising quarter, my average contribution was just $67."

And one quip near the end which speaks volumes:

Biting, one might say. Not enough to suck $67 out of my wallet, though.

No, not really. The Dalai Lama drove, not a GM vehicle, but a Land Rover — and if you'd lived most of your life in and around southern Asia, you probably wouldn't take a second look at a Camaro.

As it happens, you can own that very Land Rover:

The auction will run through the 12th of November; minimum bid is $75,000. All proceeds go directly to the Foundation.

(Via Autoblog.)

Rather a lot of them, in fact: Monday's Initial Public Offering of 28.7 million shares at $26 brought in a quick $746 million to the Oklahoma City-based energy company, and by closing Tuesday the stock was trading around 32.

SandRidge is the former Riata Energy, acquired by Tom Ward after he left Chesapeake last year. Ward, who remains the largest single shareholder in SandRidge, is now technically a billionaire. The company expects to move from its current Northwest Expressway offices to the former Kerr-McGee Tower downtown within a year or so.

Traditional English desserts are in serious decline, says Emalyse:

Of course, if they're not eating their meat — but never mind, you saw that coming.

The lovely Sarah D. Bunting of Tomato Nation, in an effort to spike contributions to Donors Choose, offered, among various incentives, this:

Total raised: over $100,000.

As promised:

If you're thinking "Didn't Angela Chase do this at some part of her so-called life?" you are quite correct. (And Claire Danes kicked in $7500, which would be icing on the cake if you could make cake out of tomatoes, which I suppose you could but I don't even want to imagine what it might be like.)

I never saw any particular need to burnish my Aging Urban Hipster credentials, on the honorable basis that I don't actually have any. On the other hand, this evening found me (and a companion, you should know) at the tony XO Lounge downtown, watching this month's shortsSUITE, a collection of short films assembled by those fabulous folks who bring you the deadCENTER Film Festival every summer. In fact, one item on tonight's menu I'd actually seen at deadCENTER: Virginia Todd Burton's lyrical Alien Rose. Some of the others I remembered seeing on screening lists. The XO itself is pretty neat, a shot of modern in the basement of the post-Victorian Colcord Hotel, and the food comes from the reliable Soleil upstairs.

The real adventure, though, came at the end, when neither of us could quite figure out how to get out of the city's humongous Galleria parking garage. Apparently this late at night there's exactly one attendant, and she's about fifteen linear miles away.

We've all seen it: usually it's a little white cross with minimal inscription, sometimes accompanied by flowers. What it means is that somebody died there. I don't focus on them, exactly, but I have been known to mouth a few words, something along the lines of "There but for the grace of God," et cetera.

So what happens when they rebuild the road?

ODOT, as it happens, isn't going to move them:

One can always hope that the road improvements will result in fewer memorials in years to come.

(Seen Anywhere But Here, as it were.)

The Professor gave it one line: "You may not know it, but your digital camera produces hidden data."

I knew some of this. When I'm running an Explorer window on my directory of digital-camera shots, the status bar dutifully reports something like this:

Until I followed this link, though, I had no idea just how much data could be read from this file. Some items of interest:

And that's just the beginning. It occurs to me that I should let you see this for yourself, so here's the photo in question. (Warning: it's huge.)

Lileks retreats from the fray, for the briefest of intervals:

The guy (if guy it be, which it need not) who comes up with a front end for Movable Type that runs on an EKG gets my eternal gratitude.

Incidentally, this is the 2,695th consecutive day with some sort of post here.

Claim: Winamp 5.5 "claims that you can stream music to anywhere that has an Internet browser, including cell phones and gaming consoles."

Test:

The Wiimote. Is there anything it can't do?

As an actual paying customer of Winamp, I may have to get this for my home box.

Not a whole lot more needs to be added to this:

Well, I suppose I can add this: the second store is going in at 16th and Drexel.

I got home from work — late again, no thanks to somebody else's malfeasance (my own malfeasance is usually quickly fixed) — and in the twilight I noticed something brown and bumpy down by the curb. A mass of unraked leaves? An item forgotten during Bulky Waste pickup? Nope: it was the metal cover to my water meter, in place but for some reason inverted, leaving the lock mechanism upright. A quick dash to a faucet revealed that no, my water hadn't been turned off. (I've never been late on a city utility bill.) And there was no indication that there had been any water-line work on the street.

Perplexed, I left a message with the city's Action Center, as this incident didn't qualify as an after-hours water emergency. No harm done, apparently, but I figure somebody ought to know about this.

Anyone who knows me will of course wonder what the hell I am talking about, since obviously I don't have any standards of appearance, or at least any that require any effort to break.

What I mean, though, is the appearance of this Web site on your browser, as opposed to mine. (Some of you may well be opposed to mine, which is Firefox 2.0.0.9.) So I turned to a service called Browsershots, which will call up the front page in a selection of different browsers on different operating systems, in case I want to know how it looks in, for example, Opera 9.24 on Ubuntu 6.06. (The answer: not bad, or at least no worse than usual.) I tried thirteen different combinations, and none of them produced severe anomalies. Your mileage may vary, but since your template is probably less preposterous than mine, I'd expect Good Things.

(Suggested by the eminently-readable Belhoste.)

Every year around this time, it happens: traffic snarls at Northwest Distressway and Belle Isle Boulevard, and the backup quickly spreads up the offramp and onto Interstate 44 westbound. The Association of Central Oklahoma Governments conducted a study after the 2005 holiday season to see if there was anything that could be done about it, and ACOG subsequently recommended changing the phasing of traffic signals and additional lane construction.

There's not a lot of room through there for new lanes, so it's imperative to get better use out of the old ones. Next spring the city will start reshaping the intersections. For now, signage has been placed to direct drivers to Penn Square Mall or Belle Isle Station — which won't necessarily be in the same direction — and barriers will be installed to prevent right turns from the westbound Distressway to Belle Isle, a significant cause of backups. (If you're headed for Belle Isle from points east, exit Classen instead.) It will look something like this. [Warning: really huge picture.]

Background here [link goes to PDF file]. Still yet to be determined: how Penn Square will fare come the Major Holiday Crunch after giving away twenty percent of its parking space to the Elephant Bar and the Cheesecake Factory.

This week's Ready Steady A Go Go podcast, devoted as always to the British beat, roughly 1962-1966 (same years, by coincidence, as the fabled Beatles "red album"), opened with a Tommy Quickly recording: "The Wild Side of Life," issued on Pye in 1964.

This was host Michael Lynch's nod to the late Hank Thompson, who died this week at 82, and who cut the original version of "The Wild Side of Life" way back in 1952.

I'd like to think God made one limited-edition honky-tonk angel to mark the occasion.

In the process of denying an unhealthy interest in women's shoes, I happened upon this fairly nifty Mary Jane by Isaac Mizrahi for Target, a pair of which Sarah snagged a few days back. Apparently the guys in her office thought they were wonderful, which doesn't sound like any guys in my office, but then most of them are the sort who don't stare at shoes: they look you right in the C-cup every time. Me, I side with Sarah's co-workers: these are pretty spiffy. What's more, the price (thirty bucks) won't make your nose bleed, unlike some of the curious couture items I've mentioned before in this space.

As to said "unhealthy interest," I attribute it to growing up (1) short and (2) depressed: if you keep your head down all the time, sooner or later you're going to notice such things. It falls short of a fetish, however, for the simple reason that it has no role in my sex life. (Come to think of it, I have no role in my sex life.)

The source of Jay Leno's advanced environmental awareness, from the Big Dog himself:

Hey, who doesn't?

The annual "Dear Taxpayer" letter from the County Treasurer has arrived, and it's always of interest, since I am in fact paying taxes (boy, am I), and there's a section that details how much of this year's property tax is going to which governmental functions.

For the curious:

• $32.85: Oklahoma County-Wide School Levy
  
• $20.55: Oklahoma City/County Health Department
  
• $41.26: Metro Library System
  
• $82.20: Oklahoma County government
  
• $122.58: Metro Tech
  
• $126.55: City of Oklahoma City
  
• $450.09: Oklahoma City Public Schools
  

The complete list of tax rates in this county is here, and it's a long one.

It took longer, I suppose, but the transit of Saul of Tarsus, persecutor turned theologian, can be seen in the life of Norman Mailer, atheist turned, well, Mailerian. What this means, more or less:

And one month after On God was published, Mr. Mailer was invited to — or disinvited from — the heaven whose existence he questions. Maybe. It is not for you or me to know his final destination.

But I'd like to think that he gets credit, his rejection of orthodoxy (or his concept thereof) notwithstanding, for coming up with a perspective that actually admits to the existence of evil, a notion highly unpopular with some and routinely mislocated by others.

The CrappiFlats™ in which I lived for entirely too long are being sold yet again, to yet another absentee owner. The 286-unit complex brought $4.76 million, or about $16,600 per unit, a decidedly smallish price, and here's why, according to the paper:

Given the infrastructure over there, which is indifferent at best, and the tenant mix, which is, let us say, downscale, and not in a good way, I suggest that the community would be better served were the new owners to tear down the place and start over.

Disclosure: My use of the term "CrappiFlats™" does not take into account the fact that some of the units are not in fact flats.

For no particular reason, I decided to take a look at Amazon's Unbox video-download service. It was not a good idea.

Issue #1: The Unbox viewer (which you must install) is basically a front-end for Windows Media Player 10 with some additional DRM; what's more, it runs on Microsoft's .NET Framework 2.0. I need hardly point out that this means it won't work on a Mac or on any Un*x derivative; on the other hand, this could be considered an advantage for those operating systems.

Issue #2: The gizmo insinuates itself into the system tray and will not leave.

Issue #3: If you do succeed in removing the gizmo from the system tray (as I did), your uninstall will collapse in a whole screenful of Fail.

I can see owning this if you have a hungry TiVo to feed, but if I'm going to wrestle with DRM, I'd just as soon it be Apple's.

Late last year I happened upon a writeup of a new film from India, and the pitch went something like this:

I filed this away for future reference, and then forgot about it.

Some months later, I was talking up doomed romances at work — that is, while at work I was talking up doomed romances, not some other way around — and Trini suggested Just Like Heaven, starring long-standing crush object Reese Witherspoon. I saw it and pronounced it good; what's more, I sought out, and eventually obtained, a copy of its source material, a novel by Marc Levy called If Only It Were True. (My kind of title, you have to admit.)

Earlier today, I spotted I See You on Amazon.com (no, not one of those damn downloads), and the first of two reviewers pointed out distinct similarities between this film and Just Like Heaven.

The second reviewer was a distinctly-unhappy Marc Levy:

Levy, at least, got paid for Just Like Heaven. I have no idea if he got paid for an earlier Bollywood film based on the same story, titled Vismayathumbathu.

(Adapted from this post at a sister site.)

Rep. Shane Jett (R-Tecumseh) was one of only a handful of Republican opponents to House Bill 1804, the state's attempt to curb illegal immigration — not because he's in favor of illegal immigration, exactly, but because he says he fears the economic consequences when a couple hundred thousand folks suddenly disappear into Texas or California or North Carolina.

Jett says he's working on supplemental legislation to mitigate those consequences. What he wants, apparently, is a state-operated guest-worker program that will identify migrants and then earmark the taxes paid by them to cover the cost of state services to them.

I'm not quite sure how this could be made to work in the context of HB 1804, which closes as many doors as the Legislature thought possible at the time, but it will be interesting to see what Jett comes up with next spring.

(Jett abstained from the vote on 1804, which passed the House 88-9, perhaps out of conflict-of-interest concerns: his wife, Ana Carolina, is a Brazilian immigrant.)

The last day of basic training, we were milling around the company area, waiting for the arrival of someone from Rumor Control, someone who never did arrive, so before we returned to the barracks to pack up our scant belongings, we were all at least somewhat scared. We all knew where we were heading for advanced individual training: those orders had already been handed out. But what then? The story had sprung up some time during the last week and grew stronger, if no more accurate, with every telling. The gist of it: a percentage of each BCT company had been allocated to the actual war zone in order to meet replacement levels, and the contribution from Delta company would be determined by running down the list alphabetically, starting with the As, until the quota was reached. The fact that this made no sense until we'd finished AIT, at which time we'd all be scattered across the country anyway, never occurred to us: we just wanted to know where the cutoff was, and Gonzales, perhaps understandably, was more concerned than Rupkiewicz.

I don't know how this all turned out: after AIT and a Stateside tour, I was packed off to the Middle East, which was a bit more peaceful in those days, if surprisingly chilly at times. Still, I think about those guys now and then, and we did achieve a distinction of sorts during our stint in basic: we'd apparently had nobody "recycled" — sent through the course a second time after failing the first — a highly uncommon occurrence in the spring of '72. (This belief was reinforced when I saw the steps they were willing to take to get us all through.)

We were eighteen then. I can't tell you the exact day we quit being boys and started being men, but I'm pretty sure the uniform had something to do with it.

Target is determined to get your attention, even if they have to use nobody to do it:

Hey, don't go hating on those laws of physics. Besides, it takes some technotrickery to pull this off:

Which, of course, disappears the moment you put it on YouTube:

Still, if nothing else, if I ever find myself with an invisible girlfriend — I should be so lucky — I now know how I want her to dress.

News Item: The Malaysian carmaker Proton has announced plans to develop an "Islamic car", designed for Muslim motorists. Proton is planning on teaming up with manufacturers in Iran and Turkey to create the unique vehicle. The car could boast special features like a compass pointing to Mecca and a dedicated space to keep a copy of the Koran and a headscarf.

Top Ten Other Features of Proton's New "Islamic Car":

10. Infidel-resistant fenders
    
9. Sensor warns if car is about to enter drive-through at Taco Bell
   
8. Extra-long seat belt to accommodate burqa
   
7. Horn plays two bars of Scheherazade
   
6. A feature patterned after OnStar calls CAIR and The New York Times in case of emergency
   
5. Special Saudi model keeps women in back seat
   
4. Warranted for six years/72 virgins
   
3. Will not start during Ramadan
   
2. Absolutely no plans for a hybrid
   
1. Self-destructs upon entering Jewish neighborhoods
   

See your dealer today. (Suggested by LGF.)

Yet another reason to avoid flying is airport food — with one possible exception:

Which is just about all they do at this one stand:

And apparently it's called simply PB&J; it's near Gate A1 in the McNamara Terminal at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport.

Once again it's time to upend the referrer logs, shake, and see if anything amusing falls out.

minimum penis size you would marry:  Are penises allowed to marry? (Can you even have one for a roommate?)

sagittarius girl rejected marriage proposal:  Maybe she just wasn't interested in a Virgo.

bill clinton does not drink:  In his younger days, he could drink you under the table. And, as long as you're under the table....

percent of women with midget fetish:  Undoubtedly a small percentage.

chocolateless brownie recipe:  Then wash it down with a near-beer.

why are nuts so expensive:  It's a plot by Shell to control squirrels.

where are streetwalkers in Tulsa?  Have you tried, um, the street?

anti-lick brakes:  Not that rotors taste so good.

Are Crocs shoes edible:  I'd sooner eat a brake rotor.

is there an oven used to make crack cocaine:  You're looking for the Easy-Flake Oven™.

what do women think about men wearing anal plugs:  Their first thought is probably "What a bunch of assholes."

Condoleezza Rice wears pantyhose:  So?

How to approach a girl you have never met before if youre an intj:  The true INTJ spends no time wondering about such things: if she has anything to recommend her, she'll introduce herself.

"charles g. hill" french:  I don't think I've ever been frenched.

yogurt sam houston parkway:  Of course, being Texas yogurt, it contains jalapeños.

all the candidates suck:  I'm pretty sure Hillary won't.

Five days after I patiently explained why you shouldn't start standing in line for Sonics tickets in Oklahoma City just yet, the Oklahoman's Mr. Monday provides a counterargument:

My objections to this line of thought are twofold:

• Actual NBA fans are somewhat less likely to conform to this particular stereotype;

• What the hell is so "poorly planned" about our bicycle routes, other than the fact that we could use more of them?
  

Point, counterpoint. Cue the other shoe.

Featuring Planck's constant.

Actually, since there's a bar over the h, this perhaps should be read as Planck's reduced constant, also known as Dirac's constant: the difference between the two is a factor of 2π.

Not that you care as you pull on your socks, right?

(Found at Fillyjonk's.)

Prudential Alliance Realty puts out a little magazine every month called Home Scene, which I grab at the supermarket because it gives me a chance to look at some of what's out there for sale, and the price (zero) is right.

This month they have a listing for what is described as a Sensational Mammoth Home, which is probably as close as I'm ever going to see to the term "McMansion" in this publication. And it's big enough: a smidgen under 4000 square feet, on a lot that looks barely big enough to hold it.

Fannie Mae owns the Sensational Mammoth, which tells me that the first buyer was in way over his head. It's probably a good thing he was here in the Big Breezy, where it's still possible to buy something this huge for under half a million.

This is "Rosabel," a gladiator sandal from Coach (now apparently retired for the season) that sells for around $150. I honestly don't understand the appeal of these things — they seem kind of bulky to me — though I have to admit, they look pretty nice here on Hayden Panettiere. This is apparently one of those times when I must yield to a higher authority, so Venessa Estrellado of Divavillage.com explains how to work these shoes:

Possible drawback:

I have no idea what size Hayden Panettiere (isn't this Italian for "Baker" or something?) wears, but since she's on the short side, I have to assume she's probably not being harshed by these shoes.

To hear my mom tell it, the only reason you could buy Dr Pepper in the Carolina Lowcountry in 1962 was because she'd spent the last half of 1961 haranguing bottlers and grocers.

And what's more, they didn't have blogs back then, so she couldn't have done something like this.

Lileks sends a note to Nintendo:

"Didn't we go through this last year?" I thought, and dialed up Lileks' semi-beloved Target, where they have five pages of Wii accessories but not one actual Wii.

Anyway, if you have an extra Wii lying around, feel free to send it to James Lileks, Star Tribune, 425 Portland Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55488.

Automobile this month tossed some questions at George Barris, King of Kustom Kars — the Batmobile helped assure his place in the throne room — and I wasn't quite prepared for one of the answers:

Wait a minute. George Barris has jazzed up a Prius?

And you know what? They did.

I don't know if this particular incarnation is really that much of an improvement, but I must say I like the idea.

Navistar's International division, after successful trials, is ramping up production on diesel hybrid commercial trucks. Says their press release:

The Hybrid Truck Users Forum, says Navistar, calculates that annual fuel consumption for one of these vehicles will be as much as 1000 gallons less than conventional trucks of this size class. (We're not up to 18-wheelers yet with this technology, but International is working on that too.)

I don't know whether to cry, to laugh, or to cry again: the British entertainment site Digital Spy is reporting that the 1960s American sitcom Bewitched will be "reinvented" by the BBC.

Now if you were to rank all the women who influenced my formative years, Samantha Stephens comes in somewhere among the Top Ten, and the last time this story was remade it didn't quite jell, but I definitely want to catch a glimpse of how it works out as a Britcom — though I draw the line at Rowan Atkinson as Uncle Arthur.

Let's see here:

Not bad. What's this in the fine print?

Now here's an "Enlarged to Show Texture" and the infamous "Serving Suggestion." On the side in really narrow print, the actual ingredients: whole grain wheat flour, wheat flour (presumably only partial-grain), malted barley flour, salt, dried yeast ...

Oh, the hell with it. It's true. I'd rather read The McGehee Zone.

I don't think I can ever criticize anyone for serving calamari (known to us non-foodie types as "squid") again after seeing this.

Perhaps surprisingly, it's not packed in a #2 can.

Maybe a skysander, or God's Own Miter Box. This is what they're building in Beijing for the new headquarters of China Central Television, and while it's perhaps too much to hope that this $600-million non-box will bury once and for all the brutal barracks of socialist realism, entirely too many examples of which get built in capitalist countries, I'm just fascinated by the sheer effrontery of the shape: it's as though M. C. Escher decided he needed a parking garage.

Some particulars:

And the TVCC has some perverse charms of its own:

What's really fun about this, of course, is that Beijing is riven with fault lines, so not only do these structures have to look amazing, they have to put up serious resistance to major seismic activity. Let's hope they can keep the lead paint out of them.

(Via Fraters Libertas.)

One unexpected beneficiary of the housing downturn: shrinks.

Seriously:

What they do feel, evidently, is insecure:

I assure you that I have no such feelings regarding the palatial estate at Surlywood, which is worth $89,356, up $229 from last month.

(Via Burbed.)

John Rohde came up with this curious assertion in the Oklahoman:

Oh, so that's the ticket. Losing teams deserve no loyalty, because, well, they're losers.

I can just imagine the response when, say, Sonics Central gets hold of this.

Update: It's something like this.

Further update: They've killed that particular thread. See Comments.

Scott Fruin at USC's Keck School of Medicine reports that a third or more of a person's daily exposure to ultra-fine diesel particulates occurs while driving to and from work:

Which seems a reasonable conclusion, given the massive number of big diesel trucks on the road. It's probably not quite so bad for me personally, since my commute, at around 18 minutes each way, is much shorter than the 45-minute average used to produce Dr Fruin's data. But this perplexed me:

Why the heck do you think I'm doing all that hard acceleration? I'm trying to shorten my commute, fercrissake.

(Via The Truth About Cars.)

You may remember this from way back in the summer of '04:

And there were: in 2005, voters in Warr Acres opted to raise the two-cent city tax to three cents, bringing the total to 7.5 percent, still lower than its neighbors.

No more. Tuesday, 521 of 999 voters (population of Warr Acres is around 9500) approved an increase to four cents; the additional penny will be split between police and fire operations. The total will be 8.5 percent when the new rate goes into effect.

So now who gets to claim "Lowest Sales Tax in Metro Area"? Norman, Luther and Valley Brook are at 7.5 percent; Edmond at 7.75; Midwest City at 7.8; most everyone else is 8 and up. (Lake Aluma is officially 7.25 percent, though I don't remember seeing any actual retail there; this is the state's fourth-quarter list in PDF format.)

What she really wants is a gift card:

The higher-value cards don't mean they're stinting on their own contributions, either:

And you probably won't see any of them trying desperately to use up exactly the value of a card, either.