Space is precious in Japan, which has five times the population of Texas in about half the area. It stands to reason, therefore, that if anyone built a working farm in a bank vault, it would be the Japanese:

A thousand square meters is about the size of my yard, so this must be one heck of a bank vault. Some background:

All this high-tech stuff, they hope, will attract young people to agriculture. Maybe it will work. I have no idea whether you can keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen the Ginza, but I have to admit, I like the idea, even if my own approach to growing stuff is decidedly low-tech.

(Via Popgadget.)

As suggested by TrueHoop's Henry Abbott:

And, well, we already have both a Cheesecake Factory and a P. F. Chang's.

We're already well into the inevitable Diablo Cody backlash, but she hasn't worn out her welcome with me yet, as witness this snippet from her Oscar weekend:

I have no doubt that other attenders and contenders have to endure much the same thing. However, I can't imagine them telling the story quite this way; surely none of the red-carpet regulars would describe a dress, even a dress from Dior fercrissake, as "the Frock of Overexposure."

Originally the operation at 42nd and Treadmill consisted of half a single building, but over the years it's expanded to fill up the rest of that building plus one formerly-unrelated structure next door. (We're not recession-proof, but we're close.)

Some years back, house wrens conducting reconnaissance in the area discovered that the underside of the second building's full-width metal awning would accommodate their particular nesting style with ease, and gradually they took over the place, defending the premises with great vigor and carefully disassembling the nests before migration, lest some interlopers take over.

A few birds had been wandering in over the last couple of weeks, but yesterday they were back on site in full force. About a dozen were perched on the edge of the building like small grey gargoyles, standing watch; others were gathering straw for nest construction; still others occupied the bank of trees along where the curb would be if we had a curb, presumably to make sure no one else got the idea of settling in this zone.

This is, I assume, pretty much the inevitable result of adaptation to one's habitat: these are urban birds with attitude to match, the stereotypically-meekest dove exhibiting pigeon levels of intransigence. I've seen conflicts in my own back yard before: blue jays ruled the place for a year or two, then moved on, but paid a visit the following spring, only to be given the Evil Eye by newly-resident robins. Even the local crows, which have a considerable size advantage and a reputation for deviousness, make a point of steering clear of the wrens.

Today's assignment: burn up a gift card at the supermarket. Difficulty: I need fruits and vegetables, which don't always come neatly prepackaged and/or prepriced.

Last time I was faced with a dilemma of this sort, I wound up sacrificing $1.60, so this time I vowed to do better, and to do the math in my head. The problem, of course, comes with the unofficial scale in the produce department, which is accurate to approximately zero significant digits.

And I did better, using up all but thirty-nine cents. It occurred to me that if I'd gotten one additional banana I might have come closer, though two might have put me over the mark. Yes, it would have been simpler to go over and pay the difference in cash, but that's not how I roll.

There's a service called Gift Card Giver which takes these unused balances and puts them to good use, but they require that you mail in the actual card, and I am for some reason disinclined to use a 41-cent stamp to send off a 39-cent gift card.

Maine, meanwhile, is considering a measure that would mandate cash refunds on balances of $5 or less. A representative of the Hannaford supermarket chain argued before the state's Judiciary committee that such a rule "would negatively affect the economics of the gift card program," which qualifies, I think, as duh-worthy.

"Don't you think the world needs more pink/orange/red shoes?" asks Phlegmfatale, and well, it's hard to make a serious judgment call from this angle (damn camera phones anyway), but the color scheme is kinda neat — she also has a pair in "dove gray/periwinkle/oxblood" — and the shape is playful without being completely absurd. It's Gorgeous by John Fluevog, and, well, let the wearer tell the tale:

The heel is a bit unconventional-looking, I suppose, but there's a lot to be said for support, and as Fluevog says, this shoe "adds a half inch to your height without looking too chunky," which is something you can't expect from the all-too-ubiquitous platform. And the idea of keeping the design fresh with limited-edition color schemes somehow appeals to my sense of continuity: after all, I once strolled into a New Balance store and requested the most current version of an existing shoe I'd gotten used to.

eBay item: "You are bidding on a framed genuine FAKE birth certificate of Barack Hussein Obama. Did I say that his middle name is Hussein? I did? Okay. Here is the fun part. Because it is apparently against the rules to use the middle name of HUSSEIN, the winning bidder will have the opportunity to choose a new middle name to replace HUSSEIN. It will be inserted in the FAKE certificate. We can begin using the name, and then we won't have to worry about being arrested by the DemocRAT PC police for using the actual real name HUSSEIN."

Top Ten likewise-unacceptable middle names for Barack [           ] Obama:

10. Koresh
    
9. Diane
   
8. Jacob Jingleheimer
   
7. Amadeus
   
6. Tuvok
   
5. Ringling
   
4. Anakin
   
3. Medici
   
2. Kuhn
   
1. Insein
   

(Swiped from Fausta by way of E. M. Zanotti.)

I admit to having had a qualm or two about the teensy smart fortwo, inasmuch as the sort of high-density traffic mazes in which they'd seem to flourish hardly exist out here on the Plains.

Now that they've arrived here, a happy owner reports:

The automated-manual transmission, however, is not your standard slushbox by any means:

Still, every car has its quirks, and this particular quirk doesn't seem severe. Traffic on the Turner does move routinely at around 80 mph — posted speed limit is 75 — and I figure if the sheer volume of eighteen-wheelers didn't prove intimidating, smart should have no trouble selling a bunch of these little darbs here in the Sooner State.

Timely advice from Tamara K.:

Similarly, P. J. O'Rourke: "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

During those days when I was expected to be able to know how to hurl those little pineapples, I learned: "Once you pull the pin, Mr Grenade is no longer your friend." As evidence of this, each and every day the Federal Register accumulates more and more shrapnel.

Of course, there are those who don't wish to lead themselves, and will wait for solutions to be handed down. A small percentage of them become clever, thereby becoming the most dangerous of creatures.

"Watch the parking meters," adds Mr. Zimmerman.

Not the sort that lures men to their deaths, but the sort that's supposed to motivate you to prevent your own. The sound came roaring in at 7:49, followed closely by the howling of gale-force winds. A tornado warning was issued for the area around State Fair Park, about three miles south of here; while no actual funnels were seen, there was enough of the telltale rotation on the radar to justify going into hiding for a few minutes. The warning has just expired for my part of town, but continues on the east side as the storm tracks eastward. We continue to get lots of wind and rain.

Update, 7 am: The office, of course, is flooded.

Ho-hum: another week, another perfunctory examination of the logs, another dozen or so goofy search strings. But you're used to it, right?

database long island women:  Is this a database of women on Long Island, or a database of island women with, um, length?

yogurt psychological description:  At least nobody's accusing it of being multicultural.

floor wax bob vila:  Why wait until he's on the floor? Wax him now.

robot tattoo:  And you said you'd never need that extra set of drill bits.

"who needs brains when I've got these":  Trust funds, right?

what is the reason customer unsatisfied with PROTON:  Some people just don't take a positive charge very well.

matt drudge "not on radio":  And they say there's no God.

How the hell do I program this keyless entry remote for my 2003 Park Ave.?  You're asking me? Do I look like I own a Buick? (Don't answer that.)

my Scion Dealer insists I am loaded:  Maybe it's because you keep showing up with a keyless-entry remote for a Buick.

spirits watch us masturbate:  At least they don't distract us.

how to modify 2007 honda accord driver seat to accomadate [sic] someone with long legs:  Um, slide it back, maybe? Unless you're Nadja Auermann.

moist turtle's gilbert gottfried:  This is the first I've heard tell of Gilbert Gottfried having any effect on amphibians.

cooked squirrel testicles:  At least they aren't raw, though I can't address the question of moistness.

Cruex Jacob disease mad cow disease:  Um, that's Creutzfeldt. Cruex is what you use for mad jock disease.

With steak prices well into double digits, one local supermarket is fighting back with unit pricing: they have single ribeyes and New York strips, smallish ones, for a flat $5. I had them weigh one for me: just under nine ounces. This works out to around $9 a pound, which is two or three bucks cheaper than the stuff in the display case, and it's a reasonable size for a single person; the ones they usually cut on site tend to be 12-14 ounces, a bit more than I need at dinner time, and end up costing around ten dollars apiece. I'm not so adept that I can guess the weight of any given cut on the first try, but I'm not doing the strictest portion control either, so a little bit of variation either way won't bother me greatly.

There are, often as not, better deals to be had by buying the so-called Family Packs; but I have never quite warmed to the necessity of unwrapping the big package and rewrapping each individual piece separately.

Volkswagen Group is facing a takeover by Porsche:

In the past two and a half years, Porsche has gradually built up a 31-percent voting stake in VW Group, a process helped by the European Union's finding that Germany's so-called "Volkswagen Law," which prevented more than 20 percent of the company of being acquired, thereby protecting the interests of the German state of Lower Saxony, which also owned 20 percent, was inconsistent with EU rules.

There are, of course, strong historical ties. Dr Ferdinand Porsche, perhaps influenced by a design by Josef Ganz, is credited with the creation of Volkswagen's Beetle; the Porsche family still pulls the strings in Stuttgart. Wiedeking has brought billions of euros into Porsche's coffers, mostly by broadening the product line and annoying the hell out of Porsche purists.

Depending on whether you're counting revenues or employees, VW Group is between 15 and 20 times the size of Porsche, so this is a case of Jonah getting a big fish dinner. I have to wonder if maybe, somewhere down the line, Ford might be swallowed up by Mazda.

Seen in the Border Mail by Ray Dixon, this odd little advertisement:

Mr Dixon attempts to explain:

I suspect Mr Dixon is giving us the Trans-Hemisphere Chain Pull with this latter, but I have to admit, I'm amused by the concept: wouldn't that just frost NBC's, um, bottom line?

As expected, it's from Nine Inch Nails.

Ghosts I-IV, a collection of 36 instrumental tracks, is the new release from the no-longer-under-contract Trent Reznor, and he's offering it in a variety of formats:

The download, incidentally, comes in your choice of three flavors:

• 320-kbps MP3s (LAME encoded)
  
• FLAC lossless
  
• Apple's own lossless format
  

The band is also throwing in liner notes (a 40-page PDF file) plus wallpapers, icons, and similar effluvia.

I may have to grab this myself, though I'm wavering on whether I want to wait for the CDs or spend half as much on just the FLACs. (Should I need MP3s, I keep a LAME encoder handy.) If you're keeping track of Halo numbers, this is number 26.

Update: I'm ordering the CDs. Ship date is 8 April; shipping charge is $6.99.

Further update: The downloadable stuff didn't, due to a server error; I've left an email to the proprietors.

And when there is March, there must be Madness, right?

Here's the pitch:

And so it goes, exactly the way you'd think it would. Which leaves one question unanswered: why did they put "celebrities" in scare quotes?

The answer lies deep within the bracket diagram itself. [Link goes to PDF file.] There's no particular argument with TV eye candy and fantasy figure Amy McRee as the first seed in the Midwest, and she should easily dispose of #16, whoever it is who picks out Bob Mills' sweaters; but for some reason #5, yet another example of TV eye candy — this one a guy — has been put up against an #11 seed who not only lacks instant recognition, but who isn't even slightly presentable. I have reference to, um, me.

The other #11 seeds look like this:

East: Tall Paul
Paul's specialty: protecting all the things you own, like cars and trucks and mobile homes. And you probably know his phone number, too. (I'm in the book, but big whoop.)

West: Grant Johnston
Another semi-cute TV type, this one in front of the Doppler. (I don't think I've ever actually Doppled.)

South: Aubrey McClendon
Just about everyone in Seattle reviles him, which I suppose means he can't be all bad. (He makes more money than Tall Paul and I put together, too.)

Things which bother me:

• I can't possibly win in the first round, because the sort of people who would vote in this thing will see the possibility of a Tyler-on-Tyler matchup in the second round.

• Surely more than 65 people in this state are more famous than I.

• Chuck Norris (born in Ryan, Oklahoma) doesn't enter brackets. He bends brackets.
  

Things which don't bother me:

• The definition of "celebrity," once stretched enough to include the likes of me, is now so debased as to be essentially meaningless, giving me hope that eventually we will have role models based on something other than mere visibility.

• At least I'm seeded higher than Hinder.
  

The voting for the 64th slot begins Wednesday.

"House Rules Committee Advances Dank Reform Bill."

You gotta admit, it takes a pretty strong committee to craft a reform bill that's really, truly dank.

Back in the Pleistocene era, McGehee was getting a lot of traffic from people who were hoping to find raunchy pictures of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who were then (1) underage and (2) pretty close to household words.

Now that the Dualstar Damsels are neither jailbait nor in demand, you'd think this sort of prurient interest would have died down. Hugh Marston Hefner (let's see if anyone complains about his middle name) begs to differ:

I know from nothing about young men's fantasies, but there are people, Hef among them, who believe with all their flinty little hearts that there is nothing sexier than twins, even if said twins look like the Smith Brothers (Trade and Mark).

Unless, of course, it's triplets.

The Times-Picayune is reporting that the New Orleans Hornets are prepared to sign Chris "Birdman" Andersen, dismissed from the NBA two years ago for drug use.

Commissioner David Stern is expected to lift the ban today; if so, and Andersen passes the physical, the Bees, who have first rights to his services, will have 30 days to offer him a contract equivalent to what he was making before the suspension: $3.5 million a year, prorated for the rest of this season. If they don't, Andersen will become a free agent and can negotiate with any other team.

The Hornets can definitely use a big man — the Birdman is 6-10 — to spell center Tyson Chandler, so look for this deal to come down pretty quickly.

Update: It's official. If all goes well at the physical, he'll be in uniform as soon as he gets a new number: #12, which he used to wear, now belongs to Hilton Armstrong.

Or, perhaps more precisely, SMiShing, which is a phishing attempt using Short Message Service, a protocol used for text messages on cell phones. It's not new, exactly, but anything that works once will draw lots and lots of copycats once word gets around.

Recent citations:

Smishing needs to be smushed, pronto.

Turnout in Ye Olde Precinct looks to be pretty good for the "NBA tax" vote; I cast ballot number 558 at a quarter past five. I have no idea how the neighborhood actually voted, though the "Big League City" signs outnumber the "No Sales Tax" signs by a factor of seven to one. I think it will pass, though not overwhelmingly so.

Update, 9 pm: With about three-quarters of the precincts in, Mayor Cornett figures 60-40 is good enough to win, and maybe it is, though it still seems like jumping the gun to me. Then again, he presumably knows which precincts are still out, and I don't.

Update, 9:30 pm: Okay, he's right and I'm wrong. With everything in, though technically still unofficial, it's 62-38.

Ray Davies, in his guise as a Muswell Hillbilly, came up with this gem: "Take me back to those black hills / That I have never seen."

The Kinks didn't sell a lot of records with this premise, but people have followed in Davies' footsteps just the same:

Really? None of it?

This calls to mind Mary McCarthy's dismissal of Lillian Hellman: "Every word she writes is a lie, including a, an, and the."

Apparently Ms Seltzer was unclear on the concept:

So if I started such a thing, I'd have to leave the following out:

Oh, wait. Not all of those are fake. Still, if you see something like this under the name of, oh, G. Pruitt, be suspicious.

"You know, the trouble with My Little Pony is, well, she isn't slutty enough."

From Playmates, which also produces Disney Fairies under license — presumably from Disney, not from Oberon.)

(Via the incensed Princess Sparkle Pony.)

The Atlas Life building at 415 S. Boston in Tulsa, now an office building with 35 percent occupancy, will be transformed into a 120-room Courtyard by Marriott hotel.

Maurice Kanbar sold the 1922 building to Missouri-based SJS Hospitality for $1.7 million. The location is spiffy: between the Mid-Continent Tower and the Philtower. The conversion will cost about $15 million and should take about two years.

I got yet another flyer from a mortgage company looking to drum up some refinance business, and they had this humongous data box on the side that contains "Property Value Est." and "Housing Zone." The "Value Est." is $91,683, which is $2800 more than the County Assessor came up with last year and about five grand short of this week's Zillow Zestimate. Conclusion: plausible. The "Housing Zone" is a four-digit number, which by some strange coincidence is duplicated in the address label: it's the +4 part of the nine-digit ZIP code. Conclusion: trying too hard.

Last I looked, the SuperSonics were still in Seattle, right?

So how is it that the newly-designed NBA.com sub-site for the Sonics mentions Seattle only in the title bar of your browser?

Geez, why didn't they just Photoshop out the KeyArena logo on the floor while they were at it?

Addendum: They've added a new picture to the rotation, with a fellow (appears to be Damien Wilkins) with "SEATTLE" woven into his waistband. Still, there's no other reference to the town; this could just as easily have read "CALVIN KLEIN."

Unless somebody fell into the machine where they melt down the old shoes into new material, or something like that. This is "Desire + Triton" by Melissa, and it's made from some plastic material called Melflex, which is not your grandmother's PVC by any means:

I suppose I could argue that 99.9 percent might be technically only partially rad, but I suspect it's far better than the industry average. And since the shoe is "extremely flexible," it's also presumably free of cruelty to your feet — unlike, for instance, this atrocity. The price of $58 is also at least reasonably uncruel.

(Via Popgadget.)

As I've mentioned a few times already, we have a property-tax assessment cap in this state: the assessed value can go up by a maximum of 5 percent per year, regardless of actual market value, unless there is a change in ownership or a substantial change in the property itself.

Senator Jim Reynolds (R-OKC) has been pushing for a lower cap, and this is as close as he's gotten so far: the Senate, by a 25-22 vote, passed Reynolds' Senate Joint Resolution 59, which would create a ballot measure to set the cap at 3 percent.

Now I never met a tax cut I didn't like, even if it's not really a cut but a slowing of the rate of increase, but this perplexes me somewhat:

Weird. It's worked exactly the way I thought it would.

What I really want to know is this: what am I going to do with a whole two percent? On my somewhere-below-$100k house, this is about a buck ninety a month. I'm spending that much on a frickin' basketball team.

Not that I'd turn it down, but I'm wondering if maybe it might be more pertinent to Reynolds' stated position to legislate some exemptions for those who are feeling the pinch more than I am.

The March of the Carnival of the Vanities goes ever on, at least for the next few weeks or so, when presumably the April of the Carnival will begin. I'm looking forward to it, if only because of the random statistic thrown out by the National Weather Service's VHF radio service this morning: of the five months with the greatest recorded snowfall since Oklahoma City meteorological records began, three of them were March. (Thanks, guys. We're under a winter weather advisory even now.) And frankly, I'm tired of getting up every morning to freezing temperatures — around 273 degrees Kelvin.

Been there, done that, had the T-shirt altered:

I could have told you that and I'm not even a gamer.

(Via Belhoste.)

"And Aubrey was her name,
A not so very ordinary girl or name.
But who's to blame?"

Um, what? Not a girl, you say?

Oh. Never mind.

The Coyote sez you're screwin' up his laptop:

To the sewers with it!

Five songs in succession on satellite radio:

• Miss Murder — AFI
  
• Sorrow — Bad Religion
  
• No More Sorrow — Linkin Park
  
• I Hope You Die — Bloodhound Gang
  
• Lie — Black Light Burns
  

And the inevitable conclusion:

Wait a minute. Satellite radio lets the hosts pick their own playlists? Coolness.

More to the point, while I am insufferably pleased with myself for recognizing all five of those acts, if not necessarily all five of those songs, I really don't know how I'd run a twenty-minute set of Songs for the Dumped. (Well, I suppose I'd have to include "Song for the Dumped" by Ben Folds Five.) Being the sort who tends to turn anger inward, I'd probably opt for brooding stuff like the Frankie Valli B-side "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)," which became a massive Spectoresque wail fronted by the Walker Brothers. Suggestions are welcomed, not that I expect to need them for personal use.

Tamara K. contemplates HDTV:

Well, maybe not consciously.

Jonny Lieberman poses a question: "How much horsepower is too much?"

You'd want to know, of course, how Mr Lieberman's ride tests out, and he tells you up front:

Given those same criteria, the vehicle I've driven which exhibited the highest degree of indifference to how hard it was being called upon to work was a 2007 G35, so I figure that 306 hp is about as much as I'd ever need.

On the other hand, Gwendolyn, with an earlier, smaller version of the same engine, is no slouch, so I am not inclined to complain about her more modest 227-hp output, especially since I can remember no instance when I've been called upon to use all of it.

Then again, 227 hp might be marginal, or worse, if you have two tons or more to haul around, and if you have a minivan or a pickup truck, you probably do.

The proper response, of course, is "Don't do that."

It is not, however, a particularly useful response, but there it is. This morning, about two and a half hours into the workday, I picked up a box of forms, and suddenly froze in position: I could move, sort of, but I really didn't want to, because when I did, I felt waves of distress cascading across my shoulder blades.

Don't worry. Take a deep breath. So I did. And it hurt worse.

After about half an hour of wondering just what it was I'd done, I was packed off to some industrial clinic, where I was informed that it was just a strain, nothing more. They gave me a bottle of muscle relaxants, and the above advice: "Don't do that."

If there's one thing I hate, it's being reminded that I'm nowhere near as indestructible as I'd like.

A complaint from Stan Geiger:

Well, around 25 percent of the citizens of Oklahoma City are under 18 and can't actually vote, so there's no point in blaming them.

On the other hand, the law specifies that ballots are counted only for voters who actually cast them, so if there's some Nixonian silent majority out there presumably keeping its mouth shut, you've got to wonder why they don't bother showing up at the polls, the only place their opinions actually matter. (About 30 percent of registered voters in the city turned out on the 4th, which is about twice the average for a city election.)

As a followup to the question of "How much horsepower is too much?" I decided to sit down and determine just how much I've had over the years. Here are the numbers:

• Susannah (1966 Chevrolet Nova): 3.8L OHV inline-6, 140 hp
  
• Dymphna (1975 Toyota Celica): 2.2L SOHC inline-4, 96 hp
  
• Deirdre (1984 Mercury Cougar): 3.8L OHV V-6, 120 hp
  
• Molly (1993 Mazda 626): 2.0L DOHC inline-4, 118 hp
  
• Sandy (2000 Mazda 626): 2.0L DOHC inline-4, 130 hp
  
• Gwendolyn (2000 Infiniti I30): 3.0L DOHC V-6, 227 hp
  

Only the first two had actual carburetors; the Mercury had something called "central fuel injection," which used one injector for the entire intake, and everything afterwards had port fuel injection. The two Mazda engines were basically identical, though the newer engine had distributorless ignition, and Mazda had moved away from hydraulic valve lifters in favor of something manually adjustable.

When I got married, my wife was driving that Toyota; we got rid of my old Nova and bought a newer one, which I didn't include here because she ended up driving it and eventually owning it. Unsurprisingly, it went unnamed. The powerplant was your basic small-block Chevy V-8, in 5.0L displacement (305), with 140 hp.

If you happened to notice that those two distinctly-different Chevrolets got the same number of horsepower, well, they didn't really: the '66 was rated by the SAE gross method, which was measured at the flywheel with nothing but the bare minimum of attachments. The newer SAE net measurement included everything you could reasonably expect to be running off the engine, including exhaust components, the alternator, and emissions gear; it was adopted in 1971. I'm guessing Susannah actually put out about 110 hp by the newer standard. (SAE recently tightened up its standards; as with the gross-to-net change, there is no specific conversion factor.)

Or something like that.

[Safe for work, perhaps less so for one's digestion.]

When last we heard from Rep. Sally Kern (R-OKC), she had come up with the dubious notion of creating a State Library Material Content Advisory Board, which would be tasked with making sure our precious little snowflakes didn't have any encounters with Teh Ghey.

After that little outburst, I figured she'd fade into the shadows once more. I figured wrong. And after a couple hundred search-engine queries with her name in them, I decided to go see what she'd gotten herself into this time, and happened upon this:

Really? The biggest threat? This seems a trifle, um, overstated. In this corner, we have your GLBT (add letters as needed) types. In the other corner, we have your standard Islamic terrorists. Let us contrast and compare:

Item the First: You've offended members of the group. How does the group respond?

• GLBT: Denounces you and, if you're an elected official, supports your opponent.
  
• Islamists: Cuts off your head.
  

Item the Second: The group wishes to get the attention of the American public. What action taken by them is the most visible?

• GLBT: Holds the occasional Pride Parade.
  
• Islamists: Flies airplanes into buildings.
  

Item the Third: Summarize the changes in American law desired by the group.

• GLBT: Extension of the rights and privileges of marriage to include them.
  
• Islamists: Extension of the rules delineated in the Qu'ran to include everyone.
  

Bonus question: Where would you rather be on a Saturday night?

1. 39th and Penn, Oklahoma City
   
2. Riyadh
   

Thank you for playing.

(Via J. M. Branum.)

Update, 9 March, 2:40 pm: Fritz identifies the real threat.

Doug Loudenback has posted the "NBA tax" election returns by precinct, so you can see how your neighbors voted on the sales-tax extension. Most notably, it wasn't a slam dunk, as it were, citywide: the measure failed to pull a majority in at least 80 precincts.

Precinct 453, where I live, voted 435-247 for the measure. (And if there were 682 total votes, this means that 124 people came in after me during the last hour and three quarters.)

Interestingly, in what looks like a throwback to the old days of Oklahoma City politics, almost all the precincts north of the river approved the proposal, and almost all the precincts south of the river rejected it.

So there are lolcats in Wayne's World:

(Original stolen from Dynamo Dave.)

I've been spending much of this weekend reacquainting myself with an old Navy friend, as it were: Popeye the Sailor, the squinty, pugnacious seaman created by E. C. Segar for his Thimble Theatre comic strip and transformed by Max and Dave Fleischer into one of the greatest of all the theatrical-cartoon series.

Getting old Popeye cartoons was usually a pain in the neck, since neither the Fleischers nor Paramount Pictures, which distributed the series until 1941 and then took over ownership of the Fleischer animation studio, bothered to keep track of copyright matters; it was left to King Features Syndicate, for whom Segar had worked, to sort all this mess out. (Apparently the original contract called for the films to be destroyed after ten years. Didn't happen.) Eventually things were sorted out, and Time Warner, owner of Turner Entertainment, owned the theatrical shorts, and Hearst, owner of King Features, owned the made-for-TV cartoons that went into production in 1960. After negotiations that bordered on byzantine, Warner Home Video announced that they would be releasing all the cartoons, theirs and Hearst's, on DVD in chronological order.

The first set was issued last summer: four discs containing the first sixty shorts done by the Fleischers, all in B&W, plus two of the three Technicolor two-reelers. For the most part, the restoration is very good, though there are fairly obvious edits in some of the early credit sequences, presumably due to the difficulty in finding really good negatives. Still, even the worst of the lot look pretty darn good, especially considering the miserable quality of the PD collections floating around, which tend to have ratty old TV prints and bad framing. About a quarter of the shorts have commentary tracks by film historians, one of which finally explained to me how it was that King of the Mardi Gras (1935) looked so much like Coney Island.

Still, what struck me most about these cartoons is how much Popeye reminds me of, well, me: he has no particular aspirations beyond doing his duty, he has no qualms about administering a thrashing to the Bad Guy, and even in his proudest moments there's something he missed. (Case in point: You Gotta Be a Football Hero, from 1935, in which he gets past the entirety of Bluto's team and heads for the goal line, but stops at the 5, thinking he's finished.) Obviously I absorbed a lot of this stuff when I was a kid. And having done so, I felt somewhat saddened by the obligatory disclaimers at the beginning of each disc, warning of the possibility — hell, it's an absolute certainty — of various nowadays-deemed-offensive stereotypes, inasmuch as I didn't grow up believing any of them and I know damned few people who did. (If anyone's stereotyped in these cartoons, clearly it's the White Guy with a Short Temper, which describes me better than it does any of the Chronically Offended.)

The other cartoon series of this era which I took to heart was the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies output of Warner Bros. But to me, they were worlds apart: Bugs and Daffy gave me punchlines, but it was Popeye who actually packed the punch. Oddly, I never did care much for either carrot cake or spinach salad.

The next set is due out later this year: two DVDs wrapping up the 1930s.

When Ford assembled its Premier Auto Group in 1999, the company built a shiny new headquarters in Irvine, California to house its high-priced brands.

But that was then. Since then, Lincoln has been de-Premiered, Aston Martin has been sold off, and Land Rover and Jaguar are about to follow. That leaves Volvo all by itself to rattle around in Orange County.

No more. Volvo, which as an independent company had its US headquarters in New Jersey, and which still maintains its service depot there, will return to the Garden State, giving Ford a chance to unload the PAG building and make some badly-needed cash.

Mazda, Ford's Asian affiliate, remains in Irvine. Then again, Mazda was never part of the Premier group.

I have yet to spend any time in a Victoria's Secret store, and while I haven't given much thought to the reasons why, they might be something like this:

I dunno. I can't imagine being delighted at the prospect.

As Gore's erstwhile boss might have said, it depends on what your definition of "stiff" is.

I see three alternatives, in decreasing order of probability:

1. Find someone who spurns underwear from this store because "it's too cheap" or "it's too sleazy" or any other reason that seems to work.

2. Find someone who spurns underwear generally.

3. Find someone who spurns outerwear generally.
   

Should #3 materialize, you might want to hope that Al Gore, despite it all, might actually be right about all that "warming" stuff.

Because (1) it's fun to see what people were searching for, and (2) it's easier than providing Actual Content.

rebate check "positive id required":  Yep, that's a rebate check all right. I'm positive.

hot tub filter destroyed with nair:  "Get in, honey, your legs look just fine."

staffordshire bull terrier how often do i worm n flee him:  Worm; then flee as quickly as you can, because they don't like worming.

terse in heaven-eric clapton  Ol' Slowhand never was all that talkative.

Why should Condi Rice run for president in 2012:  Because we'll be sick of whoever wins in 2008 by then.

will fda not let brokers order their pwn appraisals:  It seems to me that if you're already pwned, the FDA would just as soon stay away from you.

are cab drivers exempt from child seat laws in colorado:  If a cab driver is under four years old, he must use a child seat, unless he weighs over 40 lb.

opposite of "hit with a ton of bricks":  Missed by an ounce of feathers?

fedex smartpost kiss my ass:  It will take a few days.

what is it with marxists and condescending tone:  Standard equipment.

windows restaurant in the sbc building:  There's a blue screen over the salad bar.

pantyhose vs penis:  A defensive struggle. Pantyhose by six.

What we have here is the USB Smart Privacy Mouse, which contains a trick button to bring up the work you're supposed to be doing instead of surfing the Web. It takes a little while to set up, but once it's done, the moment the boss wanders in you can instantly switch to the Officially Approved Screen by hitting the button.

Is it worth twenty bucks to save your goldbricking hide?

(Via Popgadget.)

Inasmuch as a quarter of my traffic these days is Sally Kern-related, here's a compilation of links to everything I've written about her.

Could she be a Greg Kihn fan? (19 June 2004)

On the King and King dustup (2 July 2005)

Restricting children's library access (16 March 2006)

About that "biggest threat" business (8 March 2008)

Which, of course, means "What would Reba wear?" "Reba," of course, is Oklahoma homegrown hottie Reba McIntire, who now has her own line of shoes which presumably represent what she would wear. She's picky, though, and not for the usual reasons: "I've had foot problems all my life," she says, "and [I] have to have certain types of shoes that are very comfortable. Heels can't be too high, and I like lots of cushioning." "Suzy," shown here, is one of eight styles which are being sold exclusively through Dillard's. The upper is a blend of leather and stretch fabric, the lining is pure sock material, and the heel is a lowish 2½ inches. Sixty-nine bucks will buy you Suzy; the priciest shoes in the line are only $79. (If you're curious about Reba's foot problems, well, she suffers from Morton's neuroma, a condition which, when it flares up, is usually dealt with by kicking off one's shoes, which unfortunately isn't always an option.)

Rep. Steve Martin (R-Bartlesville) evidently fancies himself a modern-day Robin Hood: he's introduced a measure to siphon off a portion of sales-tax collections from larger cities and redistribute it to the smaller ones.

How Martin's proposal is supposed to work:

County levies don't count. Tulsa would have to fork over about $16 million over the next year; Oklahoma City, around $13 million.

Surprisingly, this isn't the worst idea Martin's come up with:

What is needed, but so far not forthcoming, is some way to make Oklahoma municipalities less dependent upon sales tax for revenue. [Link goes to Word document.] We'll have to wait for some other wild and crazy guy to solve that one.

We're not putting in spruce, technically, but Brian Dougherty of the Oklahoma City Community Foundation dropped by our Neighborhood Association meeting tonight to hand us a check: we'd qualified for a grant from the Margaret Annis Boys Trust to help rework our little stretch of park along May Avenue. There's a fair amount of sweat equity involved, inevitably, but it helps to have the nursery bills paid before you start planting, and we picked up just over $8500 to support new trees and the watering thereof.

Here's a brief bio of our benefactor. She would have been 99 this year.

News Item: New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer has apologized amid allegations of involvement in a prostitution ring. The married father-of-three said he had acted in a way that violated his obligations to his family.

Top Ten Eliot Spitzer Excuses:

10. "I was just trying to get her a driver's license."
    
9. "I had a hunch she'd lead me to the rest of the Gambino family."
   
8. "Did you know that hookers engage in price-fixing?"
   
7. "I was following up on Dick Grasso's expense-account file."
   
6. "Don't screw with me. I'm a Superdelegate."
   
5. "Nobody would have said a word if that goober Pataki had done anything like this."
   
4. "That fink Joe Bruno is behind this, isn't he?"
   
3. "There's got to be some way to blame this on the record industry."
   
2. "It's okay, my dad paid for it."
   
1. "Do you know how boring it gets in Albany?"
   

If anyone cares, Governor Spitzer is a Democrat.

Addendum: David Letterman did a similar list later that night. We overlap, maybe, on one item.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News dished up a list of the Top 10 reasons bloggers don't succeed. It might have carried more weight if he'd come up with a concrete, or at least non-aerosol, definition of "success," but right now, let's see how we're doing:

Certainly I've hung around long enough, and I suspect I probably post enough. My last day off was some time in the summer of 2000, so that's not an issue. On the other hand, I really don't promote this stuff, mostly because I can't think of any reason why I should: if it's any good, and once in a blue moon it is, word will get around, and if it's not any good, word will get around just as fast. Maybe faster.

Then again, unlike Mr Hawkins, I'm not trying to make a living off Web writing. I think it's marvelous that some people can; but I have no illusions that I can be one of them. Perhaps I'm just not "unique enough," whatever that's supposed to mean.

When you're a five-year-old diagnosed with Type 1 (formerly "juvenile") diabetes, schlepping around the little insulin pump is a decided inconvenience, as the big sister (she's 11) of one such five-year-old explains:

What to do? Big sister designs a dress:

Kailey Caldwell, a straight-A student from Ammon, Idaho, took this idea to the Invention Convention in Boise, where it placed third; she's thinking about applying for a patent. Sister Whitlee just loves it.

(Via Fark.)

Really, hasn't everyone in retail or services, at one time or another, wanted to shoot a customer in the backside?

BMW will be building more vehicles in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and apparently fewer in Germany. The official reason: exchange rates, making it cheaper to build in the States than it does in der Vaterland.

Stuff like this doesn't faze me. The Mazda 626 I used to drive was the first import-branded car to qualify as a "domestic" based on parts origin, and what's more, it was actually built by UAW members in Flat Rock, Michigan. And rather a lot of Volkswagens seem to get here through Mexico.

The shuttered General Motors Assembly plant on I-240 is about to be repurposed: Oklahoma County Commissioners plan to ask for voter approval of a bond issue to buy the plant, which will then be leased back to Tinker Air Force Base, just to its north.

The plant will cost $55 million; it will be just one of several projects on the Commissioners' shopping list, which comes to over $80 million. The bond election would be held on 13 May.

In some ways, this is a disappointment, since some of us had hoped to lure another automaker (Hyundai? Volkswagen?) to the plant; still, at least it's going to be doing something other than just sitting there. And certainly General Motors could use an extra $55 million these days.

Update, 19 March: Mike Solowiow quips at TTAC: "Let's hope for my own safety, the Ghosts of GM Past have left the building so Tinker doesn't rebuild my jet to TrailBlazer levels of quality." Solowiow, in Real Life, travels about in one of these.

Rich Appel's Hz So Good newsletter contains the following tidbit of Scary Information:

I'm wondering if perhaps this explains the general stability of the Oklahoma City radio market: you couldn't get these guys to play a reggae record if Jamaica became the 52nd state.

I've mentioned before that the palatial Surlywood estate is part of one of Oklahoma City's Urban Conservation Districts, and that while the UCD designation preceded (by a whole month) my arrival, I supported its aims. And with some folks in Tulsa completely spooked by the idea, I figure this would be a good time to explain just what those aims are.

The following was scissored out of Oklahoma City Municipal Code, § 59-13650, paragraph 1:

Scary, isn't it?

Where it gets frightful, I suppose, is that bit about "desirable change," which implies that some change is not desirable, and hints that changes that are not desirable are not to be accommodated. In practice, I don't see much of that happening around here; the only time I've had to consult the UCD ordinance at all was when I was looking for a new number plate for the house, and discovered that the maximum size permissible is four square feet. (The one I got is 4x19 inches, well within the limits and easily visible from the street.)

There are restrictions, yes: you can't park on the grass, you can't have a chain-link fence — I have a fairly ordinary six-foot stockade fence — and perhaps most important, if you plan to tear down a house, you can't replace it with a structure three times its size.

So basically, we're conserving a look and a feel; we're trying to maintain the character of a neighborhood that doesn't quite meet the standards for "historic." (All of Oklahoma City's historic districts date to well before World War II.) Just because we paid less doesn't mean we think less of it.

Now this takes nerve:

Actually, what makes it heinous is not the Tommy Tutone reference, but this:

Spoofing Caller ID numbers isn't illegal — yet. But if you're using a fake number to call me, I consider it prima facie evidence that you're dishonest and therefore unworthy of my business or anyone else's.

Megan McArdle reports that Manwich sauce (!) qualifies as vegan, and it's therefore possible to make a sloppy joe without any fleshy stuff at all:

I am surprised to report that I am not all that surprised: I find myself remembering that for one brief, shining moment we had a more-or-less serious vegetarian working for us at the shop, and one day she brought up some truly excellent egg rolls which she insisted didn't actually contain the shrimp they seemed to contain. Inasmuch as she was hardly ever wrong about anything, I believed her. Then again, being hardly ever wrong about anything made her overqualified and then some, and she moved on rather quickly.

In case you hadn't noticed, I am not a fan of Daylight Saving Time, nor am I alone in my disdain for it.

Still, this seems to be the definitive word on the topic:

Hey, we're already turning up the thermostats, so this wouldn't be much of a change, would it?

The only Italian I understand is "Monica Bellucci," and that not particularly well, so I'm not going to attempt to decipher this very-1996-looking page from L'Osservatore Romano, but I will point you toward what appears to be a Vatican attempt to expand the existing list of sins:

Um, no, it doesn't. Gail explains, under a better title than mine:

I believe the rule here is "Do whatever steps you want if / You have cleared them with the Pontiff." Somehow I have my doubts that Girotti has Benedict's blessing on this matter.

Actually, no, I'm not.

Yesterday's item about telemarketers contained, in the quoted material, a mention of a Web site called CallerComplaints.com, with which I was otherwise not familiar. The operator of the site, noticing the reference, suggested that I might want to take a look at what's there, and so I did.

There is, of course, a database of numbers, broken down by area code — including nonexistent area codes, under "Spoofed," which is nice — and a handful of articles about the scuzzbuckets who keep calling you. Perhaps the most interesting deals with how toll-free numbers are assigned (it's not pretty) and how to complain to the assigners.

But what I really wanted to mention is the motivation, from their About Us page. Yes, they're building a database, but there's another purpose:

I'm not so sure about that — thinking twice, after all, requires thinking once to begin with — but I'm definitely in favor of public humiliation.

The soothsayer warned Caesar, "Beware the Ides of March," but Andrew Ian Dodge has no fear: he's posted a Carnival of the Vanities to the Ides, and hang the consequences, a spirit worthy of the revered Scotsman Robert Roy MacGregor, usually known simply as "Rob Roy." who passed from the scene 274 years ago.

The Lost Ogle's ongoing whatever-it-is continues, and today it's the Midwest Region, Lower Bracket, in which yours truly (#11 seed) is being thoroughly trounced by a Broadcast Face (#5). I am, of course, appalled that I got any votes at all, but apparently my equilibrium is more easily upset these days. Perhaps I need to get out more.

Voting in this bracket continues through midnight CDT, after which I won't have to worry about it again. (Bless you, O God of Single Elimination.)

Something about this just tickles me no end: a Honda Insight with its hybrid stuff replaced by the K20A mill from a Civic Type-R.

Really. It looks like it just bolted in. With at least 200 hp and a six-speed manual, it's, if not wicked fast, at least capable of some speedy peccadillos, and it's still getting 45-50 mpg.

And that may be the whole point of this exercise:

Everybody except Congress, I suspect.

One month after floating the idea of a black bear hunt, the author of the enabling legislation has had second thoughts:

Fair enough. At least they looked at the numbers, as promised.

You'll occasionally hear the term "critical darling" applied to a performer who gets rave reviews yet no attention from the audience as a whole. This is, suggests Mark Edwards in the Sunday Times, due to a basic difference in philosophy:

There follows a list of critically-adored albums which the public shuns, and then a list of big hits which the critics abhor. In defense of the public taste, I insist that when Genesis titled an album We Can't Dance, they were merely being truthful.

Add to "to-do" list: Ask Dawn Eden about her favorite Beatles song.

Update: She's answered, and it's "There's a Place."

Way back in 2004, before the Hornets left Charlotte — never mind that unfortunate business that temporarily drove them out of New Orleans — researchers conducted a study of NBA viability in several cities, some with teams, some without. Ted Strueli of the Journal Record picked up on it, with the observation: "They didn’t give Oklahoma City much of a shot at success."

Indeed they didn't. The Big Breezy, said the researchers, might draw an average of 11,400 or so, producing revenue on the wrong side of $35 million a year.

It was at that point that Doug Loudenback started laughing. For one thing, the Hornets, during their two-year tenure here, averaged close to 18,000. What's more, a good basketball town like, say, Seattle, they said might average over 19,700 per game. Inasmuch as KeyArena holds 17,098 bodies, this would be a trifle difficult. No wonder Sonics owner Clay Bennett was screaming for a new arena.

Furthermore, a potential Memphis team — the Grizzlies had not yet arrived from Vancouver — would, say the researchers, seriously outdraw the Dallas Mavericks, which didn't even come close to happening. And inasmuch as both the Clippers and the Lakers are based at Los Angeles' Staples Center, the report projects identical attendance and revenues for the two teams. Given the sheer number of variables involved ... but never mind, you get the idea. As Yogi Berra never said, "Prediction is hard, especially about the future." (Robert Storm Petersen apparently did.)

Obviously we can, but Sean Hackbarth doesn't like the new fin:

The same is true of any US airport, I submit.

But I can appreciate this after-the-fact comment:

(Via Little Miss Attila.)

Some fungi who plasters worthless TrackBacks all over blogdom dropped in here yesterday with a link reading as follows: "Sex during diflucan."

As the phrase goes, I do not think that word means what he thinks it means. And if it does, well, the further from here, girl, the better.

And, in my experience, MT delivers. Mostly. But Jesum Crow, it's a pain in the neck sometimes, and the reason WordPress is eating its lunch might be as simple as this:

And re-tinkering is very, very common; I've set up three WP blogs, two for myself, one for somebody else, using exactly that DH one-click install, and about every other version, something they've done breaks all the customization I've done and I have to redo, or at least recopy, a fistful of templates. Meanwhile, what you see here is basically a slightly-souped-up Movable Type 2.21 template that has worked through all of my 3.x installs, though the powers that be Six Apart are careful to note that comment popups are "deprecated," the current euphemism for "We don't support that anymore." I can't prove it, but I suspect this was motivated by the ongoing penchant for popup blockers.

Still, I have a certain fondness for WordPress, and indeed I once recommended to management down at the shop that (1) they should start up a corporate blog and (2) they should run it on WP. After the "ZOMG PHP!" grousing subsided, the proposal was tabled, and the table was then folded up into a FedEx box and shipped to Lower Elbonia.

Seattle SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett and NBA Commissioner David Stern are in