Kent Hovind, evangelist and proprietor of Pensacola's Dinosaur Adventure Land creationist theme park, is facing 288 years in prison after conviction on 58 counts of tax fraud.

Hovind and his wife Jo, who could draw up to 225 years, had argued that they were working for God and that therefore their earnings, and those of their employees, were not subject to taxation. The park itself was closed in April because it had been built without a permit and because Escambia County authorities had never been allowed to inspect the premises. "Right now Caesar demands a building permit," quipped Mike Whitehead, chair of the County Commission.

Sentencing will be on the 9th of January.

(Via Secular Blasphemy.)

You know, it's probably a good thing that the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies guys never did any serious smut, or they might have come up with something like this:

Duck amuck, indeed. But no, it's Iain Hollingshead, in his debut novel Twenty Something, which has won the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award presented by Britain's Literary Review. Said the judges:

Tyrone Slothrop was unavailable for comment.

Giving no thought to mere traffic considerations, McGehee stands firm against Britney Spears' uncovered sissywhoha.

And by "against," I mean "in opposition to," not "adjoining." Just to make that clear.

(If the above link doesn't work, try this one.)

Addendum, next morning: "Britney Spears' Crotch" would make a great name for a snarly, Violent-Femmes-ish garage band, suggests Andrea Harris.

There's a scene in Bel Kaufman's novel Up the Down Staircase in which an obsessed teenager sends a love letter to the English teacher who is the object — the direct object, one assumes — of her fantasies. He grades it and returns it to her; despondent, she throws herself out a window.

This is not to suggest that Lindsay Lohan's New Manifesto is a plea for self-defenestration or anything like that, but Go Fug Yourself is happy to oblige, just the same.

And if nothing else, this suggests that for all the badmouthing Britney gets, she's at least a better writer than La Lohan.

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

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

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

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

Headline in the Business section of the Oklahoman this morning: "Ad men take boomers back to the 60s."

Would it be too much to ask that some of them be left there?

Sony, of course, invented the Betamax, the original standard for home video, only to watch it die in the marketplace, outplayed by JVC's VHS. (I wrote a brief history of said death in Vent #82 back in 1997.) While Sony continued to make Beta recorders for the US market until 1993, and for the Japanese domestic market until 2002 (!), the real watershed event was the 1988 introduction of Sony's first VHS recorder, about which I said this:

The company at times seems almost Dylanesque — most likely, you go your way, they'll go theirs. Yet another example of Sony gee-whiz thinking is headed for the dustbin: the ATRAC music-encoding-plus-DRM system, and the Connect music store that sold it to people with latter-day Walkman units, are history. (I have a fairly-recent Walkman, and an interface to Connect was duly provided as part of the package, but I never had occasion to use it, inasmuch as the interface would also accept ordinary MP3 and even WAV files.) Sony has unveiled new Walkman players (can we call them "Walkmen"?) that don't use ATRAC, and Connect apparently will be gone by spring.

All of this, of course, makes me wonder what sort of weird crap Sony is planning for the PlayStation 4.

Reportedly there's a new Osama bin Laden video due before Tuesday.

Osama's special guests include Jimmy Hoffa, Judge Crater and D. B. Cooper.

I normally don't spend a lot of time here on the subject of Britney Spears, but inasmuch as a lot of other blogs do, the opportunity occasionally arises to point to something one of them said.

Herewith, some decent-quality snark found at Hecklerspray:

Twenty years ago I did my own stint in the Home for the Bewildered. If I learned anything from the experience — and who says I have? — it's that being the center of attention has more drawbacks than delights. I have sought the shadows ever since. (Yes, I'm on display here, sort of, but I have more or less effective control of the narrative, something that's seldom said of anyone regularly mentioned on TMZ.)

And when you get right down to it, if thirty years down the pike someone asks "Whatever happened to Britney Spears?" there are basically two possible answers: one involves settling down in some place like Tangipahoa Parish, and the other involves being laid to rest in some place like Forest Lawn. For some folks, it's not as easy a call as you might think.

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.

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.

To quote Rachel Lucas:

Fond as I am of Ms Lucas, she may not be 100 percent accurate in this instance. I went so far as to check the lesser-known facts about Mr Warman, and nowhere therein is it suggested that he is substantially above average in height.

Although this tidbit perhaps seems relevant:

So maybe a little editing is called for in this instance. "Overbearing"? Certainly. "Self-aggrandizing"? No doubt about it. "Enemy of free speech"? Demonstrably so. But "giant"? Maybe not so much.