I usually try to acknowledge sources of Sudden Traffic once I notice them, but this one I stalled for a while to give the blush a chance to fade.

I mean, seriously here:

In another era not too long ago, Charles Hill would have been one of those celebrated newspaper columnists who were literally a part of the community’s collective psyche. Think Mike Royko in Chicago, Dave Barry in Miami, Lewis Grizzard in Atlanta — sometimes brilliant, sometimes analytical, usually odd and humorous, sometimes confusing, but always a “must read.”

Geez. Usually when I’m mentioned in connection with someone at that level, it’s accompanied by a phrase like “desperately imitating.” If I’m desperately imitating anyone, it’s probably Frank B. Gilbreath Jr., author of Cheaper by the Dozen, and in his later years proprietor of “Doing the Charleston,” a column in The Post and Courier which he wrote under the name “Ashley Cooper.” I must admit here that I once (at age 13, I think) mailed a backhanded compliment to Mr Cooper for something or other, noting that it was a pleasant change from his usual idiocy; Cooper duly reproduced the letter and explained that in polite society, which Charleston certainly was, we are kind to idiots like him. (Lessons in life come from the damnedest places.) “Ashley” and “Cooper” are, of course, the two rivers which meet at Charleston to form the Atlantic Ocean.

Anyway, since traffic from that little blurb by the Oklahoman’s Steve Lackmeyer is abating somewhat, I figured it was safe to pass it on to my own readership, with the caution that while I really love the idea of myself as Great Metropolitan Columnist, I can’t imagine any set of circumstances under which I might actually attain that status. Still, to quote either Bartles or Jaymes, I thank him for his support.

We really appreciate your dropping by with that brace of Benzes; the ML320 BlueTEC should find many friends here in the Big Breezy, and there’s something reassuring about the fact that there’s still a spiffy 190D from the dawn of time still on the road.

That said, though, this snippet from your tour report (December) won’t wash. I quote:

We celebrate another productive day with sirloins at Oklahoma City’s famed Cattlemen’s Steakhouse (operating in the city’s historic Bricktown district since 1945).

We’ll give you “famed.” But Cattlemen’s dates back to 1910 — what happened in 1945 was an unexpected change of ownership — and it’s nowhere near Bricktown, which was so named by the late Neal Horton, first new developer in the old cluster of warehouses, in the early 1980s.

I will not, of course, ask if you tried the lamb fries.

So you’re a member in good standing of the European Community, but you’re increasingly concerned by all the “foreign” words that have been creeping into your language of late, and you feel compelled to do something about it.

And most remarkably of all, you’re not French. British councils are demanding substitutes for phrases of Latin origin:

Local authorities have ordered employees to stop using the words and phrases on documents and when communicating with members of the public and to rely on wordier alternatives instead.

Bournemouth Council … has listed 19 terms it no longer considers acceptable for use. This includes bona fide, eg (exempli gratia), prima facie, ad lib or ad libitum, etc or et cetera, ie or id est, inter alia, NB or nota bene, per, per se, pro rata, quid pro quo, vis-a-vis, vice versa and even via.

In instructions to staff, the council said: “Not everyone knows Latin. Many readers do not have English as their first language so using Latin can be particularly difficult.”

Nor is Bournemouth alone in its urge to purge:

Of other local authorities to prohibit the use of Latin, Salisbury Council has asked staff to avoid the phrases ad hoc, ergo and QED (quod erat demonstrandum), while Fife Council has also banned ad hoc as well as ex officio.

A group called the “Plain English Campaign” is pleased with this development:

Marie Clair, its spokesman, said: “If you look at the diversity of all our communities you have got people for whom English is a second language. They might mistake eg for egg and little things like that can confuse people.

“At the same time it is important to remember that the national literacy level is about 12 years old and the vast majority of people hardly ever use these terms.

“It is far better to use words people understand. Often people in power are using the words because they want to feel self important. It is not right that voters should suffer because of some official’s ego.”

Apparently I was wrong: there is in fact no limit to dumbing down.

And this Englishwoman with the French name needs to ask herself how she’s helping the “national literacy level” with this insistence that “English” doesn’t include all those terms that I’d learned, and likely she’d learned, long before the age of twelve.

There’s also a more direct response I’d like to make, though it may be questioned by councils because of its Anglo-Saxon origins.

(Via Interested-Participant.)

You’re looking at “Slinky,” from the Taryn by Taryn Rose line, and it might even be possible to slink in these: they’re light (seven ounces), not so high (2½-inch heel), and apparently generously padded despite their svelteness. I knew nothing about this line, so I plunged into the Web and turned up this tale:

When most orthopedic surgery residents finish a 36-hour shift, there’s nothing they want more than a good night’s sleep. Not Taryn Rose. “I was known to leave the hospital, go straight to Neiman Marcus, and speed shop the last 15 minutes they were open,” says the surgeon turned shoe designer, now CEO of her own $20 million company. Rose loved wearing heels to the hospital but searched fruitlessly for stylish shoes that wouldn’t destroy her feet.

Toward the end of her residency, Rose began to see her fashion quandary as a market opportunity. At first, she fretted about what her peers and family would think. She hailed not only from a conservative field but from a conservative family, which expected her to follow in the footsteps of her physician father. But Rose felt she was onto something. “I feared regret more than I feared failure,” she recalls.

I’m impressed. The Taryn by Taryn Rose line is, they say, “a bit more whimsical” than the company’s first offerings; it’s also priced markedly lower. “Slinky” runs $205, but I’ve seen it as low as $85.

Actually, it’s the number that isn’t working out for T-Mobile:

The FCC on Oct. 17 sent a letter to T-Mobile, which is owned by Deutsche Telekom AG, advising the company that regulators should have evaluated its 2001 acquisition by the German telephone giant under a 20% voting stock threshold. The merger was evaluated under a more lax standard.

The letter, obtained by Dow Jones, said, “T-Mobile USA’s level of foreign ownership through the existing ownership structure appears to be in violation” of the 20% limit.

“The Commission strictly applies the 20% statutory benchmark of [the law], and has no discretion to waive it,” the letter said. “Based on this ownership structure it appears that Deutsche Telekom, a foreign corporation, has a 30%, non-controlling interest in a common carrier license.”

T-Mobile didn’t exactly appeal to a higher authority, but:

T-Mobile officials said the FCC’s new thinking on foreign ownership could be complicated by a 1996 World Trade Organization telecommunications agreement that allows 100% indirect ownership of U.S. spectrum licensees by foreign entities. Deutsche Telekom has 100% indirect controlling interest in T-Mobile, according to the FCC.

FCC officials, who agreed to an interview only on the condition of anonymity, said the commission has no intention of violating the WTO or other trade agreements.

As I understand things, Deutsche Telekom owns T-Mobile International AG, which in turn owns T-Mobile USA, hence “indirect.”

And apparently this whole dustup was precipitated by something else entirely:

[T]he FCC said T-Mobile had agreed to create a rural subsidiary called Wireless Alliance, which would be jointly owned by Verizon Wireless, in order to comply with the law, however, the FCC charged T-Mobile never properly created the structure.

And Verizon Wireless, itself with substantial foreign ownership — 45 percent is held by Britain’s Vodafone Group — is acquiring Alltel, a merger on which the FCC is scheduled to vote this week, hence their sudden attention to these matters.

Adam Gurri suspects xenophobia at the FCC:

Can’t have those sneaky foreigners getting wealthier as a result of fair dealings in our borders, no sir!

Still undetermined: how the incoming administration and the next Congress will make matters worse. (It’s a given that they won’t improve things.)

One hundred forty-four, you may remember from grade school, is a gross. Sometimes the search requests that land here are (somewhat) gross. We report, you deride.

honey server, which is better wide or narrow grooves:  Narrow grooves tend to increase speed of flow, sugar user.

how to curb anger in pre-teen with mild asperger’s:  When we were pre-teens, our anger was curbed by a trip to our rooms with no dinner.

ron stoppable aspergers:  Send him to his room and tell him Kim’s not speaking to him.

“how to be dumped”:  Lately, it seems, all you have to do is wait a while.

“how many of you are in the quartet”:  We try to keep it under five.

naked women in Tyronza Arkansas:  Well, that’s one way to get you to slow down.

Candy has been essentially unchanged since its production in 1912:  Which is a good thing if you plan to establish an economy using Necco wafers as currency.

yummium:  Secret ingredient in Necco wafers.

can i be compensated by tim hortons for damaging my vehicle their drive in is too narrow:  Next time don’t do donuts in the parking lot.

subjectivity of grading english:  Sometimes it is, sometimes it ain’t.

crunchy or smooth boxers or breifs:  I’ve worn boxers, and I’ve worn briefs, and I don’t like either of them crunchy.

are pixy stix suitable for vegetarians:  I suppose you’d have to know where the glucose came from.

“i can has wife?”  yu cn get lotz of cheezburgerz an toyz from yur muder an fader but if yu meetz a nise lady kitteh who is lieking yu too and is agreeing to b yur wief den yu no she comz from Ceiling Cat. (Proverbs 19:14, Lolcat Bible.)

Oklahoma City 88, Minnesota 85, and as you might guess, there were scary moments, particularly during the third quarter while the T-Wolves rolled up a 12-point lead. Not to worry. With three minutes left in the quarter and Minnesota up 71-61, the Thunder ran off a 9-2 run, which became 13-2 in the first two minutes of the final frame. There were nine lead changes in all, but the only one that mattered was the last one at the 2:19 mark, when Westbrook drove to the basket after an Al Jefferson putback which turned out to be the last Minnesota points. With 16 seconds left, the T-Wolves read the offense and closed off Kevin Durant, whereupon Nick Collison tossed in a left-handed hook to ice the deal; Minnesota got two looks but didn’t get to finish either.

The Thunder are still not shooting wonderfully, but 42 percent was a definite improvement. What they did do was own the boards: they outrebounded the Wolves 50-38, including 19 off the offensive glass. We’re talking some serious second-chance points here. And double figures were very much in evidence, with Durant snagging 18, Russell Westbrook 14, Jeff Green 13 (he finally got a trey), Chris Wilcox 12, and Collison turning in a double-double: 10 points, 10 rebounds.

Meanwhile, Jefferson was his usual hyperefficient self, with 24 points and 13 boards. Outside threat Ryan Gomes had 12, including two of three from downtown; he came this close to getting one more at the very end, which would have tied the game, but Durant pulled it away. The official horn was held up briefly while the instant-replay boffins checked to see if there had been a foul; they decided there hadn’t. This was the second time in the game that they went to the cameras, the first being at the end of the third quarter, when Desmond Mason hit a prodigiously-long jumper that just had to be a trey. It wasn’t.

So it’s 1-2, which, if extrapolated to the entire season, would be something like 28-54. Not that there’s time to think about such things: the Celtics are due in town on Wednesday.

Tim Blair identifies an issue, and responds:

The biggest story of the past few weeks: Sarah Palin’s massive clothes budget. I join with political observers of all persuasions in demanding that the attractive Alaska governor wear far fewer clothes.

Washington is a tad warmer than Juneau this time of year.

Gail at Pop Culture Junk Mail makes a horrifying discovery:

Alan Ruck, who played Cameron on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, is 52 years old.

Worse yet, it seems to be true:

Alan Ruck (born July 1, 1956) is an American stage, television and film actor. He is perhaps best known for his role as Cameron Frye, Ferris Bueller’s hypochondriac best friend in John Hughes’ Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) (Ruck was 29 when he portrayed the 17-year-old Cameron), and as Stuart Bondek, the lecherous, power-hungry member of the mayor’s staff on the hit ABC sitcom Spin City, which ran from 1996-2002.

What’s more, Ruck had been married for two years when Ferris Bueller hit the screen.

And did any Spin City viewers take a close look at Stuart and think, “Isn’t that Cameron from Ferris Bueller?”

Keep in mind that I’m still dealing with the mind-boggling idea that my firstborn is now 30.

Numenorean at Kick the Anthill has read over my recommendations for this year’s State Questions, and she agrees with three out of four.

On SQ 735, though, she takes exception:

My concern with this tax exemption is the same concern that I had on the last one we voted for. I have a problem with making an exemption for one group of people. Veterans are not the only people who serve us sacrificially. What about teachers? Firefighters? Law enforcement? Nurses? I am concerned that when we begin making this kind of exemption it only snowballs. I honestly have no idea what the figures are for what funds the state is declining to receive from veterans, but something tells me that it’s going to start to add up.

Qualifying for this particular exemption requires 100-percent disability, which suggests that relatively few people will actually get it. And this isn’t the property tax, which hits all of us who own real estate; this is the personal-property tax, which is applied only to specific, and usually business-related, possessions. I expect the dollar impact of passage would be vanishingly small.

Still, it’s a reasonable point being raised: if Group A gets a tax break, why not Groups B through V inclusive? There’s only one answer: the state Constitution would have to be amended for each of them, so if someone wants to circulate a petition granting a tax exemption to a group, that option is available, and the voters can decide for themselves.

Update: Incorrect personal pronoun corrected.

On the 13th of March, I bought this printer/scanner unit. It arrived in good condition in one week.

I installed it today.

What’s that you say? It’s the same year still? Oh, damn.

Not the CBS Radio (later TV) series created by the easy Goodman Ace, but a Gedankenexperiment proposed by Marko the Munchkin Wrangler. The premise:

You have the opportunity to make a visit to the past. You get to pick one calendar year in the history of the United States, starting with its first full year of existence after declaring independence, 1777, and ending with the last full calendar year, 2007.

Your visit will start a minute after midnight on the 1st of January of that year, and end a minute before midnight on December 31st.

Difficulty: You are not permitted to leave the country (presumably with the borders that existed at the time), to screw with actual history, to profit from your trip, or to affect your family tree.

I thought this over, and decided on 1860, in Charleston, South Carolina, the year before the Civil War Between the States for Southern Independence (choose whatever combination you prefer), a year in which secession sentiments had been growing, culminating with the issuance of Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, the state’s Declaration of Independence as it were, on the 24th of December, a response to the election the month before. Two days later, Major Robert Anderson, commander of the garrison at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island, decided that the fort could not be defended, and relocated his troops to Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor; we all know what happened there.

The relevance of 1860 to today seems obvious to me: now as then, war was predicted if the election returns went a certain way. But I have more of a personal stake in this experiment, as a one-time resident of Charleston and as a defender of the South, if not of its “Peculiar Institution.” I’d certainly have no trouble making my way around the five square miles of the peninsula, many of whose streets I’ve walked myself; it’s a place to which I have a strong emotional connection, a place to which I’d never allowed myself to return, lest my childhood illusions be somehow damaged. (I finally went back in 2001, thirty-two years after I’d left; I’ve gone back once more since.) And I’m familiar with the background: when I was in high school, two-person teams, as a history-class project, put together their versions of a theoretical daily Charleston newspaper dated 13 April 1861, the day after Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and started what some of us were in 1968 still calling “the late unpleasantness.”

(Found at A Call to Wings.)

Houston coach Rick Adelman does his homework: the Rockets evidently figured that if they could bottle up the rest of the Thunder, it didn’t much matter what Kevin Durant did, and they were right. KD racked up 26 points, and Oklahoma City actually outshot Houston (40 percent versus 36.4), but the Rockets just kept on coming, and while the Thunder played it pretty close for two and a half quarters, Houston began pulling away and didn’t let up. Final: Rockets 89, Thunder 77.

This is what you call a balanced attack: six Rockets scored in double figures, led by Tracy McGrady with 22. Yao Ming got his third double-double in three games, and Carl Landry added another from off the bench. Houston outrebounded OKC, 49-39. But perhaps the biggest difference is this: the Rockets don’t foul. We’re talking a total of ten fouls in the entire game, two of which (both from Yao) came in the waning minutes. The Thunder got nine points from the charity stripe as a result, but the Rockets earned thirty-one foul shots, producing 27 points. At least there’s some defense being exhibited here.

I had expected to see Robert Smith tonight, if only to offset the skyscraper that is Yao, but P. J. Carlesimo decided otherwise; Johan Petro started in the middle and produced some good numbers, with ten points and nine boards, three blocks and two steals. Russell Westbrook was conspicuous mostly by his absence: he played only 18 minutes and scored 6. Earl Watson, starting at the point, didn’t score much (six), but he did serve up eight assists and picked off seven rebounds.

Last time out, the Thunder had a painfully slow start and never got back into it. This time, they started fine, fell behind, and never got back into it. I suspect there will be rather a lot of “You’re doing it wrong” before tomorrow’s game with the T-Wolves at the Ford.

According to the title of the Kevin Smith film, they made a porno.

Weirdly, while the Oklahoman did carry a wire-service review (2½ stars out of 4) which left the title intact, the paper’s ad for the film clips the title to just Zack and Miri. It doesn’t look Photoshopped, so I’m guessing that the Weinstein Company, the US distributor, offered the alternate ad to squeamish papers.

Have any of you in other markets encountered the expurgated advertisement? (I haven’t seen the Tulsa World, but at least they had someone from the paper actually do the review rather than rely on the AP.)

“We’re naked, and we vote,” or something like that:

People at the upscale, clothing-optional Caliente Resorts off U.S. 41 want to establish the first clothing-optional polling place in the country.

Although there’s no concrete data on how many nudists live in the area, state Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, has estimated that Pasco County [FL] has 12,000 “nude votes.”

The resort wants to make it easier for Caliente residents and members of the surrounding nudist community to vote, said Caliente spokeswoman Angye Fox.

I wonder if they’d be asked to present some form of ID.

Anyway, it’s not happening any time soon:

Resort officials have floated the idea of a clothing-optional polling place by Brian Corley, Pasco County’s supervisor of elections. But Corley said he isn’t willing to “even consider” opening additional sites until after the 2010 redistricting.

Which makes sense to me: if you’re going to have to redraw the lines anyway, that’s the time to make any additions. In the meantime, I’m fairly sure it won’t hurt them to get dressed for a couple of hours on Tuesday.

(Via Diary of a Nudist.)

Not that anyone has any reason to care what I think about such things, but I did promise “a few — very few — endorsements”.

Steve Lackmeyer reports in the Oklahoman:

At a meeting of the committee that oversees downtown’s tax increment finance, or TIF districts, the chief executive officer of Devon Energy pitched his plan for creation of a new district for the $750 million, 54-story tower that could dramatically transform most or all of the downtown area.

A new city staff report indicates the proposed district is expected to generate $135 million. In what may be a first for the city’s tax increment financing program, [Larry] Nichols said he wouldn’t ask for TIF money for the tower, an adjoining new park or for purchase and expansion of the city-owned west City Center garage.

“One hundred percent of this project will be paid for by Devon — it will not be paid by the TIF,” Nichols said. “We’re asking that the TIF be spent to fix up the neighborhood.”

How much fixing up can be done with $135 million? Keep in mind that all the original MAPS projects combined, adjusted for inflation, cost $400 million or so.

If all this seems a hair improbable, it’s partly, I think, because we’re thinking of Devon as just one little ol’ natural-gas producer, hundreds of which have come and gone over the years. It doesn’t occur to us that Devon is freaking huge: the company’s market cap is upwards of $30 billion, even with gas prices on the low side. They could practically build this skyscraper with petty cash. And Lackmeyer reports in a sidebar that the tower alone, by 2022, will have an annual economic impact of $1.9 billion. Now figure in the upgrades to the surrounding area made possible by TIF revenues, and suddenly this looks like the screaming deal of the century.

None of this is graven in stone, of course. But from where I sit, it’s a lot more than a mere sketch on a dinner napkin.

The title of the piece in Oklahoma Magazine is deceptively simple: “75 Great Oklahoma Websites”. Apart from the lamentable lack of clickable links in the Web version, it’s a pretty good overview of blogs worth reading in these parts, though apparently not everyone is thrilled with the choices. Says The Lost Ogle’s Patrick:

I’m also not too sure how I feel about this site being named to a list of great Oklahoma websites that includes Wimgo, yet somehow omits Dustbury. That would be like leaving Ashlynn Brooke off a list of great Oklahomans but somehow including Sally Kern. But oh well, it does appease our massive egos, so we’re okay with it.

Not having a particularly massive ego, I figure this is the time to point out something I thought was perfectly obvious: I first hung out this shingle more than a decade ago. By Internet standards, this is pre-Cambrian; certainly I can’t boast of newness, a characteristic much prized on the Web, while still purveying this by-now old-hat shtick.

But being a known quantity does help to clarify my perspective. By now, just about anyone who is interested in Oklahoma blogs is either reading me already or has made a conscious decision not to read me. And I’m fine with that: differences of opinion, with a little help from gravity, make the world go round.

That said, the spiffiest commentary on “75 Great Oklahoma Websites” comes from Mike at Okiedoke:

I steer you to a list of 73 Oklahoma websites better than this one.

Emphasis added, just to show you how diabolically clever that statement really is.

Yes, it’s time for another DST rant: not mine, though. From AmbivaBlog:

I just saw on CNN’s crawl that there are fewer heart attacks the Monday morning after time “falls back” at the end of daylight saving. There’s also a slight increase in heart attacks the Monday morning after we “spring forward.” In Sweden, anyway. The effect is small but statistically significant.

That’s pathetic. We’re all so rushed and stressed (even in Sweden) that our hearts slurp up that one extra hour of sleep like desert plants in a rare rain. It always does feel like a disproportionately great luxury, doesn’t it? Balm for that feeling that there are never enough hours in the day. And some consolation for the winter dark’s sudden pounce. The two things together are like a hibernation starter kit.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for the sudden pounce of the winter dark: this time of year, the westward portion of my drive home five days a week puts the sun right in my face, and worse, right in the face of the frightened shlub in front of me who promptly slams on his brakes.

And as always, I resent screwing around with the clock for some nebulous public good; it’s yet another manifestation of “the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism,” in response to which I offer a (non-blue) finger of my own.

Last year at this time I said something that might have been construed as wishful thinking:

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.

This declaration was based upon a marked increase in Halloween transactions: at no previous time had I ever gotten more than five trick-or-treaters, but last year I pulled in nine.

This year? Thirty. I had to shut down at 8:30 because of treat depletion.

And they’re brighter, too. I have a motion detector near the door which when tripped kicks on a couple of floodlights, but a couple of invisible girls (okay, technically they could be seen, but work with me here) managed to bypass the device by causing a temporary bustle in my hedgerow. For a moment, I was almost alarmed.