Cat antics.

You'd think that Mia would be happy to be home again, where there aren't lots of other people or cats to bother with. And her first night back, she was fine. Last night, though? Different story.

She usually treats "lights-out" as the invitation to jump up onto the bed and zonk out for the night. Not so last night: she decided that was her cue to noisily stalk, wrestle with, and subdue every piece of paper on the second floor of the house. When she was done an hour later, she decided it was time to sleep. So she jumped up onto the bed - landing directly on my right eye. Allow me to assure you, that does a really good job of waking one up. And when I couldn't get my right eyelid open for a couple of seconds, I was afraid I'd been blinded. Took a while to get back to sleep. (Well, for me, at any rate. Mia was sound asleep within a minute, of course.)

Not-so-Happy Together.

Okay, the first time I heard the jingle for Appleby's, I guess I thought it was cute. By the fifth time, I thought otherwise. And by the twentieth time, I was sick and tired of hearing it. Well, I guess it's not as though I need an additional reason to avoid Appleby's. The Post has an article today about the ad, the musicians who wrote and performed the song, and the licensing agency who rents out the rights to the song.

It's only The Turtles, after all. It's not as though Bob Dylan is licensing his songs to a lingerie company, or anything.

Going on hiatus.

I won't be blogging for a while. My mother passed away this afternoon.

See you when I get back.

What's for lunch?

In Scotland, it's the deep-fried chocolate sandwich, garnished with vanilla ice cream. At least you don't have to worry about getting dessert with it.

Haiku. Low tide.

It probably is no surprise that a lot of folks send me funny emails. Or possibly, "funny" emails. And I often get them multiple times, from multiple sources. (And worse, multiple times from the same source.) Only fair, I suppose: I will often send 'em along, so I must be willing to receive 'em as well.

One that's been making the rounds for a while showed up in my email box today. Probably the fourth or fifth time I'd received it in the past few months. The "poem" made up of George W. Bush's statements, arranged for aesthetic presentation, which ends with the stanza:

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!

Okay, cute enough, so far as cheap shots go. But what got me about this particular email is that, unlike the other times I'd received it, the poem was described - repeatedly - as a haiku. Well, no, says the nitpicker inside me. Blank verse, sure; but it's not a haiku.

Or, as my email reply said:

Quite funny poem.
But this is not a haiku:
I thought you should know.

Ethics, schmethics. So long as I get my bonus.

Article in the NY Times about business schools struggling with the concept of ethics courses. Belatedly, business schools have recognized the need for such courses, following the excesses of WorldCom, Enron, and the like. An informal survey last spring indicated that 35% of schools have a required ethics course, a percentage that's unchanged since 1988. Alternatives to a required ethics course include elective ethics courses or some sort of emphasis on ethics in all courses (although I'm not sure what the interrelation between ethics and macro-economics is). Or, of course, ignoring ethics altogether.

Law schools, on the other hand, have required ethics courses - required for graduation and required for membership in state bars. And the legal profession has codified rules of ethical behavior for attorneys and for judges, not that everyone who ought to understand them follows them.

I understand that business schools aren't going to be able to create ethical standards in people who don't already have them. By the time someone is 25 - the typical minimum age at a business school - his personal ethical positions are pretty much set. But a good ethics course can cause that student to re-examine those positions in light of business-related issues: do you pay bribes in a culture that expects it? how far do you push the envelope on, say, accounting standards or FTC regulations? how does (or should) your conduct differ when you're representing your company instead of yourself?

And one of the fascinating things I learned in the business ethics course I took at Fuqua was that some of my classmates freely expressed ethical standards that guaranteed that I would never do business with them. (And this in an elective ethics course. Why were they taking the course? To learn more about people they think they could take advantage of?) For these students - headed to trading floors on Wall Street - "ethical" meant "whatever you could get away with." Even if something were against the law, if they could do it, make a profit, and not get caught, that was okay by them.

Wining and whining.

The Washington Post's gossip column has a couple of interesting notes today, on Patricia Kluge and John McEnroe.

Kluge is proud of her famously-expensive wine and her past as an erotic model and sex columnist, and McEnroe will soon have his own talk show on CNBC later this spring. What McEnroe can possibly have to tell us about business or economics is unclear.

Another reason to support mass transit.

Everyone's favorite whacko had an idea for a movie about a man who turns into a car that gets ridden around by a boy. Kevin Smith - director of Clerks and Jersey Girls - says that it was the wierdest movie idea ever pitched to him. And I'd imagine one of the most disturbing.

Point of clarification.

When I said yesterday that I occasionally envy my cat's life, this is not what I had in mind.

Although it doesn't surprise me that (a) the guy is a computer programmer, (b) he lives in California, and (c) the article fails to mention anything about a girlfriend.

Things that go bump.

There are times when I envy my cat's life, consisting as it does of sleeping, eating, sleeping, and napping. And snacking. She wakes up long enough to eat and then to go find a new place to sleep, often following the sunlight around the house as it moves during the day. But she excels at sleeping at night: when she jumps up onto the bed after lights-out, she settles between or onto my ankles (she prefers sleeping on them for some reason), and zonks out. And once she goes to sleep at night, she's dead to the world for at least ten hours, arising with a dainty ka-thummp! onto the floor immediately above my office to announce her readiness for breakfast.

So it was a real surprise the other night, when she woke me up at 4 a.m. Something had set her off - she was as agitated as she'd been during the earthquake in December or the tornado in September: Unhappy meowing, frantic pacing back and forth, repeated jumping from the bed to the floor and back, unwilling to be soothed or to be distracted by food. Figuring that there had to have been something to get her going like that, I got up and wandered around the house, trying to find what might have been the problem. The furnace wasn't about to explode, there was no car halfway into the living room, no one had broken in to threaten Her Majesty's food supply, and the weather was peaceful. No telling. I gave up and went back to bed. Eventually, she did too, but not especially happily.

It was back to normal last night, though. I awoke around 1 to find my bed swaying: medium sway, small sway, nothing. No noise, just the swaying. Perhaps what you'd expect if someone bumped into the bed, or someone heavier than the cat jumped onto it. Except there's not supposed to be anyone else in the house to hit the bed, and the cat was sprawled unmoving across my ankles, delicately snoring, so it wasn't her. Since she was still asleep, I clearly hadn't been moving my legs around enough to shake the bed, while my arms were in the same position they'd been in when I fell asleep. Hmm. Another check of the house, not that I knew what I'd find that would have made the bed sway that wouldn't continue to cause its presence to be known. Again, nothing, so I returned to bed. And a check this morning indicates there wasn't an earthquake or nearby explosion. Oh, well. I blame poltergeists.

In your heart, you know he's ... dead.

One of the few good things about spam is its ability to entertain, albeit unintentionally. And one of this morning's batch of spam caught my eye as I was about to delete it: it claimed to be from Barry Goldwater. Hmm. Spam from beyond the grave? Might be worth looking at.

Alas, no; it was actually sent on behalf of Barry Goldwater, Jr., hawking a legal tender 1933 $20 double eagle gold piece, for the amazing price of $19.99. Seems unlikely, doesn't it? Well, it should be entertaining figuring out the catch. It turns out that the coin being sold really is legal tender, just not legal tender of the U.S. It's from the CNMI (Commonwealth of the N. Mariana Islands), whose budget appears to come from making stamps and coins to sell to collectors, a practice only recently adopted by the U.S. Mint. And the coin is described in the email - but not on the website - as being 20 mil, which is mighty tiny - only 1/50 of an inch across.

And if this particular coin isn't to your liking - perhaps you have eyesight as poor as mine, and you'd like to be able to see the coin you're buying - you could instead purchase the official NY state quarter which now carries a portrait of A-Rod (a colorized U.S. Mint coin) or a legal tender 1 Crown coin with Harry Potter on the front and Queen Elizabeth II on the back (from the Isle of Man).

It's nice to have a hobby.

This guy's is painting a baseball, and not in a Rembrandt/still life sort of way. He took a baseball, and put a coat of paint on it. And then another. And another. For 27 years. It's now almost a yard in diameter, weighs 1,300 pounds, and is estimated to have over 18,000 layers of paint. (Hmmm. With a radius of 18 inches, including the baseball, that would mean that the paint layers would each be less than 1/1000 of an inch in thickness. Is a layer of paint really that thin?)

The folks from the Guinness Book of Records visited and have taken a core sample, to confirm that it's all paint. And Saturday was declared "Ball of Paint Day" in Alexandria, IN, where there evidently isn't a whole lot else to do. (Alexandria is also famous for having what they claim is the world's largest hairball, taken from their sewer system at over 200 pounds.)

Unsafe on any ballot.

Nice little column at The New Yorker on the legacy of Ralph Nader. Nader gets big plus marks for his work on automobile safety and helping to establish the EPA, OSHA and the CPSC, among other accomplishments, and big minus marks for helping put into office the current administration which is undermining all those positive efforts. At this point, the column suggests, the net legacy for Nader is still positive. But if Nader's 2004 candidacy has the effect of keeping Bush in office for four more years - although the columnist doesn't think it will - then the expected Nader legacy will be negative, and could be summed up as "George W Bush."

Lottery madness.

The lucky person (or group) who won the Feb. 20 Mega Millions lottery jackpot - an annuity value of $239 million - has yet to claim it. Sure, they've got another 5 months in which to come forward, and they're probably off furiously consulting with their tax attorneys and CPAs. But they could still have their attorney call the Lottery office and put in a claim.

Sadly, it's not me. I know because (a) I haven't been within 50 miles of the store where the winning ticket was purchased within the past 18 months, and (b) I checked my ticket again, anyway, just in case. (And not only did I not match all six numbers, I still don't match any of them.)

Doesn't stop me from planning what I'd do with all that money, though. First decision: take the annuity payments or the lump-sum present value? $6 million each year for 25 years ($9.5 million before taxes, or so) or $96 million ($145 million pre-tax) today (and all figures are wild-eyed estimates)? Well, I'm all about instant gratification, and I really don't care about those last 5 or 10 years worth of payments when I'm really old, so I'd go for the big bucket o' money today.

To be excessively responsible, I'd put aside $25 million in blue-chips, utilities, and government bonds, to ensure a happy retirement and to live on until then. And another $5 million would go to giving myself the lifestyle I'd like to become accustomed to: buying a new house or renovating this one, building and stocking a really good wine cellar, building a great little home theater, frequent vacations to the South Pacific, and similar mad-money expenses.

I'd use $5 to 15 million to buy a business to run. A winery, perhaps, or a local or regional microbrewery. Today, I'm leaning towards the latter, and yes, I already have one in mind. And I've got a brewmeister in mind to bring in for it, as well. (Again, not me. It'd be the brewer to whom I've often given the highest brewing compliment I can think of: As much as I like my own beer, I'd rather buy and drink his beer than drink my own.)

But that still leaves a big pile of money to play around with, and to do something useful with. I think I'd do something to support higher education with it. Some would go as an unrestricted grant to my alma mater; some would go to endow chairs in business law and ethics at business schools, initially, at each of the schools I've gotten degrees from; and the remainder would go into a scholarship program. And if I set this up correctly and in the same year I get the big lottery payout, it becomes a great tax deduction off that payout, and the government essentially helps fund the scholarship program even more.

Security, fun, philanthropy. A good mix, I think. Now all I have to do is win the lottery. (Or, I suppose, have someone who's already won the lottery give me all of their money. About equally likely, I think.)

Road rage.

I don't have a whole lot of patience with crummy drivers. Drivers who are unfamiliar with the neighborhood and are obviously lost, I can relate to and put up with. But making that into an art form is a bit too much.

I was out doing errands this morning, and heading home along a semi-limited-access residential feeder road. Four lanes (and left-turn lanes, when needed), sometimes divided and sometimes not, speed limit 35 or 40 (and people doing 45 or 50), very few cross streets. At one point, after about 3/4 of a mile without an intersection, we were approaching a fairly major intersection, with traffic lights and left- and right-turn lanes all over. I'm in the right lane, and the driver of the car in front of me decides that she really wants to be in the left lane. She slows down, and slows down, and slows down, and finally comes to a complete stop, 100 yards from the traffic light. (No one in front of her in our lane, of course.) Fine, I think to myself, she just realized that she needs to turn left at the light and has panicked into doing so right this very instant. And all I'm going to do is go up to the light and wait for it to turn green, anyway, so it's not as though I'm losing a lot of valuable time. Unfortunately, she didn't stop quite soon enough, and traffic backs up in the left lane past where she is. So those of us in my lane have to wait until the light changes and all the traffic in the left lane clears before she changes lanes and we can continue.

She then motors up to the intersection - and goes straight. Hmm. Maybe she means to turn left into the next street. Well, no. Or maybe the strip mall beyond that. Or the next street. Or at the next light. Well, again, no - none of those. She merrily continued in the left lane for about 3 miles: four traffic lights, another half-dozen streets without traffic signals, and ten or fifteen driveways to commercial establishments. Finally, she turns her left-turn signal on. And continues on past two more uncontrolled intersections and straight through another intersection with a traffic signal. After about three-quarters of a mile, she turns the left-turn signal off and immediately swerves into the right lane, just barely in time to enter an intersection where she could turn right. She goes straight, of course, as she does at the next corner.

Okay. Time for me to finally realize that I'm less likely to end up in an accident of her causing if I'm not on the same street, so I turn onto a cross street. The last I saw of her, she was tootling along in the right lane, as though none of her lane-changing escapades had ever happened.

Another half-baked idea.

Ah, technology. You know those handmade, organic loaves of bread you see at your local supermarket? Chances are they're actually made in a factory in New Jersey, partly baked and flash-frozen days or months in advance, and shipped to the store to get the remainder of the baking. And real-life artisanal bakers are being frozen out, as it were, and driven out of business. Not a good thing.

Westward Journey nickels.

Designed to simultaneously celebrate the Lewis and Clark Expedition and annoy coin collectors, the US Mint announced today the production of newly-designed 5-cent pieces, or what you and I would call "nickels." The front stays the same, with Mr. Jefferson looking solemn, but the back shows Uncle Sam and a nameless Indian shaking hands, under a crossed axe and golf club, the words "The Louisiana Purchase," and the date of 1803. Later this fall, another nickel design will come out, with Lewis & Clark themselves aboard a longboat. (So, if you're a coin collector, you can't just get one nickel with each mint mark to represent the year's coinage, you'll need one of each combination of mint marks and the three reverses.) Presumably additional designs will come out in 2005, and in 2006, Mr. Jefferson and Monticello will return to the nickel, although not necessarily the same depictions as are currently on the coin.

And, thanks to the success of the state quarter program, they're considering a program showing portaits of U.S. presidents on the dollar coin. The theory being that this will increase the popularity of the Golden Dollar coin, as the presidential portrait coins would be the same size and color as the Sacagawea dollars. And for trivia buffs, yes, Grover Cleveland would appear twice in the series, due to his non-consecutive terms.

How much do you want to watch Dennis Miller?

Or, if you prefer, how would they have to pay you to watch him? In Los Angeles, the going rate is $15. I'm not sure it's enough to make me want to watch him in person. Possibly if I could sleep at the same time. But what I can't understand is: How did Monday Night Football let a gem like this slip through their fingers?

The economic October surprise.

Interesting speculation on a possible October surprise of an economic nature. The theory propounded is that the biggest issue in the presidential campaign will be the economy and the lack of job creation. So, in September and October, big national employers (e.g., Wal-Mart, Sears) go on a tear, hiring hundreds of thousands of employees, causing the job-creation totals to soar and make it appear that the economy really is improving. Bush gets the credit, gets reelected, and then all those new jobs are eliminated.

Interesting theory. Probably harder to pull off than is described here, but also not beyond the realm of the Committee to Re-Elect the President to consider. Personally, the October surprise I'm expecting to see is the "capture" of Osama bin Laden around October 15 to 20, picked up from where we've known all along he is.

The indignities parents put their children through.

Like naming their daughter Diot Coke. (And presumably her nickname is "Cherry.") Although, in their defense, this was done in 1379.

Money from heaven.

The checks from the checks from the CD "Minimum Advertised Price" antitrust settlement have been mailed, and I'm sitting here staring at mine. The good news is that it's money I never would have sued on my own to recover, and all I had to do was to fill out a form on the web a year ago. And I'm surprised to be getting anything at all, because if enough people - about 13 million - had filed claims, the per-capita refund would have been under $5, the minimum amount that they'd distribute to individuals. Instead, it appears that just under 5 million people filed claims, so the amount of the individual refund was $13.86. Not enough to buy a big-screen TV with, alas.

The disconcerting part of it, though, is that while the check came in a mailer with a return address of the Antitrust Litigation (and not the court where the action was filed and settlement reached), the explanatory letter contained with the check was from Jerry Kilgore, the Attorney General of Virginia, patting himself on the back for getting me this money, and all but reminding me to vote for him when he runs for governor in 2005. Sorry, Jerry, but I'm not so cheap that you can buy me off with $13.86 of monies I'm entitled to anyway.

What this country needs is a good five-dollar haircut.

Of course, for five dollars, it doesn't have to be all that good. Just so long as it doesn't look like it was done with a weed-whacker.

One of my favorite wine shops in Richmond opened a second location about a month ago, in a brand-new shopping center. Two doors down from it, a chain barbershop opened two weeks ago, and they've got a grand-opening sale: haircuts, $4.99. Since I was past due for a haircut - well past due, the uncharitable among us might say - I figured it was worth a shot, and the price was right. And it looks fine, given what they had to work with.

I haven't always been willing to walk in off the street and trust my hair to a complete stranger. I hate breaking in new people to cut my hair, just as I hate going to a doctor or dentist for the first time. Back in Charlottesville, I followed one woman who cut my hair from one salon to another to another, and I arranged my haircuts around her maternity leaves, just to avoid dealing with someone new. Even when I left Charlottesville for Durham and Richmond, I'd time my return visits to coincide with when I'd need a haircut, and make appointments during those visits. Alas, after 20 years of cutting my hair (and that of others, I suppose), she seems to have gotten out of the hair-cutting business, so I was forced to make other arrangements here. And it appears I've survived.

Too much time on their Photoshopping hands.

Far Side cartoons remade into "real life" via Photoshop.

Behind the times.

[sigh]

You can tell when a fad becomes over-the-hill, or a "new thing" becomes no longer new and hip. It's when I take part in it. These days, even Mars rovers have blogs.

Subways of the world.

No, not the sandwich shop. Maps of subway systems from around the world, presented on the same scale. Kind of cool.

The Hobbit.

Peter Jackson will film The Hobbit, although not for a couple of years. New Line Cinema has the rights to make the movie, and MGM has the rights to distribute it, so it'll take the studios' attorneys a couple of years to figure out who gets how big a piece of the money pie. Jackson is in the middle of doing the latest remake of King Kong, anyway.

Juggling.

Cute little video of a juggler. Not quite a "how to" video, but still.

I taught myself to juggle when I was in college. During final exams at the end of the first semester of my senior year, to be precise. A pretty good way to avoid studying. I even took three oranges into some of my exams, as something to do when I wanted a five-minute break in the middle of the test.

citi_bank EMAIL_ Veerification .

This is an actual email I received the other day. Subject line (here, the title to this post), spelling, grammar, and punctuation unchanged, in no small part because I really don't know where to begin.

=======

DEAR Citibank-Online Clients,

_This letter was sent_ by t_he _Citibank_ sevrer to
veerify _your_ e-mail adderss_.
You mustt clmpeote this pceosrs by clicking on_the link
_below_ and enttering in the little _window your Citibank_
ATM/Debit full card_nummber and PIN_ that you use in_the Atm machine.
This_is done - for Your poetcrtion -i- becaurse some of our
membres no lngeor have acsecs to their email adssdrees
and we must verify it.

[link deleted for everyone's protection]

To veerify _your EMAIL adderss and acces your citi_bank
account, click on the_link below_.

[and another one deleted]

=======

I don't think I'll send them my Citibank information. Not least, because I don't have any Citibank accounts. But I'd be willing to issue a quitclaim deed to the Brooklyn Bridge to anyone who'd fall for this email.

You are "Go" for orbit.

Found a nice blog entry about former Senator and astronaut John Glenn's reaction to the plan to gut the space program. Check it out for yourself. It quotes from an article in the Houston Chronicle which notes Glenn's claim that reducing the research component of the space station will save only $2.5 million (that's with an m, not a b).

Spring would appear to be on its way.

And it's not just the 81 degrees outside that makes me think so. It's the crocus blooms in the front yard. Okay, when I planted them, there were four colors - and thus far, only the yellow ones have come up. But I think I can see leaves for some of the others, and I can also see the shoots from tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths.

The best part about bulbs? The sore muscles you get from planting them have long ago faded and been forgotten by the time you enjoy their beauty.

Ah, Corporate Democracy.

Great fun watching the shareholder vote on the election of directors for Disney yesterday. On the one hand, it didn't mean anything, because the election wasn't a yes/no vote on any candidate, and so long as a candidate received even one vote, he'd be elected. But because voting for corporate directors is usually like that and usually the chosen slate is unopposed (as was the case with the Disney election), any substantial withholding of support from a candidate is a strong symbolic statement. Even the withholding of 5% can be embarrassing to the director and the company, and the expectation was that 20% - or even as many as 30% - of the shares voted would withhold their support from Michael Eisner, and if that threshold was reached, the board would likely strip him of one of his two titles (CEO and chairman of the board).

Well, surprise. The preliminary count indicates that 43% of the votes were withheld from him. And sure enough, the Disney board took the board chairmanship away from him.

And I took part, too: I voted my shares to withhold support from Eisner and his followers. I normally don't vote in stockholder elections, on the theory that I have too few votes to matter or to make a difference even in a quorum count, and if I did vote, it usually is in support of management. (If you're going to vote against management, why do you own stock in the company?) But I voted this time, and for a couple of reasons: (1) Roy Disney's opposition to Eisner made sense, and I thought they deserved my support, but more importantly, (2) Eisner "fired" the ESPN columnist Tuesday Morning Quarterback without explanation (or, in my opinion, justification), and my emails to ESPN and Disney - clearly marked as coming from a stockholder - asking for an explanation went unanswered. Not even a "Thanks for your comments" reply. Not appropriate behavior for a company that lives on customer satisfaction.

TV and stuff.

When I'm not out driving for hours and hours on I-95, I occasionally watch some TV. I caught "Dream Job" on ESPN Sunday night, and thought it was fun. A "reality show" of sorts, it's a weekly, live job interview, with the grand prize being a one-year contract as an ESPN anchor. And the competitions that the contestants take part in are legitimate and job-related - this week, they put together and announced their own "Top Ten" lists from that day's sporting events and took part in a "Fact or Fiction" segment, debating either side of some dubious sports proposition (e.g., "The Eagles will be in next year's Super Bowl"). Interesting show, with a real-life payoff (unlike, say, The Donald's show "The Apprentice"), and at least some of the contestants could be decent anchors. I'd be willing to watch this show in later weeks - except that "Crossing Jordan" returns this week and is also on Sunday evenings at 10 pm, and if the choice is between watching Tony Kornheiser (one of the judges on "Dream Job") and Jill Hennessy, well, it's not that much of a choice.

I've been enjoying "Keen Eddie" on Bravo. A fish-out-of-water detective story, with a New York City detective sent to London to catch drug smugglers he allowed to go free in a botched drug bust. Madcap antics ensue. Well written, pretty funny. Naturally, the 13 episodes that Bravo has will be all there will ever be - this was originally a Fox show, and the Fox suits burned off half the episodes as a summer filler and decided to can the rest because they didn't want another cop show, or something. So the principals from this show have gone on to other things. It's still fun to watch, for as long as it's on.

I've also been going through some of my many, many boxes of books, and came across the C.S. Lewis "space trilogy" of Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. So I thought I'd give them another shot - I've never been able to force my way through all three books, even though I've tried on maybe 4 previous occasions, the last being perhaps 25 years ago. And my experience this time is no different than those other times: Enjoyed the first book well enough, and am slogging through the second, although with substantially less enjoyment. If experience holds, I'll finish the second, start the third, and lose all interest.

More on DirecTV.

You've doubtless seen those stupid ads for DirecTV - where a celebrity reads glowing letters supposedly sent by "real" subscribers, and we are intended to be impressed. Well, the celebrity doesn't so much "read" the letter as overemote over it. ("Jumpin' Jehosephat Yeehaw!" as Laurence Fishburne says. Yeesh.) And recently they've even gotten a real actor - Robert Duvall - to take part in the campaign. And I'm sure that the letters were written by real subscribers - real subscribers who work in DirecTV's marketing department, or are relatives or friends of such. Utterly unconvincing ads, and a waste of their money. But I suppose it's their money to waste.

It was a DirecTV service truck that I saw in Orlando last week that seemed to me to be the stereotype of DirecTV and its policies. I was on I-4, where the road was 5 lanes wide on my side. A small DirecTV service vehicle was in the next-to-left late with its left turn signal blinking. And with no one anywhere near in the left lane, he stayed in his lane, his left blinker flashing away merrily. Nothing new for Florida drivers, of course. After following him for a mile or two, I needed to get around him, and found that from the front, his left turn signal wasn't blinking. Not because he'd turned it off, of course; because he'd had an accident that had crumpled the left front quarter of his car. And the entire left side of his car, although that might have been from a different accident. And there he was, happily driving along at Interstate speeds in rain that alternated between drizzle and downpour, with a soda in one hand and a cell phone pressed to his ear in the other. (And how was he controlling the wheel? I decided I needed to put some distance and a couple of lanes between us before I found out to my dismay.) Why would DirecTV want Danny DeVito to represent them when they have this guy?

Hand-eye coordination test.

Cute little hand-eye coordination test. Or, as my results show, an "And-High" coordination test. Perhaps I need glasses. Oh, wait....

Not only the Wizards lose at Wizards games.

Haven't you always wanted this to happen? A guy proposes on the floor at halftime of an NBA game, the center of attention, and the woman says "No" and flees.

Or, I suppose, the fact that she'd just won tickets to a future Wizards game finally sank in.

I'm ba-a-a-ack.

I was off to Florida for a week. Forgot to take my Blogger password with me (sigh). But now, I've returned.

850 miles on the Interstate is a long, dull drive. Well, except for when other drivers make it exciting, for microseconds at a time. (Nothing came of those incidents, thankfully.) A little too long to make all in one stretch, so it turns into two days of tedium. Thank heavens for books-on-CD: three of them (about 25 discs worth) covered the trip almost exactly. I wish the Hercule Poirot story had been a bit more interesting, though, and about half as long.

The cat is a fairly good traveler, all things considered. Other than the every-second-and-a-half inquiries of "Are we almost there?" for the first 100 miles, she slept most of the way, often in my lap. And she never made a break for the door when I got opened it. Once we got to my parents' place, she recognized where we were and remembered where her "safe places" were, and it took only about two days to re-establish the truce with the resident cats.

On the trip back, I had to marvel at how the highway engineers were able to add an additional 200 miles of Interstate highway to my route in South Carolina in the space of less than a week, and with no signs of construction or obvious detours.

Hearts on the Vine International Wine Festival.

Interesting wine festival here in Richmond last weekend. Described as 150 wineries and 325 wines, from all over the world. A lot of California wineries - many were small Napa and Sonoma producers - but the Pacific northwest was represented, as were international producers: from France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand. It was a fund raiser for the American Heart Association, so it was a bit on the expensive side, but the majority of the wines you could taste were very good.

A couple of disappointments - there were some wineries that were present, but only barely. Cakebread Cellars was there, but represented only by their chardonnay, when I'd have loved to have seen some of their cabs. Kim Crawford wines were represented only by their unoaked chardonnay, which I certainly enjoy but I'd have expected to see at least their pinot noir and sauvignon blanc, as well.

My favorites: Barboursville's viognier, Smoking Loon's viognier, and Arrowwood's syrah.

The event was a lot of fun, and I hope that it was sufficiently successful that they'll do it again next year.

A better independent choice.

If you don't want to support either of the major parties' candidate for president, that's certainly your choice. But there's a much better option available than Nader.

Opinions are like noses; everybody has one.

Somehow, I got onto the NBC "opinion panel," which means they'll send me emails asking me to take a survey about something or another. I don't remember signing up for it, but it's the sort of thing I'd be willing to do, so it's probably just that it's been more than 3 or 4 months and I've forgotten about agreeing to do it.

So this morning, I receive the first survey, and it has to do with variety shows, mostly of the late-night type. How frequently have I seen Letterman's show, or Leno's, or Kilbourn's. What do I think of these potential qualities that a good host of a late-night show would have: friendly, warm, funny, sarcastic, multi-talented, former professional athlete, opinionated, short-tempered. (Short-tempered? Absolutely. I would surely watch Leno more often if only he were short-tempered.) Am I familiar with and what do I think of certain celebrities: Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart, Dennis Miller, Bob Costas, John McEnroe. And for that same list, how would I rate them as possible hosts of a late-night show: stupendous, wonderful, good, fair or poor?

That's when the survey turned ugly, because the survey really was about McEnroe. "We notice that you rated McEnroe fair/poor. Please tell us why." Because you didn't have a rating of "sucks dead skunks," so "poor" was as low as I could rate him. Because he's an obnoxious, whiny, crybaby jerk. Because I would actively boycott any advertiser who purchased commercial time on his show. And then the survey went on for another 4 or 5 screens of questions specifically about McEnroe: a 5-point scale on level of agreement - extremely agree to extremely disagree - on whether certain terms describe McEnroe well (e.g., funny, friendly, sarcastic, short-tempered, juvenile, gracious); a yes-no list of whether you recall McEnroe in certain roles (substitute host for Letterman, married to Tatum O'Neal, commentator for tennis matches, host for Saturday Night Live, and my favorite, professional tennis player a long time ago - sadly, they didn't ask about his stint as host of the reality/S&M TV show, "The Chair"); how often you'd watch a talk show for which McEnroe was the host (frequently, sometimes depending on what else was on, never).

If it were up to me, McEnroe would never get a TV show. And if he does? Well, that's why they invented cable - to have choices when crummy shows are on. And there are always books.

Can Every Flavour Beans be that far away?

In Great Britain, the makers of KitKat bars are considering new flavors. Among them: Curry-flavored KitKat bars. Okay, strictly speaking, "cumin and masala flavour," but you know what I mean. And they're thinking of lemon cheescake KitKats (currently for sale in Germany and Japan, possibly as a punishment for losing WW II), liquorice, saffron, and passion fruit flavors. The theory behind the exotic flavors is that the trend towards healthier lifestyles is causing people to eat fewer chocolate bars.

Elsewhere in Great Britain, other companies are selling chocolate flavored bottled water and egg-and-bacon-flavored ice cream.

Ah, fine British cuisine.

Welcoming the telegraph to the 21st Century.

For the first time in "at least several decades," a new symbol has been added to Morse Code. It's the "@" symbol, to be officially known as a "commat" and represented by the signals for "A" and "C" (dot-dash and dash-dot-dash-dot respectively) with no space between them.

And it's being done to allow ham radio operators to exchange email addresses more easily. (They use Morse Code to initiate conversations that end up taking place over the Internet.)

Back in my Boy Scout days, I knew Morse Code reasonably well, and even took part in a competition by wig-wag flags. And I'm happy to say that I've forgotten virtually all of that stuff.

Choreographed photo ops as a substitute for leadership.

Interesting column documenting the Bush campaign's penchant for providing resonant backdrops to campaign appearances, including (among others) repositioning a Coast Guard cutter that had drifted out of position and gathering thousands of soldiers and ordering them to cheer his arrival, instead of the traditional standing-at-attention during the playing of "Hail to the Chief." Of course, it was merely a coincidence that the planning for the trip to Ft. Polk to be photographed in front of the cheering soldiers started only a week earlier, after the latest flap over Bush's failure to show for his National Guard service started to heat up. And the White House press secretary is shocked! shocked! that anyone might think otherwise.

I'm John. I read.

Hi, John.

I read. A lot. I am compelled to read. Newspapers, magazines, books, web pages, backs of cereal boxes. I read 'em all. Can't go to sleep at night without reading at least a half-hour. Gotta read.

So it's no surprise that while I was making dinner last night, and waiting for things to bake or boil or something, I found myself reading a bag of Pepperidge Farm Herb Seasoned Stuffing. The ingredients list, to be precise, as I was wondering what they thought constituted "herbs" and "seasoning" justifying the product name (as opposed to, for example, "Bag o' Bread Crumbs"). All sorts of bread ingredients, of course, and corn syrup and salt. Then you get to the magic line of delineation, "Contains 2% or less of:" More bread/grain ingredients, "spices," molasses and honey, nonfat milk and cultured buttermilk, and nothing I'd call "herbs" other than parsley. Vinegar. Onion powder. But the oddest mystery ingredient was - "raisin juice concentrate."

Raisin juice concentrate? What a concept! They crush raisins to free whatever miniscule moisture is present, and then reduce that to a more concentrated form? I bet it's expensive. And I bet you could make a great dessert wine from it.

Alas, no. "Raisin juice" is what you get when you soak raisins in water, and the resulting liquid is what gets concentrated. And it's used in bakery products as a natural preservative and mold retardant, and a natural coloring agent.

Talk about a little change in his diet ...

French doctors were surprised to find the reason for their patient's sore, swollen stomach - he had swallowed 350 coins and assorted necklaces and needles. That's about 12 pounds worth of coins, enough to force his stomach down between his hips, and they were swallowed over the space of a decade. Surgery was performed to remove the badly damaged stomach and its contents, but the patient died from complications 12 days later.

Making a deposit at the bank.

Paula, a participant in a wedding ceremony in rural northern Germany, apparently got bored and left the ceremony to go to a nearby bank. Wandered around, didn't make either a deposit or a withdrawal, and left, presumably to go back to the wedding, where she was due to be milked. Yes, Paula's a cow, and not in an insulting way. Here are the security camera photos. Perhaps if they'd offered her a toaster, she'd have stayed.

"We're going to Disney World!"

I'm of mixed feelings about the report that Disney is buying the Muppets from the Henson family. Certainly, I'm happy for the Henson family that they're getting a big payday out of the deal. But I don't see that the Disney suits will allow the Muppets to have the wonderfully cranky, individual character that they presently have. I foresee Gonzo, Animal, Statler & Waldorf, and all the others being dumbed down and cuted up to fit the Disney mold, and that will be a loss.

Just in time for Valentine's Day.

Official imaginary girlfriends. What won't they think of next? For some amount of money - say, $40 for two months - a girl (or someone pretending to be a girl - and hey! what does it matter to you?) will send you perfume-scented letters, photos, and even articles of clothing. And when your paid-for time is up, you can break up with her for whatever baseless reason you want, and she'll write you one more letter, begging you to take her back.

And yeah, technically it's too late for Valentine's Day - but I'm willing to be she won't mind a bit.

There's a time and a place for big, romantic gestures.

So there I was late this afternoon, schmoozing in one of the local wine shops that I frequent on Saturdays when they're tasting new and interesting wines. A customer walks in and wants a specific champagne in a half-bottle. It being 4:30 on Valentine's Day and all, the shop's champagne selection was wearing a bit thin, and they not only didn't have the precise label the guy wanted in a 375-ml bottle, they actually had only one half-bottle of champagne remaining. (They did still have a pretty good selection of regular size bottles, though.) After whining about it at length, he decided that the half-bottle they had was too expensive (and while it was certainly expensive for my tastes - as it was $55 - it probably wasn't grossly overpriced, as the 750-ml bottle of the same champagne was $79), and ended up not getting anything.

Come on, guy: it's Valentine's Day. Splurge and buy a whole bottle of something. There can't be many good reasons for having only a half-bottle of champagne when you could have a whole bottle instead.

And a very happy Valentine's Day to you, as well.

That's "MISTER Observant" to you.

This afternoon while I was out doing errands, I decided to wander by my polling place to see if there were a line of voters or people from another campaign, and if so, I'd stop and get out my Kerry sign and greet voters as they arrived. And to no great surprise, neither was the case.

Turning out of the school driveway, though, I noticed an official "state polling place HERE" sign by the driveway to a church across the street - and sure enough, another precinct had its polls right across from my precinct's polls. What are the odds that two precincts would have their polling places on the edge of their districts, and that they'd be across the street? High enough, apparently.

But this surely isn't the first time the other precinct has voted there, which means that not only did I fail to notice that polling location this morning, but I've missed it the other two times I've voted at my precinct.

I guess there's a reason why I'm not a detective.

Sleeping on the job.

Note to the cutting-edge manager: an afternoon nap at work can improve workers' alertness and productivity, at least in New Zealand.

Now if I could only find a manager who'd agree that a beer or two in the afternoon enhances my creativity, I'd be set.

Valentine cards for the bitter.

Or, more accurately, Anti-Valentine cards. Perhaps my favorite - and there are many in the running - is the Lord of the Rings-based one.

Vote early, vote often.

It's Primary Day in Virginia.

I went out to work the polling place for my precinct. When I went to Kerry headquarters yesterday to volunteer to work a polling place - any polling place, wherever they needed me - they were happy to let me work the precinct where I vote, and gave me a sign on a four-foot stick to hold, but were otherwise a little disorganized. No assignment of a particular shift to be there, no additional signs to put along the driveway to the polling place.

I showed up at my polling place - the neighborhood elementary school - around 6:40 this morning, the polls having opened at 6:00. The only signs I saw posted were a couple for Dean, and there was no one from any of the campaigns greeting voters. It turns out I was the first person to vote at the precinct today, and the election officials did everything but hug me. They insisted on showing me how to vote a butterfly ballot, and on pointing out each step (here's where you show your driver's license, there's where you actually vote, there's where you put the ballot into the machine). Very helpful, I suppose, and exactly the same procedure as the last two times I voted there.

After I finished voting -and it didn't take all that long, as there was only the one race on the ballot and I couldn't write my own name in - I went to the car and got the Kerry sign, and returned to the electioneering area through which all voters must pass (and which is marked off with the invisible dog collar line beyond which I could not legally carry my sign) and waited for people to show up.

And I was prepared to wait quite a while. I live in a very conservative, very Republican precinct. Which pretty much explains why the first vote cast in the Democratic primary didn't occur until 40 minutes after the polls opened. I also understand that my presence was unlikely to sway any votes - when there's only one race on the ballot, I'd expect that anyone who showed up to vote had already made up his mind. But I figured I was there to show the colors, to lend support to any Kerry voter, to assist them in running the unfriendly gauntlet of, well, this empty elementary school parking lot.

After a couple of minutes, someone showed. Three or four minutes later, another voter arrived. Five minutes later, someone else. "Good morning!" I'd chirp. "How are you doing today?" as I show them the sign. "Fine," was the usual response, "how are you?" "Chilly!" which usually got a chuckle. And two minutes later, after they'd voted, we'd have a short conversation about how nice it was to not have to wait in line to vote. Perhaps one person in three volunteered that they'd voted for Kerry - and no one volunteered that they'd voted for anyone else.

Around 7:00, an SUV pulled up, and a kid with an enormous backpack got out, and went into the school. Car drives off. Five minutes later, another SUV, another kid dropped off. Five minutes later, another one, and another one five minutes after that. And during that fifteen-minute period? No one voted.

The trickle of SUVs disgorging children with huge backpacks became a torrent of them, and a line of 25 SUVs appeared, waiting to drop off their kids. By the time school started at 8:00, probably 200 vehicles - mostly giant, gas-guzzling SUVs, although there were a couple of Jeeps, a few minivans, and a couple of real cars as well - had dropped children off at this entrance. Maybe another 10 to 20 vehicles went to the teachers' parking lot, close to this entrance, and the parent accompanied the child to the school. Out of all those parents who brought their children to school, only three then went in to vote. I suppose a good argument could be made that someone driving a Ford Expedition or a Toyota Land Cruiser isn't likely to want to vote in a Democratic primary.

When the school day started, I once again became the only person standing outside in the cold. Here's a person, there's another, five minutes later one more arrives. It's telling, I think, that in the time I was there this morning - during the "morning rush" - there was only one time when there were as many as four voters inside the polling place at the same time. And as they had four booths to vote in, there could never have been a line.

By 9:00, a grand total of 59 people had voted, the time between voters had lengthened back to about 10 minutes, and my fingers were the same shade of blue as my shirt. So I went home to warm up, and I'll probably return for the afternoon rush (5:00 to 6:00).

And tonight? I'll watch election results at the state headquarters.

Thinking far too much about the Death Star's trash compactor.

A fairly in-depth analysis of the implausible nature of the Death Star's trash compactor and of some of its engineering shortcomings.

What sort of costume do you suppose the author wears to sci-fi conventions?

Wine Brats act bratty.

It appears that the Seattle branch of the Wine Brats is closing up shop, and all because they decided not to follow state law regarding the import of out-of-state wines. They were having donated wine sent from California, and when they discovered that they'd have to register an in-state address with the Washington state liquor authorities, they decided none of the 2000 members of the Seattle branch could be bothered.

For what it's worth, other Seattle wine groups think that the permit and license processes are user-friendly.

I can't say that I'm surprised that the Wine Brats have such a casual attitude towards alcoholic beverage control laws; it seems to fit in with their Gen-X philosophy to promote wine tastings and parties. Not that they do that especially well either, in my experience: When I was in Durham, I went to a couple of Wine Brats events in Raleigh, and they were nothing more than thinly-disguised singles events, with no one present who was even mildly knowledgeable about the wines being tasted.

Where's Bill Haley when you need him?

Looks like this spring might be a good time for comet watchers: the possibility exists that two recently discovered comets will be visible to the unaided eye at the same time, around April and May. Of course, they could also both turn out to be Comet Kohoutek.

Virginia primary.

Not that it's especially news to anyone, but there's a primary in Virginia on Tuesday. And with the change in the primary's date - from April or May, long after almost every nomination race has been decided in recent memory - this year's primary may actually mean something. Primaries are relatively new to Virginia: although there was one in 1988, the results were odd enough - Pat Robertson won on the Republican side and Jesse Jackson won on the Democratic side - that the state went back to caucuses. The next primary was in 2000, won by Bush.

We've been getting plenty of TV ads for Clark (his ads started between Christmas and New Year's), Edwards and Kerry. They're mostly "here's the candidate" ads, telling of the candidate's path to the candidacy and touching on issues without really addressing them, and don't mention their Democratic opponents either directly or indirectly.

Saturday night was the annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, a fundraiser for the state Democratic party, and the leading candidates showed up to make their cases: Kerry, Edwards, and Clark. For comic relief, Sharpton was there, too. Dean was scheduled to attend, but blew the event off just as his candidacy is being blown off by the voters.

Before the J-J Dinner, each candidate had a rally. I went to the Kerry rally, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Sure, it was his stump campaign speech which I'd already seen a half-dozen times on CNN, but it's energizing to see it in person. And to be close to the candidate: I was within 10 feet of him, as close as I've been to a politician of national scope since I saw President Carter at the National Air & Space Museum back around 1978. (It occurred to me that this will be one of the last times for a while that one will be able to get to be close to Kerry without running Secret Service protection - I'd guess he'll have their protection by the end of the month.) Kerry actually had to vary his speech a bit - near the end of it, someone in the crowd had some medical problem (chest pains, I think), so he cut his speech off fairly abruptly and implored the crowd to make way for medical personnel to approach (and then to go vote for him). Luckily, there was a fair-sized cadre of firemen with paramedic training at the rally, so the affected person got attention pretty quickly.

Although they urged people to stick around and listen to Kerry give another speech in an hour or so, I decided to take off. On my way back to the car, I saw a surprisingly quiet knot of people with a mixture of signs for different candidates on the corner beside the building where the J-J Dinner was to take place. As I got closer, I realized that Gen. Clark was speaking, so I stopped to listen to him. Nice enough guy, I suppose, but his speech wasn't compelling or especially polished - he repeated a couple of his personal factoids (his mother was a secretary, he was career military) three times in eight minutes, at least two times more than was necessary - and he seemed tired, like he knew he wasn't going to be doing this much longer. And about the time that he started to repeat himself yet again, I decided to wander off to get a beer.

Another reason to watch Letterman.

Monday night's David Letterman show will include a performance by the Beatles. One of their songs - I Want to Hold Your Hand - from their original performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, forty years earlier to the day and in that same theater.

Bob Knight? In trouble again? O, say it isn't so!

And speaking of things that cause me to be shocked, shocked! Bob Knight is at it yet again. Knight has been suspended for five days because of a loud public confrontation with the Texas Tech University chancellor. Witnesses report that the chancellor approached Knight to compliment him on his recent good behavior. Naturally, Knight flew into a rage and called the chancellor a liar. I guess Knight learned something from listening to Saddam Hussein.

Knight's knee-jerk reaction was to quit. Sadly, someone gave the jerk his knee back, and he's decided to stay for the rest of the season.

I'm sure that Texas Tech is delighted with its decision to hire Knight. They sure can't claim that his actions come as a surprise to them.

Update: Well, it looks like he won't be suspended after all. He'll just get a letter, possibly not even called a letter of reprimand. I bet it won't be all that long before he attacks another secretary or student, though.

Ah, technology.

TiVo has announced that Janet Jackson's little striptease during the halftime show at the Super Bowl is the most replayed moment in TiVo's history.

I'm not sure which is more frightening: that people did repeated instant replays of the incident, or that TiVo's monitoring system can tell that precisely what you're watching.

Equine flatulence: the soul of wit.

I thought it was a pretty crummy collection of ads televised during this year's Super Bowl. Personally, I thought that matched the quality of play in this year's Super Bowl, too; a minority opinion, I know. Sure, the game was exciting - it just wasn't good.

I thought all of Budweiser's ads were utterly pointless and unfunny, and none of them would cause me to want to buy Bud. A crotch-biting dog; yes, I want to support that concept. Cedric the Self-Styled Entertainer getting a bikini wax; I suppose I'd be willing to buy a Bud if they'd promise (a) he'd really be given a bikini wax and (b) they'd never use him in a commercial again. And horse farts? Well, I view that as Budweiser's contribution to Truth in Advertising, as that particular image is one that I associate very closely with the taste of Budweiser.

Also pointless and stupid were the ads for AOL. Their message seemed to be "If you're stupid enough to think we can super-accelerate your motorcycle, then we're the internet service provider for you!" No wonder they're having problems. Well, this'll give Ted Leonsis something to work on while he can't mess up his hockey team.

I'm not sure why anyone would think that Mike Ditka is a good spokesman for erectile dysfunction. He strikes me as a fine choice for the "Before" photo, though.

I thought the car ads were pretty stupid, with the exception of the Chevy truck ad with all the kids with soap in their mouths, which was kind of cute (although again, the ad caused no interest on my part to buy a Chevy truck, even a bright yellow convertible one).

I enjoyed the Pepsi Jimi Hendrix ad, for the music if nothing else. Did it cause me to want to go out and buy Pepsi? Well, no.

I liked the concept of the Willie Nelson advice-giving doll, and thought it was a great match for H & R Block. But enough to go there for tax advice? Again, no.

And I sort of enjoyed the NFL Network ad with players singing Tomorrow and "Jerry Jones" turning cartwheels. Of course, it was also an irrelevant ad to me, as my cable system doesn't offer the network (nor would I pay extra to receive it).

All in all, no classic ads, and none that were especially clever. Nothing to rival Apple's 1984 ad.

I'm sure it's all just a coincidence.

For anyone left to be shocked, shocked! by Janet Jackson's PR machine, a single from Jackson's new album was released to radio stations yesterday. Which proves the old PR adage: any exposure -- make that "press coverage" -- is good press coverage.

Economic analysis applied to football decisions.

And no, I don't mean the age-old question that owners ask themselves, "How much should I raise the price of a ticket this year?" This is the analysis of the value of going for it on fourth down vs. kicking the ball, done by a UC Berkeley economist, where the conclusions reached suggest that teams should be less conservative in their decisions and ought to go for it more often. For instance, where you're on the opponent's 7 yard line, and you have fourth-and-two, going for it yields an average value of about 4 and a third points while kicking the field goal yields a value of almost 3 points (from that distance, it's almost automatic). One of the factors not often considered in this situation is that if you don't make the first down, the opponents get the ball at around their 7 yard line, while if you kick the field goal, after the kickoff, they'll get the ball somewhere around their 25 or 27 yard line - and that difference in field position is valuable to you, too.

Another conclusion is that on short-yardage fourth downs, from almost anywhere on the field, you're better off by going for it than by kicking. The Patriots' coach, Bill Belichick, read the paper last year, and must have remembered it in the conference championship game two weeks ago: at fourth-and-one on their own 44 yard line, on the first possession of the game, they went for it, to the surprise of the commentators in the TV booth. And, of course, they went on to win the game. I'm willing to be that the Panthers' coach has made a point of studying this paper during the past two weeks, too.

Columbia's final minutes.

An excerpt from the book "Comm Check ... The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia" details the final minutes of the Columbia's flight. A lot more detail than I've read anywhere else, including an explanation of how the chunk of foam slowed down 550 mph in two-tenths of a second before its collision with the shuttle's wing. This definitely looks like a book I'll want to read in its entirety.

No, I wasn't in California last weekend.

Sacrilege. A $20,000 170-pound bronze statue of Yoda was stolen off of the flatbed truck it was bolted to. And, not surprisingly, at that price it's described as being "limited edition."

Take the lions and give the points.

This is described as being Pepsi's Super Bowl ad, leaked to the web in advance. Perhaps, I guess, although (a) it's a full three minutes long, not easily broken into one-minute segments, and that's awfully expensive airtime although Pepsi can certainly afford it, and (b) I'd guess it was "leaked to the web" by Pepsi, in order to build buzz for the ad.

Not exactly leaked in secret, though, as the ad had its release party Monday night at the National Museum in Trafalgar Square, with the "stars" (Britney, Beyonce, and Pink) present and accepting accolades. The ad is called "New Gladiator" and is "expected to play in international markets", whatever that means. Perhaps we'll get to see it during the commercials that play in theaters before movies.

And Queen has nothing to fear.

Telemarketers and Caller ID.

FTC regulations which are part of the national do-not-call registry take effect today, and require telemarketers to identify themselves on Caller ID. Telemarketers can no longer block their identification, and their calls must display either the name of the company whose goods or services are being sold or the name of the company making the call. The display must also show a phone number that consumers can call during business hours to request that the company no longer call them.

These regulations didn't take effect when the do-not-call registry came into being last fall, in order to give telemarketers time to get the technology needed to display the names and numbers.

The telemarketing industry supports the Caller ID requirement, claiming that it would "improve trust" among customers, and - not surprisingly - opposes the do-not-call registry. Of course, since the registry now contains over 56 million telephone numbers, it would appear that consumers have voted with their feet, prefering to avoid telemarketers instead of trusting them.

Ever so much more humane than Penguin Baseball.

However, the whole concept of "haggis = creature" takes some getting used to. But a fun way to waste some time.

You will thank your third-grade teacher.

Wonderful article in the NY Times on a great opportunity provided through eBay: buying items that are misspelled and reselling them for a profit. A correctly spelled item will attract substantially more potential buyers, and thus is more likely to sell for its fair market value - one guy was mentioned who bought a box of "gers" for pocket watches for $2, and he sold them (as "gears") for $200.

A blast from the past.

"If you care about this country at all, you better go listen to that John Kerry fellow."

Ah, that was a week of classic Doonesbury comics: the day before (Oct. 20) had one of the most memorable football-huddle strips, and the Sunday of that week (Oct. 17) was perhaps my all-time favorite Doonesbury - I cut it out and still have it around, somewhere.

If only Doonesbury were still that funny ....

When is cat food more than cat food?

When it's official Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul brand cat food. Yes, the stupid series of mindless self-help books has now licensed out its name for a line of cat food.

On the other hand, a look at a partial list of ingredients would lead you to think that a cat eating this cat food would eat better than I do: "Chicken, salmon, chicken liver, turkey, duck, chicken broth, whole grain brown rice, whole grain white rice, oatmeal, potatoes, barley, egg product, flaxseed, kelp, carrots, peas, apples, dried skim milk, cranberry powder, rosemary extract, parsley flake, dried chicory root, ..." Turkey and cranberries. Duck. Chicory root. Salmon. Almost worth giving it a try, except for its connection to that stupid series of books.

Ol' Bleary Eyes.

Bloodshot? No, no; not at all. These are my festive holiday eyes, decked out to look like peppermint candies.

One might think that, after having read books for mumblety-mumble years, I'd have learned not to read thrillers just before going to sleep. One would be wrong, however. I've been reading Frederick Forsyth's Avenger lately, and was about halfway through it. (It's pretty good, by the way, and is set in the present day - well, the pre-September 11 present day - instead of having the usual WW II or '60's Cold War settings that a lot of spy-ish thrillers have. With secret agents, murder-for-hire of the unexpecting innocent, and vile criminals getting their just rewards from vigilantes, not from the justice system: good stuff, and exciting.) So I went to bed and picked up the book, intending to read a chapter or two before nodding off. Unfortunately for me, it was sufficiently enticing that I kept saying to myself "Oh, look! The next chapter's really short, so I'll read just that one more and then put the book down." And just one more, and just one more, and eventually it was 3:30 a.m. and I'd finished the book.

Great! Time to turn the light out, and drift peacefully to sleep, listening to the familiar and comforting sounds of an otherwise empty 50-year-old house: the pops and creaks and clangs of the furnace going on and off and the heating pipes expanding and contracting; the BOP-Bop-bop-bopbopbop-roll-l-l-l of an acorn on the roof; the rustle of leaves outside my window, due to the wind or a (hopefully) small animal; the tap-tap-tap of, I guess, a branch against a window; the motion-detector-light over my driveway repeatedly coming on and illuminating my bedroom blinds; the creaking of floorboards settling, or possibly the basement door opening; the just-at-the-threshhold-of-hearing footfalls on the steps and the bated breathing of the cat in the hallway, unless it's an intruder with a gun with a silencer. And sure enough, sometime around 6:30, I finally got to sleep.

Good thing there's nothing interesting on TV right about now. I think I'll go take a nap.

Return of the King, pt. 6.

Not many people realize that there was a much earlier version of The Lord of the Rings, with Humphrey Bogart as Frodo. (Be patient - it takes a while to load, even with broadband.)

The holiday spirit.

A very happy National Pie Day to you. Make mine cherry, with a lattice crust.

A gimmick a day.

And today's gimmick is the new Diet Coke With Lime. Picked some up a couple of days ago, and tried it today (in lieu of coffee - due to the lack of water). It's actually pretty good: the lime flavor is subtle, unlike the vanilla-flavored Diet Coke. I'll doubtless pick up more of it. Of course, I like the Diet Coke with lemon flavor, too, but will probably get the lime flavored Diet Coke as a substitute to the lemon flavored one, not in addition to it.

Cleanliness is next to impossible.

Especially with no water. Water main break somewhere in the neighborhood, so there's no water pressure. They promise it'll be fixed within a couple of hours. Until then, I'll just have to pretend I'm living through the hurricane again.

Reviews & such.

Last night on my TV, I watched a cartoon character with a squeaky voice and a tendency to mispronounce words. He was clearly lost, over his head, and out to sea, and it seemed to last for two hours. On the other hand, it was fairly entertaining. Yes, I was watching Finding Nemo. (Oh, was that on too?) I thought it was okay, but that's about it. Very good animation, some decent voice acting, but not much of a story. There's no reason why you can't have a good story with an animated movie - see Shrek, for instance.

A better movie I've seen on DVD recently was What's Cooking?, written and directed by Gurinder Chadha (who also did Bend It Like Beckham). A Thanksgiving movie that isn't a depressing farce about dysfunctional families, this looks at the Thanksgiving celebrations of four families and their interlocking stories. Well written, good actors - especially for this director's first movie made in the U.S. - and a good sense of fun. Well worth seeing, and the director's commentary is fun, too.

I've also seen Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which was fine as a mindless action picture, but clearly not up to the quality of the previous Terminator movies. And as a bonus, you get to see California's governor naked, not necessarily a good thing. And the commentary track was one of the worst I've ever heard - separate commentary tracks from the director and the leading actors, edited together. Arnold kept going on and on and on about how he had to get back into shape for his nude arrival scenes.

Among currently-playing movies, I've seen and liked "Something's Gotta Give". Admittedly, I like anything with Diane Keaton in it, and she does a wonderful job. Jack Nicholson does a great job of playing himself, and Frances McDormand excels at playing oddball characters. Great writing gives the actors a lot to work with, and they show themselves capable of handling it. The Hollywood-style happy ending is a bit much, but not unexpected. A good date movie, for those for whom that's not a hypothetical consideration.

On TV, I ended up being somewhat disappointed with Celebrity Poker Showdown. I've seen enough of the "serious" poker shows to realize that I don't enjoy them, so the attraction with this show would be to see the stars off duty. And for my money, only the show made up of folks from The West Wing was worth watching. I've heard that they're going to do a new set of shows; I can only hope that they'll have more interesting participants.

On the brighter side, though, Monk has returned with new shows.

And I don't spend all of my time in front of the tube. I've read Eragon - the fantasy novel by the then-15-year-old home-schooled kid that's been on the NY Times best seller list. It was okay, although not much better than that. It's clear that the book was greatly influenced by Tolkien (elves, dwarves, dragons, swords with names, and intended to be an "epic" trilogy), McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series (dragon riders, how they attach to dragons), and Luke Skywalker (an orphan who comes to terms with his identity as a Hero-in-training, who leaves his homeland in the company of an older mentor and in search of who his parents are). It comes across as a Tolkienesque book, written for the Harry Potter set, and in that particular context, succeeds. All in all, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't especially good, either. I didn't see anything in it that was original, and this particular culling of pieces of other, better fantasies isn't compelling. Still, it was better than some of the truly uninspired Tolkien imitators (like the endless Shannara series), and is a far better novel than I could have written at age 15.

He shall from time to time.

Possibly the only, and certainly the best, reason to watch the State of the Union Address tonight.

Where do cartoon characters go when they retire?

Oregon, apparently. Heh, heh, heh.

You don't understand - we're trying to forget them.

Another "what were they possibly thinking?" site: one dedicated to photographs of airline meals. Well, the meals in first class for many of the airlines look pretty good, not that I'll ever find out.

And I suppose the only possible companion site is this one.

The value of a liberal arts education.

Who else would make a reasonable comparison between Bush's proposal to go to the Moon and Mars and the canal boom of the 1830's which led to a six-year depression?

I'm all for pushing space exploration and exploitation, but I don't see the purpose of setting up a permanent base on the Moon. Compared to a space station in earth orbit or at an L-5 point, the expense of sending material to the Moon in order to build Mars rockets there is staggeringly ridiculous. And equally ridiculous are Bush's estimates of $12 billion to fund the first five years of the Moon-Mars initiative, including new Moon probes and design of the "Crew Exploration Vehicle." If Boeing is going to spend $7.5 billion to design its new 7E7 airliner, which uses well-understood engineering and isn't going into space, how can the design cost of the Crew Exploration Vehicle be about the same?

This Moon-Mars boondoggle has already taken its first victim: the Hubble telescope. Sad to see something producing useful science being thrown away solely for the purpose of trying to make Bush look like a visionary.

And I thought this cartoon was absolutely dead-on.

Presidential conventions. Yawn. Or maybe not.

Fun suggestion that this year's Democratic nomination race might well go all the way to the convention - and then to multiple ballots - before someone becomes the winner. This would be the first time since 1960 that the Democratic nomination wasn't decided until the convention, and since 1952 that a convention went to more than one ballot. Likely? Probably not. But it would make the convention interesting for a change. (So long as it's not exciting, the way the 1968 convention was.)

The article suggests that this year's race has some factors that, combined, make a longer race for the nomination possible: Proportional voting (instead of winner-take-all), so that someone who wins with a 25 percent plurality only gets 25 percent of the state's delegates, instead of all of them, and that second-and third-place candidates will get some delegates out of the state (anyone with at least 15 percent of the vote receives delegates); persistent candidates, so that the leading 5 or 6 candidates may well stay in the race through Super Tuesday (March 2), by which time about half of the delegates will have been chosen and divided up among those five or six; and an odd front-loading of primaries, designed to give a single candidate an aura of inevitability, this year may split enough among the leaders so that no such positive aura is generated. As a result, the leader may reach the convention with less than 40 percent of the delegates, and two or three other candidates each have enough delegates that a deal is possible to come up with the requisite 50 percent - and might lead to your choice of a ticket, either person on top, among Dean, Clark, Gephardt, and Kerry.

And this article notes that once a brokered convention becomes a real possibility, it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because there is no incentive for a fourth-or fifth-place candidate to drop out when he can stay in the race, make it to the convention, and his pool of delegates can become a valuable bargaining chip - and if he drops out any earlier, he'll have nothing of value left.

Here's lookin' at you, kid.

Another cure for extra money in your checking account: football team logo contact lenses. Your choice, prescription or non-prescription. And if you don't want the Oakland Raiders in your eyes, click on the pull-down menu in the upper left corner, and take a gander at some of the other choices: animal eyes, or smiley faces, or a Today show logo.

It makes my eyes hurt just thinking about it.

What state do you think of when you think of a blueberry?

It would seem that now you're supposed to think of New Jersey, which has just declared that the blueberry is the official state fruit.

Yeah, me neither. Maine and Michigan come to mind first, in my estimation.

On the other hand, I have had a blueberry-flavored wine from New Jersey, which is not something I can say about Maine and Michigan wines. A blueberry-flavored sparkling generic white wine, as I recall. And the folks in the tasting room said that it was wonderful for making pancakes: use this wine in the batter and you didn't really need syrup. MMMmmm: New Jersey wine - it's what's for breakfast.

Just right for when you can't stay awake through dinner.

A Seattle restaurant has made that choice simple: a steak crusted with ground coffee - Starbuck's dark espresso blend, to be precise. It's described as being "a bit crunchy." Perhaps the novelty is designed to bring Washingtonians back to eating beef, sales of which are off due to the recent discovery of mad cow disease in a Washington cow. But what I really want to know is: what wine goes well with coffee-flavored steak?

A cheap toupee would look better.

I had thought that nothing could look more stupid than those Packer fans' cheesehead hats. It appears I was mistaken. Eagles fans (or, for that matter, fans of any Philadelphia team) can now wear Philly Cheesesteak Foam Hats in public, should they so choose (or be so inebriated). Really, really stupid looking. They look more like a punishment than something a person would voluntarily wear. Fits the city, I suppose.

The web: A chronicle of our times.

And of almost anything you could possibly think of, and doubtless some things you couldn't. Here's a site dedicated to showing poor building conversions, such as when a national fast-food chain franchise goes under, and the building becomes used as something else. The home page shows a formerly Pizza Hut building, now a "Chinese Hut". But my favorite gets the award for the cheapest conversion possible from the former business.

What's in your wallet?

Yow. According to the Federal Reserve, America's non-residential consumer debt stands at over $ 2 trillion, a doubling of consumer debt in only 10 years. Three-quarters of a trillion is in revolving credit (such as credit cards), and the remainder is non-revolving (such as car loans). Total consumer debt, including mortgages, is just under $9 trillion. To me, that last figure is surprising, but not in the way that the article intends: on average, people's mortgages are only a little over three times as large as their other consumer debt combined. (For example, my mortgage is about 10 times the size of my other consumer debt, most of which is a car loan.) Okay, I know there are people who have paid off their mortgages (although I'd guess those are also folks who don't carry credit card debt), and I know there are lots of people who live in apartments and thus don't have mortgages. But do enough of them carry so much debt to offset the large mortgages? Apparently so: the article says that the average household consumer debt is around $9,000 (or around $13,000, if you're looking only at households that carry a credit card balance).

This is why I don't want to own a successful web-based company.

Go to Amazon.com and search for "old fart". (The search might work today only, though.)

Have a beer.

Or possibly thousands of them. Article in yesterday's Washington Post about the Frederick Brewing Co., and its economic woes. Seems they expanded a bit too much during the microbrewery boom of the 90's, and the changes in beer-drinking fads has caught up to them. They're currently in bankruptcy, and Frederick County, Maryland, is coming after them for over $1 million in unpaid taxes and debts, much of which is for water.

At the height of its popularity, Frederick Brewing went public and built a large brewery. Even though it bought up a number of its smaller competitors, making their brews, and did contract brewing for other labels, it's not selling enough to make its payments. Rather like what happened to one of my favorite microbreweries, Catamount Brewing Company of Vermont, a couple of years ago.

I remember considering buying some stock in the company when it went public, a token 100 shares at $5 a share, just so I could pretend to own a brewery (or, at least, a piece of one). I didn't get around to it, though, and was able to watch without sweating or swearing as the stock price fell through $2, through $1, through 25 cents, was "reverse-split" at 1-10 to bring the price up above $1 to try to avoid de-listing on NASDAQ, and continued to fall to its present level of 1 to 2 cents per share. Probably one of my best investment decisions ever, not buying this stock. Of course, part of that may have been due to the fact that I didn't especially like their beers, with the possible exception of the Snow Goose, a winter beer made by one of the competitors they bought up.

Well, it's the free market at work. If a company makes repeated poor decisions regarding expansion, product lines, or personnel, it's not that surprising that it has trouble staying afloat.

The original Macintosh ad.

It's held up awfully well over twenty years, especially for a TV ad that was aired exactly once as a commercial (although countless additional times as an advertising icon). See it here, in your choice of screen sizes. Shows what a good director (Ridley Scott) and an unlimited budget can do.

And if you want to see an analysis of the advertisement that I'd say easily goes way beyond excessive, check this out. It starts out with the easy comparisons with Metropolis, 1984 and Stalin, and branches out to David and Goliath, the Wizard of Oz, and the Garden of Eden. Entertaining.

A prediction made out of sorrow.

I predict that, if Philadelphia wins next week and goes to the Super Bowl, you will see this on a sign, certainly once and probably many times, to (and beyond) the point of annoyance:

"Houston, The Eagles have landed."

Holy Toledo.

I think we're onto something here: Ohio really does have the strangest criminals. Today: a man in drag leads police in a chase that ends outside police headquarters at shift change. And instead of getting a summons for a court appearance, he ended up in jail. And from his booking photo, I'm guessing that it would take more than the dress, high heels, and a wig to make him into an attractive woman.

Giving credits where credits are due.

Article in the NY Times about closing credits in movies, finally noting how long many movies' credits have become. The credits for The Return of the King lasted 9 minutes and 33 seconds, for instance, and included credits for the compositing inferno artist, the horse makeup artist, and the two guys in charge of chain mail.

Yes, I understand that sometimes - especially in independent movies - a lot of folks work for free, and the screen credit is the only compensation they receive. And sometimes the screen credit is part of the compensation package, say for travel agencies or caterers, and the free advertising allows the producers to pay less for those services. And many of the screen credits are required by the various Hollywood unions. But still: screen credits have gotten to be so long and tedious that it's become much less fun to watch them. When the number of names in special effects movies goes from 143 in the original Star Wars in 1997 to 701 in the last installment of The Matrix, it's pretty clear that too many people are getting listed in the credits, and as a result, filmgoers aren't watching the credits - which rather nullifies the purpose of having those credits in the first place.

I happily admit that I'm a credits watcher. You can often learn something interesting and fun from the credits, such as an unexpected location used in the movie (in True Lies, the car chase supposedly taking place on the highway in the Florida Keys actually takes place on a bridge between Jamestown and Newport, RI - and was something I recognized during the movie), an unexpected actor in the movie (e.g, John Rhys-Davies as Gimli), or unexpected job titles ("insect wrangler"). And sometimes they'll have scenes continuing through and after the credits (Young Sherlock Holmes and Ferris Bueller's Day Off) or outtakes from the movie, to provide entertainment while the credits are rolling. And sometimes it's just the credits themselves, as in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. But this latest trend towards insanely long end credit sequences with no redeeming entertainment has made me start to reconsider my credit-watching.

And next, Britney as Laura Bush.

Perhaps it's too much to ask to cast actors who look like the people they're portraying in biographical movies. George C. Scott didn't look all that much like Patton, Anthony Hopkins didn't look all that much like Nixon, and I imagine that if anyone had seen it, James Brolin didn't look all that much like Reagan. But it really strikes me as pushing the envelope to have Tom Selleck portray Eisenhower, especially when he isn't going to do all that much to look like Ike, in the upcoming two-hour movie for A&E "Ike: Thunder in June". Apparently he'll shave his mustache, but won't wear any appliances. (Shaving his head? He won't say.) At least the producers are consistent: they're filming the movie in New Zealand, which doesn't look all that much like Normandy, either.

Too much time on his hands - the geek version.

Someone's website has collected computer programs which print out the lyrics to 99 Bottles of Beer. He's gotten programs in 598 different computer languages, from A+ to ZZT. The languages that I recognize - Fortran, Cobol, Basic, and a few others - look correct.

Still, I think that the best versions of the song are on the "History" page, with the Mathematician's version ("Aleph-Null bottles of beer on the wall") and the Zen version ("No bottles of beer on the wall").

Ohio gets all the cool criminals.

First, the lunatic woman who got caught breastfeeding while driving on the turnpike at 65 mph while talking on her cell phone and taking notes on a scrap of paper on the steering wheel, and now a man wearing a chicken suit robs a grocery store. The police hopefully point out that the robber must own or have access to a chicken suit, so if you know someone, please turn him in.

Maybe it was the Minnesota Vikings.

Archaeologists in Scotland were delighted when they discovered stone blocks under a garden, rocks that appeared to be the first Viking settlement ever found in mainland Scotland. Alas, it turned out to be a sunken patio, built in the 1940's and filled in after WW II so the owners could plant a vegetable garden. Oops.

Charlie Hustler.

It's not all that often that I agree with George Will, even when he's writing about non-political issues. And usually, his baseball columns bore me to tears. But he's got a good column today on Pete Rose's latest attempt to worm his way into the Hall of Fame. Will correctly points out that Rose's pretense of repentence isn't credible and shouldn't be rewarded with eligibility for the Hall, especially so long as the Hall's criteria for membership include the player's integrity and character. As for me, I don't believe Rose's claims that he didn't take full advantage of inside knowledge while he was betting and managing at the same time - he's cheerfully lied to us for the past 14 years, why would anyone think he's stopped?

A panda walks into a cafe.

Nice little story in the NY Times books section about a surprising book on the British best seller lists: a book on punctuation. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation turned out to be very successful, possibly because it was a novelty gift for the intellectual set, and possibly because of the cover illustration of a panda painting over the comma in the title. The author is somewhat of a punctuation stickler, and has even written articles about apostrophe abuse. The book has now been sold to an American publisher, and will be published here in the spring.

It's all about the money.

I'm not sure what the "C" in BCS stands for. Near as I can tell, it should be silent. Sally Jenkin's column on the "championship" played last night is fascinating: it shows the lie behind the BCS and why the schools behind the BCS scheme are opposed to any actual reform - they'd have to give up the BCS money.

The BCS presidents would tell you that a playoff would erode their academic standards, not that the terms "BCS football players" and "scholarship" often appear in the same sentence without some sort of negative qualifier. A playoff would cause graduation rates to go down - think of the disaster that would cause at Oklahoma, where NCAA statistics show that a whopping 6 percent of its players graduate. And I wonder what playing in this year's I-AA championship game will do to the graduation rates at Delaware and Colgate. Not much, I'd imagine.