Go For the Hoax, Redoax

Newest Hoax: That "updating" my template per the new Blogger would help the awful HTMLriffic posting I have to do myself now, part of the reason I blog so seldom lately. And....it didn't work. New blogs ahead, I promise again, but I still mean it and things are still happening.

Here at the Museum of Hoaxes you can see many famous foolings- which makes me feel slightly better for being faced again- including spaghetti trees and the recent big You Tube hit, the screamingly acrimonious break-up of a couple that, in fact, never dated. Even real reality TV is fake. The couple claims now some philsophical purpose like to show the power and money involved in its vast internettiness, but I think it was to make fun and see if people would believe. They did and did.

I actually have saved up bunches of other links, some mildly amusing and provacative, to post about, but I can't bring myself to go through all the hassle. The image above was purported to be Baby Hitler until an unfortunate mother (in may ways) from Connecticut recognized it as a doctored picture of her own little Johnny. Image comes from the museum's photo gallery. Be patient with their site; it's their big traffic season. Please enjoy this simple and sparse pre-April Fool's dose of fraud and have a lovely weekend.

Bummer, I Warn You, but Cathy deserves the Props

Cathy Seipp, one of those contrarian non-smokers with lung cancer, has died at 49, five years after her diagnosis gave her only six months. Though current postings at her blog are filled with sympathy from myriad friends she never met (I met her once in 2005, so there!), her archives are a great place to discover her unique, funny, and well-reasoned perspective on LA life and media. Besides, it would be the coolest twenty-first century-style tribute to hoist her to number one on Technorati today. She was already ahead of Paris Hilton by yesterday. Click a link and share the love. Also, consider the horrible fate of lung cancer victims- frequently stigmatized as morally-corrupt smokers- though Cathy never was (nor was Dana Reeve) and always lived a healthy lifestyle. This disease is aggressive, painful, and greedy to kill. Once my great aunt Katherine was diagnosed, they simply tranked her to the gills on morphine, and she never saw her own bed or home again. I hope Cathy is pleased to know that she's brought today's spotlight to this disease that's quite underfunded and studied compared to its virulence and the number of yearly fatalities it causes. Maybe the needle will move a little today.

Cathy's World

Update March 23: Cathy's Number 1! Take that you vapid celebritards. Back seat to a real human. Shine on.

BLAMMO, Einstein, and Og

Update: I never did get the Og pix figured, but this post now provides a handy spot to park a miscellaneous Hamburglar picture I needed. Don't ask.

Through image search, I think I've learned that 'og' means 'and' in German. It also clearly means something in Japanese, something occasionally tagged on NSFW pix. This captures the spirit of Og as I intend him. It'll all make sense by the post's end.

Ever written a whole mess of verbiage, then just flitted away for a picture, and BLAMMO went all your text? Ever tried to post pictures repeatedly without success? Ditto. Ever hated the new Blogger?

Apre BLAMMO, I was just writing that today's both Houdini's and Einstein's birthday (1874 for Erik Weisz and 1879 respectively), and that I'm reading an occultish novel about one of them. Did you guess right? It's Einstein. It's Three Days to Never by Tim Powers. a creative fuser of the fantastic and historic who happens to write well, too. He irritates me that way, and I'm compelled to read everything he writes. Eventually, of course. I'm a juke box that doesn't play album sides, if you know what I mean.

Do you find it amazing that I began reading an Einstein-centric time travel book about unmaking existence yesterday after I was commenting on a philospohical argument against existence, and that I'm still reading the book and it turns out to be Einstein's birthday today? Me neither. I have certain fascinations, reflected in the books I have waiting to be read, the articles that provoke me, and the dates I'm likely to notice. This confluence would mean more if I'd just found the book abandoned in a public place, the article had been forwarded by a stranger who didn't know my tastes, and I didn't regularly read my This Day in History e-mail for the kinds of birth-and-deathiversaries I like to know. (Today's also the 1833 birthday of America's first woman dentist, Lucy Hobbs Taylor, but what am I gonna do with that? Can't think of a thing, so I ignore it.)

The novel's good so far, and I respect the way Powers is willing to hang things out, incomplete and unexplained, for many pages. If I like the writing and subject, that approach engages me, makes me dig into the story further, but some people may find it frustrating. This is a somewhat confusing time travel a-go-go kind of tale where (unlike the rules in Back to the Future), your future, present, and past selves from varying parallel existences may be grousing next to each other at the blood-stained skeezy bar before the end of existence. No mere white-tableclothed restaurant at the end of the universe, this.

(Note the way I'm not using 'Anyhoo' to begin this paragraph, even though it beckons me like a blazing finger). The tendency as displayed above for humans to selectively self-filter what we conncetrate upon is exactly the reason a movie like '23' blows emu sack. Oh I see, we add up a number series and get 23! Why didn't we subtract or long divide or do anything consistently from our arithmetic or even algebraic bag of tricks? Frankly, I think algebra's the better method here. If I know I need the answer to be 23, what maneuvers and variables will it take to get that outcome from the address of the Chinese take-out place down the street with their accursed Kung Pao of existential doom?! Can it possibly be entertaining watching someone disappear that far down his 23 millimeter navel?

This very normal human tendency to tune out what we don't need as noise can tempt us to overemphasize, but it has its distinct upside, too. For example, the ability to pick out your plane's gate from a static-filled departure display listing hundreds while ignoring the squeaky-wheeled cart nearly clipping your heels and the five people shouting into their cell phones. But, it's not just an adaptation for modern life. Heck, no. In a wild savannah, the landscape teems with thousands of specific details to see, but what about young Og who spends his time looking down a lot, poking at smelly piles with a stick? We hope he's using a stick. Instead of butterflies or leaf varieties or the clouds in shapes of bunnies or cappucino machines, young Og sees only scat. The fresh scat of either juicy, prancing prey or razor-clawed predators. We might call him poopy-brained, but he might survive long enough to become old Og.

May we all be old Ogs who've earned new sticks.

I Find Today a Fine Day to Exist

Can flocked wallpaper be so bad it's good? Well, ahem, someone (I'm pointing down the page) doesn't see it that way. Things do seem black and white to him, I guess. But definitely not a groovy swirl of overlapping and constrasting moments, just unrelieved black mostly. The black of nonbeing so unbeen that it might even be lavender.

Sure, it's just my opinion, but I do prefer being to the alternative, now that I'm in the swim of it. However, not every deeper thinker feels that way. Prompted by an article on odd book names, the crack team (or meth, whatever makes the links quiver) at James Taranto's Best of the Web for the Wall Street Journal did further investigation on one particularly prickly title: "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence"

This tome was written by David Benatar of the University of South Africa at Cape Town, and I'm sure if I had a sister that rockin' and popular, I might feel so insignificant as to prefer the winking-out. To his credit, rather than becoming a bitter suicide, the professor's decided to plod on, contributing to the intellectual content of our unthinkingly cruel species with his philosophical treatise against being. That's right. Being At All. Yes, you too. The WSJ's link is www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009777 (personal html skillz not mad today), and I think it's a freebie, but in case not, I will extract freely and tell you how darned interesting and funny the column in total usually is, so you should subscribe yourself, blah....or just pluck the book's description from Amazon like they did.

Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. Thus, if they ever do reflect on whether they should bring others into existence--rather than having children without even thinking about whether they should--they presume that they do them no harm.

Better Never to Have Been challenges these assumptions. David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm. Although the good things in one's life make one's life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence.

Drawing on the relevant psychological literature, the author shows that there are a number of well-documented features of human psychology that explain why people systematically overestimate the quality of their lives and why they are thus resistant to the suggestion that they were seriously harmed by being brought into existence.

I'm quite sure I'm missing the brilliant subtlety of the "anti-natal" argument: No one will ever experience suckitude if there is No One to know what sucks, but I don't know how he could attest that non-existence sucks less. All of us doing the arguing are too late to the party to know, pre-birth memories being widely faulty for other than a few bestselling hosts of costly weekend seminars and consciousness props. To my unsophisticated perception, life strains everywhere to be fecund, whether in blossoming flowers or the mold on leftovers, whether in termites, kudzu, or those fish that hibernate under mud flats for years. Mayflies. The lengths to which life will adapt (most unattractively) just for the briefest, longest-shot to make more life from itself seems to show that living must be cool, or at least preferred. Otherwise, why would so many vile and perfectly natural things from plague viruses to deadly bacteria keep trying so hard to make it here in LifeTown. I'm a crude instrument for philosophy, I'll admit, but there's one other refutation I can make.

A bestest friend of mine is having a birthday today, and I'm extremely pleased not only that said friend ever existed, but that many suckfests were able to be shared and survived together, as I find that surviving long enough to laugh, sometimes just a second or two past the sucking, is half the fun. And so I praise this one laudable existence by sharing a gift of unalloyed happiness with you. Dare I say, it may even serve as healing balm for your existential harm.
Hopefully, what will quickly load below is The awesome Wallpaper video of Do What you Want by OK GO.

Just for a nanosecond of your intrisically-harmfilled slog, I dare you to dodge the sweet lightning of joy. Go on, try.

A Not-Fake Ubercute Tiger Cub Story

Bottom AP photo by Achmad Ibrahim- don't sue, please.




As you may recall, I've highlighted the fake grieving-tiger-raising-disguised-piglets-in-California story, which turns out to be the case of some well-meaning folks subverting natural wild animal behavior. The Thai tiger in question there was raised with and by pigs, so that plunking some into its cage later didn't excite predatory behavior.

I'm happy to report that the following story generating seriously cute tiger pictures seems authentic, well, depending how much one trusts the AP, but it does feel more likely.

Within an Indonesian zoo nursery, very young tiger twins have bonded with 5-month old orangutans. We can enjoy the unusual sight with the knowledge that the animals aren't being made vulnerable by the early contact since they'll live in habitation, also knowing they'll be separated by the time the cubs reach 3 months of age, about the time they'd start eating meat. For now, it's very sweet.

CNN Article Link

Update: Added top two pictures from BBC article I saw at www.cuteoverload.com
Permalink's not working for me and I can't stomach all the HTML again, so type in the name if you want.

Holy Day Yawns, Sunglasses, and Man Boobs

Today's Ash Wednesday, so I salute all those dusty ones who shall return. And if the following image of the current champion, Don, doesn't cultivate 40 days' worth of pensive humility, item 3 has the link for more.

1) I was reading the following item from reference.com: "Yawning is an involuntary action that causes us to open our mouths wide and breathe in deeply. No one knows for sure why we yawn, but there are some interesting theories. One states that yawning is physiological: we yawn to draw in more oxygen or remove a build-up of carbon dioxide. Another theory states that we yawn because we are bored, fatigued, or drowsy, while a third suggests that yawning is evolutionary; according to this theory, our ancestors used yawning to intimidate others by showing their teeth, or to signal a change in activity. The use of yawning as a form of communication would also explain why some people find yawning contagious; 55% of people will yawn within five minutes of seeing someone else yawn."

I found myself yawning even before I got to the following part: "Reading about yawning usually makes people yawn as well. The average yawn lasts about six seconds. All animals appear to yawn, too!"

Did you yawn reading that, too? Sure it's boring, but more than that, I think. Doesn't that strange contagious reflex seem like more than just a simple form of communication? I don't talk or even grunt back to the computer screen usually anyway. So why did the translation of dark squiggles into meaning in my brain cause me to yawn? I don't sneeze when I read that word. Anyway, here's to the deep mysteries inherent in the everyday.

2) I don't think I could live through the original, almost eight-minute version, but as someone who's mocked David Caruso's woodenly humorless "acting" on CSI:Miami for as many seasons as it's existed, I adored this video compliation of his "Sunglass Method". See 24's Keifer Sutherland for "Whisper Method."

Defamer: Caruso One-liners, Endless Sunglass Edition

3) Via April, if the Valentine's Post left you hungry for more man-meat stew, here's your cup-overflowing helping of mannery glands.

"Man Boobs UK

The tastelessness of today's post merely documents my need for penitential contemplation.

Super Sexah Valentine's Ya'll

What else is there to say? Except that I'm waiting amid a snowstorm with freezing rain for furniture delivery, which seems stupid, so I tried to talk the companies taking the old stuff and bringing the new out of it, but no dice. Yet. In the meantime, enjoy the hotness.

Joining the Club While On the Road

I'm currently in Ventura County, California. I've been visiting family and risking my life on Grimes Canyon Road, but today I'll be flying out to Seattle for the Left Coast Crime convention of mystery writers, fans, adoring hangers-on (as if).

Here's an article about the doings with links to the conference homepage.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2003550086_mysterywriters01.html

Now, Ann Althouse and her 7,000 daily visitors have switched over to the new Blogger and hate it, too. Perhaps, there'll be some fixes forthcoming now? Right. But here's the poop on this crap from a big, reputable blawg who's having different, but equally or more annoying, problems from mine. Here are her several posts, ugly links because I don't have time for the HTML today and because, as she puts it-

New Blogger is Driving Me Crazy
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/02/new-blogger-is-driving-me-crazy.html

I Hate Blogger
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/02/i-hate-blogger.html

You Might Be in Blogger Hell if...
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/02/you-might-be-in-blogger-hell-if.html

Don't be fooled by the puny number of commenters, more like this site's than hers. It's another part that's broken.

Enjoy your weekend. I'll be Reading in the Rain!

Dunking's Too Retro and Exhausting!

And think of what we'll save on redundant neon!

So, this lazy bastage still hasn't set up the new blog home page and referred over to it, but it's still happening. In geological time, you won't be able to sense any delay. Although, now Blogger's dangling a new template change which will wipe out my current look but offer better editing, they say. We shall see. Got less to lose now that I'm unenchanted.

However, I couldn't wait for a new or improved blog home to post the most important scientific development ever! You know I love the medicine, the gadgetry, the transports, and GPS. I likee this modern world of advancements so beyond or beside my core areas of expertise that they Do look like magic- thanks, Asimov. But, despite the saturation of hype, it is rare that an innovation arrives with the true greatness of the "sliced bread" category. Sandwich slices are so simple and elegant, yet it took 20th century machining to make them possible for John and Joanie Q. Public. Now, the wonders of cutting-edge molecular massage and Dr. Bohannon- may his name live in legend- birth an elegantly simple and transformative new necessity:

The Caffeinated Donut.

(Yes, I pasted up some HTML backstage, because I couldn't take the ugly links anymore. No, I won't make a habit of it. Too much like welcoming my ant overlords and volunteering to toil in the sugar caves.)

Anyhoo, let us hope one of the fine mass pastry purveyors steps boldly into the glorious future of breakfast and road food. I'm going to scroll up Donald Fagan's New Frontier on my iPod and dance around the dome in me rocket suit, lads.

Magic 8 Ball Says Migration Time

I have a few things I'd like to post about, but I can't stand the ongoing and absolute lack of response to, even acknowledgement of, the amputation of my Compose mode which forces me to deal in HTML code or nothing. I hope to get this thing switched over to a friendlier domain next week- at least getting the home page redirected- if the archives won't be transferred yet. In the meantime, I thought I'd provide a fact of the day about the Magic 8 Ball from Reference.com (don't even hope for a live link, look it up, I'm limited here).

"The Magic 8-Ball, invented in 1946 by Abe Bookman of the Alabe Toy Company, is a novelty version of the crystal ball. It is a hard black plastic sphere, the size of a small grapefruit, which reveals answers to life's most perplexing issues when it is turned upside-down. The answers are on a white plastic die made in the shape of an icosahedron and floating in a blue liquid. Of the twenty possible answers, ten are positive, five negative, and five neutral. The name of the novelty comes from its resemblance to the ball used in pool and billiards."

I also learned (disclaimer: dubiously) from Wikipedia that it isn't necessary to shake it to get a new answer, as was my habit just like shaking Polaroids, baby. Wiki has the list of the twenty answers and also go there for a list of media appearances by the Magic 8 Ball on screens everywhere, big and small.

Does the current blogging situation blow? It is decidedly so.
Will 2007 bring offerings enhanced in coolness and vim? Signs point to yes

Got the picture here: http://nugatoryburble.bravejournal.com/entry/12741

Still TRYING- NO Help Forthcoming

I can easily post this pic, but not link to where I got it, but it's an all Russian language site, so maybe no big deal.

OKay- Now that Blogger Beta (to which I will remind you I was extremely reluctant to migrate) is now simply Blogger and not working right, I'm experiencing the unparalleled service I have every right to expect with a free product. Since it's been free for me to use, I try not to strain the system and not to ask too much or complain too loud. However, this is a new low in non-functionality.

The posting window I'm using here doesn't have my usual set of easy, WYSIWYG controls. No, this beast digests raw HTML which I'm lousy at writing. I could go into my old posts and do the copying and pasting of the appropriate code for alignments and fonts and links, but I don't want the hassle or to have to become an HTML hexpert. Due to some of my background projects in the works, I may be able (very soon) to point this blog from Blogger to a different platform- another one of my strange fruits- that won't be any worse. At this moment, it would have to be much better.

For the record, I went through all the Help files and then to Google's moderated Blogger forums, and while 5 or 6 other users Amened my post saying they'd seen the same thing, no one authoritative, so to speak, has replied with any useful advice. I'm having the problem on multiple browsers, both PC and Mac. The situation makes for ugly, link-poor posts filled with my whining. I'll be addressing the fixes this week and next, but I apologize now. I just knew the new Blogger would implode somehow. Boom.

National Bird Day

I can't seem to post anything but raw text and pictures (still no links yet or easy formatting) in the new version of Blogger, so you'll get this uncredited picture of other eager birders while I'm trying to get my functionality back. You can look up the "holiday" to your own satisfaction. Cheep. Cheep.

However, many new online offerings are in the clockworks behind my lazy posting. As I said in reply to a post on another site, this blog will eventually be but one strange fruit on a kaleidoscopically varied tree. So there.

2006: You Were Awesome, Smell Ya Later

Well, Blogger's pushing me to switch to their new version by hobbling the old one, and I'll be forced into it. Even posting this holiday-themed photo of the skyline from our balcony has been a nightmare. I'll conform. Tomorrow. But posting today, for the last time this year, I'm using my Christmas laptop for the first time! Surprisingly, my five year-old one doesn't really stink, but this new one is much more mobile and cleanly designed, with a better set of capabilties and horsepower. I look forward to being able to do much more multimedia-- like posting videos and audio podcasts-- next year.

2006 was actually a pretty great year, feeble in personal woes and strong in progress. I hope it's been so for you, but if not, it's over. Onward and upward. I'm going to try to continue to get narrow and deep, like the Marianas Trench, merging my disparate activites into more central places where they can all feed each other. I'm looking forward to new audiences and playing around with enhanced bells and whistles, especially since my regular readers all have new machines that simply gobble up the higher bandwidth goodies. I expect to revise a bunch of things, migrate some to a different web site, and get a little more frequent, if a little more focused, in my posting. Oddities will remain, however. What's life without wonder?

Also, in the last couple of days, as a sort of late Xmas gift (yet certainly before Three Kings Day), I finally got an idea (THE IDEA) for my next stand-alone suspense novel. It's a tremendous Whew. Now that an agent's repping the first, a prospective publisher might want another in a similar vein, or at least might consider one with the same sort of tone and approach. My agent asked me what else I had or thought might be next. Well.... uh.... What do you think they'd like? I had nothing. Sure, I have my comic/absurdist/mystery thing I'm working on, something I love but which is weird enough that it'll have to sell itself after completion, and I might need a pseudonym depending upon how distracting to my non-existent career it's considered. Problematically, it's also not easily prepackaged or even explained, but I think if I don't disappoint myself and take my time (simple enough since nobody wants it), it could be fantastically entertaining and I'd be very proud to see that. However, every time until last Friday that I thought about writing a follow-up thriller, I just felt a hollow bonging in my skull. To feel barren of ideas is anxiety-making in the extreme for someone who's supposed to be full of 'em, but I tried to stay calm while waiting for something to happen. And a notion did emerge, in the manner it does for me, almost fully formed.

A few years ago, the manuscript-now-for-sale's plot came up over lunch at Bennigan's with my Ideal Reader, and after bullet-proofing the motives and action through the back-and-forth tennis of "What if?", I wrote up a chapter-by-chapter outline that evening, just a paragraph of the important stuff in each one so I wouldn't forget. Over the course of writing and revision, things changed and were added and refined, but if you read that outline today, the eventual novel's storyline is unmistakeable, and all the juiciest surprises would be wrecked for you.

So last Friday night over steak with my previous plot collaborator, into existence sprang a new idea, starting with a simple solution to one basic problem. Since I'm no law enforcement/emergency procedure/medical/legal expert, if I set the next book in Manhattan versus anywhere else, how do I keep a story of dramatic content including death (deaths?) from being quickly swept into one giant institutional flow or another about which I can't and don't wish to write? And I conceived an answer based on circumstances which have always felt to me as magical as they are dangerous. Perhaps greatest of all, the story also includes another theme/setting that I had seriously intended to use a year or two ago and had therefore researched with great interest, even developing highly-regarded and knowledgeable contacts in that industry as resources. Then, I had some characters rattling around in my mind, but I couldn't ever spark the story into independent motion. Discouragingly, the bones of the storyline never soldified, and it never jumped to its feet and sprinted. At a certain point, for me, the story I want to tell has to start leaping ahead with possibilities faster than I can keep up. I'll imagine conversations, lines of observations, flashes of scenes that overlap and begin interlinking as they pop into being, all jockeying for position in my final scheme.

In my experience, if ever a story "writes itself", it's now. Once my ideal plan exists and is documented, the work of making sure my Wren cathedral blueprint doesn't finally manifest itself as an outhouse is sheer, arduous labor. That's why I have to love the idea so much, because writing it purely sucks. That's my process, different than other people's and I daily wish I sat scribbling like them with joy in my heart, but this is how my deal works. And it does eventually work, no matter how gruesomely my sausages are made. Anyway, that fabulous compunding, metastasizing story effect happened to me Friday night, and the additions and enhancements have continued through today, like a rock sugar crystal that's added elegant structures and strength every time I think to look at it.

If you don't care about all my personally blathery B.S., enjoy Dave Barry's year-end wrap-up as ye may.
Long link form to copy-and-paste instead of nifty short form (or color or bold) since Blogger's pulling the old carpet runner out on me.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/lifestyle/stories.nsf/everyday/story/245703EB0C601CA9862572520005082D?OpenDocument

Next year, the look of things here will be new, if I can't guarantee they'll be improved. My affections toward you, dear pals, are nothing new and cannot be improved upon. To a cheery 2007!

Nogs and Logs

Just a few more items that won't wait:

1) The story behind one of my favorite new-old chestnuts, The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth sung by Bing Crosby and David Bowie. I'm with Bowie. The inane, nonsensical repetition of the original starts to make me feel deranged by the second verse, but this version I like.

2) A manly man and his dreamy, homemade Christmas wreaths. Got a problem with that?

3) Think your family's holiday customs are weird? Think Festivus is wacky and way-out? Well, this image of a sh*tt*ng Santa comes from this site, which includes another translated explanation of the phenomenon covered in this article. At this time of year, Catalonia in Spain goes absolutely poop-crazy, believing it to be a symbol of fertility and prosoperity. Besides the turd candy and toys, you can get defecating figures (with lucky piles of sewage) for your nativity scene. They come in many personages: scubadivers, babies, bride and groom, doctors, executives, Pope Benedict 16, King Juan Carlos... Browse for your favorite.

I might be ashamed to dwell on such an unattractive (if culturally authentic) topic, if I hadn't simultaneously conferred such good fortune and wonderful well-wishes upon you all.
Poops up, peeps!

For Christmas: A Cat in the Pants

Not specifically festive, but I liked this Daily Kitten picture, because I'd forgotten that lots of cats do this, as you'll read in the DK comments.

1) This once happened to me at an acquaintance's house. The cat had sneaked into the bathroom behind me, then entangled itself between my ankles while I was preoccupied. Not knowing the cat, I was leery of picking it up to hoist it away from the vicinity of my nethers, but it bore the relocation placidly. Not the first time, I suppose, since the owner later told me this was standard feline operating procedure at their house. As this season of parties and guests and visiting swings into action, that's exactly the kind of thing about which you might wish to forewarn visitors. Just my tip, hospitality-wise.

2) In other holiday-related animalia, a virgin dragon will give birth this holiday season. Well, actually her eggs will hatch, and this ability, while not observed among female Komodos before this year, is well-known among other reptile species. Still, don't depend on a journalist to spoil a great lede with overmuch clarity.

3) In other things weird and wonderful, a Canadian meteorite has been found to be older than the sun. Cool, I want to buy it and put it on a pedestal in the garden. Maybe on a mantelpiece. Or I'll break it into nuggets to sell as fashion jewelry. I mean, after they've sampled enough to study the origins of the universe, of course.

4) Australian Cougar Arts teach a variety of Man-skillz embodied currently in a fantastic organ soundtrack and a mustachioed idol. Dong the Gong in the man skillz test. You must see and hear to love enough. When they ask if you're over 18 and awesome at Kung Fu, click YES, or you'll get an alcohol awareness education, since apparently Cougar Spirits underwrites the International Fence Busting Affiliated Organisation.

Founded by Brian "The Guru" Watson in 1968, The Cougar Arts Federation became known for its unique philosophy - "Don't try to get away with anything too big at first, and then try a bit harder and gradually you'll probably get somewhere."

Barry "The Cougar" Dawson is now Head Instructor at the school. He is a Black Belt Master and an exponent of "Man-Skills" - a set of powerful techniques including "Mind Control" "Speediness" and "Invisible-ness".

5) I know they say this is a New York thing, and it makes sense given most people's habitations. But I was aware of it as a child in Texas and California, I recall. And this year, we even have a choice of classically crusty or slickly modern televised Yule Logs.

May you, too, blaze on, my pals, and enjoy the season!

Not Feeling Holly Jolly Towards Chase Visa

This Scrooge image once appeared somewhere in the Bear Valley News. Metaphorically, it represents not only the droopy dunce cap that finally broke the hat rack of my tolerance, but also shows my intensity of contempt. That's me...hating you, Chase Visa.

For years, we've been paying extra for membership to a credit card that gives us airline miles (usefulish) and extended warranties that we haven't used as well as supposed concierge services and other discounts we haven't found particularly handy either. In the past, when the CV Co. is afraid there's fraud-- like anytime (frankly, every time) we're on vacation-- store clerks end up giving us their patented lugubrious expressions of We Regret The Necessity/Are You Broke?, and haul us towards the shop phone to verify our identities and geneology on our mother's sides. We get temporarily annoyed, and forget to do anything about it after arriving back home.

Obviously, it's a frustratingly repeated inconvenience for those (us) whom we assume are regarded as good customers. We put significant dollars through this card annually, so whether or not we carry a balance, they're paid by merchant fees on every charge plus our member fees and any specialty transaction fees for cash advances, checks, etc. If they increased the intelligence put toward examining the pattern of purchase types and vendors rather than simply location, such analysis might reveal that the roving charges are likely from us, because whether home or abroad, we always go to TCBY or Frankenstein Nail Spas (or wherever). Not a crime specialist, it still seems unlikely to me that garden-variety thieves are mainly using our hot plastic for fine dinners and non-transferrable hotel room charges, but whatever.

When we do happen to buy something criminally fungible like a pricey new winter coat or electronics, we're also likely to have our charges held for verification. Believe it or not, this once happened when buying a large batch of socks. I don't know about you, but I don't usually ration purchases of black and brown dress socks, and buy up bunches at a go rather than pacing myself. Because the CV Co. phone lines were jammed (an overload of incisive fraud checking?), we couldn't even call through for verification, and had to use another card. This is all simply the CV Co. protecting us, right? Well, no. It's them protecting themselves since they're on the hook for fake charges in excess of $50, provided we report them in a timely fashion. Lately, the companies have all gone preemptive. Don't wait for the customer to notice, jump in and assist! Ideally, this would be handled so it feels like it's us and CV Co. working against bad guys, but it doesn't feel like that at all. And today was the dunce cap that broke the hat rack.

My very own Santa purchased my Christmas present yesterday from a place where many other people enjoy shopping, too, because of their cool, but entirely distinctive, stuff. (DANGER, thinks the CV Co. Popular places are mostly frequented by lowlifes!) After receiving two phone messages this morning alone, I knew CV Co.'s onslaught of concern must've been triggered by yesterday's Xmas purchase. So, I contacted my personal Santa to make the confirmation call such that my surprise--now wrapped and beribboned beneath our tree-- wouldn't be ruined. Unfortunately, when my Santa verified the charge from yesterday, CV Co. also wanted to go back in history and check other recent charges, too. Just for thoroughness, of course. After all, who'd be doing more and more varied shopping than usual near Christmas? However (wouldn't you know it?), I'd also recently purchased an Xmas present online. This one happened to be for the other holder of our card from a merchant's website which is basically like www.TheNameofYourGift.com.

In order to walk down memory lane, transaction-style, with CV Co, I had to be conferenced in to illuminate the more elusive mysteries. Though, before I joined the call, my own Santa specifically asked that they not repeat the location of the charge for my gift yesterday, here's how it actually played out:

CV Co. employee has both of us on the line, and asks:
"Other than the charge at [screamingly obvious name of the vendor of my own gift], can you verify the charge at [screamingly obvious place where I purchased gift]?"

We were both quiet for a second until I thanked the fine Fraud Protection Specialist for ruining Christmas.

Most of our friends suggest Amex, because for the membership price (should you wish their add'l services), the service is supposed to be way better. It's even reported they don't treat customers like morons or like we're the persistent problem with their business.

Kiss us goodbye, Chase Visa, you low-rent, tone-deaf, killjoy, picayune, idiot army of Scrooge-y Douchebaggingtons.

A Snootful of the Overdue and Bookish

I'm taking a vacation from my hiatus, and have, at long last, posted a new review at Mystery Book Spot. As I put it in a post to the multi-Book-Spot pals, I've just grabbed my machete and lopped off a couple of tentacles grabbing my time, so I can be more attentive to my reading, writing, and reviewing. Sometimes, things have long since become a no-fun, no-point, buzz-kill before I think to dump them. But now that I have, my innards feel all floaty and sweet.

My reviewing reprise is Julia Pomeroy's very good debut novel, The Dark End of Town. It was released in hardcover early in 2006, and I have finally written it up a woeful number of months after receiving it this summer from the author her-darned-self. However, the trade paperback is due out in March, 2007, so you will have plenty of opportunity to get your fisties around a copy.

Besides being a delightful dinner companion (I note this, should you happen to find yourself her table neighbor as I did), Julia Pomeroy's got history in Japan, Libya, Somalia, and Italy. After landing in America, she worked as a screen actor, translator, and restauranteur in upstate New York. She doesn't volunteer all this immediately via personal data dump (as I certainly would if I'd ever been interesting), but actually converses, so we'll reference the web for bonus material about her pet baboon.

Here's her interview with Illinois' own Rick the Librarian.
Here's another from the wonderful Julia Buckley's site, Mysterious Musings.

In other news bookish:
2) Douglas Dutton's suggestions for holiday bookgiving.

3) Should novelists be allowed near the screenplay adaptations of their work? The horribly Hollywoody saga of Clive Cussler's Sahara. If I could've been paid like one of those screenwriters without the burden of having my name permanently attached... Oh, boy. For the record, as action-adventure yarns go, I didn't think this popcorn-cruncher was so tragic on film.

4) Radar Reviews Dictator Style: Lifestyles of the World's Most Colorful Despots.
Feast your eyes on details of the idiosycratic strongmen's tales of alien abduction and astrology, not to mention their hunger for teens and cadres of virginal bodyguards, armed and chaste and eager to die for their wackos-in-chief.

Blogging, Again?

This image is uncredited and unrelated to anything. I just liked thinking the greyhound track's pace bunny and this knackered squirrel might be commiserating over a break. You can almost sense the ciggie butt dangling just out of view from the squirrel's left paw.

I know. You'll soon be overwhelmed with the frequency. Because 3 of my occasional readers have scored new computers, I'm going to post a threesome of video links in honor of their enhanced media functionality.

1) This 8-plus minute performance by Jerome Murat is surely the Stairway to Heaven of modern-artsy French pantomime.

2) Richard Simmons's ubiquitous tank top and shorts were borderline ick decades ago. However, now that he's 103, I must give him props not only for his tone but his cool head when confronted with exploding appliances.

3) Via April: Dolphins "see" underwater and bats at night by sonar, analyzing the bouncing of sound around them to detect objects and obstacles. A boy whose eyes were removed due to cancer when he was a toddler has developed human echolocation. This blind teenager streetskates, plays foosball, accurately whips pillows at his friends, and even plays video games against his little brother. See his amazing skillz yourself. (Also explore the Human Marvels site for info on the furred Sacred Family of Burma and a man who smokes through his eyes.)

4) If you have a dusty old blog you're not using anymore, proud Euronihilist Tim Worstall wants it.

5) It's a special kind of low-rent spunkload who fakes retardation for 20 years to steal the gov't checks.

6) Although others are reporting this, too, I found the story my own darn self, and will credit no one- hear me? Many bathrooms have candles to help dissipate certain antisocial happenings. However, on a plane, even those with embarassing personal conditions can't go striking matches willy-nilly. Might I suggest activated-charcoal-lined undies and a less-than-3-ounce bottle of Febreze?

7) Even a finger sandwich's worth of John Waters provides several quotable and tasty morsels.

Digging on the Nice

It's been sooo long, I know. All is well and active, and I'll assume you've been too busy to notice the lapse on my part.

Today is the birthday of Ranier Maria Rilke (1875-1926), a German poet I first read in college and whose work figures prominently in the manuscript I HAVE AN AGENT to represent!

In honor of all nice things, because I'm generally feeling nice-ish these days, here is the list of Baskin-Robbins original 31 Flavors and this awesome picture of a unicorn.

Banana Nut Fudge, Black Walnut, Burgundy Cherry, Butter Pecan, Butterscotch Ribbon, Chocolate, Chocolate Almond, Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Fudge, Chocolate Ribbon, Coffee, Coffee Candy, Date Nut, Egg Nog, French Vanilla, Green Mint, Lemon Crisp, Lemon Custard, Lemon Sherbet, Maple Walnut, Orange Sherbet, Peach, Peppermint Fudge, Peppermint Stick, Pineap ple Sherbet, Pistachio Nut, Raspberry Sherbet, Rocky Road, Strawberry, Vanilla, and Vanilla Burnt Almond.

Gobble, Gobbledygook

Color image site here. For b/w image link (and punchline) see item 5.


What is there to swamp my attention despite the sludge-bound shallows of bad art? Plenty.

1) The Brazilian lady who thought her cat had given birth to puppies has been disproved by gene testing. If such a thing could happen, it probably would have already, given the hordes of stray and fertile domestic animals roaming around. Her generous kitty probably took three abondoned puppies to nurse, something not at all uncommon in history. For her cat to save three tiny lives rather than proving herself a floozy to one Fido makes this a triumphant outcome, right?

2) Via the Grumpy Old Bookman, the Publishing Contrarian lists examples of cringe-worthy book jacket copy for some well-known, award-winning books. She points out that this is, in itself, an art form at which many practicians stink up the joint.

3) Fret not, fans of the fuzzy. When informed in media reports that the creatures would be extinct in 25 years, biologists who study polar bears were surprised, too. Especially since their data largely show stable, even expanding populations.

4) Demanding respect and recognition as Britain's 4th largest religion? Jedi Knights.

5) Has the face of London's infamous Jack the Ripper been revealed? Using the 118-year-old statements of 13 witnesses, a Metropolitan Police analyst created an image of what the prostitute-killer is believed to have looked like. However, scientists still need to explain to my satisfaction the space-time continuum that makes it possible for 19th-century murders to have been committed by 20th-century rock icon Freddie Mercury.