1. Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven
2. Naked Beneath My Clothes by Rita Rudner
3. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
4. The Book Wars by James Atlas
5. Rumpelstiltskin by Ed McBain
6. Years of Minutes by Andy Rooney
7. All the Trouble in the World by P.J. O'Rourke
8. The Black Corridor by Michael Moorcock
9. Make Room for TV by Lynn Spigel
10. Time Flies by Bill Cosby
11. Ghost by Piers Anthony
12. Freefall by William and Marilyn Mona Hoffer
13. Bad Business by Robert B. Parker
14. The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz
15. Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen
16. Give Me a Break by John Stossel
17. The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams
18. Full Court Press by Mike Lupica
19. Gallery of Regrettable Food by James Lileks
20. Video Fever by Charles Beamer

• The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick
• Introduction to Philosophy by Baruch Brody
• Fielder's Choice by someone
• Bob Greene's America by Bob Greene

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:48 PM   0 comments

Two million people a year, most of them little kids, are dying because of the West's anti-DDT superstition. Two...million...people...a...year.

Anti-DDT taboos undoubtedly kill even more than that, since the debilitation caused by malaria helps keep Africa desperately poor. But, hey, they're Africans. We got rid of malaria here, so we don't give a damn. I bet the NYT Mag gets letters from people outraged at Rosenberg's audacity in pointing out the problem.

hey farmer farmer
put away the DDT
i dont care about spots on my apples [and, apparently, two million dead people on a continent far away --ed.]
leave me the birds and the bees
please!

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:55 PM   0 comments

The reward for helping the Americans during the Vietnam War took 29 years to materialize, but for the 15,000 Laotian Hmong in this sun-baked refugee camp, it was a payout beyond their wildest dreams: U.S. citizenship.

"I can't believe we'll be Americans," said Sui Yang, 60, who fought with CIA-backed Hmong guerrillas against the communist Pathet Lao in the mountains of Laos. "We heard rumors for years this was going to happen, but they were always only rumors. Most of us gave up hoping. I thought we were going nowhere."

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:49 PM   0 comments

GUINNESS will no longer be brewed in Britain from next summer.

The plant which has made the stout for nearly 70 years is to close. Bosses blame over-capacity.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:53 PM   0 comments

Advertising is ubiquitous nowadays, with marketers using product placements on television shows, linking words in magazine articles with ads and, as an ad firm working for Toyota recently did, temporarily tattooing pitches on people's foreheads.

"It's a littering of the mental landscape," MacFarlane said. "We live in a culture that pushes the fear of not succeeding, getting sick, of being alone. ... Advertisers sidle up to us and say: 'Hi, we love you. We understand. But isn't there something wrong with your life?'"

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:49 PM   0 comments

Okay. As you may know, Andrew Sullivan has famously proposed hiking gas prices by a dollar to reduce the deficit and pay for the Iraq campaign. Don't get me wrong - I have a great deal of respect for Andrew.

But.

Here I disagree. Low gas prices are bad for the economy and bad for drivers, he says - the sort of statement that makes you read everything that follows with wry detached amusement, the same way you'd regard an article on canine training that began "dogs respond remarkably well to feng shui." You read on because it can only get better.

He refers to gas as “woefully undertaxed.” If one uses the phrase “woefully undertaxed” one may be correct, but one should not be surprised when one’s conservative bona fides are called into question. You could make the argument that cable TV is woefully undertaxed. Peanut butter is woefully undertaxed. Once you’ve identified a good that can be cured by additional taxation, well, everything is woefully undertaxed. There aren’t any pro-war movies being made! We could fund them with a movie tax! Popcornn is woefully undertaxed! He says:


The truly needy tend to consume less gas than their middle-class compatriots. Others say it penalizes those in remote and rural areas. So what?

Some conservatives say it's antithetical to the American Dream. Hooey.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:35 PM   0 comments

• As a rule, I am deferential to older generations and their wisdom. I don't mock it, even when it's goofy. Well, maybe I do sometimes, but this book led me to a high horse, and you can lead a man to a high horse, but you can't make him drink. If you lead him to Guiness, though....what was my point?
  
  
• I read this book too soon after Make Room for TV, a book which examined old television shows and extrapolated from them to score Marxist/Feminist points. Lileks' book doesn't make political points, but it does make light of the knowledge of our forebearers. Or at least the knowledge of those who marketed to our forebearers. Still, I had too much anti-Spigel venom built up to appreciate what Lileks was doing.
  
  
• I have a closet full of these books from when I was doing the eBay thing. I'd pick them up for a dime and list them for a couple of bucks. I sold a couple, too, to people looking for their parents' recipes, or perhaps to the parents who lost the recipes in a divorce settlement or something. Still, Lileks cuts into the resale value of these treasures I own.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:25 PM   0 comments

TAX GAS MORE: All of your opposition merely convinced me I was right. Here's my Time column on why raising gas taxes would be a very good thing. Here's Ramesh Ponnuru's critique. Make your own mind up.

The worst knock against a gas tax is that it is, well, a tax. Who likes that? But with soaring deficits and a war to pay for, taxes are not an option — they're a necessity. The only relevant question is, Which taxes? The case for a gas tax is a straightforward one. Gas prices are strikingly lower in America than anywhere else in the world; such taxes are relatively easy to collect; since an overwhelming majority of Americans drive, few avoid the tax; and by adding a cost to the wanton consumption of gasoline, you actually encourage conservation, accelerate fuel efficiency, reduce pollution, cut traffic and help wean Americans off the oil that requires the U.S. to be so intimately involved in that wonderful cesspool of rival hatreds, the Middle East. So what's not to like?

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:49 AM   0 comments

• Canada.com. Headline: Blues centre Mike Danton charged in alleged murder-for-hire scheme. [He's a winger; I thought you Canadians knew hockey. Also, it's spelled "center" on American teams.]
  
  
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Headline: Danton was learning to play waiting game.
  
  
• (San Jose) Mercury News. Headline: Blues player arrested in alleged murder-for-hire plot

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:27 PM   0 comments

"Canada is exporting to us the crack of marijuana and it is a dangerous problem," Walters told reporters in Miami, where he kicked off a campaign to cut marijuana use by Hispanic youths.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:52 PM   0 comments

Don't be fooled.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:38 PM

I usually preach moderation, but not when moderate is 2 drinks a day? (Only a pint and a half of beer.) My definition of moderation is enjoying something not into excess. As long as I'm not getting drunk every night, missing work, or delinquent on my bills, I don't see the problem. I can stop at any time, and usually about once per year, go an entire month without drinking. (Just to prove I still can.) Besides, I'd rather live fast and die young than lead a long, boring, long, dull, long life.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:28 PM   0 comments

1. Get a cash advance against your paycheck.
2. Get a cash advance on your credit card.
3. Pawn your diamond ring.
4. Take out a personal loan.
5. Charge your tax bill.
6. Use your home equity.
7. Gamble on the float (write a check without funds in your account)
8. Dig into your retirement account.
9. Hit up the folks.
10. Pay off the government monthly.

1. In plasma. Much of which is not even yours.
2. With a bag of cash in which the dye pack is yet to explode.
3. In North Korean Won.
4. In allocations of barrels Iraqi oil, dated 1998.
5. Just sign over some Air America checks.
6. Pay? Constitutionally, I am not obligated to pay income tax.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:11 PM   0 comments

President Bush and the Republican Congress, who believe fervently in cutting taxes for the rich, are quietly presiding over a most remarkable kind of tax increase for high-income Americans.

The Alternative Minimum Tax is becoming a miserable annual tradition for a growing group of prosperous taxpayers. (If you've just received a nervous phone message from your accountant—that's probably what she's calling about.) The AMT traces its origins to a minimum tax enacted in 1970 when Americans were scandalized to learn that some 155 high-earning taxpayers owed no income taxes in 1966. The AMT was originally designed so that people who had a lot of income but loads of deductions—through the standard exemption, the ability to write off property taxes and state income taxes—couldn't reduce their taxable income to next to nothing. Historically, it applied to a tiny minority of taxpayers. But with every passing year, more and more citizens are ushered behind the velvet ropes. This congressional backgrounder suggests that 1.8 million Americans paid it in 2001. Newsweek's nearly infallible Allan Sloan wrote earlier this month that "about 2.3 million returns for 2003 got nipped by the AMT." The numbers are set to rise exponentially in the next several years. A two-income couple in New Jersey—he's an accountant, she's a public school teacher—with combined income of $230,000, three kids, and annual property taxes of $15,000, could easily fall into paying the AMT. Even government bureaucrats get nailed. Last year, IRS Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson paid the AMT.

Republicans don't want to fix the AMT because fixing the AMT would require undoing their beloved tax cuts. Without the billions generated by millions of taxpayers getting slammed by the AMT, the marginal rate cuts would be impossible to sustain for the next several years, let alone make permanent. Without the AMT, the deficit picture would look far worse than it does.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:28 PM   0 comments

Let's go ahead and get one thing out of the way: the Blues will never win the Cup in our lifetimes.

Whew. Boy, it feels good to get that off of my chest.

Let me say it again. The Blues will never win the Cup in our lifetimes.

Anyone who knows me knows that this is what I say any time the words "Blues" and "Stanley Cup" come up in conversation. It's not that I'm particularly knowledgeable about hockey or am smarter than anyone else. (I think I've proven that fact time and again in this space.) I'm just fairly certain that I'm right.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:35 PM   0 comments

Big tot day, Mondays. No school, no Nana, just us - and since I decree that the TV shall be silenced after two morning programs, that means puzzles and books and coloring and painting and so on. Usually I have the radio or the news on while we play, but like I said last week, I hit a point where I can't take it right now. I just can't take another "we're there for the oil" call. I can't take another 37 minute discussion about whether the PDB said OBL wanted USA DOA PDQ. I browse the news sites and the blogs, then go play with my daughter for the rest of the morning. I think April will be my month off from marinating in the news 24-7, if only to get my blood-pressure down from hummingbird levels.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:09 PM   0 comments

The multicolored set of plastic bracelets many Palm Beach County middle and high school students are sporting these days aren't just a fashionable fad.

At some schools, boys and girls snap off one of their classmate's colored gel wrist bands in exchange for a corresponding sexual favor, health department officials told school board members Monday.

For example, a person wearing a white band may mean she is willing to kiss to the person who pulls it from her wrist. A red band means a lap dance and black is intercourse. The meanings may vary from school to school.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:34 PM   0 comments

1. If you're talking to him on the phone, if his mother interrupts through call waiting as you tell him you're not wearing underwear, he'll talk to her instead.
2. He talks to her a lot on the phone.
3. He cancels a date in which you will not be wearing underwear to help her move furniture.
4. He quotes his mother a lot.
5. He compares you to his mother a lot.
6. His mother decorated his house.
7. His mother visits his home frequently.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:25 PM   0 comments

Now, the NIAAA has backtracked a bit. It now defines a binge as five drinks in two hours or less for men, four in two hours for women. Seems more plausible, and seems like a definition that would at least put most people over .08.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:12 PM   0 comments

Budget Totals

Old budget was $3251.488 billion
($2264.172 billion in spending, $987.316 billion in tax expenditures and cuts).

New budget is $1727.29 billion
($1318.51 billion in spending, $408.78 billion in tax expenditures and cuts).

You have cut the deficit by $1524.2 billion.

Your new deficit is $-1167.19 billion.

Oops!

You've cut so much that the federal budget now contains a substantial surplus. Many economists warn that this budget may help induce or prolong a recession, and ordinary citizens demand a refund. You might want to cut taxes or raise spending.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:44 PM   0 comments

• "An Aluminum Dream", in which an arena usher gets the chance to meet the songstress with whom he's obssessed whose music he likes.
  
  
• "Reading Faces", wherein a literary writer reading on a college campus confronts the worst type of audience.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:20 PM   0 comments

"The star will be Vernita Green's (Vivica A. Fox's) daughter, Nikki (Ambrosia Kelley). I've already got the whole mythology: Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus) will get all of Bill's money. She'll raise Nikki, who'll take on The Bride," he says. "Nikki deserves her revenge every bit as much as The Bride deserved hers. I might even shoot a couple of scenes for it now so I can get the actresses while they're this age."

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:28 PM   0 comments

• Helps prevent heart disease; since my family has a history of heart disease, I better up my dosage just to be safe.
  
  
• Is an important source of vitamin B, which has suddenly gained importance for its rationalization benefits.
  
  
• Has less carbs than other beers. It also has less carbs than eating a whole confetti cake each night, and since I have to do one or the other....
  
  
• Contains less alcohol by volume than other beers, which means I can drink more without forgetting where the bottle opener is.

It's a favorite of Bono (obviously), Madonna (with a good cigar) and Matt Damon (no, Guinness does not make teeth unnaturally white).

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:10 PM   0 comments

Domi did want to get something else off his chest, however. Peter Bondra said he thinks the series could be "a war."

"Using the word war is getting a little stupid in our game, especially in our rivalry," Domi said. "Out of respect to the war that is going on, I don't think it should be used. Those guys are fighting a real war and it is insulting to them."

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:37 PM   0 comments

GX classes will be cancelled on Easter Sunday.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:32 PM   0 comments

Infosys Technologies Ltd., which has become India's second-largest software maker thanks largely to outsourced work from the West, is investing $20 million to create nearly 500 consulting jobs in the United States.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:25 PM   0 comments

Melanie Thomas
(314) xxx-xxxx
meet Thurs. night

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:54 PM   0 comments

Wal-Mart is a thing of evil

There is great irony that the Wal-Mart proposed for the South Side would be located on the site of the shuttered Ryerson steel mill, a bit of symbolism that would be too obvious in fiction, but in real life just sits there and smirks at us: the good-job, good-salary past of America bulldozed to make room for the penny-shaving gulag of Wal-Mart. Of course it's our own fault. We rhapsodize the small town past of America, with good old Mr. Henderson standing behind the oak counter at Henderson's Drugs, wrapping our box of cotton balls in brown paper and twine. But when forced to act on our convictions, it turned out we'd rather save a few pennies on our cotton balls by buying them in a 55-gallon drum from an indentured servant at Wal-Mart with Mr. Henderson greeting us at the door for minimum wage.

Tales of Wal-Mart excess -- from forcing illegal immigrants to work unpaid overtime to triple-charging customers through a credit card snafu -- were already piling up when a truly frightening story arrived from Inglewood, Calif.

The Inglewood city fathers, sensibly enough, blocked Wal-Mart from importing its Third World employment practices to their community. The Bargain Behemoth responded by getting a referendum on Tuesday's ballot with a proposal that would basically create a sovereign Republic of Wal-Mart in the heart of Inglewood; if you think I'm exaggerating, the New York Times said the measure would ''essentially exempt Wal-Mart from all of Inglewood's planning, zoning and environmental regulations, creating a city-within-a-city subject only to its own rules.''

My bet is that voters pass the measure -- what is the integrity of your government compared to the lure of buying stuff really cheap? -- and no doubt Wal-Mart will find a way to jam itself into Chicago next.

The most telling detail of the California nightmare is this: The goons Wal-Mart hired to gather signatures to get their measure on the ballot were paid a far better wage than the clerks in its stores.

• Kim du Toit thinks "Wal-Mart is a tool of Satan (not to mention Communist China's best client)."
  
  
• The Meatriarchy Guy agrees with me that "They are a friggin’ department store and no one is forcing anyone to shop there."
  
  
• The ORACULATIONS guy recognizes So as a lifetime job WalMart sucks. As an entry level job while you are looking for something else or while going to school it's great."

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:30 PM   0 comments

Democrat John Kerry said Monday that the violent Shiite uprising in Iraq underscores the Bush administration's failure to build a "genuine" international coalition there and create the conditions for lasting stability.

"I think they're on a terrible course," Kerry said of the administration's performance, while speaking in Washington, D.C., to a group of reporters, most from Midwestern newspapers.

Asked if the United States should arrest Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric who inspired the uprising, Kerry said, "I think they've got to do what they've got to do."

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:18 PM   0 comments

With William Hung, is there any other reason to extend the joke on America except that it plays to a racist image of the ineffectual Asian-American male?

What is Hung but an infantilized, incompetent and impotent male image? Strong? No. Virile? No. Sexy? The guy's a virgin.

It wouldn't be so bad if we saw positive images of Asian-American males in the media. But, for the most part, we've been invisible, and the images have usually come with martial-arts enhancements.

Bruce Lee's combative persona has been the most virile and most enduring icon for Asian-American males. But the stereotypes that predominate are the sinister and inscrutable or ineffectual and effeminate.

You certainly wouldn't see them glorify a black man who couldn't sing and dance on "American Idol." Nor would they prop up a clumsy, tone-deaf white person.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:37 PM   0 comments

• She's a Canadian
  
  
• who protested in Canada
  
  
• about "censorship" in the United States
  
  
• which is not actually censorship, but a negotiation between the producer (Morissette) and a purchaser (radio stations) that didn't work out according to Alanis's "artistic" sensibilities.
  
  
• She protested this "censorship" by wearing a body suit (not by exposing her actual, slightly dumpy body).

• Yahoo!: Alanis Morissette Celebrates "Censor-Free" Canada At The JUNOS, Canada's Music Awards: Songstress "Disrobes" on Canadian TV Video Available by Satellite. Good to know it's available by satellite. Also, appropriate use of scare quotes.
  
  
• Reuters: Alanis Morissette attacks "U.S. censorship".

• James Joyner: Alanis Morisette Not Nude. Thankfully not. Remember that one video she did with her bits pixellated? No? Keep repressing it.
  
  
• Michael Williams: Or Maybe It's Just You

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:19 PM   0 comments

t was no April Fool?s joke when the tap went dry Thursday for a Fond du Lac woman who was left to pay a $1,200 water bill for her deceased mother.

Sonja A. Terry, said neither she nor her late mother, Maria Wittig, had an idea the utility bills were drastically less than they should have been. The problem with an outside meter was discovered only after Terry?s mother died in June 2003 and water utility officials cross-checked what they call the ?actual? meter in the basement at 120 E. Second St.

Wittig had requested and purchased the outdoor meter so the reading could be taken outside her home. The outdoor meter had slowed drastically and may not have been working at all.

Terry agreed in December to pay $50 a month toward the $1,200 bill. When she failed to make the two initial payments, her water was shut off.

?I turned the faucet on and nothing came out,? Terry recalled.

Early last week, she was given another shut-off notice due to two more consecutive months of non-payment. The water was shut off Thursday. She agreed to pay $100 and the water was turned on a short time later.

?I can?t make those (extra payments),? Terry said. ?They?re putting it on my regular (utility) bill.?

Terry said her most recent regular utility bill was $242. Another $150 was added to the bill ($50 repayment schedule for each of three months), bringing the total to nearly $400 for the quarter.

Before the error at the meter was discovered, Terry said her mother?s bill was $53. The amount is the monthly charge for vacant residences, according to water utility staff. The amount suggests that the outdoor meter wasn?t functioning at all.

?I hate doing this,? Fond du Lac Water Superintendent Dale Paczkowski said. ?I don?t like it. (And) it?s time consuming for us to be putting (shut-off) notices on the door and sending letters.?

Paczkowski said the water was used ? it ran through the actual meter.

?I agreed (in December) to $50, which I cannot do,? Terry said. ?I thought I could (pay $50 per month toward the debt), and I had my back surgery, and I lieves headache and eases insomnia. It can be applied full strength to burns, rashes or psoriasis.

Lavender is a ?must-have? in the home, Vores said.

n Lemon increases optimism and sense of humor, helps calm fear and increase memory, according to Vores? list of essential oil uses. In very dilute solution (1 or 2 percent) it is good for acne, he said.

n Peppermint is a mental stimulant, relieves headache and anxiety. It is good for congested sinuses and digestion as well as emotions.

n Tea tree oil builds strength before surgery, says a list of oils Vores? has compiled. It?s a strong antiseptic that stimulates immunity.

Vores describes essential oils as the ?lifeblood? of a plant, the part that is fragrant. ?Pure? oil comes from a single source.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:47 PM   0 comments

Prediction 52: In the future, everyone will be a news reporter.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:58 PM   0 comments

O Me! O Life!

O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light?of the objects mean?of the struggle ever renew?d;
Of the poor results of all--of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest--with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here?that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

It's always more than sex to sleep with you.
Don't get me wrong; I like to tangle sheets
and hungry scents and taste the salty dew
of glistening sweat where heavy brow meets
soft eyelids closed, relaxed. I'll kiss them, too,
and sample other slow seduction sweets.
But I run out of juice, won't thump my chest
and say I don't, and so I like the rest:
I like to lie, arms wrapped around you, deep
in comfortable darkness where the moon projects
odd patterns on the walls. I want to keep
you safe and warm as winter licks our necks.
You mumble love and slowly fall asleep;
these moments worth much more than simple sex.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:47 PM   0 comments

A 15-year-old girl has been arrested for taking nude photographs of her self and posting them on the Internet, police said.

She has been charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:57 PM   0 comments