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And so we made it, albeit scathed, and we awoke to the sun shining and the birds singing and the cat meowing and 2005 beginning in fine style. I don't want to ruin the good will and positive feelings, not right away, at least, but I was flipping through the channels and saw something that reminded me of this:

Someone really needs to do something about the Mummers Parade.

I lived in the Delaware Valley for years and never once felt the need to head to Center City to see the Mummers. There's a reason for this- it's kinda stupid. For the uninitiated, this is what a Mummer looks like:

(2002: Fralinger String Band struts to a second place finish in their division with "A Festival of Knights." Photo courtesy of GPTMC)

What you get with the Mummers is basically a bunch of South Philly guys strutting in sequins and feathers and playing banjos. (And, traditionally, drinking and peeing and puking all along the parade route, but they've tried to cut back on that stuff) The parade isn't as popular as it used to be, but it persists, and it was on TV, so I watched a few minutes with the kind of feeling you get from seeing the aftermath of a non-injury car crash- what a shame, glad nobody got hurt, get me outa here.

Really, though, what do the big parades tell you about their cities? Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade: "This is a big, bustling city with lots of people and Broadway shows and NBC personalities. Oh, and it's now Christmas season, so come here and shop." Rose Parade: "It's warmer and sunnier here than where you are. And Bob Eubanks is still alive." Mummers Parade: "You really don't want to come here."

Philly's better than that. Time to retire the Mummers.

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America? Bad, right? Militaristic, imperialist? Evil? From the news today:

U.S. helicopters rescued dozens of desperate and weak tsunami survivors, including a young girl clutching a stuffed Snoopy dog, as the American military relief operation reached out to remote areas of Indonesia with cartons of food and water on Monday.

Funny how the world went from Yankee Go Home to Help Us, America in the time it took for the wave to hit.

Although the United States was not among the first at the scene after last week's natural disaster thousands of miles from American shores, it is now spearheading the international relief effort and delivering more supplies than any other nation. A U.S. warship strike group carrying thousands more Marines was headed in to help.

Chintzy, that's what they called Americans. Chintzy when not torturing poor terroris... er, insurge... no, political prisoners at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

The American pilots ferried the survivors to a medical field station in Banda Aceh. The ones not rushed on stretchers were placed on a blue plastic sheet, among them a young girl clutching a stuffed Snoopy dog. Some cried, and aid workers stroked their arms and backs to comfort them. They were given chocolate wafers, water, sweaters and T-shirts.

Evil Americans, spreading their capitalistic poison chocolate and water and sweaters and t-shirts.

More American help was coming. The USS Bonhomme Richard and two other warships carrying a Marine expeditionary unit, dozens of helicopters and tons of supplies steamed into the Indian Ocean on Monday to join relief operations off Sumatra and Sri Lanka.

"We've been racing across the ocean," said Rear Adm. Chris Ames, commander of the strike force.

The strike group, which had been headed to the Persian Gulf, was diverted while near the Pacific island of Guam. Ames said the Marines' primary responsibilities would include transporting food and medical supplies.

The Pentagon also has decided to send the USNS Mercy, a 1,000-bed hospital ship based at San Diego, to join the relief effort, officials said.

Yeah, yeah, but everyone knows what the problem is, right? So America's helping save lives. Big deal- what about solving the inequity beteen rich countries and poor countries? Could the tsunami disaster be a turning point for the world, making them finally tackle global poverty? That's what the Independent's asking very important people like comic impressionist Rory Bremner, who opines:

On an individual level, it is not just about what we are prepared to give, but what we are prepared to give up. Having left Afghanistan and Iraq in their wake, can our leaders be trusted to fight a war on poverty?

Well, you know, if Rory Bremner says the West "left Afghanistan and Iraq in their wake," it MUST be a bad thing. You know, he does comic impressions- that makes him an expert on good and evil. And Bremner the Expert says the war on terrorism is a bad thing. Then there's Greenpeace Executive Director Stephen Tindale:

It seems churlish to say it, but while it's relatively easy for most of us to give £50, it would be much harder for us to make the changes in our modern lifestyles that are needed if we are to move to a fairer world.

Which raises the question: how do you get to a fairer world? What's fair? Should everyone have the same money, the same opportunity, the same everything? Yes? OK, then, I guess a brain surgeon should be paid the same as someone who pushes a broom, and they should both be paid the same as someone who refuses to work. That would be fair, no? No? Then what is fair? How much should be reallocated from "rich" to "poor"? And who should administer that transfer?

(crickets)

Here's "comedian" Bill Bailey:

It was the same after 11 September. Everyone said it was a great opportunity to try to understand the world but it was used by the US as a reason to go on a rampaging adventure in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The jury may be out on Iraq, but Afghanistan? "Rampaging"? I guess Bill Bailey liked the Taliban just fine. Meanwhile, artist Dinos Chapman sez:

Western capitalism demands that people must be impoverished. I cannot think that anything will change this year, because we are the ones who have made the world the way it is. I don't believe in altruism.

And there's the far left in a nutshell- they don't believe that people are willing to give to the less fortunate just because it's the moral thing to do, because they don't believe there are such things as morals. Altruism? No, no, people are intrinsically evil, don't you know? (Those multi-millions Americans are sending to charities to help the tsunami victims? The military aid? The medication donated by pharmaceutical companies? Nonexistent- it's altruism, ergo it isn't real) And capitalism is bad, because it rewards those who actually work hard and achieve and excel. That's unfair- under big bad Western capitalism, you have to WORK to succeed. It's far better when all you have to do is occasionally take a dump on the floor and put a sign next to it and call it art and the government hands you a grant. THAT'S fair. (And it is unlikely to occur to Dinos that artists in non-Western-capitalist societies tend to run into issues like censorship and oppression, unless he assumes those are small prices to pay to avoid actually having to compete in the open market of ideas and commerce)

Finally, the King of the Loony Left, Anthony "Tony Benn" Wedgwood-Benn, coming back from extreme obscurity to say this:

It may make people realise that the UN needs to be well-equipped and funded. If people diverted money from weapons and war, we have the technology and money to be able to help - if we decide to do that.

The U.N. gets an enormous amount of money already. Nobody holds it accountable for anything. And the moment anyone actually looks into what the U.N. does with the money, the stanch of scandal wafts out so powerfully that the leadership has to hold an emergency meeting to deal with the Secretary General's incompetence and the corruption of the organization in general. Let's divert money from weapons and war and give it to them. And then we can watch as terrorists kill without fear of reprisal and Kim Jong Il bombs South Korea and China takes Taiwan and Tony Benn nods in contentment.

Yes, it's all a) America's fault, b) the West's fault, and/or c) Capitalism's fault. Meanwhile, America, the West, and Capitalism are the ones helping the victims of this disaster while the critics sit home on their wallets and point fingers. Surprise!

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The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim?

They can call themselves whatever they want and nobody will be fooled. Anaheim is not Los Angeles. Ask the Rams, who tried to make that work before getting the state of Missouri to make them rich. I can't blame Arte Moreno for trying to get some more radio and TV revenue mileage out of his franchise, but if he expects local TV stations to think, hey, they're an L.A. team now, so we'll pay him the same money we'd pay for the Dodgers rights, he's insane. It doesn't work that way. The Clippers will never get Laker money. The White Sox aren't as lucrative as the Cubs. The Islanders ain't the Rangers. The Oakland A's wouldn't make more money as the San Francisco A's. The New York or Brooklyn Nets won't get more broadcast revenue than the New Jersey Nets do from the very same stations. It doesn't work that way. He can try, but he's going to learn some things before he's through.

And meanwhile, they'll be the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Sorry, but that just doesn't work for me. I suspect it won't work for Arte, either. But it's his dime.

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Today was the dental work, the inlay, which is usually not a big deal. Weird, though- first the novocaine shots hurt like king hell, then my jaw felt like it went out of whack being yanked open to do the drilling, then I fell asleep in the chair for about 15 minutes, then more drilling, yanking, and discomfort. I staggered out of there and I haven't quite recovered. The numbness is just now wearing off, several hours after the fact, and I'm a little dazed from the experience. I'm so dazed, I can swear that USC is blowing out Oklahoma right now. That can't be right, can it?

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Excuse? A 15 hour work day's an excuse? Several torturous hours trying to configure the new Dell computer, plus 45 minutes arguing with customer service because they sent the wrong damn video card, an excuse?

Damn right, and a good one, too.

Go look at the Ashlee Simpson booing clip or something.

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You order a car with a V-8 and you pay extra for it. They give you a V-6. You go back and they have to get you a V-8.

You order a porterhouse, well done. They bring you a raw flank steak. You send it back and they bring you the porterhouse.

You order a computer and pay almost $300. extra for a top-of-the-line video card. They send you a computer with a much cheaper video card. They send you the correct card and offer profuse apologies, right?

Right?

Well, let's say this- I'm not going to mention the name of this particular very large computer vendor, but I've spent about THREE HOURS on the phone with various customer service and tech people in India and Texas, and I'm waiting for a resolution. And here's the fun part- I ordered one card. I paid for it. The order shows the right card. The PACKING SLIP shows the right card. But they put the wrong one in. And they didn't immediately agree that they needed to change the card.

Wait, it gets better. After 45 minutes going back and forth with the CSR and a tech person in India, I finally got them to send me the right card. No problem, they agreed, here it comes. And, indeed, the next day (today), DHL dropped off a box. I opened it... and found the SAME wrong card I already had, only THIS one was a REFURBISHED card. Back to the phones, this time landing in Texas, where a CSR heard my tale of woe and then told me she knew what the problem was- it was that their computers show the wrong card listed. I told her I was looking at the packing slip and the original order and they listed the RIGHT card. She said fine, but since the wrong card was listed, she could only exchange it for the same model.

"Wait," I wailed, "you're telling me you can't just have someone go to the shelf, pick up the right card, and send it to me?" "That's right," she responded cheerily, "it's not a like-exchange." BUT I PAID FOR THE MORE EXPENSIVE CARD. "We don't have that listed." I DO! AND CHECK THE BOTTOM LINE- WHY DOES IT SHOW THAT I PAID ALMOST $300. MORE FOR THE VIDEO CARD?

OK, she said, here's what we can do- send us back the cards, we can refund you the money, you order the right card and pay for it. Here was the flaw in her logic: one, I would then be without a video card and, therefore, without a computer for the days or weeks it would take to do that, and two, I got a sweet no-interest-until-2007 deal on this baby and if I have to pay for the video card seperately, that's almost $400. I'll immediately owe- I'd lose the no-interest deal for that amount. And that didn't strike me as fair, since the problem wasn't my doing, it was THEIR MISTAKE.

By this time, the tension headache was unbearable. She wasn't budging- sorry, sir, but you'll have to do it this way, there's nothing we can do. I asked for a supervisor. After another long wait, I spoke to a supervisor, who claimed I'll be getting that better video card and it'll all be taken care of.

I'll believe it when I see it. Until then, I will not mention the name of this Texas-based computer company, in hopes that the supervisor will come through for me. She seemed sincere, and she may have pulled this one out yet. Your prayers are appreciated.

(And your refraining from the "shoulda bought a Mac" refrain will be appreciated, too)

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No new video card yet, but the rest of the computer works. That's no small feat, since it involved using Alohabob PC Relocator to move a lot of programs from the old computer, then fixing a couple that didn't make the trip all that well (unfortunately, that included some of the main ones, but after a few hours of trial and error messages, I finally got everything to function.

Like you care.

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Ladies and gentlemen, for your weekend viewing pleasure, a stirring story of an intransigent coyote and the woman who photographed him. Voted Best Picture by the South Torrance Film Critics Circle, it's a nature documentary, it's an art film, it's...

Coyote In the Road.

(You'll need Windows Media Player to see it. Shot on location in December 2004 at Joshua Tree National Park)

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Need proof that the mainstream media has a different perspective on things? Check Romanesko, which is pretty much the place for the practitioners of the news trade in America to gather and gossip and mostly deny they're liberal. What was the big news media story today?

No, you're wrong. Jim put a single story plus a link to the report about that on the site, buried low on the list.

How about a conservative columnist NOBODY READS with a TV show that NOBODY WATCHES doing something ludicrously unethical?

Yep. TWO separate entries, here and here, with no less than six additional story links.

You mean that there was nothing else on "Rathergate" to which it would be worth linking? Nothing?

Well, maybe that's unfair- surely the letters page, which is usually a lively debate among members of the profession, has all the buzz about the report- was it fair? Should the four fired employees have been fired? Should Rather have taken the fall? How could what they did NOT be politically motivated?

Um, nope- NOT A SINGLE LETTER as of now (11:12 pm ET Monday). Not a SINGLE LETTER on the only media story right now that's big enough to have crossed over to the news the public sees. It's one of the lead stories on even the local news shows right now, and the people in the news media aren't discussing it? They're more concerned about Armstrong Freaking Williams, a guy nobody in the general public knows, than Dan Rather, a household word?

Maybe they're too busy covering the important news. Who knows, they may get Brad to say something about Jennifer.

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It's the morning after and Romanesko's finally added some stories and links about Rathergate. How, er, timely. But the letters haven't changed- I guess nobody's talking about it. (Better guess- everyone's trying to figure out the best spin)

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They replaced the motherboard on my computer, and all was well until the updated ATI video driver went in, at which point I got the Blue Screen of Death and lost everything. I mean, all data, all documents, all programs. Couldn't reinstall Windows, couldn't get past the BIOS bootup, couldn't access the hard drive booting from the CD, couldn't get to Safe Mode or a command prompt or the recovery utility. Couldn;t do anything but run the wipe-everything-clean-and-start-over utility. THAT worked, of course.

Luckily, I'd backed up the documents and the financial stuff, so I wasn't completely out of luck when I had to revert the system to its fresh-from-the-factory state, but I'm still not done reinstalling, and my mail and bookmarks are a mess. If you sent me anything in the past week, I'd appreciate it if you'd resend it- I lost all of that.

What have we learned?

1. Back up everything.

2. Windows sucks.

3. Dell customer service sucks, too. And I've spent hours on the line with them in the last couple of days, so I know of which I speak.

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I was in the midst of yelling at some customer service rep in India about my computer, which had crashed and wouldn't recover and lost all my data, when, restraining myself from cursing, growled "this is a disaster, man, a disaster."

No, no it wasn't.

And I apologized.

India knows what a disaster is. The entire region of South Asia knows. Hell, Ventura County, where they're still sifting the mud for bodies, knows. Some well-off suburban guy grumbling about his precious new computer, well, there's no disaster here.

Losing perspective is easy. I mean, my great tragedy was to lose a few ultimately inessential files, some unrecoverable e-mail and work, and a few software programs that I downloaded and bought and registered but which are not available without a paid upgrade anymore. And I'd backed up all of my documents and my financial records. That's it. So I had to reinstall a zillion programs and hastily reconstruct some pieces I'd written. Disaster? Not even on a personal scale- 2004, now THERE was a disaster. This? Piece of cake.

So far this year, I've had one computer crash, one aggravation over the wrong video card, a couple of teeth needing repair, and some minor car repairs, all in less than two weeks. And you know what? It's still better than last year. Picked up a couple of new projects already, getting good feedback from my latest stuff, the rain finally stopped and it was gorgeous today... I might even smile a little.

And with the end of the rain and cloud cover and lousy atmospherics came the first reception of over-the-air HDTV and digital TV on my PC's HD card. (We can't get L.A. OTA TV here- blocked by a mountain- so we can only get San Diego from 100 miles away, when conditions are just right) And who's the first person I see? An almost-first-lady.

But I'm STILL gonna keep a positive outlook.

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I don't know how I did it.

Commuting, that is. I had to leave the house today- you know how I hate that- and that meant a long drive up the 405 and La Cienega to West Hollywood and Beverly Hills for a meeting. I haven't had to make that drive for a while, and definitely not in the thick of rush hour. I think it was sitting on the off ramp that merges into La Cienega from the 405- nothing but red lights and tail lights ahead- that reminded me how much I don't miss driving to work, how grateful I am to work at home. I've picked up another project that'll require some driving, and I guess I'll have to get used to the drive again. I'll try.

I've had some epic commutes before- 90 miles each way from North Jersey to the shore, 35 miles across the state, the legendary 45 miles at 3:30 am to Pasadena- and I developed tricks to make me feel like it wasn't all bad. Whether it was trying to hit the Essex tolls on the Parkway South by 7:30 am because that would mean I'd beat traffic the rest of the way, or knowing which lane to be in at every point on the 110 North- left lane from the 91 to the 105, then all the way to the right up to downtown- it gave me the impression that I'd beat the crowd, when, in reality, the crowd beat me, every time. And then, I discovered the joys of commuting from the bedroom to the office down the hall.

I guess everyone finds a way to ease their commute- radio, coffee, whatever. And while you're doing it, you convince yourself that it's not so bad. I like driving- like it a lot, actually, when the roads are wide open and the speed limit's high. But this jammed-all-the-way 40 mile ultramarathon... no, sir, I don't like it. GOod thing tomorrow's a stay-in-the-house day.

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Do we really have to do this?

I guess because I sometimes talk politics, and because in the post-Armstrong Williams (full name "Who the Hell Ever Heard of Armstrong Williams?") era a pair of the more prominent liberal bloggers have been revealed to be paid "consultants" to political campaigns, here's my disclosure statement:

Nobody pays me to write any of this crap.

Nobody would ever even think to pay me to write this crap.

I pay someone else- the server company- to let me post this crap.

If someone for any unfathomable reason wanted to pay me to take a particular viewpoint, I wouldn't take it.

If anyone cares, I get paid to write for AllAccess.com and to do projects for Sirius Satellite Radio and consulting for Sabo Media. I don't write a whole lot about them anyway. You don't care. The end.

Now, whaddya think about the Eagles-Vikings game Sunday?

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Suddenly, those names are back. I refer here, of course, to those randomly generated names for the "To:" field in spam e-mail, the ones that resemble no real names on Earth. Herewith, the latest entrants in the Spam Hall of Fame, populated entirely by the "senders" of e-mail I've received:

Milestone A. Indiscretions, Hebrews M. Wangled, Antislavery A. Shandy, Blockaded I. Anion, Scatter P. Morons, and Replicas O. Saar.

If you have a baby on the way, you might want to borrow these. Imagine the joy of growing up with a name like Hebrews M. Wangled.

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Apparently, I'm embarking on a busy period, which differs from my normal level of activity in that I'll be sacrificing what hours of sleep and weekend leisure I've managed to retain thus far. As a result, I barely made it out of the house this weekend- I spent most of the last 48 hours at the computer, except when I went to a meeting on Saturday (you know you've condemned yourself to a pleasure-free life when you're taking business meetings on Saturday).

That meant putting the football games on in the corner of my computer monitor, so I got to watch the Eagles coast on a wave of Vikings miscues and the Pats defense make Manning look scattered and lost and unable to find anyone open beyond the flat. I missed the Steelers-Jets game for the meeting, but was in the car in time to hear the missed field goal and then the overtime. I used the Sirius (CONFLICT ALERT: I am being paid by Sirius to do production and miscellaneous independent work! WARNING! Read at your own risk! ) (Hey, if XM wants to buy me off... er, pay me, I'm available for them, too) radio and thus got to hear the Steelers' broadcast, meaning, of course, Myron Cope. Myron is one of a kind, and if you get the chance to hear him, you gotta, at least once- unique, high-pitched, heavily Pennsylvania-accented voice, random exclamations, non sequiturs, hopeless homer. He appeared to be taking credit for Doug Brien missing the field goal because everyone was waving their Terrible Towels, which he invented. It made the game even more interesting, because I had no horse in that race and whenever I checked the Jets' broadcast, it was just, you know, regular football. I'd much rather hear a game described by an escaped lunatic. It's like the way I watch games when I go live- I end up in a long conversation about other stuff punctuated by comments about the game:

"Yeah, I heard that show, and I can't believe he thought that topic would work. He didn't even give the phone num... AAAHH, COME ON! KORVER WAS WIDE OPEN! I swear, as long as Iverson takes 30 shots a game, the Sixers will never win... anyway, that show was awful. I need some popcorn. You want any?"

Yeah, you don't want to go to a game with me.

Not that I'm likely to be at any games anytime soon, unless someone moves a franchise into my yard. The Los Angeles Lakers of Palos Verdes, anyone?

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By the way, during dinner, we briefly had the Golden Globes on, and Annette Bening won one for acting in a movie called "Being Julia."

Being who? What?

Is that a real movie?

I think they made this one up. I'm reasonably well-informed about movies- we tend to go to see all of those Oscar-bait L.A.-New York-only releases before they open wide, we see all the cool art films, we saw "Harold and Kumar Go to Wh..." oh, right, that wasn't an art film. But we saw it. "Being Julia"? Never heard of it. The Hoillywood Foreign Press people probably just wanted to give Annette Bening an award, and they figured that nobody would notice or care if they just made a movie up for her. I mean, who's gonna say anything? It's an award winner- you gonna tell anyone you didn't see it? Of course not.

I saw a lot of movies this year that I WISH weren't real, but "Being Julia" is a mystery. Never saw a trailer, never saw it listed in the movies, not even at the ArcLight or the Laemmle Sunset 5. Never saw it in those ridiculous insufferable Kevin Crust lists of upcoming releases in the L.A. Times (I think there was another one in today's paper, but I had no time to read it- maybe "Being Julia' is in there). Until I see that movie, I refuse to accept that it exists.

Did "Harold and Kumar" win anything? Not even "Best Movie to Feature a Fantasy Geography of New Jersey Where Hoboken is 20 Minutes from New Brunswick and New Brunswick is 45 Minutes from Cherry Hill and there Isn't a White Castle Anywhere Closer to Hoboken than That"? Then I'll skip the Globes, thank you very much.

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Backup, backup, backup.

Tim Blair's site was down earlier, then up, then down, and now, apparently, back up. For a while, though, it looked like he lost everything.

I know how he felt. I had that huge crash the other week, and for a while I thought I was cooked, but I'd remembered to throw my documents on CDs and financial records on CDs and a flash drive, and when I had to use the return-it-to-its-original-state option to get the box working again, I was able to save everything critical- I lost all the applications and had to reinstall them (I'm still not fully restored), and I lost about a week's worth of e-mails, but the docs were there. Relief is not an adequate word to describe how I felt when I copied the docs onto the refreshed hard drive and everything worked.

But Tim losing the site, however briefly he was out, reminded me that if my host went down, I'd be S.O.L.... unless I made sure to back up the archives. I can always reinstall Movable Type, but could I live with myself if my carelessness deprived the world of my literary genius? No, I could not.

It's backed up now. If you were rooting for this to go away, you lost.

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One question:

"Aloha Taylor"?

Is there a rule that TV weatherpeople have to have funny names? Dallas Raines, Johnny Mountain, Storm Field, John Bolaris... okay, Bolaris is odd for other reasons, but Aloha Freakin' Taylor? That's like "Hello Smith" or "Shalom Harlow"... right, that's someone's real name, too.

Forget I said anything.

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It's all about time, I suppose. I realized this watching one of those travel shows they loop on the PBS HDTV channel. They were showing Milan and Lake Como and the Alps, and it was, as every location on these shows appears to be, spectacular. There were the villas with lush gardens, the winding cobblestone streets with shops and cafes all around, the restaurants and markets with fresh local delicacies... I wanted to see them all, wander through the country, take it all in.

But I don't have the time.

I have to work.

I should have been a travel writer. I'd like to have the time to go to Italy or England or Australia or wherever and just bum around, visit wherever and whenever the spirit moves, take as much time as I need to enjoy a place. I'd like to move around without a timetable, without a clock, without a schedule, just do what I want when I want how I want.

That's freedom. Can't get that. Gotta be here, gotta work, gotta be up at 5, gotta get everything in. Too much to do. Europe? Asia? Even San Diego? Not now. Maybe someday.

And that's why "money can't by happiness" is a crock. Of course it can. If I had enough money so I didn't have to work every day, didn't have to lug a laptop wherever I went, didn't have to plug into broadband, didn't have to watch the clock, you'd better believe I'd be happier. You can't go to the happiness store and give them money for the goods, but you can buy freedom, buy your way out of work, out of most of your time obligations. With money, if you decide, hey, let's go to Europe, you can drop everything, head for the airport, buy a ticket, go to Europe. If you decide to sleep in, you can sleep in. You have time, limited only by health and, eventually, death. That's what money gets you.

But you don't get that kind of money very easily. You can become a highly paid Hollywood star or famous athlete, but you probably won't. (Besides, those people never actually stop working. If I was Jim Carrey and got $20 million a movie, I'd make a few movies, then quit and never come back. You put $40 or $60 mil in the bank, you can live off the interest and do whatever you want. Me, I'd quit as soon as I had enough to blow off all future obligations, and I'd disappear. But that's why I'd never get to that point) You could start a company and build it into a fabulous success worth billions, then sell it and have fun, but that rarely happens, and the people who do THAT are too driven to rest- Mark Cuban, for example.

Or you could hit the lotto. That's my plan. You gotta be in it to win it. Hey, you never know.

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Had to finish a big project tonight, so my long piece on blogs and Hugh Hewitt's book and the future of practically everything will have to wait. A guy's gotta get some sleep, you know what I'm sayin'? In the meantime, ponder this screen capture made when I was randomly snapping away while playing with my digital TV tuner card:

This was a slide on KUSI's news. Whatever do you think this is supposed to mean? Let's look at it- California Department of Health Services. Okay. 1-800-NO-BUTTS. Symbol of "no smoking." Okay. And we're supposed to do what with that number? What happens when you call?

"Hello, 1-800-NO-BUTTS."

"Um, yeah, hi, I saw your number on TV."

"Yes? And how may I help you?"

"Um, well, I... um.. No smoking! Woooooo!"

"Thank you for calling the California Department of Health Services." Click.

Maybe it's supposed to be a line to help you quit smoking, but then what's with the "No Butts" thing? Butts aren't the problem (oh, get your mind out of the gutter). Pre-butts- actual smokable cigarettes- they're the problem. And it shows the map and the "no smoking" symbol, so I'd assume it's about the public smoking laws, but then we're back to why you'd call a state number for that. Is it to report violators?

Okay, my curiosity got the best of me. Turns out it IS to help you quit smoking, although I have no idea what they could possibly say to you.

"Hello, 1-800-NO-BUTTS."

"Hi, um, I'd like to quit smoking."

"Okay, then stop."

"Um, I can't. I need help."

"Go to the Walgreens and buy one of those nicotine gums. Or a patch."

"That's it?"

"Or you can glue your lips together. Have a nice day." Click.

Yes, I AM tired and incoherent. Why do you ask?

(By the way, the title of this post was an excuse to mention an old comedy bit. Whatever happened to Franklin Ajaye, anyway? Why, just click here. He's in Australia, he's still active, and he just acted on "Deadwood." And he did "Don't Smoke Dope, Fry Your Hair," the ultimate James Brown impression. Hit me!)

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May 13, 1962:

Boy, they really knew how to sell a show then, didn't they?

Here's the original caption:

Now it's time for a leisurely cup of coffee and a Valium. Sure, she still has to watch one of the little brats and the dog- clean up after both of them, actually, trying not to pay much attention to the pale beige stain still marking the sofa from Fido's last "accident." Accident, yeah, right, she thinks, the goddamn dog knows how I feel, waited until the plastic slipcovers were off getting cleaned to have that "accident." Maybe Fido will just "accidentally" get "lost." Maybe the brat- Peggy or Patty or whatever the f--k we named her- can get "lost" with him. She could dream. The drug's kicking in now, and she turns on the TV. It's that f--king Jack Chase, Betty Adams and Don Kent. Look at them chatting away, smiling and happy. I hate those f--kers, she thinks. Sure, they're happy. They don't have a loveless marriage to a goddamn f--king actuary- he's a good provider, they tell her, a solid pillar of the community. Boring f--ing a-hole who can't get it up, she thinks, watching the cream in her Chase and Sanborn curdle atop the rapidly cooling murk. He comes home late every goddamn day, picks at his food while he loses himself in the sports pages of the Traveler, doesn't speak. She looks back at the TV. Yeah, she thinks, Jack, Betty and Don. My only friends. My only f--king friends. F--k that. She pours some Bailey's into the coffee, drinks some more, picks at the label. Jack, Betty, and Don... She remembers the pistol the F--king Actuary bought for "protection," remembers where he stashed it, in the crawlspace above the bedroom closet. She thinks about it, thinks some more, then pours some more Bailey's until the room starts to waver and she passes out.

NEWS AT NINE... 9 am weekdays WBZ-TV 4.

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A column at Editor and Publisher's web site today (hat tip: Romanesko) purports to be a "20-something freelance writer"'s defense of newspapers, and after trying to establish his credibility by insisting that he likes blogs and "The Daily Show," he gets to this:

...newspaper readership isn’t declining because the competing media happen to be more technologically advanced; newspaper readership is declining because we have deemed the medium itself -- often calm, dispassionate, and time-consuming with all its sections and space for hundreds of articles -- flawed and out of step with the way we live. Right now, we believe there is no time and no need to read and then deliberate.... Right now, it is becoming easier to get wrapped up in the seamless lifestyle and political views of our choosing and never consider the alternatives. To read the newspaper, to wade through the swamp of stats, context, and conflicting ideas, to tempt confusion and hesitation, well -- that is not an option for the savvy-minded. Rather, we use blogs and fake news as an efficient way of staying somewhat informed and, at the same time, envisioning the world. The winks, nods, and ALL CAPS denunciations are fast becoming guides and shortcuts in a contentious, jumbled world with too many other things to do.

Call me a stodgy traitor to my generation, but this growing demand for blatant cues of interpretation is worrisome.

I think the guy misses the point, and he misses the essential nature of the way blogs actually work. A good start to understanding what blogs really do for their readers can be found in fellow talk radio guy Hugh Hewitt's new book "Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World," but I'm not just talking about the author's excellent analysis and history of the new form. In the back of the book, several readers of Hewitt's own blog contribute their commentary on how they use blogs, and included are comments like these:

-The blogosphere can point out... misleading stories and help the reader to put current events in the proper CONTEXT.

-I see the blogs as the antidote to the elitism in the MSM and politics in general.... Blogs are a filter. We badly need a detector to filter the ridiculous stuff that is on the web.

-I think this is what the conventional media is missing the most- not that more of us will turn to only bloggers, Drudge or Fox News for our news, but rather, with the advent of the new media, we will end up demanding more news from more sources. Editorial decisions concerning which news stories will be covered are no longer the province of the networks and the NYT and WP.

Well, yes. There aren't studies to show this, but I suspect that most blog users use the Net to get more than the single perspective on a story that the mainstream media offers. They don't abandon the traditional mass media, they supplement it. That's what I do. Blogs have not replaced my reading of daily newspapers, but I do check blogs for opinion and context, much the same way one would read the op-ed page or the local columnists in the past. The reason the op-eds and the columnists are "past," however, is that with blogs, I don't have to wait a whole day or even longer to read what commentators have to say. Something happens in the world and there's Power Line in Minnesota, and Tim Blair in Australia, and Colby Cosh and Damian Penny in Canada, and countless others all around the world to weigh in.

And it's also a reaction to what you get on TV news as well- the same old pundits, chosen less for their opinions than for their looks or charisma. Looks don't matter in blogs- ideas do. I have no idea what most bloggers look like. (You don't know what I look like, except for my eye; you can always go here if your curiosity gets the better of you) All that matters is the opinion, the facts that back 'em up, the writing.

There are parallels, to some extent, to my business, talk radio. Like talk radio, blogs are giving voice to those shut out of the "regular" channels. Like talk radio, there's an interactive element- the callers on the radio, the comments for the blogs. But unlike talk radio, there's an even better response route. If you don't like what a talk show or station is saying, you can call in, but you can't easily start your own station that's on an instant equal footing. Don't like what the blogs are saying? Start your own. You can do it for free, you can pay a little, you can pay a lot, but there's absolutely no barrier to entry. It's the ultimate meeting of free market and mass media. Think that scares the MSM a little? Consider this- it's as easy to find this page as it is to find the New York Times online. (Of course, I ain't no New York Times, nor do I have more than a zillionth of its daily readership. But I can dream) We need the New York Times- we need all the mainstream media outlets we can get- because we need their news gathering expertise and we need the material. But, suddenly, instead of the single op-ed page and a few letters to the editor, there's an unlimited op-ed "page" and unlimited "letters." And many of those are ready and eager to point out any flaws or mistakes or- pardon the term- bias in the news columns. (Once, for example, you've read Patterico's blog, you can't possibly read the L.A. Times again without using the blog as a supplement and counterpoint. Every paper and news organization should have a Patterico to keep them honest. Hewitt would say that the papers should have blogs by the editors to keep themselves honest. He'd be right.)

Oh, yeah, Hewitt. The book? It's an excellent introduction to the form, including a compelling comparison of this media revolution to another media revolution, the invention of the printing press, which enabled Luther to get his ideas out in the open, a new New Testament into people's hands, and, ultimately, with Calvin, the Reformation ("(f)or the MSM, it is 1449 and 1517, at the same moment"). There's an explanation of how blogs are keeping (or trying to keep) the news media honest, as up to date as Rathergate, and a lot of sage advice for those- in business, in politics, in virtually all walks of life- who want to, or need to, get into blogging. It's an essential read for bloggers, blog readers, and, especially, the corporate leaders and politicians who ought to be blogging right now.

I'll bet ABC News people haven't read it, though, considering the "show us your Iraq troop funeral" debacle yesterday. So many people want this blog thing to go away. Or, as the writer in E&P concludes, they want things to somehow return to "normal," to the days when the newspapers were all you needed (and got):

Perhaps there’s something in the newspapers after all: different voices, new ideas, something to help us figure out where to go from here -- even if it means logging off for a few minutes each day. At the very least, we can listen to our iPods and read at the same time.

The different voices and new ideas, the help in figuring out where to go from here... that's exactly what the blogs are for. You can go to the New York Times and get the same old Dowd/Rich/Safire pontifications, or you can go to the Net and find hundreds upon hundreds of fresh voices. That a lot of the folks at newspapers and TV networks and, yes, radio, too haven't figured that out yet is turning out to be their problem. The rest of us? Looks like we're in the right place.

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It's not the act of travel I dislike. I love travel, really I do- I enjoy the change of scenery, the excitement of the unfamiliar, the meeting with friends and relatives and acquaintances I never otherwise get to see. What I don't like is the preparation- the sorting through bills to pay, things to pack, arrangements to make, work to do- I have a ton of writing to finish and some work on other projects to get done before I go, and not enough time (there's that lament again) to do it all. The preliminaries are a pain in the butt, time-consuming, frustrating.

And then there's the separation anxiety. I don't want to be away from home, away from the comfort of my own bed, my own computer, my own Ella the World's Most Famous Cat. I like the familiar surroundings of L.A., and while I'm going someplace that's pretty familiar, too, I'd rather be home. I'd like to be able to bring home with me, but I don't live in an RV and, thus, it's a plane and a rental car and a hotel for me. Ah, well, there are worse things with which to deal.

But it is time to deal. Doesn't mean I won't be here, writing and annoying you, however. You can't get away that easily.

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On ESPN, Ron Jaworski, previewing the Eagles-Falcons game, said "In the words of Winston Churchill, those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it."

Ah... no.

George Santayana.

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Look, if you're not sure about something, don't just blurt it out and hope it makes you sound intelligent.

Geez.

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Made it to the other side of the country, had some hotel problems, and it's late (past midnight here). So, yes, I have something to say about the Eagles, but it'll have to wait until Monday.

Just remember, when a hotel says it has Internet access in all rooms, what they mean is that some rooms don't. Needless to say, this was not something that pleased me.

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ESPN's Bill Simmons wrote a recent column about a Red Sox fan who missed the whole post-season because he was in a coma, thus becoming Coma Guy and being the one living Sox fan who didn't experience the joy of the Series win because he was, er, otherwise engaged.

For the NFC Championship this year, I was, figuratively, close to Coma Guy. I missed the whole game.

It was not... well, partially not my fault. I did not intend to be in an airplane when the Eagles game started, rushing to the baggage claim as the clock wound down, waiting for my rental car when I checked my cell phone and the final score popped onto the screen. When I booked the flight over a month ago, I didn't know for sure that the Eagles would be in the game, or that the NFC game would be at 3p ET. And if the plane had been on time, I might have made it to a TV in time to see the end. Instead, the plane was a few minutes late, the baggage took forever to emerge on the carousel, and the rental car agency was out of the car I'd reserved. That's how I ended up staring at my cell phone web browser as the good news came in and the rental agent said I could either wait for a full-sized car to show up, pay a lot extra for an SUV, or take the mini-van for the reservation price. Not quite Coma Guy, but in the ballpark, with an obstructed view.

Missed the game. Ended up in a Dodge Caravan. 32 degrees in Florida. The first room at the hotel didn't have Net access. Perfect, just perfect.

Well, actually, it WAS perfect, because after all that, we met this character:

He's our nephew. It was the first time we got to see him im person- he was born just a month ago. the kid's adorable, and we're his Crazy California Relatives, Weird Uncle Perry and Aunt Frannie. I missed McNabb showing up Vick, I missed the celebration, I missed the football, but I didn't miss the most important thing.

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If I'm awake, that is. Travelin' day tomorrow, early- and I mean EARLY. Talk to you when I get back.

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Back from Tampa-St. Petersburg, just in time to miss Gasparilla. We've never actually been in Tampa when Gasparilla is in effect- Gasparilla is sort of Tampa's answer to Mardi Gras, ostensibly an invasion by "pirates" who seize control of the city and throw strings of beads at the locals (I believe residents of Tampa are known as Tampons, although I might be gratuit