PMSimon.com

I'm enjoying the latest round of spam e-mails I've been getting.

No, really, I get roughly five hundred spams a day among my various accounts, much of it the usual viagra come-ons, plus some farm animal action, if, as Joe Bob Briggs would day, you know what I mean and I think you do. But the latest batch is different. In fact, I don't know what's in 'em- I think they're really just sent out to confirm your address is valid so someone can sell it on a list- but they feature names and subject lines that appear to be randomly generated.

For example, "Lois Jaramillo" writes on the subject "Gunky associate." "Alvin Putnam" waxes profound in an e-mail with the subject "algerta brockish." Maxwell Rogers insists "assume nomadic churn," while Valeria Faulk speaks of "luxuriant flung." "Stephen Irwin" urges us to "freethink cinematic." "Marquis Hull" suggests that we "adminish imprecision ditty," while other notes come from "Plutocrats L. Vexes," "Pierce Kenya," "Revved U. Wedding," "Repletion J. Cliburn," "Reallocates C. Flotation," and "Refulgence H. Corduroy," not to mention "Seedless J. Grouping," "Slap K. Orchestral," and "Elephant J. Tomcats," who I think was in my law school class.

Really, it's far more amusing to get an e-mail from Mr. Flotation and Sir Tomcats than from anyone I actually KNOW. It's great when the names almost but not quite approach a reasonable facsimile of a real name: "Repletion J. Cliburn" has 2/3 of a real name, but you know there's no "Seedless J. Grouping." (Where have you gone, "Algonquin J. Calhoun"? And why do most fictional names have the middle initial "J"?)

These days, a lot of my REAL e-mail is bad news: "you have a new e-bill," "you haven't updated my listing," "Dodgers 2004 season tickets on sale now." I'm enjoying the spam more without even having to open them. Maybe someone should invent a spam filter that keeps your LEGITIMATE messages out of your inbox. I'd be interested. If you have one, drop me a line- you should be able to find my address anywhere. Just look for Plutocrats L. Vexes.

 Share

I was walking into the post office when I noticed something that keeps happening there, a pet peeve of mine: each of the handicapped spaces were occupied by cars without handicapped plates or placards. When I came back out, one of those cars- a brand-new BMW with a gate sticker for the ultra-affluent gated community at the top of the hill- was occupied by its owner, a woman who can only be described as a WASP matron, upper fifties at least, too heavily made up, dripping with jewelry. And as I passed by and behind her car to get to mine, she backed up... right into me. She didn't hit me, but she was trying. I know this because she was screaming at me to get the hell out of the way- after all, she's FAR too wealthy and important to be made to wait for a mere pedestrian. And as I dodged that harridan, I saw that the other illegal-parker was a fat guy in shorts who had just decided that he didn't want to have to walk more than a few feet to drop off his letters.

Here's my proposal- any car without handicapped plates or placards parked in a handicapped spot should be fair game for vandalism. You see a car illegally parked there, you get to key it, or break the windows, or spray-paint your tag on the hood. Better yet, how about ENCOURAGING vandalism against those cars? Every handicapped spot should be equipped with sledgehammers, buckets of paint, cans of Krylon... I can see this having the salutory effect of not only dissuading idiots like the Rolling Hills BMW Matron from parking there, but it can be used as a release of violent tendencies for those so inclined. Gangs could take out their fury on Lazy Fat Guy in SUV instead of innocent victims. You want to take a handicapped spot from someone who really needs it? Eat a mouthful of Sherwin-Williams.

Maybe, on the other hand, I'm being too harsh. I mean, maybe they ARE handicapped. They have a malfunctioning conscience. Imagine going through life with that affliction.

 Share

I didn't want to hear the recording of the call from the flight attendant on Flight 11, because I never like to hear that stuff. All those 911 calls you hear on the news, the anguish and panic in the voice of the people who call- it's haunting, and I don't like to be haunted. This time, though, the tape came without warning. I had KABC on in the car, and the story popped up in ABC News before I had a chance to react. And there it was, direct from 9/11, a calm Betty Ong calling a reservations clerk and saying "somebody's stabbed in business class, and, um, I think there's mace that we can't breathe. I don't know. I think we are getting hijacked."

Calm and clear in the face of certain doom. Hearing it was about as painful and sad as possible, and it made me angry all over again. And in my anger, I remembered again what was done to us on that day, what was done to everyone, what's been forgotten in the ensuing 26 months.

We can argue over what to do about what happened on 9/11, and that's exactly what the candidates are doing. Great. That's America- we're free to bicker and second-guess and object, and that's what makes this country what it is. But in that discussion, I sense that we aren't remembering what really happened to us. We're talking in the abstract again, detached, as if the attack happened to someone else, somewhere else, hurting nobody we knew. Some would call that the right thing to do, a way of retaining perspective and balance, as if there's some other side we need to consider.

There is no other side. The attack was murder. It was evil. No excuse.

Someone, a while back- maybe it was Lileks- pointed this out first, so I claim no points for originality, and I've even said this before, but we need to be angry about this. We need to remember the punch in the gut, the knee to the balls, the horror, the wrenching horror of watching innocent people burn to death or jump from 100 stories up. We need to remember because in forgetting, we're giving aid and comfort to the people who celebrated that event, who want us either dead or subjected to their beliefs.

We need to hear that tape.

 Share

Lotta work today, lotta work coming up. My mind's a little occupied right now, and not even by Vicodin or tooth pain. That is to say, sorry for the lack of new material today. Hey, you gotta at least love the price.

 Share

The work avalanche is in full effect, and it's day two of the deluge. Actually, I welcome the flood- more work, more money- but there are not enough hours in the day, you know. Turns out there's a limit on my ability to do things- I can do about three things at once in a vaguely competent manner, but pushing it further is unwise, not because I can't do it but because my mind melts down. I'm in the process of analyzing every show on a couple of big radio stations, all at once, plus doing a research project, plus writing some comedy material, plus my usual columns and news items, plus breathing and eating and sleeping. Ah, hell, they don't pay me to eat and sleep and breathe- skip 'em.

The other part of the equation is that I'm neither being attentive to what's happening in the news nor what's happening around me. I mean, I'm writing my usual news stuff over at AllAccess.com, and it's (I hope) as relevant as it should be, but I'm forgetting it as soon as it's typed. And I'm not experiencing the usual daily aggravations that translate to observations for this thing- today, my total outside-the-house experience included a) walking out to get the papers off the driveway, b) running, c) driving to the post office, getting the mail, driving to Taco Bell, eating a taco in the car, driving to the cleaners, picking up the dry cleaning, driving home, and d) walking to the backyard grill to cook dinner.

There's no entertainment value in any of that.

So I'm in my own world for now, a world that isn't all that fascinating, a world of work and more work. I'm going to try and be a little more, you know, interesting tomorrow. Right now, I'm just coming up for air.

 Share

I keep going back and forth on the prospects for the new Air America Radio liberal talk network. Today, I think it'll fail. Why? Here's a quote about Lizz Winstead's plans for her show and the network from the Orlando Weekly:

Ms. Winstead will oversee and edit a stable of 10 writers, most of whom have worked with her before. A handful came from "The Daily Show," others from "Court TV," where Winstead developed "Snap Judgment," a satire of the legal system. Others come from network TV or from the Oxygen network, where Winstead developed "O2B," a spoof of women's talk shows that was pulled after one season in spite of good reviews. "I have basically hired people who are funnier than me and smarter than me, and who understand me," she says.

If you need 10 writers to do a daily radio show, you're finished. I've done talk radio for a living in major markets for a career, and you know how many writers I worked with? None. Zero. The best talk shows on the radio have no writers, just the host and maybe a producer kicking around ideas. A few have writers- Howard Stern has a few, Bill Handel has producers write stuff- but 10 writers for a midday talk show?

"It won't be completely scripted," Winstead says.

Radio's not TV. Most talk radio's not scripted. That nobody at this network seems to realize this is astonishing.

This should be interesting. That's not necessarily a good thing.

 Share