Trump this

A wrestling wager
Will the hair fall on growing grass
Sell it on Ebay

Let a smirk be your umbrella

I usually like smirks. Sometimes they're mean and malicious, but more often it's the inner child revealed: how am I going to explain that grape jelly smeared all over my face... and the kitchen?

Which is why I watched Rush Limbaugh before he started to listen to his inner bully. With just an expression he was letting his faithful know what was coming: 'I'm about to twit those guys. Let's see if it gets a rise out of them.' He was so good at it you suspected him of being a double agent: 'I can say anything and these guys will buy it.' It's sad. Now I feel like he trashed the kitchen, isn't sorry and doesn't care about it anyway.

Bill O'Reilly was also good in the beginning. He could be so outrageous you had to pay attention. Nobody would say that, would they? Before it became another trick in his bag, it forced me to examine ideas I might have just dismissed.

In his glory days at Comedy Central, Bill Maher was the best: 'Look how naughty I am.' He would shift from foot to foot and look like he was trying to make himself disappear. There was a purity, an innocent anarchy in the way he talked. How did that turn shrill, combative and confrontational?

Is that just the way it is? Do smirks have a short shelf life, or is this connected to the reason most bands can't do more than two or three good albums? Maybe nobody can avoid the self-importance that comes with too much attention and too many press clippings.

Whatever the reason, I'm looking for The Next Great Smirk. Let me know where it is; I've got to catch it early before it gets away.

Pieces of hate

I love reading opinions.* What I don't like is following along, agreeing or disagreeing, when the author veers off on some tangential personal attack.

Strong views are great. Hatred and name-calling makes me question your arguments. There are a lot of choices, and I choose rationality.

OK, there are some evil people in the world and there are evil ideas. You don't fight them by showing how nasty you can be. I subscribe to the 95% rule: the majority of people try to do the right thing at least ninety-five percent of the time.

Watch out for that other five percent. That's where we have our disputes. They are caused by any number of things; ignorance, fear, greed and prejudice among them. Sometimes two people can look at the same facts and reach different conclusions.

I don't hate President Bush because I disagree with several of his policies. I disagree. He seems to be a pretty likeable man with a big job, and he doesn't have the background or experience of his father. It's tougher, but I'm still trying to give his advisors the benefit of the doubt.

I just don't see how you can start a modern war, increase other spending and cut taxes at the same time. That's as silly as starting a war and something called the Great Society at the same time.

There have been reports lately of cities with a constant low-level hum in the background. Only some people are sensitive to it. I think that hum is the sound of thousands of fiscal conservatives spinning in their graves.

Richard Nixon? I wouldn't have wanted to hang out with him, but we could have had a drink and talked football. Only two policies I really liked and two I disliked come to mind after all of these years, and I challenge anyone to guess what they are. The prize is, hmm... a bag of papayas, if I don't have to ship them.

Then again, I'll read anything. If I'm eating alone and there is no newspaper or magazine around, there will probably be a book or a food package propped up behind the plate. Restaurants are calling my number when they put writing on their placemats.

anna nicole smith and the Rapture

There, I've said it too. I only had a few minutes and was looking for cheap entertainment, so I googled on anna nicole smith about nine hours ago. Wow, 'about 66,600,000'. I'm not making this up; I cut-and-pasted the numbers. If you believe in the Rapture, you'd better start buying groceries just in case.

about 71,200,000 on Yahoo
ask.com had 2,228,000
559,929 results from MSN

Just a goof, I figured I'd check back in a few days or a week to how many more results a search would dredge up. Then, in a flash (a dim one because our voltage is low (and no dimbulb jokes please)), I was inspired. If someone searches for 'anna nicole smith' + 'the Rapture', I'll probably be on page one.

Well I think so, in fact I hope so. Even to me, that's strange. I'm going to try it as soon as I finish posting.

Then again, I'll probably get an interesting group of netsurfers. There could be money in this. I'm reminded of the anecdote, which I've never been able to track down, about L Ron Hubbard saying he was tired of getting pennies for his (crappy) Science Fiction novels so he was going to start a religion. Sounds like another job for the Urban Legends Reference Pages. Yeah, yeah, as soon as I finish posting.

Now, observe the way my mind works. This means I've found a use for those strange titles on my junk email: I'm going to start using them in everything I type. If just one percent of the people making arcane searches actually click through, I've gained hundreds of readers.

Now this is weird. I really wanted a quote I saw, so I went back to Google: 'about 51,100,000'. Obviously the first number was intended for me only. That's too much like finding a picture of the Virgin on my breakfast cereal. BTW 'about 167,000' results for + the Rapture. I'd forgotten about sex, for once.

"Marrying into money was not a good thing for me."
- Anna Nicole Smith

So is your mother

We're extremists.

In a war, we don't talk about 'the enemy'. It's ragheads or camel jockeys. Previous incarnations were slopes, gooks and nips. You get the idea, the list could fill pages.

In some ways that's useful for soldiers. It depersonalizes the person you're about to shoot. It can also make atrocities seem less atrocious.

But why is that process all over the internet? Time after time I see interesting discussions degenerate into mindless namecalling.

'That's a liberal way to say that' is very different from 'just what I'd expect from a liberal'. 'You conservatives' is not the same as 'that's a conservative point of view. This is just personal, but the terms 'Liberal' and 'Conservative' don't mean very much any more. You're trying to fit millions of people into one mold, and you're assuming they think alike on a dozen or more issues. That's not the world I see around me.

I've been called left-wing, right-wing, anarchistic, libertarian, and yes, liberal and conservative (the complete list would easily fill a page). I seem to be a nazi to everyone. Often my answer would be yes, on that issue. I don't think the majority of people are that different.

Sure there are extremists who fit these stereotypes in every particular. They're very useful, because otherwise we wouldn't have a full range of ideas.

I don't do emoticons

I recently googled a username that was my id on a lot of forums a couple of years ago. Quite a few of my posts came up on the first few pages and I was amazed to read them.

I still agree with almost all of what I said, but the tone seemed different than my intention. That's the problem with written language. It's hard to write a shrug, a wink or a grin that says I'm just pulling your leg.

That's why a lot of people use emoticons. You know, the smiley, frowny faces that say I'm really not being hardcore about this, just kidding. If emoticons aren't enabled, you'll see a lot of parentheses, brackets and colons used to make them.

I've tried, but I just can't do it. This must go back to when I was ready to throttle the next person telling me, no, ordering me to 'have a nice day'. The world was wallpapered with smiley faces, all haranguing me with the same sentence.

They say many beekeepers develop an allergic reaction after being stung over and over. It must be something like that.

When emoticons and their stick-figure cousins from text-messaging came along I felt my hackles rising again.

I see them and my breathing becomes shallow and labored. Typing them makes me break out in hives.

You'll just have to forgive me if my style comes on too strong:)

Chronicalling a pilotless drone

The San Francisco Chronicle has started a podcast channel for listener complaints. What a great idea.

The Saipan Public Radio station broadcast NPR'S Morning Edition with a story about it.

Interesting enough, but the first caller went on and on about "pilotless drones", and the guy's raving has been set to music on YouTube. It's pretty good.

Also in the story, though it didn't appear in the website transcript, was some discussion of a "pilotless drone". Even though a pilotless aircraft would be more newsworthy (unless it was a drone), they claimed 100,000 hits on a Google search. Now I don't always take NPR's word for everything, so I had to check myself. Aha, only "about 93,900", and those numbers are padded because this thing's spreading over the blogosphere.

As crazy as they want to be

Iran introduces AIDS cure. There's really nothing more to say, so I won't say it.

OK, wrong again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's part of a '20-year vision plan' to conquer 'peaks of progress'. The website is, ah... stunning.

Brer Bush and the wonderful tar baby

Brer Bush come prancin’ ’long twel he spy de Tar-Baby, en den he fotch up on his behime legs like he wuz ’stonished. De Tar Baby, she sot dar, she did, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“‘Mawnin’!’ sez Brer Bush, sezee—‘nice wedder dis mawnin’,’ sezee.

“Tar-Baby ain’t sayin’ nuthin’, en Brer Fox he lay low.

“‘How duz yo’ sym’tums seem ter segashuate?’ sez Brer Bush, sezee.

“Brer Fox, he wink his eye slow, en lay low, en de Tar-Baby, she ain’t sayin’ nuthin’.

“‘How you come on, den? Is you deaf?’ sez Brer Bush, sezee. ‘Kaze if you is, I kin holler louder,’ sezee.

“Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“‘You er stuck up, dat’s w’at you is,’ says Brer Bush, sezee, ‘en I’m gwine ter kyore you, dat’s w’at I’m a gwine ter do,’ sezee.

“Brer Fox, he sorter chuckle in his stummick, he did, but Tar-Baby ain’t sayin’ nothin’.

“‘I’m gwine ter larn you how ter talk ter ’spectubble folks ef hit’s de las’ ack,’ sez Brer Bush, sezee. ‘Ef you don’t take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I’m gwine ter bus’ you wide open,’ sezee.

“Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“Brer Bush keep on axin’ ’im, en de Tar-Baby, she keep on sayin’ nothin’, twel present’y Brer Bush draw back wid his fis’, he did, en blip he tuck ’er side er de head. Right dar’s whar he broke his merlasses jug. His fis’ stuck, en he can’t pull loose. De tar hilt ’im. But Tar-Baby, she stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“‘Ef you don’t lemme loose, I’ll knock you agin,’ sez Brer Bush, sezee, en wid dat he fotch ’er a wipe wid de udder han’, en dat stuck. Tar-Baby, she ain’y sayin’ nuthin’, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

“‘Tu’n me loose, fo’ I kick de natal stuffin’ outen you,’ sez Brer Bush, sezee, but de Tar-Baby, she ain’t sayin’ nuthin’. She des hilt on, en de Brer Bush lose de use er his feet in de same way. Brer Fox, he lay low. Den Brer Bush squall out dat ef de Tar-Baby don’t tu’n ’im loose he butt ’er cranksided. En den he butted, en his head got stuck. Den Brer Fox, he sa’ntered fort’, lookin’ dez ez innercent ez wunner yo’ mammy’s mockin’-birds.

“‘Howdy, Brer Bush,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. ‘You look sorter stuck up dis mawnin’,’ sezee, en den he rolled on de groun’, en laft en laft twel he couldn’t laff no mo’. ‘I speck you’ll take dinner wid me dis time, Brer Bush. I done laid in some calamus root, en I ain’t gwineter take no skuse,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.”

Here Uncle Remus paused, and drew a two-pound yam out of the ashes.

“Did the fox eat Brer Bush?” asked the little boy to whom the story had been told.

“Dat’s all de fur de tale goes,” replied the old man. “He mout, an den agin he moutent. Some say Judge B’ar come ’long en loosed ’im—some say he didn’t. I hear Miss Sally callin’. You better run ’long.”

Hacker wars: A modest proposal

It would be nice to see all of the terrorist internet links posted in one place.

Make the security 'good enough' to keep out everyone but hackers, then ask them to launch Denial of Service attacks. Spam the websites with Spam ads, if that's not going Too Far.

Volunteerism makes our country great.

Haiku

Life is a journey
You say are we there yet
I've got to pee

Surge protector

Nothing memorable happened during my two years in the inactive reserve. The only thing I remember is the letter saying it was over.

Times have changed.

Stop Loss programs, calling up the inactive reserve, the military is trying everything to maximize their resources. Tours are being extended, some not for the first time. Now with the surge -- ridiculous word, why not say increase -- they are forced to squeeze every hour and every day out of the available soldiers.

Catch-22.

Updated for the new millenium, but there it is. We can't get out because we're in. Sure, Saddam feared the fundamentalists as much as we did, but they're in Iraq now, so we can't pull out. Meanwhile, hundreds of Milo Minderbenders have scurried off with boxfuls of cash that were meant for reconstruction.

Read the book, watch the movie if you're too lazy. I wouldn't recommend the made for TV version.