I totally called this a year ago. Well, not the NBC part. I thought it would take longer and would end up on HBO. I'm still betting on Denzel, though.

Lee returns to 'NoLa' with NBC

Spike Lee will follow his documentary on Hurricane Katrina with a scripted drama for NBC set in New Orleans.

Famous or semi-famous people recently did lists like this, and lists are easy, except when they're hard, so here's mine. The rules were, no mini-series, no reality series, no puppets or cartoons. Any live action show and I'm counting badguys and good guys. I only picked one per show.

• Al Swerengen (Ian McShane) of Deadwood, cocksuckers
• Vic Mackey (Michael Chicklis) of The Shield
• Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia) of LOST (though this could go to a lot of the cast)
• Lorelei Gilmore (Lauren Graham) of Gilmore Girls
• Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni) on Veronica Mars. What a great dad.
• Doctor Who (fuck off. It's my list. If I have to pick just one, I really like #10, David Tennant)
• Jack Bauer, the only super-hero currently on TV

That's a lot of current characters.... uh, some classics.

• Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) of Homicide: Life on the Street
• Odo of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine who loved, lost, loved again, and then moved into a lake.
• Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Winifred "Fred" Burkle (Amy Acker) of Angel
• Spock. 'Nuff said.
• Uncle Fester
• Cosmo kramer
• Chandler Bing
• President Josiah Bartlett (I'd have voted for him)
• Batman as played only by Adam West
• Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) on Alias before they ruined him in the last season. Twice.
• Tristan Farnon (Peter Davison) on All Creatures Great and Small
• David Brent from The Office (UK edition, but the American version, Michael Scott, doesn't suck at all). Actually, I think I might like Gareth & Dwight even more.

Damn, this is hard.... searching brain....

• Christopher Moltisanti on the Sopranos, just for socking Lauren Bacall. Not that I have anything against her, I just thought it was funny.
• Fonzie. I once thought that short, rotund Jewish man in the leather jacket really was cool.
• Agent Dana Scully
• David Addison (Bruce Willis) in Moonlighting but only up until he slept with Maddie. It was all downhill after that.
• Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, the hottest and most conflicted Cylon on Battlestar Galactica
• Gob Bluth

I feel like I skipped four decades worth of TV in there.... I know this is a programming golden age and all, but that seems ridiculous. Who am I forgetting?

It's no secret I have a lot of... "stuff." I grew up a packrat, raised by packrats, who would go to the packrat church and place gifts on the packrat alter, except that would mean not having their stuff, so maybe not. Not that being a packrat is about being greedy or stingy, quite the contrary, packrats love to share, they just want their stuff back eventually. For, you see, it's about "never knowing when you're going to need it." That six inch piece of metal roof flashing left over from 1997? Might need it someday. Garbage bags for leaves, even though all you've got is conifers? Might need it. 27 years worth of Popular Mechanics or Comics Buyer's Guide or [insert name of your favorite periodical here].

Might. Need. It.

My wife broke me of this habit, for the most part, years ago. Yet it lingers, especially with items that might have an actual use or are far to complicated/difficult/stupid to throw away. But still, I've come to realize they are items I do not want. So imagine our joy in discovering the Ithaca Freecycle group I've mentioned before. It's a Yahoo! mailing list set up just for people in our area to give stuff away (they exist for almost 4,000 communities, check Freecycle.org for one near you.) Over the course of the last month we've given away:

• 40 square feet of left over oak wood flooring
• 8x11 foot braided rug
• A Bernzomatic torch for burning weeds
• Rusted BBQ pit racks
• About 100 foot of garden fencing
• A .9 cubic foot microwave oven and cart
• A multi-color kids ceiling fan
• A unicycle

 And that's just the stuff I gave away. The wife -- who I call the Squantitor -- gave away a ton of old dog agility stuff and other items I've forgotten.

 This weekend we outdid ourselves. After six years of struggling with my Western Auto Wizard 14 horse power lawn tractor which I got almost for free myself from my grandmother-in-law (is that a real term?) the wife said, "we are getting you a new tractor."

She's said this before, on many occasions. Much as I always hated that tractor, I always said no, knowing I could limp it through just one more year.

But my skills are not enough to make it through 06-07's winter intact, not without one of us going down. Probably me. Plus, one of the mowing blade shafts is bent, so every pass on the lawn cuts a rut in the grass. Nice as the striped look is, I don't want it for the rest of my life.

Besides, a new tractor would be sweeeeet. One year no interest financing doesn't hurt, either.

With the new Cub Cadet 20-HP GT2542 scheduled for delivery on Monday, the choice was: let the lawn equipment guys take the Wizard away for parts (it's not worth a rusted nut as a trade in) or give it away.

In less than 15 hours, I had about 30 people on FreeCycle responding to the offer.

Some just say "I'm interested" as if that's enough to get a free tractor. C'mon people, work a little.

One guy wrote in all CAPS. Has the world not progressed past that yet?

There were several that wrote me truly great tales of why they need/want/desire the free tractor. It was hard to choose. Some wanted it for work, one wanted it to cannibalize into an ATV, some just because they can't stand mowing their 20-plus acre estates with hand-pushed mowers anymore as their nine children stay underfoot, no doubt tethered to the mower with rough twine.

I finally settled on a woman who says she needs it for her fiancé, a cancer survivor. She's on the way now to get it.

I hope she has ramps, otherwise she's lifting it into the back of her pick up herself. As the wife said the other night, "It feels good doing this, doesn't it?" and she's quite right, it does, it really does, but I have to drawn the line at my kindness. If I lose a finger or break an arm giving this tractor away, how do I pay for the new one?

Terrorists were stopped by the Brits from blowing people up with some kind of liquid explosive cocktail! Hooray!

Now, airlines are not allowing people to take liquids on planes. Because remember, we're all guilty until proven innocent.

In some airports, people are being forced to pour all their liquids that could go boom into a big receptacle (read: garbage can). Which is exactly where you want to put all the detonating water in the crowded airport. Mix it up. Maybe throw in a burning cigarette, just to be sure it's safe.

I applaud the TSA's efforts to protect normal citizens from themselves as they did in the past with the prohibition on nail-clippers (which are now allowed, so they were only dangerous for a few years after 9/11) and the continued vigilance against the danger of shoes.

Hey, look, through the miracle of the Inter-Webbing, I found a news story from the foooooo-ture....

DATELINE: August 30, 2007 -- Following the recent ban on wearing any footwear on planes and the exclusion of electronic devices even in the luggage storage hold, comes another prohibition: clothing.

Following the recent capture of a terrorists in Poland who planned to sew tiny bomb bits into the lining of their clothes, the Transportation Safety Authority (TSA) said today that all passengers boarding planes at U.S. airports would have to be stripped naked.

"We can't take any chances, not even with, uh, thongs. Panties! Underpants, I mean," said a sweaty U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary Joe Lieberman. One of the alledged Polish terrorists had lined the elastic band of tighty-whiteys with the wire needed for detonating a small explosive.

Emporer and supreme leader of the American Peoples George W. Bush said, "Until the enemies of freedom no longer have a place to hide their dirty, nasty explosives, no American is safe."

ACLU president Nadine Strossen considers this a step up from the mandatory deep cavity searches implemented last January for all passengers in and out of the U.S. This was after a suspected terrorist was found with three balloons of white powder impacting her colon. Many still say she was a drug mule, but Lieberman says that has yet to be substantiated despite the unnamed woman's several months lock up at Club Gitmo, the prison formerly known as Guantanamo Bay until the recent Fox reality series that took place there changed the name officially...

I'd post more of it, but it's just too depressing.

From Superman Hype! --Listen to the Full Superman Returns Score! Stream it. and you will believe a man can fly.

I got a chill down my spine just listening to the first few bars -- and I listen to the original 1978 soundtrack album all the time. Amazing.

Mentor vs. Torment.

Discuss.

Found this quote by a GENIUS in a story on MSNBC.com about a 101-pound man who eats 6,500 calories a day just to stay alive...

...a registered dietitian at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, said most of the people she deals with are not trying to put on weight. "Its far more common to have the opposite problem," she said.

Next up: How most people prefer breathing to drowning.

A lot of people go through life saying "I've never won anything." I can't say that.

Whether by work or by doing nothing, I've won my fair share of stuff. First was probably the watch I got from the Cub Scouts for selling the most TomWat crap to the unsuspecting elderly of my neighborhood and family. It's amazing what you can get people to buy when you're a child. Since then I've gone on to get the occasional lottery ticket win ($10 was the most I can recall) or door prize (got a sweet Bose radio just for showing up at a shindig in Vegas once and leaving my card... they mailed it to me later and I to this day don't know who sent it to me).

The latest was a book. Hard Case Crime is a publisher that's doing it's damnedest to make sure the hard-boiled PI genre not only never dies, but continues to kick ass the way it did in its hey-day of the past. To that end, they put out reissues of lost books (like an once out of print Ed McBain I need to buy) and brand new books by classic authors, or just new stuff with a very Mickey Spillane feel to them. They do a drawing each month for people on their email list, and this Monday I was informed by the editor that I was the winner of the latest release: The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins. He's a great author of not only several novels and a few screenplays but also of comics, most famously at this point for writing The Road to Perdition graphic novel, long before Tom Hanks ever heard of it.

Today, I got my copy of The Last Quarry -- not even a final print, but what's called an ARC, or advanced reading copy. It could be filled with typos and notes from the author for all I know (thought I doubt it). The cover looks like it should be on a drugs store spinner wrack circa 1967 or in someone's collection now with yellowed pages. Instead, it's got some of the brightest white paper I've ever seen in a book.

I just read the book's afterword -- which gave away the ending, but I'm stupid that way -- and found out why the book looks so vintage 1970's -- the cover art is by Robert McGinnis, who drew some of the classic James Bond movie posters.

There was a time that people considered books like this a throw-away after reading it, much like comics used to be (back when comics sold in the millions each month). Now look at things... comics are in mylar bags before human skin oil can soil them, and a paperback that looks like its an oldie is a classy way for an author to see his work. Everything junkie and disposable eventually becomes someone's valued antique, even if it's just in the presentation.

I'm always willing to show when I'm wrong. But c'mon, they had three women in a shower at the opening. Imagine how many people were disappointed when that didn't come back up for the rest of the hour....

Super Bowl Satisfies ABC, Quiets Stones - Feb 06, 2006 - E! Online News

In another example of its strength, the game put Grey's Anatomy, airing right after the Steelers showered their head coach with drink, before 38.1 million, an all-time best for the series, and the most for a post-Super Bowl show since the 2001 premiere of CBS' Survivor: The Australian Outback...

Anatomy after the Bowl...

ABC's hospital drama Grey's Anatomy, which has already benefited greatly from having the hit Desperate Housewives precede it on Sunday nights, will get another boost come Feb. 5 when it airs following the Super Bowl.

Why do the TV networks continue to think running a TV show after the superbowl is is a boost for that program? That hasn't worked since that show with Adam West premiered in the 80's, and guess what? It sucks and tanked anyway. The people who watch the Superbowl could give a tinker's damn about what comes on after the post-game, and the people who actually want to watch the show after will be 1) mystified when it's not on at 10pm like normal and 2) will skip it all together if the game goes into overtime. Which it will, so I set my TV to tape Grey's for an extra half hour, just in case. I'll bet that the ratings for that episode of Grey's Anatomy go DOWN on Feb. 5 compared to a normal week when Desperate Housewives is the lead.

Besides, if they want to "boost" something, try putting a show that is not already a hit after Superbowl. It won't work, but at least it would seem like they're trying.

holy. fucking. cats.

UPN, The WB Merging Into CW Network

TV Networks UPN and The WB will cease operations in September, giving way to a new broadcast network that will build on the assets of CBS Corp. and Time Warner...[snip]The CW will incorporate The WB's current scheduling model, programming six nights and 13 hours of prime time fare per week, including unscripted series such as America's Next Top Model and dramas like Smallville, Gilmore Girls andd Veronica Mars. In addition, the net will also broadcast the schedule of children's programming now known as Kids' WB!.

This is probably good news -- especially for me since I don't get UPN in Ithaca, and now I can watch Veronica Mars on the TiVo instead of downloading it with BitTorrent -- but then again, with more oversight, this CW will probably cancel Veronica Mars just like WB cancelled Angel....

Levi Strauss debuts iPod-ready jeans - Yahoo! News

Denim giant Levi Strauss said on Tuesday it had designed jeans compatible with the iPod music player, featuring a joystick in the watch pocket to operate the device.

"joystick in the watch pocket." Hee hee.

How many of you can say you've met Time Magazine's Person of the Year?

Not Bono. I'm not really in U2, tho I like their commercials for the iPod.

No, not Bill Gates... tho I did see him dirty-dance with my boss once at a Studio 54 in Las Vegas.

I'm talking about MRS. Gates, Melinda. I was working at FamilyPC magazine in late 1994 when she was traveling the country on the stump for the product she managed at Microsoft that would soon change the world of family computing as we knew it: Microsoft BOB. Sadly, the only thing BOB gave us was things like animated paper clips in our software. Bill didn't hold it against her apparently, and shacked up her a few years later. And now she's mega-rich and powerful, but probably still hates that frickin' paper clip like the rest of us, I bet. If I ever meet her again, that's the first thing I'll ask just before I hit her up for a loan.

I wonder if I should tell her he dirty-dances with editors when he's away from home?

It's been a dramatic week at Casa de Griffith. None of which I can talk about really because, I learn from other people's mistakes, and I know that blogging about jobs (even if it's not my job) is a big no-no. Suffice to say, the status quo is still in place, though with potential improvements.

I haven't written much on the novel this week... it's amazing how much incentive NaNoWriMo gave me through November, but ten days into December I've only written 4,400 words. Pathetic. Though I had a nice night Tuesday, where the wife helped me think though a silly plot problem and I was so jazzed I got up at 4am the next day to write it. If only that happened everyday.

I'm a power downloader this week, stealing MP3 music like a mad-man from Web sites (highly recommended: Wishful Thinking by the Ditty Bops; not recommended: My Humps by the Black-eyed Peas... though, admittedly, neither the wife nor I can stop talking about "lovely lady lumps" after hearing it). I also finally found a BitTorrent site that seems to actually work for me, and I've got the first two episodes of Veronica Mars second season on the hard drive. (Go Netflix season one right now. Go. Seriously. Now.)

I will spend the rest of my day with various projects: I need to buy tickets to see Billy Joel in concert at the Carrier Dome in March, for myself, the wife, and my friend Bill and his wife— he'll be back from Iraq after the first of the year. I have to take the snow blower up to the repair place, which means muscleing it into the back of the mini-van. A trifle bit more Xmas shopping, but mostly that's done, so the evening will be spent wrapping presents just like last Saturday was (we watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, definitely in the running for the least needed remake of all time, at least until this new Winnie the Pooh with the female version of Christopher Robin was announced by Disney this week...)

From Wired 13.12: To Boldly Go Where No Fan Has Gone Before

As every geek in the galaxy knows, Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise set out on a five-year mission to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before. But NBC canceled the show in 1969 after only three seasons. New Voyages aims to fill fans in on what they missed. In September, Cawley and Marshall assembled more than 50 Trek lovers from across the US (and the UK and Canada) to shoot the third episode of what should've been season four. At their current pace of one episode a year, they'll finish the five-year mission in 2054.

This spring they will release episode three, titled "To Serve All My Days." Like the first two episodes of New Voyages, it will be downloadable for free at newvoyages.com. You'll also be able to snag bonus features, outtakes, and commentaries. You can burn it all to a disc and put it on the shelf between your Star Trek the Original Series - The Complete Third Season boxed set and your Star Trek: The Motion Picture director's edition DVD.

Damn. I love this... it's exactly what I wanted to do when I was 11.

An open letter to the woman seated in section six, row D, seat six or seven, at the Barenaked Ladies (BNL) concert last night, November 29, 2005, at Turning Stone Resort-Casino in Verona, NY:

In the future, please, put your fucking arms down.

I could not, would not, bring myself to say something about this to you in person for various reasons. (You are only doing what you consider natural and enjoyable, which even though I grew to despise you over the course of the concert, I would not want to disrupt your fun. Even tho you are evil. And, you could be a crazy bitch with a knife, and I was wearing my favorite shirt.) However, over the course of this following day, as I look back on a very excellent show indeed, it is marred entirely by your presence two rows in front of me and your desire to keep both your hands fully outstretched over your head through 80% of the performance.

Admittedly this might not have been that big a deal if the entire floor section had just sat the hell down. The need to stand throughout an entire concert experience is exactly what I was afraid of encountering, and yet I still went to the BNL show unprepared. Even with an audience that ranged from probably age 11 to 65 based on my observations, the majority of people on the floor felt had to stand— the domino effect of those in the first few rows standing forced everyone else to stand as well so we could see anything. Annoying the extreme, especially after a long day and when you're wearing sneakers with no arch support. My dogs was barkin'. But again I could have lived with it. Except you kept putting your damned hands up in the air.

I have news for you: the band didn't see you do it. They didn't see you point. They didn't see you do the devil-horns. They didn't see you sway or even when you apparently were conducting them. None of it. You were only pissing me off.

I was absolutely joyous when, in the middle of "Brian Wilson," you suddenly left the row. I thought perhaps you would break your hands on the upper part of a door casing while on your way out. No such luck. You actually came back in and had a large bucket of popcorn.

And you held this bucket OVER YOUR HEAD.

By the first encore, you were tired, it was obvious. You sat down and while your hands still played about over your head occasionally, I could see your heart wasn't in it. Good I thought. It would have been nice if the row ahead of you had sat as well, so I could see, but I could live with it.

Then, you did something I could not believe— you poked the woman in front of you and asked her to sit down. Maybe you ordered her. She looked at you like the freak you are, but must have also seen some glint in your eye, that "bitch, I gots a knife, I'm gonna cut-chu" vibe. She sat, but not without derisive looks toward you from her friends, who did not sit. Had they any inkling of how tired your arms were at that point, I like to think they would have jumped you.

In the end, after two encores, BNL left the stage. I vowed to myself that in the future, any concert I go to where I get floor seats I'm getting tickets right up front where I an sit even if everyone else wants to stand. That, or I'm bringing a big set of lopping shears, the kind used for trimming shrubbery. I won't be so tolerant of arms up over someone's head again.

Signed,
Fellow concert goer who unfortunately had to stand behind your dumb ass.

Oddly Enough News Article | Reuters.co.uk

LONDON (Reuters) - Ever get frustrated with fresh-out-of the-fridge butter that is too hard to spread?

A UK-based company has launched a portable, temperature-controlled butter dish, ButterWizard, which keeps butter at what it says is the optimal spreadable temperature of 18.5 C.

It has a built-in fan and a chip which together control the temperature, adjustable for different textures, be it super-soft bread, crusty toast or delicate biscuits.

"We were trying to find out what people's frustration with butter was. It's either too hard or too soft," said David Alfille, managing director of East Sussex-based company Alfille Innovations Limited.

"ButterWizard heats or cools the butter and you can adjust the temperature to suit yourself."

Nutritionist Fiona Hunter said: "There are over 16 million UK households buying butter on a regular basis, but one complaint I hear time after time is the lack of spreadability of real butter."

"Butter has been part of diet for thousands of years. The important thing is to spread butter thinly," she added.

ButterWizard is available in the UK for 34.95 pounds.

When this is available in the U.S., I will buy THREE.

Dr. Barnes has asked, as I hoped someone eventually would, "What is with all the BNL lyrics?"

BNL, for those not in the know, stands for Barenaked Ladies. They're a band.

They are not actual ladies. They are not actually barenaked.

They're dudes. And they're Canadian. They even have a blog.

I first heard BNL on a cassette tape in a car driving around Delaware with my friend Chris in 1994. I was visiting him at his grad school during a particularly depressing time (for me, not him). Turns out that when you're morose, and you hear great music, it doesn't make you all uplifted like in the movies. Instead, it paints the music with the same brush. For years after, I didn't listen to BNL because I associated it with my depression.

By circa 1997, that changed. I was listening to the album "Maybe You Should Drive" repeatedly for months because it was the only one I had on cassette, and that's all my car would play. I'm not much of a music buyer really, but when "Stunt" came out, I went out and found all the BNL albums — only then did I discover that their debut album, "Gordon," the album I heard in Delaware all those years before, was perhaps my favorite.

In 1999, the era of the first Napster, I found even more BNL, specifically bootleg recordings of them in concert. BNL gives great concert. I've since watched them a couple of times on cable to prove it.

But I've never wanted to go see them live. I mean, I do — but I just can't stand the thought of being trapped around thousands of screaming 20-somethings. That kind of thing got ruined for me at a concert by, of all people, Harry Connick, Jr. that the Wife and I saw at Smith College... 19 year old girls standing on rickety seats, screaming, didn't lead to much enjoyment of the music. (This was Harry's pop-ish period, not his crooner period, so that didn't help.) I had a shot at a free BNL concert during Comdex in 2000, but my co-workers and I bailed at the last minute due to the crowds trying to go from Mandalay Bay Hotel on a bus to the private concert location near the airport (I think Intel was throwing the concert/party, tho it might have been AOL/Time Warner celebrating their merger). The only concert I've seen since is the KISS/Aerosmith double-bill in Vegas in 2003, and that was just impossible to pass up. And it was great without anyone having to stand up for the whole thing except Steven Tyler and Gene Simmons.

For some reason, my anathema toward BNL concerts changed when I saw that they are doing a concert at the Turning Stone casino east of Syracuse at the end of November. I'm not sure why, but I thought maybe, just maybe, this would be the venue where seeing them would be fun even for an elderly 35-year-old like myself. Perhaps it's my association of casinos with old ladies at slot machines holding a big plastic cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other that makes it seem so welcoming....

So I bought tickets. In 34 days, the Wife and I will watch the group cavort about, singing some of my favorite songs, like "Another Postcard with Chimpanzees" and " Shopping" and "Alcohol" and "Grade 9" and "One Week" (as if I know the play list, but I can dream).

To celebrate the upcoming even, all my blog entries for the next month are going to be titled with BNL lyrics.

But if I have to stand on a god-damn chair to see the band, some 20-something is going to get smacked upside the head.

The only good thing to come out of the movie Along Came Polly is the term sharted, which Philip Seymour Hoffman refers to as a problem he has at a party where he tried to fart and a little shit came out.

For some reason, the term came up as the Wife and I were driving about today. We laughed. We love poop jokes.

Then, on our way home after visiting my mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, and my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and nephew -- practically the entire race of in-laws -- I had what we're now calling a "buke." Which is that phenomenon of throwing up a little in your mouth when you think you're going to belch. (Burp+Puke=Buke).

And it happened again when we got home, so I shared this with the wife saying, "I just threw up some of your sister's lasagna into my mouth. We should name this." Thus... buke.

Just saying this term to the Wife made her hysterical, at least until she came over to give me a kiss at one point and I put my finger to my lips and expanded my cheeks, then pretended swallow as if clearing the field of buke. Not so funny then.

Were it not for M*A*S*H and the original Star Wars, the 1970s would probably not be worth remembering at all. Sadly, those were my formative years, age one month to 9 years + one month, so my brain is filled with trace amounts of the 70's, kind of like mercury.

How sad is it that I never even heard of (or paid attention to) the Vietnam war until I was in high school in the 80's, but I can remember quite clearly a live-action Saturday morning tv show due to one simple fact: there was a guy on it who when ape-shite crazy every time someone said the word "bananas."

The last couple of days, friends of mine from high school have been e-mailing back and forth with kid-vid memories, trying to put names to the images in our heads. Major Bill started it, asking about some show with puppets in a rocketship. That turned out to be OuterScope, which was part of a show called Vegetable Soup (and featured, get this, James Earl Jones. Well, his voice at least). It's memorable because the rocketship had cedar shakes on the outside. Obviously that's something NASA should be considering for future space shuttle rides.

I was trying to identify this show with the crazy bananas guy and could only remember that they sang and solved crimes. Every kid's dream. Friend Mark thought I was talking about the Banana Splits, but I remember them much more clearly: they were guys in animal suits doing slapstick as they introduced cartoons like Atom Ant. Later, the Skate Birds had the same schtick, but they were all birds. On skates no less! Hilarious!

I'm serious. When I was seven, this was hilarious.

I did some searching around on some links on other shows I was telling them about, specifically spelling out how my brain remembers far to much about just about every Sid & Marty Krofft show of that decade...

You know the Krofft shows. All psychedelic acid-trip stuff for the kiddies. They made Jim Henson look like a pansy. The Kroffts's did H.R. Pufnstuf, Lidsville, The Bugaloos, Lost Saucer, and many, many more. The best were Big Foot & Wildboy, Land of the Lost, and Sigmund and the Seamonsters. The last one featured child star Johnny Whitaker, famous from Family Affair. I actually owned his album on 8-track as a kid and listened to it all the time on my grandmother's stereo on weekends. I thought Johnny Whitaker was cool. (And my god, I just found out Sigmund is out on DVD! 29 episodes of pure silly-ass goodness. I must have-- I mean, uh, my nephews, must buy it for the nephews!)

Little known fact: LOST, the best show currently in prime time, owes everything to Krofft shows as there were at least two, maybe three, that featured people in plane wrecks on islands that are then constantly harassed by villains. One featured a Dr. Strange (no relation to the Master of the Mystic Arts) and the other was the best: Dr. Shrinker. (Theme: "Dr. Shrinker, Dr. Shrinker, he's a madman with an evil mind.") He shrank people. Maybe that's what's waiting for Jack in the hatch...

As I surfed around, bless you Internetting, I found the show I couldn't identify on a page at 70's Live Action Kid Vid. It was called The Kids from C.A.P.E.R. and yes, it was teens who played music and solved crimes. What else would they do? Smoke? Drugs? One of them was super strong, and yes, he went nuts when "bananas" were mentioned. They even have an RealAudio file of the aforementioned apoplectic fits.

I'm just relieved to know I didn't dream this.

God, what a wasteland of horrible television it all was back then. I miss it so.

I had a nice long post written for the blog earlier today that was all about self-pity, which I felt like wallowing in at the time (I even ended it with " Yes, self-pity! I will fill my bathtub with your syrupy, sticky glop in which I can wallow as I see fit!") But I don't feel like posting it, it just underscores daytime depressions. Better too talk of my night-time depression, because, I just finished reading the last ever 87th Precinct novel by Ed McBain. I won't pretend it was of the caliber of previous entries necessarily -- some of his work in the 80s is utterly chilling and hilarious, sometimes on the same pages, and his latest, Fiddlers, I think only filled 257 pages because they used wide margins and a big font -- it was like reading a large print book. Still, to create a sympathetic character out of a pure racist fucktard like the legendary Fat Ollie Weeks... glorious. And it's not a bad little bit of detective work that leads five different teams of cops to the same conclusion via different paths.

Oh, and tonight was filled with good TV too: caught last night's Gilmore Girls, which had some fine George Lucas bashing; and of course the season opener of LOST. Good to know what is in the hatch. Now if we are actually told what that means, even better... but I'll gladly take my time getting there. Saw the series premiere of Invasion as well. I liked it, but it didn't floor me like it seems to have every critic out there. I'm sure I'll stick with it though. (Already shows are falling by the wayside in my watching... haven't caught SuperNatural at all, and I'm doubting I'll see Reunion again just for the sake of saving time. Best thing so far is My Name is Earl, which made me laugh even at stuff I'd already seen previewed online.)

Thank god for entertainment. It makes the daily stuff seem worth it. Which it is, of course, because it lets me pay for it all.

Overheard today while at a matinee of (the extremely hilarious film) The 40 Year-Old Virgin, when a PSA for the Jimmy Fund or some such thing comes on with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson:

Girl 1: Oh, I fucking love the Rock.
Girl 2: Yeah, he's awesome.
Girl 1: He has no neck.

I'm tired, just finished doing some tech edit read-throughs for a book publisher and sent them off, read some blogs and thought a lot about writing the novel or working on another short, but I'm getting bleary-eyed and my stomach is actually making sloshing sounds because I just drank two cups of water in a row.

So I'll just tell you this: The wife bought some cans of dog food that we use as the occasional emergency supplement to the dogs' usual BARF (Bones And Raw Food) diet. And the name brand of this canned food?

Turducken.

At first, I thought that was like some family name that a person actually had to live with, and worse, was proud enough of it to put it on a can of dog meat. Then I looked it up and found out it's a truncation of Turkey, Duck and Chicken. All the fowl that's good for mutts.

Still, that's just one consonant way from the worst coprophilic pr0n EVER (in a can).

I've been unsure about whether to blog about this all day, as I don't want to jinx anything. But I suppose it should be said for the record that today at 1:30pm Eastern Time, I, Eric Griffith, being of sound mind and mushy body, did for the first time in twelve years (maybe 13, I dunno) submit a fiction story of my own creation for publication to a magazine.

Of course, I expect rejection. Not because the story deserves it. It's just that, that's what writing is all about, at least at first, and there are few exceptions. For example ...

That sure knowledge doesn't prevent me from picturing my numb reaction on that day in the fall when my own self-addressed-stamped-envelope appears in my mail box, though. How I'll look at it and see my own hand-writing, as if my evil-inverse-twin from the mirror universe (where I have no beard and I eat only health bars for food) is writing to me, but I'll know that this is actually my own handwriting, and my own stamp, and inside is probably a form letter telling me that my story isn't right for them at this time. There won't be any criticism or comments, there will not be time for any editor to gaze upon my four to five months of writing and editing and cutting and rewriting those 13,800 words and say what makes it great or what makes it suck or why it did or did not grab them by the (metaphorical) testicles and did or did not let go. Those editors are inundated by submissions and I'm lucky that I've sent the story in to a place where I'm at least sure it will be read. I expect no special attention.

Still, I harbor that dream... that instead of the form letter, I'll get an e-mail (which is in my cover letter and the top page of the manuscript) from the editor asking me for an electronic copy so they can print that sucker, as is, in fact, they want to devote an entire issue to the characters I created so they'll just print it four times in one issue!

Or maybe an e-mail where we, editor and writer, can start a creative dialog where they explain to me improvements I can make that will guarantee purchase and publication, if not fame and riches.

I'd settle for an e-mail telling me why it didn't grab them by the (still metaphorical) nut sack.

I stood in the Post Office today with the manuscript stamped and ready to mail and went over in my head every reason, from the editors' POV, why the story is great and why it sucks:

1) The dialog crackles and is fun-ny, hell yes.
2) But the dialog isn't very literary... they sound like bumpkins.
3) The story speeds along.
4) Or does it plod like little old men in mud up to their ankles?
5) Professionals have read through this tale and helped me fix all the issues.
6) There's always a damn typo, and it might be the editor's biggest pet peeve that I let slip through, causing rage and thrown pages and lots of red pen ink to be spilled.
7) The magazine says it accepts police procedural stories (which mine is)...
8) I don't remember seeing any police procedurals at all in the last few issues...

Etcetera. It's station K-FUK playing full-blast in the head. Usually it comes in clearest while trying to get things down on paper, but this after-the-fact air play was annoying.

Ultimately, I had to believe in the story. I had to know, having read so many back issues of the magazine, that it was a fit. That what I was sending them wasn't a shot in the dark -- it was a what they are looking to give their 100,000+ subscribers. I just had to. So I dropped it in the mail slot.

I now have between 30 and 120 days to receive my rejection or acceptance or feedback. I can't let myself think about it. In that time, my writing must turn back to the novel (which stands at 30,500 words, and I've get a bet with Josh that I can reach 100k words before he does, which shouldn't be hard as he actually edits as he goes along. Sucker! And I'm 5,000 ahead anyway.) Maybe another short story or two, hopefully some much shorter than this last one. I've got more ideas than I do time, especially the time to sit at a computer. But I hope to keep plugging away, otherwise I'll never get any closer to turning this kind of writing into my full-time, extremely underpaid gig.

If you don't know what a meme is, you're probably not a blogger. It's pronounced "meeeeem" and it is defined, basically, as a "viral or cultural idea or practice"—in essence, a fad. Like using smileys in e-mail. That's a meme turned fad turned cultural crime. ;P

In the blogosphere (because, that's right, bloggers need their own place to live ) a meme usually takes the form of being asked some silly ass questions and answering them publicly for potentially embarrassment or to find some bold, hidden truths about one's self.

As if that's going to happen here.

This is a long way of saying that my good friend and fellow blogger, Dr. Med-Rush, future neurosurgeon to the stars, has called me out on a meme, asking the following question:

What's On My Night Stand?

Well, one thing not on my night stand is a lamp, because my lamp is mounted to the wall. As is the wife's. They have accordion extension arms on them, like the boxing gloves that used to show up in Looney Tunes, so we can pull them away from the wall. Very cool.

I also don't have any books on there, but that's only because I've got them strewn all over the house.

On top is:

I reserved Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince about a month ago at my local Borders. I know I probably didn't need to. Two years ago when Order of the Phoenix came out, I didn't reserve it but showed up at the local B&N the next morning and stood outside with a small throng, all adults, waiting to see if we could get it. They had about 20 or 30 copies for sale on the shelf. Probably had a pallet of 2,000 more in back.

I hope no one buys this book for its collectability... it's about as likely to make someone money down the road as collecting the old Styrofoam containers that Big Mac's used to come in.

I reserved a copy mainly to get 40% off, though I probably could get that if I'd waited a couple of weeks to buy all the over-stock the stores will undoubtedly have. I can't wait though. Me loves the Rowling.

For those not initiated, Borders (at least) is trying to whip up the frenzy. Yesterday, due to a cable modem outage, I found myself ensconced in a chair at the Border's café, which is home to a T-Mobile Hotspot that I can use to go online wirelessly. I was there for about three hours and heard about once an hour an Englishman's recorded voice over the loudspeaker suggesting that people might want to pre-order the Half-Blood Prince, and be there for the store festivities on Friday starting at 9pm (book becomes available at midnight).

When was the last time a theater made a big deal like this out of a movie? Imagine the parties they could have held (and made money from) for Lord of the Rings trilogy. Or the coming King Kong.

Five minutes ago, I got a phone call from that same Englishman on the recording at Borders, who turns out to be the same guy who reads the Potter text for audiobooks. Borders programmed my number into a computer that is now calling all those with pre-orders with his canned instructions on when we can get the book—anytime between midnight ("as Friday turns to Saturday," as the recorded Brit put it) and close of business Sunday. After that, I imagine my book is put out for the general public, but hopefully at only 25% off or something.

I doubt I'll show up at midnight for the book, though it's tempting, if only to see the kids who will show up in full Hogwarts regalia, wearing sorting hats and carrying Nimbus 2000s. It'll be like a mini comicbook convention held at a library, only these kids will probably grow out of all the hysteria and costuming eventually. Unlike some people.

As mixed bags go, this week has been the mixed-baggiest.

The holiday weekend started annoying (hauling about 1200 lbs of rapidly thawing processed meat product for dog ingestion), turned out very nice with a visit from my uncle and his wife (who is, I suppose, my aunt, though it's weird to think I have a new aunt at age 35. Hell, I've got TWO new aunts in the last couple of years...), went back to annoying when I spent a lot of Sunday nuking the hard drive on my dad's computer so I could reinstall Windows to improve performance, and then finally Monday I felt like a third, or fifth, or ninth wheel at my brother's annual July 4 BBQ bash. I was thrilled to be saddled with some work like shuttling my ailing grandmother back and forth, or grabbing extra tables and daiquiri mix from my parents house. The wife bailed and didn't come with me, I didn't have one of my dogs to look after, so I basically kept to myself while my cousins gathered in one spot, my sister-in-law's family gathered in another, and I stayed out of the way.

The work week took off just as annoying, and has stayed that way all week, and annoying as that might have been, it would have been just fine had it stayed this way. But first thing I hear from NPR this morning is the terrorist attacks that rocked London.

And then around noon I find out that my favorite author of my lifetime has died.

I wrote back in December 2001 about some great book sharing that I'd done in my life, number one among them when around age 10 or 11 I was somehow introduced to the novels of the 87th Precinct written since the 1950's by Ed McBain. At the time, I started getting all the books out of the public library and my mom and I would read them at the same time.

His books were police procedurals, following the basic day to day of an investigation of a crime, or more usual, crimes. It was perfectly feasible to know who the bad guy was from page one-- the excitement came in watching the twists of how the cops would get him. And a lot of it came down, as it does in real life, to luck.

Ed McBain said in an article in the NY Times that he humanized cops when he started writing about them in 1956 by giving them head colds.

Unlike most book series that are either finite or age specific (not that the books should be read by 11-year-olds, but I turned out okay), the work of Ed McBain (AKA Evan Hunter) never left my life. There was a new 87th Precinct novel almost every year of my life for the past 25 years. Every single year book was a joy -- he never lost his stride. Not in 49 years of 87th Precinct novels, and certainly not in the many, many other award winning books (The Blackboard Jungle), and short stories, and screenplays (Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds) he did as well.

The last 87th Precinct novel, Fiddlers, will be out next month. The last one. And it breaks my heart.

It will be the last few new hours I'll have to spend with this man's characters, but luckily I have hours and hours of previous work I can check out again.

The world of registered trademarks is a strange place to live, I would think. Companies spend all their time making products into household names, then when everyone starts using those names, the companies have to rush out and prevent the name becoming TOO generic lest it lose all power as a brand and rights to use the name are lost. It happens all the time... you know the world "hoagie" used to be trademarked? And "linoleum"? Even "zipper" and "yo-yo."

I got a little note from some 'corporate paralegal' at the LoJack Corporation for using the name LoJack in a story that wasn't really about LoJack, but compared a product in the story to what LoJack does.

LoJack's legal eagle with her finger on the Google button didn't ask me to take down the mention or anything—I believe it was just corporate due diligence to make sure that, if I start to say LoJack LoJack LOJACK over and over again in every article I write, they'll be able to say, "hey, but, wait! We told you not to do that. We asked nice! Waaaaa!"

In that spirit, I'd like to mention a few brands that I'm sure are quite registered trademarks, just to see if someone will find them in a search engine and send me a nice note:

Band-Aids
LoJack
Kleenex
Speedo
Tampax
Post-In Notes
Xerox
Clorox
TiVo
Windex
ZipLoc bags
Super Hero (the term, to prevent use in comic book titles from other publishers, is jointly owned by Marvel and DC Comics. No kidding.)

And those are only the trademarked products/services I know of in my house. Well, except for the Speedos. No banana-hammocks here. (Find more fun trademarks you can abuse.)

I'm sitting out in the lobby at the Wi-Fi Planet show in Boston Baltimore [wishful thinking that I was in Boston...]. The third conference session for the day has begun, and the one I set up that's running (out of four concurrent panels) has the lowest turn out.

Apparently, I'm not very good at this 'conference co-chair' stuff.

It's hot in Baltimore, just like it was last year. I'm thinking about going back into the panel room, which has better A/C and isn't under a skylight like I am right now... but I need the outlet, as Maui's battery is almost out of juice.

A vendor I know just told me as I passed him in a meeting "I'd hug you if I could" regarding a story I wrote yesterday. I feel dirty.

I've met a couple of consultant types today that seemed to come from different ends of the geek spectrum -- one with bowl cut and the mannerism to go with, another a handsome dude with the laid-back attitude of a successful former fratboy -- and both made me feel like I don't know what the hell I'm talking about in my daily grind of covering wireless technology. I suppose I should be happy a vendor wants to hug me, at least that means I got the facts straight. At least, according to him.

I haven't been gone long enough to officially miss home, but I'm already happy at the thought of getting back tomorrow. I don't know how people do it that have to travel more than 50% of their work time. They must really hate where they live.

At last count, the wife, who I refer to as Shamus McSquanto, has found no less than six four-leaf clovers since the grass started to grow. And yesterday she found one with six leaves. I have the proof all over the house, in various stages of drying out into unrecognizable husks of vegetation. (After you pass about 15, the thought of saving all of them for good luck starts to sound like work...)

As I've mentioned before, on my first date ever, I watched the original silent movie version of Nosferatu. You know, to try and get the girl "in the mood." (I know in retrospect that this is like taking a girl to a combo Star Trek/Doctor Who/Comic Book Convention dressed as Yoda and expecting to get laid.)

Now, it turns out, that any geek can watch Nosferatu with their date, because the entire film is now free for download on the Web at the Internet Archive. The copyright has expired, and thus it is available to all.

So make some popcorn, sit down with your date, pull up the laptop and your video playback software, and enjoy...but don't expect to get to get past first base, nerd.

(Oh, when you're done, go rent Shadow of the Vampire, a rocking good flick that tells a fictional version of the filming of Nosferatu depicting the lead actor as an actually vampire, expertly played by Willem Defoe.)

You know what doesn't really work? Trying to read a book at the same time as you're listening to the audiobook version. Not like, following along, like you used to in Social Studies when the teacher decided he was tired and made some kid read a passage while everyone else had to read along, as if that was teaching. No, I'm talking about when you listen to some in the car, then go to read the book in bed, then listen to more on the lawnmower the next day, and read some on the crapper after. It's especially hard realizing that the frickin' audiobook is an abridged version when you're 200 pages (or five hours) in...

A day spent preparing for, thinking about, and shopping for the GBSP™ means I not only missed the local book sale (which I don't really need to go to, still having books from to read from last summer's sale), but also Free Comic Book Day (which, honestly, I don't need any free comics to not read either).

But the work for the day is done, and I'm sitting at Maui the laptop encrusted in the sweat-salt of earlier in the day with disheveled hair that looks like what would happen to Paulie Walnuts on The Sopranos if he were to stick his tongue in a wall socket.

When not thinking about the hardwood floor installation to commence one week hence, I'm (of course) thinking about writing. Maybe moreso today, I'm thinking about writing collaboration. This morning, while still cuddling in bed before facing the carpet remotion to come, the wife (whom I call Shamrock McSquanto!) told me about a dream she had. She decided that it was a story I should write.

Really, what she'd told me of her dream wasn't a story, it was more of a premise... no plot, no theme, no characters. It seemed interesting in that abstract way dreams of others can be, but I felt removed from it—it wasn't my dream, I hadn't lived it in my head.

But what was interesting was, over bagels on the back deck, we talked about it more, and extrapolated it into... something. Something that intrigues me, that is now settling into the shelf in the back of my head to percolate and mutate. Or maybe it could do more if we continue to talk about it.

Writing has for me become about as solitary as it gets. I'm hesitant to the point of paranoia to show anything I've written to anyone, especially Squanto herself, as she's a picture-straightening perfectionist with training as a copy editor and lots of freelance writing experience. She's the first t say she can't write fiction (which I don't believe), but she has very specific ideas of what she thinks works in a story which I know just from how we see things differently in films or TV. We're more on the same page than not, but still, she'd be my first set of eyes on anything and her reaction will be paramount in my mind.

A blog I read, Ink Slinger, did a post recently about the phenomenon of wife's as editors, and had this to say:

ADVICE FOR THE ASPIRING WRITER
Tip #1 - Get yourself a spouse who is smarter than you, and who is secure enough to hurt your feelings.

I've got that. I'm all set!

Working through the idea stemming from her dream, turning it into something that could be a story, seeing the hesitant frayed edges of a plot in it (though still sans characters) was almost electrifying for me.

Last time I collaborated with someone on writing, if you don't count my stealing stories from my brother the copy was on a spec script for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with my friend Dave. He was in Virginia, I was in NYC, and we would send files back and forth until we had something done that actually got read by an agent. Something I'm proud of in a foolish way, since it didn't lead to anything.

I remember a night in college on the phone with my friend Brett, telling him about something I was writing. It wasn't even so much collaboration as me just going on forever about something, with him making occasional noises to the affirmative or negative. There's something to be said for the human sounding board.

So perhaps its time to start spewing forth some of my current work, my short story (Ripped from Today's Headlines!—that's not a title, just the truth) and my novel(s?) in progress, and more about that dream, with my in house editor. Though I'm not posting squat here until something is done, because someone will rip off the ideas and get rich on it and I'll then give it all up to become a full-time hardwood floor installer.

While my thoughts swirl around the thought of the the Griffith Big Summer Project, now officially scheduled for initial demolition the week of May 9 (rip up old carpet) and construction on weekend of May 14-16 (nail down the wood floor), and as I grapple with the usual disappointment in myself that I haven't worked on my short story in days (6,700 words and holding), I should also mention the interesting family news of the week.

Yesterday morning, my uncle got married. I didn't make it to the wedding as I had to work, but that's no big deal, as 1) we are about as close as I am to the FedEx guy and 2) he didn't really let anyone in the family know it was happening until the night before.

It's either because he's embarrassed because he goes to a major bible-thumping church complete with tambourines, or he thinks the family casts judgment because he's is now married to a black woman. While I can say without equivocation that most Born Agains do tend to be on my ridicule radar (mainly because of there incessant recruitment needs) no one in my immediate family looks down at his marrying this woman, who we've all met, thinks is great, and who makes him happier than I think he's been in probably 20 to 25 years. My brother Paul said as much at the reception, when it came to his turn among the group to say something (he also congratulated our uncle, but wished the bride "good luck").

Maybe my uncle just things it is all no big deal. He was trying to keep the nuptials on the down-low until the congregation heard about it and said they'd throw a reception for them. So, hey, free reception! Why not invite the family?

It was fascinating to hear about the whole thing second hand. I'd been hoping this was a real fire and brimstone gospel group like out of The Blues Brothers -- the scene with James Brown. Turns out they're probably a little less hip, about on par with the snake-pit types we made fun of as kids when they'd broadcast their sermons and "music" on the local cable access channel.

In fact, the minister for that cable-access group I mention above showed up at this wedding. Apparently the two groups are somehow related. This minister is hated and loathed by my mother with the passion of a thousand suns for some crap he pulled 25 years ago against my other uncle, now dead, who this minister talked into moving his family of 6 (at the time) to Florida. The minister left him high and dry. Having her other brother this close to the guy is a gut twister for her. She wanted my brother to go out to the car and get his Glock and take care of him once and for all, but my brother smartly refused.

In the end, it sounds like it was probably overall as boring as most weddings, but a lot less expensive, which I can totally get behind. My blanket advice to anyone I know getting married is always one word: Elope.

My uncle will of course always have some issues over this with the world, and other family members, but I can say without hesitation that my immediate nuclear group is behind him 200%.

The part I really wish I hadn't missed, which my brother and I laughed about on the phone for a good five minutes last night was when, in the middle of the ceremony, my nephew John just blurted out, "I WANT CRACKERS!"

And he got them.

Watching TV Makes You Smarter: this is the single greatest article in the history of the NYTimes (registration required to read it).

The headline says it all. Tho it is written to sound like an academic paper, so here's the gist: If you watch modern shows like Sopranos, LOST, 24, Simpsons etc., you're getting an order of magnitude more information, story and character than anyone ever dreamed of even 20 years ago (and another infinity step above that from the 1950s or 60s). He even says, go ahead, watch TV Land for one night and try not to feel stupid. It's all scientifically proven with graphs and big words.

So there's this guy I hate.

I've never really met him. I have not had a conversation with him. I don't even know his last name, and he doesn't know who I am at all. He's not a big public figure with terribly polarizing views or background. He's just some local guy. And I can't stand him.

Obviously we've all been there. Someone just rubs you the wrong way for some innocuous silly reason and you're suddenly predisposed to thinking of them only with curses and epithets. It's not a pleasant thing, but its human nature to anyone who isn't saintly or gullible, I'd argue.

This guy set me off at a meeting I attended over a month ago. He was running for an office on the groups first ever executive council, and when he got up to make his one-minute spiel, you could tell right off he was annoyed at having to do so, mainly I think by being limited to a minute (as I've since found out he's a god damn blabbermouth of epic proportions, at last in e-mail, where he can't shut the hell up). He was the only one of seven candidates who decided he was big and loud enough to address the assemblage without a microphone. 40 seconds into whatever he said (I'd already tuned him out, it was that instantaneous), people started yelling that they couldn't hear him, so he wasted another ten seconds getting the microphone, because he also couldn't be bothered to stand behind the podium.

Instant enmity.

So, this meeting progresses so that they group decides the exec council can have seven seats instead of the original five intended, thus everyone who ran was on the council. How nice! More voice to take care of things, everyone comes away a winner, what could be wrong?

Well, Mr. No-Mic apparently had a problem with it, for we found out a less than a week later he quit the council. He screwed up their Web page, too, which took the rubes another three weeks to fix. I thought about volunteering, but couldn't bring myself to get close to the group which was starting to feel... strange.

Over the last week I finally made it onto the overall group's e-mail listservs and got to watch as No-Mic has blathered away at length, taking potshots at most people's proposals and griping passive-aggressively about a self-serving proposal of his own that got canned a while ago (and was, I think, his reason for leaving the exec council). His attitude toward the group and human beings in general feels like a cheese grater running down my spine. I used to dread spam messages, now I dread seeing his e-mail address in my inbox.

Saturday morning, the Wife, who is also on the list, had had enough and she wrote up a long e-mail to send to the list to call No-Mic out on the carpet. As she is wont to do, she had me read it first -- she has learned from my past mistakes of sending e-mail in the heat of the moment. At that point, my take on it was: don't bother. Bon's message would likely have splashed a bucket of gasoline on a few embers, and it didn't seem prudent, and I told her so. She bagged the message.

Now I'm not so sure. I have gathered so much loathing inside toward this single man (and a couple of cronies who seem to follow his lead like lackeys to the super-villain) that I wish she had sent it. Or that I had. The problem is, not all of his ideas are without merit. Some are even border on good, if not reasonable.

His inability to express them in text on the Interwebbing, however, continues to get my goat. If No-Mic's e-mails push my buttons much more, however, I'm likely to send a message myself, and its so tempting to have it be a tanker-truck of gas on a full fledged flame. We'll see.