Yes, I changed the template again. And the header photo. Love it? Hate it? Hit the ‘Sound Off’ link below and let me know what you think.

And yes, things might look weird or something in IE for Windoze. But then … well, you use IE for Windoze and you pretty much deserve what happens to you. Switch to Firefox! Immediately! End the Evil Redmond Monopoly!

And thanks for dropping by. We’ll write more later. We haven’t gone anywhere.

I missed my opportunity (thanks to my annual January bronchitis) to comment on the fool prince’s costume party thing. Even though it’s sorta blown over, I’ll contribute with this: my version of Prince Harry’s Official Coat of Arms:

Actually, « the real one is here ». I just couldn’t resist.

Oh, lighten up! It’s a parody folks!

« Gore Vidal » is back in the Empire and telling it like it is, thank god:

‘He said that he can foresee the war going so badly that [the Emperor George II] will be forced to resign or be driven from office. “I can’t believe the speed with which the entire republic fell apart. The U.S. Bill of Rights fell apart with [inJustice Minister] John Ashcroft and the [USAPATRIOT Act],” he said of post-9/11 America. “Preventive war became our national policy, which has not been any nation’s policy since Hitler. A preventive war is about as un-American as you get. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t done it before,” he said. “The worst (previous) example was the Mexican War. That brave moralist, Ulysses S. Grant, who had been a second lieutenant just out of West Point, hated that war and said … that nations like individuals suffer for their transgressions. “I believe the Civil War was the judgment of God on us for what we did to Mexico. God knows what we are going to get for Iraq.”’

— Reuters

Amen, Brother Gore, amen!

There’s also this entertaining tidbit in the article, which unfortunately is given a more prominent place in the article.

‘As far as Vidal was concerned, “Alexander” was a breakthrough work because it treated Alexander’s bisexuality in a matter-of-fact manner rather “than a terrible sin to be punished by Our Lord.” “They are on the right track with this picture because it says bisexuality exists which is something the public already knows because they practice it,” he said. Then he described how as one of the key script doctors on “Ben Hur” he secretly wove in a homosexual subplot into what bills itself “as the world’s most honored movie.” Vidal, who along with playwrights Christopher Fry and Maxwell Anderson were uncredited writers on the film, figured that a homosexual subplot would explain the tension between first century Jewish prince Ben Hur (Charlton Heston) and Messala (Stephen Boyd), the old Roman pal who turns on him and sends him into slavery.’

(Don’t know who Cassandra was? « Look it up ». For those to lazy to follow the link, Cassandra (also called Alexandra) was the Trojan seeress who uttered true prophecies, but lacking the power of persuasion, was never believed. Sound familiar?

Here’s the REAL Pledge of Allegiance, as written by Non-Sequitor:

‘I pledge allegiance to the flag of the corporate states of America.
‘And to the Republicans for which it stands,
‘One nation, under debt, easily divisible,
‘With liberty and justice for oil.’

— Non-Sequitor

Amen.

« Our Life in Michigan – 2005 North American International Auto Show »

Here are some pics taken by Frank and by me that I’ve been meaning to post:

« Our Life in Michigan – 11- and 22-Jan-05 Miscellaneous Wintry Pics »

« Our Life in Michigan – 11&22-Jan-05 Miscellaneous Wintry Pics »

I was in Kroger last night picking up some groceries. The place was packed, and one of the checkout lines extended past the newspaper rack. I reached over one woman’s basket to grab a copy of the Ann Arbor News. First she gave me a sour look, then she chuckled and said, “Read it and weep.” Usually I’m at a loss for snappy small talk, but in this case I was able to come back with, “Yeah, that’s what I do every time I pick a newspaper up. You know what I mean?” She chuckled again and said she knew what I meant. I wished her a good weekend, she cheerily said “You too,” and that was that.

But it was a good moment. It made me feel (in a strange way) like I finally “live” here in Michigan, in a way that no other moment has. I use the word “live” because I doubt I’ll ever “belong” here; there are many things I like about Michigan 17 months after moving here, and my ability to have this exchange means (kind of) that I’m finally starting to understand the Michigan sensibility (that kind of mordant wisecrack would not be made in California), but I don’t have the feeling that I’m ever going to feel like a Michigander.

Having said that, it was good to have a moment like that to store and to remember on those far more numerous occasions when I fail to understand the personality of the typical Michigander and feel like I’m stumbling around with two left feet. (Not that there is such a person, but I’m as convinced that there’s a Michigan personality as I am that there’s a California or a New York personality.)

I added « Reality-Based Nation » to the blogroll because of wonderful, kick-the-fascists-in-the-face entries like this:

‘Earlier this week, we noted a pending appeals court case in Indiana (article) in which the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was being challenged. Yesterday, while Mr. Bush preached to the world about freedom and liberty for all people, the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld the ban. The court opinion is shocking and sad:

“An Indiana Court of Appeals decision upholding the state law banning same-sex marriage came down to the issue of natural reproduction — not morality, religious tradition or gay rights. The court ruled Thursday that the ability of heterosexual couples to procreate naturally is distinction enough to justify the law.”

‘I’m still trying to figure out how the hell gay marriage will disrupt straight marriages. If gay couples marry, will there be a decline in straight marriages? Is there, like fossil fuels which Republicans love, only a finite number of marriages available in the world? Questions, questions, questions. And the only answer is contained in the biblical book of Leviticus. Good source. Meanwhile, Stay-Puft Richard Land was on NPR’s “All Things Considered” last night and insisted that the debate over the separation of church and state is over — won by the religious right. Okay. Fine. Can we tax and regulate Land’s Southern Baptist Convention now? Tax the shit out of them? Help pay down the deficit, perhaps? These shmendricks have no clue. Don’t they realize that when you merge church and state it gives the state free reign to interfere in the church? Stupid, stupid.’

— Reality-Based Nation

Reality-Based Nation … awesome stuff!

As we slog around in the weeks of snow that have been dumped on southeast Michigan, it’s mordantly amusing to see what happens in parts of the country that aren’t as used (inured?) to snow as Michigan is:

A mere inch of snow was all it took to cripple North Carolina’s capital—and prompt plenty of finger-pointing Thursday as the city thawed from the surprise storm that caused gridlock and left 3,000 students stranded in classrooms overnight.

While a TV weatherman hung his head in shame—telling viewers his forecast of a mere dusting was “embarrassing”—the mayor vented at meteorologists for leaving Raleigh unprepared for Wednesday’s storm.

“A forecast that had given a better indication of the likely problem would have been very helpful,” Mayor Charles Meeker said.

Residents—particularly those who have lived in other parts of the country—could not believe the city was brought to its knees by just an inch of snow.

« Airbus A-380 photos at Airliners.net »

Looks like, at long last, &laquo the official rollout of the Airbus A-380 », the world’’s largest commercial aircraft, is finally at hand:

‘Airbus, which has delivered more airplanes than Boeing for the second year in a row, is about to unveil another No. 1: the world’’s largest passenger jet. The A380, a four-aisle, four-engine, double-decker “superjumbo,” will roll onto the tarmac Tuesday at Airbus headquarters in southern France, in a lavish ceremony attended by EU leaders and thousands of guests. Sales have beat expectations so far, and most of the technical problems that have dogged the program have been resolved, at a price. But the real sighs of relief won’‘t be heard in Toulouse until later — sometime before March 31, Airbus says — when the A380 hauls its 280-metric ton (308-ton) frame aloft. That’’s when the plane’’s engineers will begin to find out whether their gargantuan offspring lives up to the performance promises, as the first test-flight data streams in.’

— AP

If it all goes as scheduled and without a hitch, it will be an incredibly impressive technical achievement and will add punctuation to Boeing’’s sad state of affairs.

« Very first pics of the first A380 are up at Airliners.net ».

That is one big-ass airplane. Awesome!

Although it’’s not likely that the Emperor’’s anti-union and anti-worker administration is likely to heed it, «  ” title=”Union Calls for Urgent Meeting on Airlines”>the IAMAW union is calling on the Transportation Department to convene a major meeting regarding the sorry state of the airline industry »

‘The request came in a letter to the transportation secretary, Norman Y. Mineta, from Robert Roach Jr., vice president for transportation at the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents more than 100,000 mechanics, baggage handlers and ramp workers at the major airlines. Mr. Roach noted that the department had brought officials together after the terrorist attacks in September 2001 to discuss challenges facing the industry. He called that session helpful but said that the industry had been caught in an unending slump and needed to find solutions. So far this decade, the major airlines have collectively lost $30 billion, five companies have filed for bankruptcy protection, more than 110,000 jobs have been eliminated, and workers pay and benefits have been cut or eliminated. “If we are to have a safe, efficient transportation industry,” Mr. Roach said in the letter, “it is more important than ever that everyone in management, labor and government work toward the common goal of rebuilding the transportation industry for our mutual benefit.” In an interview, Mr. Roach said he was not asking for specific moves by the government, but he said the industry’’s crisis could not continue. “We believe very strongly,” Mr. Roach said, “that the only way to get this problem resolved is to put everyone in the industry together and think about what comes next.” A spokesman for the union, Joseph Tiberi, said it had not received an answer from Mr. Mineta.’

— NY Times

And good luck on getting an answer from anyone in the great American fascist imperial administration, dude. But hey. We’‘re pulling for ya.

It seems more details have emerged about « Delta’s new pricing strategy » this weekend.

‘Under Delta’s new structure, prices for last-minute walk-up fares have been cut by as much as 50 percent, the long-unpopular Saturday night stayover requirement for lower-priced fares has been eliminated, the fee for changing nonrefundable tickets has been dropped from $100 to $50, and the airline’s menu of fares has been simplified: Now there are eight prices for each flight; before, there were dozens. These latest price cuts — for flights within the 48 contiguous states — will be more of a boon to business travelers than to vacationers. Most carriers already are offering deep discounts to their leisure customers.
So how does a “legacy carrier” with a history of fiscal mismanagement and clueless resistance to change plan to make more money by cutting it’s revenue?’

— Washington Post

Good question. Apparently, by turning airliners in flying Costco warehouses. Instead of toilet paper by the caseload, they’re going to give the flying public … well, I’m not sure what, but it’’s probably the finger or something.

‘It was only last month that Delta’’s Grinstein stood before a group of airline professionals in New York and predicted imminent change in the financially troubled industry. The reason the major airlines have been losing market share to low-cost competitors such as Southwest, he told his audience at the elite, private-membership Wings Club, is because travelers no longer think they’re getting a good deal from the big carriers. “I recently came across the mission statement for Costco, the membership warehouse company,” Grinstein said, according to a transcript of his prepared remarks. “Their goal is to ‘’continually provide our members quality goods and services at the lowest possible prices.” The failure of major airlines to meet that standard “caused us to lose the trust of our customers,” Grinstein continued. “Passengers no longer believed they were receiving the highest quality at the lowest possible price. And they were right. “As a result, customers shifted their trust and affiliation to carriers like Southwest and JetBlue. Southwest succeeded so well that today customers flock to the airline’s Web site, even when Southwest’s prices are higher than other carriers. They simply trust Southwest to be the best value around.”

There are some grains of truth here and I’ll give good ol’ Grinstein credit for pointing them out. First, the product of the legacy carriers is complete shite, to borrow a word. We’‘ve gone from the days of Braniff’s Flying Colors and the glamour of the World’s Most Experienced Airline to crappy, dirty, jam-packed ‘planes full of dirty, rude, ignorant hillbillies. Yet, we’ve left the pricing structure intact.

Second, that second-to-last sentence is telling: Customers trust Southwest (and Wal-Mart) to be the cheapest and best around so much that, even when WN and W-M are not, those customers still spend their time and money with them because of the perception that they’re the best value around.

Kind of like the same people keep voting against their own economic and social self-interest because the Fascist Party is now perceived as being the moral values champions who are on the little peoples’ side.

Delta and the other legacies have a long, long, long way to go to overcome that perception. Delta may pull it off. USAirways, if their Christmas debacles are any indication, probably cannot. Too large and mired in bureaucratic inertia, most legacies will not survive. The Empire’’s current trajectory appears to be giving us a culture where one shops at Wal-Mart, flies Southwest, votes Fascist, etc.

If this is where that Bridge to the 21st Century has delivered us, I’‘m headed back to the (ironically) saner 20th.

Another 3-4 inches of snow fell overnight; it was soft and fluffy, with no ice. So this afternoon, we took a ride downtown.

The Grand continues to perform admirably; you have to do something really stupid to make it fishtail and it simply refuses to skid if you apply heavy brake. I’m loving the heating system and heated seats these days.

It’s getting a bit scruffy on the inside; these people are nuts with the salt around here, and there’s very little you can do to keep it out of your car. The mats are due for a scrubbing, and the seats in the rear need to be wiped down.

I remain very pleased with Jeepy 4 after a month of driving it. The only thing that keeps it from being perfect is its 13/17 gas mileage. That’s very ‘ouch’-inducing.

It should be lots of fun driving to Oklahoma in April. But I dread the gas mileage I’ll get driving a trailer-load of books and other things the 1,000 miles back home.

The weather has been abyssmal. Haven’t been able to get outside on the book since New Year’s, since the sidewalks and streets are just treacherous.

Since I want to average 5 miles per day all year, I’m already in the hole and have lots of catching up to do. Blast it all.

I love how taken aback the “old school” newsgathering operations are that blogs scooped them, and in many cases surpassed them, in covering the South Asian earthquake and tsunami catastrophe. The best quote I’ve heard in this regard was today on NPR: a “technology contributor” named Xeni Jardin said, breathlessly, that bloggers aren’t just “fat blowhards sitting on couches in the suburbs writing about what they saw on the news” anymore.

Note [1.7.05] …… In the comments, bentley points out that Xeni Jardin is actually a contributor to boingboing, which is a fantastic blog (this being a perfect example why). I have to eat some crow and revise my reflexive sarcasm above in the light of this fact, which I didn’t know beforehand. It must be that Ms. Jardin was engaging in some sarcasm herself on NPR, although it was kind of hard to discern that over the airwaves. Anyway, my belated apologies.

Details are still slightly hazy, but « United’s pilots are fighting the weird backroom maneuvering » which resulted in us taxpayers getting soaked with the responsibility of the pilots’ pension fund, thanks to United’s epic and clueless executive mismanagement:

‘Pilots at United Airlines will fight plans for an involuntary bail-out of their pension scheme, threatening to unravel agreements needed to bring the US company out of bankruptcy. Their angry reaction follows a surprise intervention last week by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which runs a national insurance scheme for all US companies. The group fears being held responsible for $6.4bn of unfunded pension liabilities across United’s four pension schemes and decided to minimise losses by taking pre-emptive control of the pilots’ plan. But union leaders representing this highly-paid group accuse the PBGC of singling them out for “vindictive” punishment, as the early move means they will receive $140m less than hoped.

’… The union also questioned whether the quasi-government agency was deliberately seeking to wreck union agreements with the company. “We are equally concerned about the timing of the PBGC action in the midst of a pilot membership vote over the tentative pilot agreement. “We question whether the PBGC’s action may be designed to confuse the pilot group, undermine the membership ratification process and deprive the pilots of the benefits and protections of the tentative agreement.”

’… Separately, United announced on Monday it had reached “tentative” cost-saving agreements with two other unions, although it remains unclear if these include terminating their pension schemes as well.’

Well, since the Fascists have installed their minions in almost every corner of government, purging anyone who dissents, and since, subsequently, agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board have become very anti-worker, you can bet the move was a sop to United and Fascist Party benefactors in some way.

Too bad the pilots get left holding the (now-worthless) bag and taxpayers get stuck with any bills.

Ah. Life in the reign of Emperor George II. Ain’t all the higgledy-piggledy-ness grand?

I was going to get a good start on my riding program by biking every day, but alas, it was not to be.

I biked five miles on Saturday the first, but as I was returning, I noticed the rear tire was low. So I went to the gas station at Packard/Stadium to air it up. I guess the gauge was inaccurate and I apparently over-inflated the front tire. I biked home fine, but a couple of hours later as I was making dinner, there was a very loud bang in the front of the house and I thought we were being attacked.

Turns out the innertube and tire on the front of the Bobcat pretty much exploded. It ruined the tire and put a two-inch-long shred in the innertube.

So today I went back to « Ann Arbor Cyclery » and had to buy a new front tire and tube. I also got a new, accurate gauge.

The shop wasn’t open Sunday, so between that and all the rain today, I’ve lost two days of riding already.

Oh, well, I’ll just have to make up for it somehow.

While waiting on the installation, I picked up a new catalog for « Marin Bikes ». This year’s Bobcat Trail is little changed from the 2004 model I bought, with one exception: the 2005 model is matte black and totally slick looking. Almost makes me wish I’d waited, but I’m still happy with my red one.

I enjoy all the year-end lists that pop up on the WWW around this time, mostly because they demonstrate that if there’s one thing the Web’s good at, it’s making lists. I also enjoy realizing that there’s about a snowball’s chance in hell that I’ll get around to reading, seeing, and listening to all of the books, films, TV shows, and music that all of these lists tell you it’s essential to have consumed.

One movie that seems to have popped up on a lot of lists is Alexander Payne’s “Sideways,” which Steve and I saw this weekend. I wouldn’t say it’s a masterpiece or anything, but I would wager that it’s a hell of a lot better than most of the movies released this past year. Nevertheless, just as was the case with “Lost in Translation” (another excellent movie) last year, when the critical consensus starts getting too huge, the detractors have to show up to make sure the “favorite” is knocked down a couple of pegs (or two). Thus, the boring, stale dweeb AO Scott of the New York Times, whose opinion about film is about as valuable to me as that of the sponge sitting on my kitchen sink, says that “Sideways” is the “most drastically overrated film of the year.” NP Thompson says that the movie “plays like a dumb sitcom.”

I thought the film was excellent, understated, and well-observed. Few people in the showing we were at seemed to get it, though; most of the hilarious moments were greeted by silence. Maybe it’s because it’s a completely California movie — the movie’s set in San Diego and Santa Barbara County, and the characters typify a kind of California self-absorption that’s hard to understand (or to find amusing) unless you’ve lived in California or know Californians. Oh well. I still think it’s well worth seeing, even if you hate California (maybe even more worth it, in that instance).

Anyway, I’m hardly one to speak about current movies. I only saw seven new releases in the theater in 2004, which seems like a pathetically small number, but there are very few movies I’m willing to fork out the bucks and go through the public ritual of seeing anymore. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” sounds like an intriguing premise, but I’m tired of excusing movies with the exasperatingly untalented and overrated Jim Carrey in them just because they have a good premise (e.g., “The Truman Show”). “Before Sunset” is being praised to the skies, but I thought “Before Sunrise” was uninspiring, so why should I like “Sunset”? “Bad Education” is getting a lot of raves, but I have yet to see an Almodóvar film that I’ve liked. So it goes.

As for music, well, I’m even less able to offer worthwhile comment there. My musical discovery of the year was Ella Fitzgerald’s songbook box set, the last album of which was released in 1964, so that should tell you something about my level of hipness. However, I do listen to new music on the Web once in a while, and one album that really impressed me (that I haven’t yet bought) is the Fiery Furnaces’ Blueberry Boat, which is feverish, bizarre, insane, and inspired all at once. The Strokes’ Room on Fire was released in 2003, but I didn’t hear it till 2004; I liked the instrumentation, but you have to get past the whiny, braying, processed lead vocalist to get to the instrumentation, which is too big a hurdle for me. (Also, the main riff of the leadoff track, “What Ever Happened?”, sounds too much like a ripoff of the chugging riff of Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” to be taken seriously.) What I’ve heard of the most overpraised album of 2004, Arcade Fire’s Funeral, didn’t set me on fire. I loved PJ Harvey’s Uh Huh Her, which is no huge leap forward, but at this point even PJ Harvey in a holding pattern is superior to most of the crap out there. I didn’t hear a single new hip-hop or R&B album that I liked, which is pretty sad.

Today comes news that « the Emperor is planning permanent gulags in a number of countries to hold persons merely suspected of … well, doing something of which the Emperor does not approve »:

‘The Bush administration is preparing plans for possible lifetime detention of suspected terrorists, including hundreds whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts, The Washington Post reported Sunday. Citing intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials, the newspaper said the Pentagon and the CIA had asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for those it would not set free or turn over to courts at home or abroad. As part of a solution, the Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, plans to ask the U.S. Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence, defense officials told the newspaper.’

Folks, we’re no longer living in the America into which I was born and raised. This is something very different, very ugly and very evil.

The Republic is dead. Long live the Empire, eh?