I have been extremely rigorous in my avoidance of any and all "reality" TV. I am proud to say, that except for an occasional commercial, I've never seen a single minute of any of the Survivors. Ditto Joe Millionaire, the Bachelor, the Bachelorette (ugh, the very concept), Fear Factor, Amazing Race, Paradise Hotel or any of the several million knock-offs and variants thereof.

However.

Since the playoffs (and if you have to ask which playoffs, you are utterly worthless) were on FOX, there were a lot, a lot, a lot of ads for the new season of Joe Millionaire in which they showed a dozen very pretty young Euro-trash women burbling on about how they could just so easily fall in love with this man they think is worth $80 million. "And now for the best part, he's riiich"

God help me. I have to watch. This is a train wreck I would PAY to watch. I don't want to. I won't respect myself at all. But I am going to be glued to this. It's ugly. It's cruel. It's going to be my personal must-see-TV.

Speaking of cruel, I am just appalled by the new Sprint commercials which show a young woman taking a photo with her voice and image cell phone of some poor schmuck having a bad day at the diner. She sends the photo to her girlfriend with the snidest, bitchiest singsong voice over of "Look at your new boyfriend, don't you l-u-v your new boyfriend?"

It is just mean spirited. Cruel. It gives me the heebiejeebies of highschool cliques and unpopularity contests. It's ugly. It's demeaning. It's awful.

And a lot like what I suspect will be my new favorite TV show of all time: Joe Millionaire goes to Europe to hose the unsuspecting gold diggers.

My (not-so) Stinky Fish have won the National League Championship Series, coming from behind in the series. Huah!

I have tickets for Game Five, if there is a Game Five.

I had to drive to work today. If I'd wanted a two-hour commute, I'd live a hundred miles from my office, not 10. Who's idea was it to trim the trees in the median of Dixie Fucking Highway during the morning rush hour, anyway? We don't need an Office of Homeland Security, we need an Office of Stupidity Security. You know, these would be the guys who looked at everything the government, from national down to local proposed and do a common sense and logic check before things actually took place.

Hmmm, cutting down three very slow north-bound lanes of traffic to one even slower lane during the morning commute... sounds like a great idea to me! And then that moron would forward it to the OSS to be reviewed. Someone there with sufficient brain cells to rub together would look at the idea and say: "Uh, how about we cut the trees in the north-bound lane at the end of the day, when 98% of the traffic is heading south, and there won't be an inexplicable traffic jam that extends all the way south to Kendall, a mere 120 blocks away."

And then, once I finally got here, I had to park on the roof of the building. Hey! I can see my car from my office. Yep. Still there. Sort of in the shade. I got to the office, checked the office e-mail and then sat down to the most important chore of my day: getting on-line and getting those Series tickets.

Life is good, sometimes.

I have a new troll. Or a new stalker, depending on your point of view.

He came to me the way they always do: he Googled the web, searching for someone who disagreed with his opinions. Then he sent an e-mail, calling me a pathetic loser with too much time on my hands. (This from someone who searches the web for dissenting opinions) Then he sent another, and another and another. The vitriol escalated slightly. He sent me a long e-mail that backed up his opinion and was contrary to mine.

I finally responded. I said: I don't care what you think. I don't care who agrees with you. I will be deleting all further mail from you.

That caused him to send me a storm of e-mails, suggesting that I kill myself, offering to help me do so.

I blocked his address. He took a new e-mail address and sent this chilling little item:

From: robert blake (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address))
Date: 13 Oct 17:47 (EDT)
To: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Subject: no hard feelings. ok?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

in the east - the far east - when a person is sentenced to death, they send them to a place where they can't escape - never knowing when an executioner may step up from behind and fire a bullet into the back of their head. it could be minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years from the time they are sentenced.

it's been a pleasure talking to you. have a nice day.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What was the catalyst for this? What had he Googled? Was it religion? War? Politics? What deep-held belief of his had I trampled and so condemned myself to death?

I think David Lynch is a second-rate film maker. I don't like Paul McCartney.

What kind of world do we live in, anyway?

So, for the record, I still don't think David Lynch is a genius.

But for all the rest of you trolls out there, try to think this through. I'm speaking to myself when I blog. I'm assuming that some people will read, and many more will not. I'm voicing an opinion, I am not attempting mind control or saying that my word is law. I'm just saying.

I do not send my opinion to you. You come to me. I do not spam the web. You search the web.

You are searching, you are spending time looking for something to argue about and take offense to. And you have the nerve to call me, and my brethren (or sister) bloggers people with too much time?

How small is your life? How insignificant do you feel, that you need to threaten and violate? Take a night class. Get another degree, or your first one. Move out of your parent's basement. Get a real job. Get a friend. Get a life. Try volunteer work. Try therapy. Watch fewer movies, play less x-box. Read the newspaper.

Because, and I'm sure you'll remember this: killing the president didn't work out so well for Travis Bickel, did it? Or even for John Hinkley.

Have a day.

So, it's a Sunday in the middle of a long weekend. My girlfriend calls around noon. "Wanna go to the gym?" Hell, yes. The gym on a Sunday? Doubly virtuous, extra calories burned by virtue of time and day.

We go on a shopping expedition afterwards, she to pick up a serenity fountain for her office, me to stock up on cold and flu meds for the darling (and flu-ish) husband. I even make a pit stop at the Chinese restaurant for chicken soup.

I come home, bearing gifts and sustenance, only to be asked:

"Did Leslie get a hold of you?"

Uh, no. Why'd she call? (A friend, but not a particularly close one, and one with whom telephone communication is infrequent and sporadic.)

She had tickets to Game Four of the League Championship Series. She is my only true blue, die-hard baseball buddy. She had an extra ticket and called me. But I was out. I was at the gym, watching the Dolphins as I slogged my way over hills on the elliptical trainer.

I watched one of the best baseball games ever played -- ever-- from the comfort of my living room. But I'd rather have been in the stadium.

When it comes to stadium events this month, I am just not on a winning streak.

I present to you the following e-mail conversation I had with my brother-in-law yesterday. He's still alive, but only because I don't want to go live in the slammer. Still, as I pointed out to him, a jury of baseball fans would acquit me.

E-mail #1, from me:

So. Did you get invited to the box for the playoffs? If you say yes, and didn't invite me, I'll have to kill you with my bare hands.

E-mail #1, from Steve:

How did you know? Only kidding, but we do have tickets for Friday's game.

E-mail #2, from me:

Tickets for Marc and me, too? Or (and I am not kidding about this) am I going to have to drive up to your office and just strangle you. I'd be acquitted by a jury of baseball fans, it's perfectly defensible.

E-mail #2, from Steve:

I was given nose bleed seats for Friday.

E-mail # 3, from me:

Excuses, excuses, excuses. Nose bleed seats are still seats in the stadium for a playoff game in the League Championship Series. How can I put this more simply?

I am a HUGE FUCKING baseball fan, and a Marlins fan, and have been since I was part of the grassroots movement to get an expansion team to South Florida. One of my life goals is to attend a game in every major league park. I'm about a tenth of the way there. I have been to opening day games at Yankee Stadium and at Shea. I have seen the Red Sox play at Fenway. I cry at the first pitch.

And you have a seat for the play offs, the hardest seats to come by in the country, and you didn't even THINK of inviting me? Or trying to wheedle an extra ticket? Are you MAD? Do you think I'm kidding? I'm just going to have to, I don't know.... give your daughter a toy that makes noise?

ggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I don't want to be your sister-in-law anymore. Expect to see a major rant about this on Girlyshoes, bucko.

ggggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

E-mail #3, from Steve:

So does this mean your email is working? (Note: the whole conversation began with a request to fix a broken e-mail link on a site he hosts)

Sorry, I have no control over the ticket thing. So the Marlins are in the playoffs? Will I have trouble finding a parking space?

E-mail #4, from me:

Yes.

> So the Marlins are in the playoffs? Will I have trouble finding a parking space?

Yes. And yes. Take a shuttle. Unless your buddy gave you a parking pass, too.

If you weren't so cute, if you didn't look EXACTLY like David Lee Roth, and if I didn't love your idiot brother so much, I would be so very, very pissed at you right now.

He thanked me for relieving him of some of the guilt with that last message. I told him if he wanted to be relieved of all the guilt that he could give me the freaking tickets. I guess he likes living with guilt. And I hope he likes living with the child-size set of bagpipes his daughter is getting for her birthday next week.

Or I would have had to kill myself. My ole pal Andy* called me last night to gloat over the fact that he'd gone, not once, but twice, to see Springsteen at Shea Stadium. And he had his regular Mets seats, which means he was just off home plate on the first base line, down in the boxes. Bastard.

This is retribution for not getting him in to Madison Square Garden when I was up for the Reunion Tour.

But the thing that I would have had to kill myself over was this:

Shea Stadium October 4, 03

1. CODE OF SILENCE
2. The Rising
3. Lonesome Day
4. Roulette
5. Night
6. I WISH I WERE BLIND
7. Empty Sky
8. You're Missing
9. Waitin on a Sunny Day
10. Johnny 99
11. Another Thin Line
12. Tunnel of Love
13. Because the Night
14. Badlands
15. Prove it all night
16. Mary's place
17. BACK IN YOUR ARMS
18. Into the fire

First encore:
19. LIGHT OF DAY
20. Bobby Jean
21. Born to Run
22. Seven nights to rock

Second encore:
23. HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED(Bob Dylan)
24. My city of ruins
25. Land of hopes and dreams
26. Rosalita(Willie Nile)
27. Dancing in the dark
28. Quarter to three
29. Twist and Shout(Soozie on lead)
30. BLOOD BROTHERS

Two encores, 30 songs, and THE BOB. The Bob, she says with a cry and a whimper. On the same stage as The Boss. Singing, as Andy put it "For Yom Kippur", Highway 61 Revisited.

For those of you who don't know, on Yom Kippur, the torah reading is the story of Abraham and Isaac. Or, as The Bob puts it, and I mutter under my breath, every single fucking year:

"Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."

Well, just bite me. I would have had to kill myself after such a peak experience as that. And what if, by some amazing freak of good luck, my girlfriend with the all-area access had me backstage and introduced me to The Bob?

Well, my head would have spontaneously combusted, and there'd be no more Girlyshoes. So I repeat, it's a good thing that I wasn't there. Or so I tell myself.

* Andy and I have been pals since college. We went to see "A Boy and His Dog" together at a midnight movie. And loved it. When I married Marc, Andy looked around and figured out that he was the only person on the bride's side not related by blood. So for the rest of the day, he walked around introducing himself as my "only friend." And I refuse to give my name when I call his business, saying only that I'm HIS only friend. The secretaries all know who I am, and put me through.

I'm standing around the temple yesterday morning, waiting for services to begin, feeling virtuous and all, and chewing the fat with a friend from my political life. I'm telling her about the Peaceblog Project, and asking her to write for it. She's enthused. I'm enthused. Her husband walks up.

Background interlude: I like her husband. I've known him for 20-some years, during which time he has declined to hire me on no less than three occasions, and we have both won awards for our work. He is now a nationally sought-after designer and conference speaker. His company has merged, grown, merged and grown again. Did I mention that I like and respect him? I do. A lot. I have a nagging feeling, though, that he doesn't much care for me at all, regardless of our mutual professional respect. And frankly, I'm only guessing and hoping that it is mutual.

So she tells him that I'm telling her about my blog project. He gets a look like he's just stepped in something that was left in the grass by a dyspeptic dog. He says: "Oh, no. Not a blog. People who write blogs have way too much time on their hands. The only thing more pathetic are the people who read them. Who wants to waste time reading someone else's virtual rants?"

OK. He told the unvarnished truth of his own opinion. I can respect that. I'd do the same. Usually do, and usually with the same results: seething resentment and hurt feelings on the part of the person so addressed.

The wife says that she likes reading them. I wander away, feeling like the thing that was stepped in.

I have this suspicion that the reason this man doesn't like me so much is that I'm too much like him. Our birthdays are a day apart. But he came from a prominent local family and is male. I suspect that he looks at me and thinks, there but for the grace of money and gender, go I. And that thought is unsettling. To him, at any rate. Not to me, because, as I said, I actually like this guy. A lot.

Which brings up the next question: Why? Why, if he is usually the same kind of prick that he was in temple yesterday morning, and why, if he continually interviews me, but then doesn't hire me, and why, if I can tell that he barely tolerates social discourse with me, DO I like him?

And that I can't answer. I think because he is so talented, and so funny, and so smart. All the things that make us similar. I think I like him for exactly the same reasons that he doesn't like me: we are very, very much alike. Except that he's real tall, and real good looking and a guy. And rich. And famous. And has his own very successful business. But, you know, except for that....

In the old days, back before G-d invented dirt, and I was a young designer who still had visions of a career standing at a drafting table, getting my hands full of ink and 2-coat rubber cement, only designers (or the paste-up guy at the local printer) could produce newsletters and such.

And then came the desktop computer, and it was OK. And then the desktop computer begat the desktop publishing software industry and everything went to hell in a handbasket.

Suddenly, secretaries were using the words "font" and "typeface" interchangeably. Point sizes were replaced by pitch (on IBMs). People with no eye, queer or otherwise, were able to put together newsletters. They used every typeface installed on their machines . . . in each publication. Because they could. Grayscale tints were placed behind blocks of copy. Black boxes contained knocked-out lettering. Xerox machines replaced printers.

And, in the immortal words of Stan Freeberg, "Everybody Wants to be an Art Director."

But they are not. Many, if not most, people haven't got what it takes to be a good graphic designer, top of the line software notwithstanding. If you don't believe me, just look at how the average man or woman dresses to appear in public. If they can't tell what looks good on themselves, what makes them think they can figure out how to make something look good on a page? Huh? Answer me that!

Here at the hospital, I used to have to work with the nurses who would bring me "designed" newsletters to publish. I would say this to them:

Everybody here went to school for something. You went to school to become a nurse. I went to school and studied design. While I could, theoretically, start an IV, it would be painful and messy, and you would not want me to do it to you. Likewise, although, in theory, you could design a newsletter, it would be messy and painful ...

Now I'm out of the printing business, and in the web publishing business, and you know what? I didn't think it could happen, but it's even fucking worse. There are so many more ways to be incompetent. JPGS that are articulated and bitmapped are presented as quality graphics for me to post.

Can I retire yet and become a luddite?

The following wedding announcement is from the Miami Herald. The names have been abbreviated to prevent any lawsuits against your author. That everything I say is fact makes it hard to charge me with libel, but the new missus has a history of bogus and frivolous lawsuits, not to mention some heavy black arts. Nevertheless, it is with much joy that I present the annotated version.

B******n - E*****t

Ms. B***y B******n and Mr. M*****l S. E*****t were married, 5 September 2003, in an American Indian (this would be after Ms. B had burned through Judaism, Zen Buddhism, New Age Crystals, Witchcraft and Feng Shui. Mr. E is a former Jesuit.) ceremony at their mountain-top home in Ludow, Vermont. (This is at least the third marriage for Ms. B, and the second for Mr. E. Her first two ended in divorce, after she had drained the souls and pocketbooks of her victims husbands. Mr. E's first marriage ended with the death of his wife, of breast cancer. Her funeral was produced and hosted by his then-mistress, Ms. B.) They will honeymoon in Madrid and London in the fall. (Ms. B likes to honeymoon in Madrid. She's done it before, with number 2. Although the adjoining suites in the Plaza during the first Mrs. E's funeral was probably the "real" honeymoon for these two.) Mrs. E*****T is the former B***y (nee Bernyce) G*****n W*******n, daughter of Y****e and B******n G*****n (Aha! Now we know where the latest last name came from. It's important, when one is a grifter, to change names often. Don't know if she changes her social security number, too. It would help with that back taxes thing she was running from for the past dozen years, though.) of Forest Hills, New York, both deceased. (And, no doubt, spinning furiously at what their spawn has become) M*****l S. E*****t, son of M**y and the late M*****l J. E*****t of Bayonne, New Jersey, (and tell me that dad isn't doing some heavy spinning of his own) is the former Associate Vice President Medical Affairs, Executive Director, UM Hospital Division and Chief Information Officer, University of M**** School of Medicine. (Former being the operative word here. He was "asked" to leave rather suddenly, after an argument over the cooked books and the half million dollar make-over his office had, under the Feng Shui direction of his mistress. Marble floors, a five-foot fountain, crown moldings and custom office furniture as the hospital was bleeding red ink. There were reports of loud voices and the words "lying" and "horse shit" being bandied about. Ms. B was asked to leave shortly after her protector.) The couple reside in the Cayman Islands, BWI, where Mr. E*****t is the Chief Executive Officer of the Cayman Islands Health Services Authority. Mrs. E*****t is Director of Marketing for the Cayman Islands Hospital. (Gee, I wonder how she managed that? As the dearly departed Leapin' Larry Greene was wont to say: It ain't who ya know, it's who ya blow. Here in M***i, her skills at writing and promotion were, shall we say, uneven?) The E*****t's (yep, it was printed with the apostrophe. Herald misprint, or grammatical error from the author? Probably the latter. As I said, writing was never her strong point.) will retain their primary residence on Key B******e, Florida. (There is no mention of their combined five adult children. The bride's three are estranged from her, and have been for years. They are: the lesbian chef, the Hollywood sex worker, and the lawyer. The groom's children haven't spoken to him since their mother's funeral. Well, that's not quite true. His daughter was living with him, until Ms. B moved in within the week following his first wife's death. She was actually in the apartment before the body cooled. She couldn't abide having the daughter there, so she threw her out. The son quit speaking to the father shortly after, when Ms. B decided that the son could sell his car to pay for law school, since his veteran's benefits didn't quite make that nut, and Daddy needed all his money to pay for the remodeling of their home. The old Mrs. E's stuff had to be cleared out and her memory effaced as quickly as possible. There is no photo accompanying this announcement, one assumes because the bride -- and is it correct to call a thrice-married, 67-year-old hag a bride?-- does not show up in photographs, nor does she cast a reflection in mirrors. )

I was talking to my cousin the other day, and telling her about my cute, cute, cute little cake mold from Martha Stewart for a beehive-shaped honey cake.

Being Jewish, honey cake is a big deal. At least once a year someone has to make a honey cake. And, universally, everyone else has to pretend to eat it, all the while trying to feed it to the dog and complaining about the density (somewhere near that of a black hole).

I said to Barbara, honey cake is the Jewish equivalent of Christmas fruitcake. It's expected to show up at the appropriate holiday. Everyone makes a fuss. Nobody likes it. They are small, weighty blocks useful as doorstops and little else.

Except, of course, for the one made with Martha's recipe. It is light, almost airy. It is flavorful. I make mine even better than the original with the addition of instant coffee to the batter.

I made the cake complete with the little marzipan bees, once. Since then people have had to settle for the cake alone. I don't know if I'll do the marzipan bees this year or not, since I'm going to have a new audience for the production. (Different family at the holiday table -- new audience, same thing.)

Anyway, I'm off to my parents' house tomorrow and I'm packing up the cake mold, my laptop, a book, a bag of needlepoint, a loose leaf binder full of recipes, a pack of smokes, and a bottle of vodka. Oh yeah, there's clothing in there too, but mostly this is about mental survival.

Wish me well, I'll be gone for a week. I'll try to post, but if I can't, just leave messages on the guest map and peruse that long list of links, over there on your right.

And do NOT feed the dog any more honey cake.

Last night's episode of "Whoopi" just cracked me up. I'm probably the only person in America watching and laughing (except for my darling husband, who laughs at some of the same things I do). But laughing I am. Last night skewered our nation's new color coded warning system for terrorist dangers. They had a code orange, which meant that unattended packages in the lobby required blowing up by the NYC bomb squad. On yellow days, unattended packages are safe.

Maybe I wouldn't have found it quite so humorous if Miami wasn't under an Orange Alert this week. You might think that the front page of our local rag newspaper would feature this notice. You might also think the world is flat. You would be wrong on both counts.

Yesterday, the story was buried somewhere in the newly graphically destroyed redesigned paper in a sidebar on an inner page in the local section under a headline that read (and I am NOT making this up) Miami Under False Code Orange Alert. The story went on to say that the Feds thought we should be under an Orange Alert due to super secret de-coded messages that threatened a terrorist attack on the city. The local FBI thought that the messages were bogus. So they split the difference by issuing the alert and telling everyone "Never mind" like some kind of spy network Emily Litella.

Today, the story made it to an actual body copy story. Same thing. National says that the threats were very specific: day, date and city, but they refuse to actually name names. Or date dates, as the case may be. Just a generic sort of "some time this week" in Miami. Or not.

It's not like I work in a tall building in the county hospital (the designated treatment center in case of a mass casualty event) in the direct flight path of the air port, or anything. I'm not nervous. I'm barely cautious. But every time one of the choppers comes in to the Trauma Center, or a plane comes in for a landing, or even when the MetroRail glides into the station at the foot of this building, my stomach clenches.

This is just great. I have a light in my car that doesn't designate any particular problem, it just lights up when you need to take the car to the mechanic. I call it the random anxiety generator light.

I feel like the FBI has put a random anxiety generator light on the entire city of Miami. Or maybe the FBI is being run by Jewish grandmothers. "I don't want you should worry, but..."

To quote the ever eloquent Jodi, "feh."

* A note. I used to do a radio comedy program on my local NPR station. It was "The Pandemonium Midnight Uprising," and I did a weekly movie review in the person of Rhona Remora. A remora is a fish that sticks (literally, via a patch of like, backwards pointing scales on the top of their heads) to sharks. When the sharks swim, the remoras go along for the ride. When the sharks eat, the remoras get the leftovers. A very little imagination can take you to where I was when I named this character. Anyway, as much as I loved doing Rhona (she has a high, very nasal New York accent, via Brooklyn) she finally went to the cutting room floor when Pande ended. But after seeing a movie this weekend, I had to bring her back. Take it away, Rhona. Cue the cheesy intro music:

Hiya, Rhona Remora here with another Pandemonium Movie Review.

This week I went to see "Once Upon a Time in Mexico." This should not be confused with "Once Upon a Time in the West." Or, for that matter with "Once Upon a Time in America","Lagaan, Once Upon a Time in India", "Once Upon a Time in the Midlands", or even "Once Upon a Time in Beruit."

I'd been told that this "Once Upon a Time" was a sort of remake of the great Clint Eastwood classic, "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly". By sort of I guess they meant that it was a film. I had just seen TGTBTU on cable, so I remembered the plot. There was a lot of money. The good guy (Clint, of course) knew where it was and was going to steal it from the dead guy. The bad guy (Lee Van Cleef) didn't know where it was, but he had the good guy captive and was going to kill him after he had stolen the money from the dead guy, and then steal the money from Clint. The ugly guy (Eli Wallach) was along for comic/violence relief since he was never going to get the money from anyone: good, bad or dead.

There was none of that in OUTIM. Well, no. There was money, and two of the Mariachis got it, one of them was The Drunk, and the other was The Kid. There was plenty of ugly, with both Willem Dafoe and Mickey (O, my god, what happened to his face?) Roarke. Neither of them live, or get the money.

Antonio Banderas gets the money, but then he throws it off the roof of a building so the villagers can grab it. I think. Maybe. Or maybe the money is blowing around in the village square because the building it was in blew up. Hard to tell, because pretty much everything in this movie either blows up or gets shot up.

Even the predictable fruit cart chase ends up not with a fruit cart crash, but with a massacre of harmless fruit. Watermelons exploding from armour piercing bullets. Bananas spattering. Unidentifiable pulp and juice everywhere.

Johnny Depp plays a CIA agent and Ruben Blades a retired FBI agent. They both take a lot of lead. Neither one gets any money, but Ruben gets Mickey Roarke's chihuahua. Depp gets the girl, but she turns out to be bad, and so he gets to turn her into one of the dead.

There's a cameo appearance by someone I think is the director's grandmother. In the middle of one of the never-ending gun fights, an older woman in a military uniform unlike any of the other military uniforms, steps out of a doorway and plugs away with a shotgun. She appears in no other scene. Maybe they were smoking in the cutting room, and she belongs in one of the other "Once Upon a Times."

But that was the movie. Lots of blowing up stuff, lots of bullets flying, lots of body count and a really gross thing happens to Depp. Maybe this should have been called the Pretty, the Dead and the Missing Plot.

Until next week, this is Rhona Remora saying: Remember, in the dark, they ain't all alike.

Aw, damn. I hope that this is it for a while of celebrity deaths that I actually care about. I suppose I should tip the hat for John Ritter, but frankly, I thought that Three's Company was one of the low points in American Pop Culture.

On the other hand, saying goodbye to the man in black is hard. Johnny Cash. Shit. I remember, but not from where, the story of Bob Dylan meeting him for the first time when both were young (one much younger) men. At Newport Jazz, maybe? Bob circling Johnny like an oak tree, and then saying "Yeah."

One of my earliest concerts was at the Palm Beach, uh, convention center? What were they called before they were called that? It was where they had live wrestling, before that became such a mainstream event.... My parents took me to see Johnny Cash. It was cool. I was still young enough to not be embarrassed to be there with parents. I wanted to go, so they took me. Wasn't a matter of me trailing along with them.

I've heard other artists sing his songs, and Johnny sing the songs of others. There've been duets with Dylan. Covers of Springsteen.

His was a voice from a time and place long gone in America. The country artists of today are manufactured from the same machine that spits out pop tarts (the musical kind, not the toaster variety). Their songs of hard work and pain are spun from focus groups, not actual labor in a cotton field. And that's made all the difference.

Mr. Cash was the real deal. Maybe the last of them.

Back in the day, in my other life, when I was married to a criminal defense attorney (aka: The Anti-Christ) there was a great one-liner that went like this:

Want to hear a lawyer joke?

Ed Meese (Ronald Reagan's Attorney General, for those of you who slept through American History)

So in that same spirit, I present this little collection for you today. Especially today.


"Finally, a candidate who can explain the Bush administration's positions on civil liberties in the original German." -- Bill Maher, on Schwarzenegger running for Governor.

"President Bush is supporting Arnold but a lot of Republicans are not, because he is actually quite liberal. Karl Rove said if his father wasn't a Nazi, he wouldn't have any credibility with conservatives at all." Bill Maher

"They're saying Arnold will get 95% of the vote. At least according to his brother, Jeb Schwarzenegger." Craig Kilborn

"President Bush has been silent on Schwarzenegger. Of course, he can't pronounce Schwarzenegger." David Letterman

"Here's how bad California looks to the rest of the country. People in Florida are laughing at us." Jay Leno

"Well, we're all excited because President Bush has started his 35-day vacation. He's down there in Crawford, Texas and on the first day of his vacation he went fishing. He didn't find any fish but he believes they're there and that his intelligence is accurate." David Letterman

"The United States is putting together a Constitution now for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It's served us well for 200 years, and we don't appear to be using it anymore, so what the hell?" Jay Leno

"President Bush held his first full press conference in over five months this week. He announced that the war on terrorism is continuing, much, much more work needs to be done on the economy, and Saddam Hussein has not yet been captured. And then he said, 'I'm going on vacation for a month.'" Jay Leno

"President Bush is leaving to go to Crawford, Texas, for a 35-day working vacation. This should go over big with all the people taking a can't-get-work vacation." David Letterman

"The White House says that the vacation in Texas will give President Bush the chance to unwind. My question is, when does the guy wind?" David Letterman

"President Bush's economic team is now on their jobs and growth bus tour all across America. I think the only job they created so far is for the guy driving the bus." Jay Leno

"President Bush has refused to declassify portions of the congressional 9/11 reports about the Saudis, because he says it will help the enemy. Not Al Qaeda, the Democrats." Jay Leno

Ba-dum-dum.

I'm trying not to go to sleep at my desk, but the floor under it is looking pretty damn good to me right now. I've had lunch. The city is steaming outside my window. The only work to do at the moment is whatever I invent for myself. The only invention I can think of is to place my needlepoint pillow on the floor, and call the carpet under the desk a bed.

Work is so slow that one could be excused for thinking that we'd fallen into a black hole, or one of those quantum singularities where time is pulled like taffy, and no matter how thin, it still stretches out, elongating every moment.

And it's hot. Did I mention that it's hot and humid? I shouldn't have had to, after all, it's September in the little latitudes. Equatorial heat.

Instead of passing out on the floor, and horrifying the boss when he wanders back in, I am reading this and trying to convert my site to CSS.

Then I can design another dozen logos for the Pediatric Residency group to look at because they don't like the type we used for the previous administrator and they didn't like the first 6 designs I gave them weeks ago, and I haven't got a clue as to what they didn't like. They just e-mailed me and asked for some more choices.

In other colors? Using type effects? Using different type faces? What? What do you want different from what you have, and what was used before? Can you give me a starting point from which to move? Or should I just go through the entire fucking type catalog until you find something that YOU think is "cheerful, friendly and childlike."

I mean, jeez, I used the type from the Brady Bunch. For a program aimed at young GenWhazits who grew up watching the show after school when they were still little latch-key sprats, I thought it would be a great subliminal hook. "Let's go to med school with Marcia."

Or not.