FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, HOW LONG DO I HAVE TO BE NAKED BEFORE SOMEONE FREAKIN' ARRESTS ME?
Eve 6 singer...yeah, like I know this guy's name off the top of my head...okay...crap...new window...paste link into browser...ah!...Max Collins was allegedly (allegedly? right, maybe it was some kind of misunderstanding, him showing up with shaving cream on his coc...uh...on his bits) running 'round his hotel nekkid last night. Big whoop. (Actually, the story doesn't mention what size whoop it was.)

My first thought? Eve 6...uh...and they sing...? Heard of 'em, don't know 'em. But now...

Nudity is the neutron bomb of criminal publicity stunts. Huge ruckus, little negative fallout. Good for Max.

Oh, and a few too-good-to-be-true nuggets: The record label spokeswoman? Maggie Wang. The town where he romped nude? Moon Township. The paper that broke the story? The Beaver County Times.

Who needs to make shit up when reality offers that kinda bounty?

HIJACK THIS: A crazed idiot tries to storm the cockpit of a Qantas plane. Passengers and crew subdue the man and save the day. A wonderful story. But it made me wonder:

What's the pacifist response to a crazed idiot who intends to kill innocents? And haven't we seen this scenario somewhere before?

Glenn Reynolds suggests the reason hijacking won't work anymore is not because we're "confiscating tweezers," but because "passengers won't allow it."

Again, as in previous blog entries, I think back to my (very limited) martial arts experience. First, you try to avoid conflict. But when conflict is inevitable, it's nice to have the tools and the willingness to come out ahead, to be able to protect yourself, your friends, your family.

Your country.

Before September 11, the pacifist approach to hijacking -- sit tight and do what they say -- was the preferred strategy. After September 11, that approach seems ludicrous to most people.

The new strategy? When conflict is inevitable, strike decisively to eliminate the threat. Rinse. Repeat as necessary.

I do believe that the current United States defense policy is akin to what happened on that plane. No one can say whether this madman intended to bring down the plane or not. But thank goodness a handful of courageous citizens recognized the potential threat and acted swiftly.

Saddam Hussein was the madman with the sharp sticks. The United States military -- regular men and women who chose to be heroes -- took them away from him, subdued him. I only hope that one day Hussein, like the crazed hijacker he so resembles, will be arrested and brought before a judge.

In the meantime, I hope we continue to be on the lookout for madmen, and that we continue to be amazed by how many heroes there are among us.

FRESH FISH: Felix Salmon is back with a fresh entry on compassionate conservatism and Florida's new reading test. I haven't decided whether I agree with him or not, but damn if the guy isn't a master of clear prose.

CAMEL TO FELIX: MORE GRUEL! What do you call the feeling when your favorite blogger is idle for a while?

Felix Salmon hasn't posted a new essay in weeks. Errr, a week. So I exaggerate, but: What am I to do, read actual print media? A corporate website? Perhaps I'll dash off an e-mail to the polymath and urge him to scribble some new stuff.

Meanwhile I guess I could invent a word for the aforementioned feeling, a TOBAW (There Oughta Be a Word) to use my own, freshly-minted sniglet-replacement.

So the malaise that hits when your favorite blogger is slow on the post is called...

The blahgs.

As in, "When Felix Salmon doesn't post for a week, I get the blahgs."

Perhaps this could be used a more general purpose term for blog-related ennui. Dunno.

YELLOW GOLD: I'm not sure what Jewel's going for here, but I like it. (Okay, I'll try: She is going for an Anita Bryant meets modern-day stripper look, with a dash of Annie Oakley thrown in for country-crossover cred. She is Britney meets Shania meets Kathy Lee. That's one man's opinion, of course. But I'm tellin' ya, somebody get the name of her new personal trainer, 'cause he or she has done wonders.)

I MISS ME, TOO: Oh, crap, I have this blog-thing that I should be writing. Okay, folks, back with a fresh brain tomorrow. Choose from the following excuses:

Forgot. Had relatives in town. Was out of town. Drunk. Hungover. Ran out of ideas. Stricken with a rare disease. Stricken with a common but scary disease. Just plain stricken. Amnesia. Kidnapped. Brain-freeze. In secure location with Dick Cheney. Working on Carol Moseley Braun presidential campaign. Playing bass drum in Memorial Day parade band.

See you tomorrow.

SOMEDAY SOMEWAY: Tonight I realize that one of my life goals is to sing Gary Numan's "Down in the Park" at a karaoke bar.

HOORAY FOR HOLLYDAYS! I've finished my writing project -- or I've surrendered. I can't figure out which statement is true, but either way I'm not going to touch it again until Monday. No, wait, until Tuesday! Woo-hoo! Holiday! Celebrate! Time to come together, somethin' 'bout the weather...need a holidaa-aay!

Here's the thing about so much of my writing life: Folks, I can turn a phrase with the best of them. I really can. And when I start to doubt that I have a good friend in Florida who can be counted on to remind me, as he did a couple evenings ago. So yeah, I mean, I can write, okay? But so much of what I write about, I'm not really the expert. Instead, I play Cyrano to their...whatever the name of the good-looking guy was, the one who employed the proboscis-powered ghostwriter to get the girl. (I even have a big nose!) I'm like Barry Manilow, but stuck in the jingle-for-hire game and never tasting the big time.

What I'm getting at: As I sit here atop a post-project adrenal cloud, I see that I wanna be the good-looking guy for a change. I wanna be the guy that knows something, not just writes as if he did.

GET HIM! Uday Hussein is reportedly negotiating his surrender to U.S. forces.

EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT MODERN HAIRCUTS I LEARNED FROM THE SWEATHOGS: Here's your morning chuckle:

The Guide to having good Indie Rock Hair or Hair Style!

(A tip of the hat to blogmaster Ken Layne for the pointer.)

TALK ABOUT AN ANIMAL LOVER: This morning I was shocked, amused, horrified, and just generally amazed to discover that a recent visitor to this fine site had arrived here by way of the following Google search string:

"Hot chicks rooting dogs"

Call it searchendipity.

THE ANNIKA: Blogging likely will be light today as I struggle to finish my writing project (a chapter on "privacy" for an upcoming book on marketing).

But even as I struggle to focus and finish, I have been subject to one diversion: The Annika. I've been clicking back and forth between various real-time, online scoring applications, plus wandering into the bedroom to check out the telecast. Man is it exciting! Seriously, I'm really enjoying it, and rooting for her to kick some butt. And so far she is, resting comfortably off the lead at one-under after 9.

My favorite moment thus far: After a solid drive, some guy from the gallery yells out, "You da woman!"

As my father would say, it was "a real goosebumper."

MORE SOFT ROCK GENIUS: It's just too good. Can you hear it? I bet you can:

That's the way it began we were hand in hand
Glenn Miller's band was better than before
We yelled and screamed for more
And the Porter tune (Night and Day)
Made us dance across the room
It ended all too soon
And on the way back home
I promised you'd never be alone

THE DAILY SOUNDTRACK: I'm writing today -- a real, for-pay piece, and so I have to concentrate. And for me, nothing says concentration like "soft rock."

So I've kazaa'ed a bunch of Little River Band, Loggins & Messina, Seals & Crofts, and Air Supply -- and I'm sitting here weeping and writing. Not really. Okay, really. Not.

Believe what you must.

"I'm lyin' alone, with my head on the phone, thinking of you 'til it hurts."

Today's epic song is "All Out of Love" by Air Supply.

IS IT MY IMAGINATION... Or is the Blogspot hosting service just sucking butt of late? Seems like graphics are coming in an as broken links, pages are taking forever to load, etc. Let's hope this is just a hiccup on the road to Google-ification. Please drop me a comment if you're seeing and/or experiencing similar lags and issues. Thanks!

CALLING CARD: I armchair-psychoanalyzed a friend of mine today in e-mail. He plans to have my analysis printed on cards he can hand out in bars. They'll look like this:

INVENTION CAPITAL? David Appell may be showing us the future of markets -- the idea that aggregated desire can underwrite projects. Call it "invention capital," if you will.

In this instance, Appell wants his readers to support a freelance article.

JIM FIXX AWARD: A suicide bomber whose bomb failed to detonate drowned instead.

EXCUSES: This blog is not dead, only resting. It's just that my parents came to visit, I've got a massive writing project, and my dog is incontinent. So that's why I'm quiet. But I'll be back with bells on in the days to come...

DOWNLOAD THIS: The headline is "Apple sells 2 million songs in 16 days." Well that's just great. But it's also sad. Because the entire infrastructure, from the file format to the price point (99 cents/song) was in place, oh, about six years ago. The only trouble was the music business, in the form of the labels and the RIAA, were acting like a concrete choker around the neck of innovation. Had they played ball sooner there might not have been such a massive demand vacuum, the likes of which fueled the rise of Napster and Kazaa and all the others. With no "legitimate" way for consumers to get what they wanted, they turned to the legally suspect alternatives. And now I'm used to getting stuff for free. I mean, uh, they are.

Please, folks, repeat after me: The music business is not about music or business. Discuss.

PESTO NOT PESCO: I stopped eating all meat except fish about three years ago. I'd flirted with various forms of vegetarianism over the years, but nothing ever stuck. Then I read Charlie LeDuff's article on race issues within a slaughterhouse, and it wasn't the racism that bothered me the most but the slaughterhouse practices. Institutionalized cruelty, and largely invisible to me for all these years.

But now I had no excuse. I resolved to give up meat that afternoon, and I did. Given the history of heart disease in my family, I felt my no-meat decision was a big win-win. No more bad karma or bad cholesterol.

I struggled with the fish issue, though. Fish, it seemed to me, were largely allowed to live normal lives in the sea, were not confined or otherwise tormented before being killed, and seemed somehow less sympathetic to me than their farmyard cousins. Plus they were an awesome and tasty source of protein, and maybe even offered health benefits via the seemingly heart-healthy Omega-3 oils. I could live with myself as a fisheater, and so I have.

So this article today gives me pause. We've radically depleted the big-fish population through industrial fishing. This news comes just as I was about to trudge over to my favorite sushi joint. Perhaps pasta is a better choice today. Tomorrow? I'll think about it over some rotini.

MY SON AT ONE: "Whose butt do I have to kick to get some more apple juice?"

TOO BUSY TO BLOG: I'm quite busy today. I'm writing a chapter on "privacy" for an upcoming business book, to be titled PRECISION MARKETING. Which is neither here nor there...

Or is it? Because I do have this burning and inexplicable need to contribute something, anything to this here blogspace for the ongoing edification and/or fleeting enjoyment of my paltry yet devoted readership. So...

Today I have only this small offering, an excerpt from what is perhaps my favorite book of all time, Alan Watts' THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY (which, come to think of it, does seem somehow related to the notion of privacy in this networked, interconnected world of ours):

"We seem to be like flies caught in honey. Because life is sweet we do not want to give it up, and yet the more we become involved in it, the more we are trapped, limited, and frustrated. We love it and hate it at the same time. We fall in love with people and possessions only to be tortured by anxiety for them. The conflict is not only between ourselves and the surrounding unverse; it is between ourselves and ourselves. For intractable nature is both around and within us. The exasperating 'life' which is at once lovable and perisahable, pleasant andd painful, a blessing and a curse, is also the life of our own bodies."

And another one:

"At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but they do not seem to make a 'problem' of it. Their lives seems to have so few complications. They eat when they are hungry and sleep when they are tired, and instinct rather than anxiety seems to govern their few preparations for the future. As far as we can judge, every animal is so busy with what he is doing at the moment that it never enters his head to ask whether life has a meaning or a future. For the animal, happiness consists in enjoying life in the immediate present -- not in the assurance that there is a whole future of joys ahead of him."

CLINTON'S IDOL: Oral history indeed.

HOT CHICKS 1, EARNEST CRAZY MEN 0: Once again, my belief that ruthless men and hot chicks rule the world is confirmed.

SUPERDUH: Hey, look, the world is round! Who knew people would actually pay to download music?

Only everybody except the record companies.

Repeat after me: The music business has nothing to do with music or business. Discuss.

BUFFED: Jewel, formerly an Alaskan folk yodeler, has transformed herself into Britney Spears' older sister. (Somebody introduced her to a personal trainer, and the results are not all bad.)

AS A DRIVER, HE'S A PRETTY GOOD TALKER: CNN's account of North Carolina governor Mike Easley's recent 165MPH visit with the wall at Lowe's Motor Speedway contains a comic gem:

"It was fun for about four or five laps, but the last part wasn't too good," said Easley, who was wearing the HANS device, a head-and-neck restraint system mandated by NASCAR in October 2001. "I was pushing and the car was running tight and it got loose on me and I wrecked."

Track spokesman Jerry Gappens noted that "he's got some of the racing lingo down."

Bob Newhart couldn't have said it better.

STAY WHERE YOU ARE. START NOW I'm not proud of the fact that, as I lingered in the house this morning, I found myself watching THE OTHER HALF, the male answer to the popular womens' show THE VIEW. Hosts Danny Bonaduce and Dick Clark welcomed Carol Channing to the show, and before I knew it I was hooked.

I knew very little of Carol Channing -- she talks funny and she's old Hollywood, a sort of North Star for drag queens. Still, as I listened to her tell of her engagement and impending marriage to her Armenian junior high sweetheart after decades apart, I was mesmerized. Despite Bonaduce's frenetic interjections ("You keep jumping around," she scolded him at one point), Channing managed to untangle a charming, nuanced story within a medium that seldom stretches out enough to allow it.

One of her comments stuck with me. Asked to offer advice to aspring actors, Channing said, "Stay where you are and act. Go to the nearest place you can act and just do it."

This reminds me of a revelation I had a few years ago. Contemplating my life at year's end, I found myself making notes like, "I want to be a vegetarian. I want to be a writer." Then, seized by a rare moment of clarity, I responded to myself: "Stop eating meat. Eat more vegetables. Write every day. Quit worrying about 'being' some amorphous thing and just start doing. If you write, you're a writer. If you eat vegetables and no meat, you're a vegetarian. This isn't something to aspire to, it's simply something to do. So start now."

Today I'm reminded that enlightment simply is. There's nowhere to go. I'm already there. Thanks, Carol.

WHAT ABOUT THE NON-CUDDLY CREATURES? Cats and dogs farmed for their fur in the EU! This is an outrage, I suppose. Meanwhile millions upon millions of chickens and pigs -- who are of comparable intelligence and sensory construct as cats and dogs -- are penned up, stacked up, mistreated, electrocuted, dragged, and executed every day around the world in the name of food.

Thing is, the rounded-up cats and dogs are living far better lives than their factory-farmed brethren. Think about it.

SMOLDERING COULTER TO KERRY: GET YOUR MOUTH SHUT! Here's a cruel and unusual attack on John Kerry that...well, I don't know how to feel about Ann Coulter, and usually I don't much like her...but homegirl can write her ass off.

GIVES NEW MEANING TO "BEATING" THE HOUSE: Ken Layne on why we should pity Bill Bennett:

"Millions of dollars on machines, with no human company beyond the wandering cocktail waitress and the oxygen-tank guy honking quietly a few seats down? That ain't gambling. That's masturbation."

THE GLOVES FIT, WE WON'T ACQUIT: I don't know about the rest of you, but I no longer even need "a smoking gun." Look, Saddam was a bad actor intent on a legacy of same. We know enough to know he was trying like heck to develop chemical and nuclear weapons under adverse conditions and with varying levels of success, and that they weren't intended for high school science fairs. He had his foot over our neck, so to speak, and he was telling us he hated our guts. Good for us for not waiting for him to stomp. Maybe we won't find a smoking gun, but there was plenty of blood on Saddam's gloves to justify what we did.

LIKE MAGIC: And, inexplicably, the archives are back. For now.

DOWN WITH BLOGGER, UP WITH ESTES: As much as I like Blogger, it's really starting to piss me off. A month ago my template changed for no discernible reason. At times, I can't log in to my ftp server to update the blog. Sometimes the buttons paste my HTML tags rather haphazardly. And today my 'archives' have randomly disappeared. Thank God the company was sold to Google. Now if the G-team would just hurry up and fix the Blogger mess...

Anyhow, I was trying to open my archives so I could link to a recent rant about Shawn Estes and how he shouldn't be a Cubs starter. Well, I was wrong. Two strong starts in a row!

I take it all back. Sorry.

RESPECT! Mo Dowd writes about one of my guilty pleasures of late, the incomparable Ali G.

BYE BYE LUC: My beloved Red Wings have decided to part ways with Luc Robitaille, the historically uberproductive winger whose scoring has dwindled in the past two seasons. While this is good -- I love how Ken Holland gets down to business every offseason, immediately starts retooling for the next Cup run -- it's also bittersweet. I'll miss the Detroit crowd's loving "Luuuuuuc" (those are not boos you here) cheer each time he does something spectacular, and I'll miss his seemingly affable, steady presence on a team laden with All-Star egos. Still, with Hull, Shanahan, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Yzerman, and Fedorov, it's doubtful they'll miss his contributions as much as they might have missed the $3 million they'll save by parting ways.

Holland's first order of business is to lock up Sergei Fedorov, of course, but I'm not sure what's next. Cujo has two more years on his contract, so he's not going anywhere. What else can they do? What else should they do?

Thing is, Holland is not afraid to go looking for a blockbuster deal. But what do they need? This team, on paper and on the ice, was easily one of the best teams in the league...until the first round of the playoffs. I suspect we won't see any major moves through this offseason, that Dave Lewis will stay put, and that this year's aberration will, like the horrible Devils sweep of days gone by, serve as fuel for the next Cup run. But then I'm an optimist as well as a Wings fan.

Funny how different it is being a Wings fan than a Cubs fan, though. (I'm both.) As a Wings fan, you have the luxury and joy of imagining the Cup all year long...and the huge disappointment should they lose. Losing feels like a betrayal. As a Cubs fan, though, you expect losing, and so winning when it comes is like Indian Summer, a pleasant surprise that deep down you know won't last.

GETTING ON THE DUCKWAGON: FWIW, I'm rooting for the Ducks. They smashed my Wings in four, then shocked Dallas in six. A hot goalie is the ultimate trump card in hockey.

BILL BENNETT'S FENDER-BENDER: I think I have it in me to write a long, searching, intelligent essay about the whole Bill Bennett gambling fiasco. I have the chops, I hope, but not the inclination. Because I never thought Bill Bennett was flawless. I never imagined anyone could actually live a life devoted solely to virtue, never to vice. He was bound to fall, and I wonder if anyone's really shocked by it.

Most of us know the Right and the Left are populated entirely by flawed human beings. But leadership does not require them to air their dirty laundry on a daily basis, to lead with their foibles. Here's the message of a real leader: "We might all aspire to virtue, even as we succumb to vice." We'll buy that.

Still, Bill Bennett's gambling is a news story, to be sure. He made it a story years ago, by choosing such a fragile bully pulpit. But it's more like a fender bender really, nothing to see here, and let's keep it moving. Aren't we all too busy driving somewhere, anywhere, than to be lingering at the scene of this one-car crash with only cosmetic damage to the car? We see the flustered, well-dressed man on his cell phone, and we just know he has AAA or some other form of roadside assistance, that he'll be back behind the wheel of a new car in no time, hands not dirty, lesson not likely learned. This is what large unhealthy blusterers do. They caterwaul and crash, caterwaul and crash.

Isn't it always the fat guy that wants to tell you how to eat? And aren't we all the fat guy sometimes?

Nothing to see here. Keep it moving.

'NOTHER NEW NOD: I also just added LET'S PLAY TWO, a very straightforward Cubs blog I've been reading of late. (Pet peeve alert: I have a problem with blogs whose URLs have nothing in common with their names. But who asked me, eh? Pet peeve alert #2: People who refer to Ted Rall as "smart." He is, in fact, an ass.)

NEW NOD: I added Gawker to my list of RECOMMENDED sites. (If you're not yet hip to Gawker, think of it as the NEW YORKER meets SPY magazine...on her period. Smart, snarky fun.)

NO, NO, YES! Nancy Franklin, writing in the NEW YORKER, says three things I've wanted to say for a while:

Bill Maher is an ass.

Jimmy Kimmel Live is terrible.

You can't help but like Da Ali G. Show.

Needless to say she says them with more grace, or at least more words.

A TIP OF THE CAP: FelixSalmon.com is my favorite discovery of the past few weeks. The guy manages to sound effortlessly intelligent and approachable, like a really smart next-door neighbor who always loans you just the right book.

BACK TO THE BALLPARK: Heading back to Wrigley today for my sixth Cubs game of this young season. We've got my wife's company box again, so we're taking the boy to his second game.

His favorite thing seems to be when everyone in the park claps. He raises his eyebrows then joins in. So far he's been much more interested in Daddy's beer can than in what's going on on the field...which leads me to believe he'll eventually end up in the bleachers. Heh heh. "Left field sucks!"

WHO ASKED YOU? This may not be a nuanced response to Hizbollah's rejection of our Middle East peace roadmap...but on a Friday night after a few glasses of wine, it seems appropriate:

F---- Hizbollah.

Tomorrow I'll devote more time to understanding whether or not they should be next on our list.

NO PRIOR RESTRAINT: As a Cubs fan, this was an incredibly exciting day. We're back on track, having taken the series from the Giants. Dusty beat his old team. And Mark Prior can do no wrong! After plunking Barry Bonds, Prior refused to back down, saying:

"Just because he's got 15-20 years in the big leagues and 600 homers and I have been in the league a little under a year doesn't mean I have to stop doing what makes me a professional."

The kid has balls! Cubs win the Series in '03! Woo!

SAME AS SAMIZDATA: So I'm late to the party with my neo-Sniglets idea. Turns out there's already a pretty evolved glossary of blog-centric neologisms at samizdata.net.

(According to the glossary, f I were to e-mail them my little invention -- "blump" -- I might be guilty of being a "link whore." I don't suppose I have to explain that.)

THEY REALLY DO: This is my favorite t-shirt I've seen in a long time:

As Homer Simpson would say, it's funny 'cause it's true. (Buy one for yourself at ThoseShirts.com.)

BLUMP IT UP: I'm almost embarassed to admit I miss SNIGLETS. You know, those "there oughta be a word for that" inventions that, if memory serves, were orginated by a guy named Rich Hall back in the '80s? You remember.

Well, somewhere old Mr. Hall is probably sitting around clutching his copyright, so I'm gonna come up with a new name for a BLIND CAMEL version of SNIGLETS. (I probably just sealed his court case -- whaddya call it, infringement? -- against me with that description).

I agree with Sarah Hepola who, at one point, bemoaned the popularity of the term 'blog'. I don't like it either. It's ugly, and it sounds, like, trendy or something. I even prefer the clunky 'online diarist'. Anyhoo, this little blogging world gives rise to all manner of new moments that demand their own neologisms. For our purposes here, we'll call them...TOBAWs, which stands for THERE OUGHTA BE A WORD. Sure, it sucks, but don't tell me you loved the term 'sniglet' the first time you heard it.

Our first TOBAW is BLUMP -- which describes the action one takes when one dislikes their top-of-blog post so much they impulsively compose a new one in order to BLUMP the old one from the top of their blog. BLUMP. For example, "Did you check out BLIND CAMEL today? He totally needs to blump it."

STOLEN FROM STEVEN WRIGHT? YOU BE THE JUDGE. A joke, e-mailed from my pal Brian:

"I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any."

Now that's what I call good comedy.