Chad the Elder has a cri de coeur that is music to my ears. 

He’s talking about “e-business” sites – shopping sites for places like Amazon, Best Buy, yadda yadda – and a key problem many of them have; they’re just not designed for real people to use them.

He wants the companies to…:

Make it Easy to use: The other day I was trying to find some information on a local hotel/water park. The web site was chock full of neat looking Flash animation and graphics. But when I tried to find out how much it would cost to use the water park on a particular day I entered a cyber-hell of being forced to follow link upon link upon link (while animation played for each one) until I was finally able to find what I was looking for. And then, when I was curious about the room rates, I had to go through the same rigmarole again only to eventually be instructed to “call for information.” Arghhh! If I wanted to call, I would have done that in the first place. The whole idea of visiting the web site was so that I didn’t have to make a fargin’ phone call.

This sort of thing tells me I’ll have work to do for a long, long time.  It’s almost a game, trying to guess why a “e-business” site turns out like that. 

The usual suspects:

• Management thinks “usability” means “sizzle”.
• Management thinks graphics artists are qualified to design human-computer interaction.
• Management are former programmers, who think “user centered design” is some touchy-feely commie fad – where it is, in fact, a highly empirical, indeed scientific, approach to making software, including web sites, usable.

Elder enjoins business to…:

Think about the top two or three reasons that customers are visiting your site and make that information as easy to find as possible. Fancy graphics are nice, but what I really care about is finding what I’m looking for as quickly as possible.

It shouldn’t be all that complicated…make it easy to find critical information. It ain’t rocket science, it’s just the internet.

If it were easy, anyone could do it.

Fortunately, this town is crawing with people who do just that.  Some even write about it.  Myself occasionally included. 

(Merry Christmas, fellow HCI geeks)

“The only way home is through Berlin”. 

The line was Tom Skeritt’s, from Saving Private Ryan.  It’s one I’ve repeated during countless intractable crises in my own personal life; it recognizes that the only way to be rid of the problem you face is to beat it, or at least outlast it.  The unspoken corollary, of course, is that if you don’t go to Berlin, you won’t go home.  And the key criterion in getting to Berlin is the will to do it or die trying.

 Victor Davis Hanson on loss of will, and what it means.  He describes our enemies not as terrorists, but as agents of a worldview incompatible with the one that spawned this great nation:

But our newest foes of Reason are not the enraged Athenian democrats who tried and executed Socrates. And they are not the Christian zealots of the medieval church who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity. Nor are they Nazis who burned books and turned Western science against its own to murder millions en masse.

No, the culprits are now more often us. In the most affluent, and leisured age in the history of Western civilization–never more powerful in its military reach, never more prosperous in our material bounty–we have become complacent, and then scared of the most recent face of barbarism from the primordial extremists of the Middle East.

What would a beleaguered Socrates, a Galileo, a Descartes, or Locke believe, for example, of the moral paralysis in Europe? Was all their bold and courageous thinking–won at such a great personal cost–to allow their successors a cheap surrender to religious fanaticism and the megaphones of state-sponsored fascism?

Hansen ponders – has the West lost the will to persevere?  The signs are ominous:

Just imagine in our present year, 2006: plan an opera in today’s Germany, and then shut it down. Again, this surrender was not done last month by the Nazis, the Communists, or kings, but by the producers themselves in simple fear of Islamic fanatics who objected to purported bad taste. Or write a novel deemed unflattering to the Prophet Mohammed. That is what did Salman Rushdie did, and for his daring, he faced years of solitude, ostracism, and death threats–and in the heart of Europe no less. Or compose a documentary film, as did the often obnoxious Theo Van Gogh, and you may well have your throat cut in “liberal” Holland. Or better yet, sketch a simple cartoon in postmodern Denmark of legendary easy tolerance, and then go into hiding to save yourself from the gruesome fate of a Van Gogh. Or quote an ancient treatise, as did Pope Benedict, and then learn that all of Christendom may come under assault, and even the magnificent stones of the Vatican may offer no refuge–although their costumed Swiss Guard would prove a better bulwark than the European police. Or write a book critical of Islam, and then go into hiding in fear of your life, as did French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker.

Read the whole, scary thing.

Mark Yost in Kansas City writing on the new WWI Museum in the WSJ.

Indeed, it’s often facts and figures that overwhelm visitors. Here, the curators have chosen only the most pertinent–and illuminating–figures and presented them in a way that’s easy to understand. For instance, a giant chart lists the number of troops from each country and the number of casualties they suffered. Of the 8.4 million Frenchmen who went to war, 4.5 million were either killed or wounded. As a result, 1 out of 3 Frenchmen age 18 to 30 died by 1917.

By comparison, Britain lost only 2.3 million of its 10.5 million troops, but suffered its greatest single day of combat ever on the Somme in July 1916. After shelling German trenches for days, the British expected to stroll across No Man’s Land unopposed. What they didn’t know was that the Germans had steel and concrete reinforced bunkers–stollen–that protected them from even the most devastating British shells. When the shelling stopped, the Germans emerged from their bunkers unharmed and proceeded to mow down 58,000 British troops.

But most of all, the museum does something very important, notes Mark; it puts the US involvement in proper context:

America sent over about two million men and women, some 365,000 of whom were wounded and 50,000 killed. These numbers pale in comparison to the millions of British, French and German casualties. Indeed, the exhibit makes clear that it was our industrial more than our military might that determined the outcome of the war. More important, our entry had the greatest consequences after the war, marking a significant turn for the U.S. from isolationist to global player. President Woodrow Wilson proposed his 14-point plan and the League of Nations, the beginnings of an internationalism that still defines our foreign policy…A map showing 20,000 miles of new borders that were drawn as a result of the war features Palestine, which the British were pushing as a Jewish homeland, and a place called Iraq.

But perhaps the most telling–and lasting–quote comes from humorist Will Rogers: “You can’t say civilization don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.”

Worth a read.

Busy this morning, getting my little editing gig wrapped up before my real new job starts on Monday.

Light posting for a bit here.

“Yellow Wiggle” Greg Page is bailing:

The hugely popular children’s group The Wiggles is expected this week to announce the departure of its lead singer…

Huh?

 He wants to make a solo album?  Acting career?  Clashed with the drummer over a post-Kid-Rock Pamela Lee? 

… because of a serious illness, media reports said Wednesday.

Doh.

The Wiggles were Australia’s top-earning entertainers last year, ahead of No. 2 AC/DC and No. 3 Nicole Kidman.

But their best albums are still from before they went major-label.

Homeowner kills intruder:

Gerald Whaley told police that he was home alone when he heard what sounded like several intruders breaking in through his garage about 11 p.m. Minutes later, he shot a burglar once with the .22-caliber rifle he kept loaded by his bed. The intruder stumbled downstairs and collapsed in the home on the 11700 block of Bittersweet Street.

Whaley, who had no phone, got dressed, climbed out onto a second-floor deck and went next door to call police. The intruder was dead when police found the youth, whose name wasn’t released Tuesday.

And then the Strib reporter dug up a Dostoyevskian biography on Mr. Whaley, detailing years of housing code citations – possibly germane to the shooting – and his battle with the Anoka-Hennepin School Board, which isn’t.

This is the same Strib that figured that reporting Alan Fine’s complete innocence of a charge in a 35 inch story reported on page A1 was being excessively thorough.

Well, it looks like you did it. 

Unofficial estimates of the projected revenue surplus through June 2009 range up to $1.2 billion, a far cry from the $4.5 billion shortfall that greeted Gov. Tim Pawlenty and legislators in 2003, a hole the state has been digging out of practically ever since.

That heavy lifting has now been completed. More than $1 billion in state treasury reserves have been rebuilt from zero.

Some of the pundits were saying it was going to take a decade or more to unfuzzle the Ventura Deficit – the deficit that happened after a decade of cha-cha spending, including the madness of turning surpluses into permanent entitlement spending.  When the recession of the early ’00s happened, it bit the government in the butt. 

So now it’s time to open the checkbook and satisfy pent-up demand for government spending or tax cuts, right?

Not so fast, say some of the state’s fiscal guardians.

“There’s obviously going to be some good news in the forecast,” said state Finance Commissioner Peggy Ingison, who is scheduled to issue the much-anticipated figures at 10:30 a.m. today. “But we need to be prudent financial managers and increase our reserves so we protect ourselves against the potential downturn that could be just around the corner.”

While that might seem prudent on its face, it’s wrong; the “reserve” is the mass of unnecessary spending that clogs the state budget. 

Governor Pawlenty; you need to move to give part of this surplus back to the people who paid it in.  It might be impossible with the spendaholics in control of the Legislature this session. 

All the more reason to try.

The retroactive spin in GOP circles has begun; some of the people who laid out the losing side’s strategies this past campaign have been backing and filling and trying to phumpher their way out of the realization that while the GOP got smacked on election night, conservatism fared better.

Sisyphus tries to dispel Nih[i]list in Golf Pants’ ongoing shame by poking a big hole in that theory. 

In the House, the Republicans in the more fiscally conservative half saw their margin of victory diminish by an average of 2.6 percentage points from the 2004 election. The RINO half saw their margin decline by nearly twice that, 4.9 percentage points. In the Senate the effect was even a little more pronounced with the fiscal conservative Republicans losing 5.4 and the more RINO Republicans losing 12.

He’s got tables and everything.  Read it.

Tell you what we’ll do:  the next time we get on a plane together, you refrain from acting like you’re probing the plane’s security measures for whatever purpose…

 …and I’ll avoid acting like my Viking anscestors acted when they pummeled encountered your anscestors.

Deal?

I remember watching the coverage of a panel on terrorism and the media over the past summer hosted by Rush Limbaugh. I even wrote about it (a post I ended up not publishing). The hook line – for me – was watching an interview with Mary Lynn Rajskub, the actress who plays frazzled ubergeek Chloe O’Brien on 24. She seemed perplexed and mildly miffed that conservatives in particular seem to love the show that’s made her a star.
The story has apparently come back from the dead-pile via News of the Weird, or so it seems, with wags linking Rajskub and…Rush Limbaugh?:

ACTRESS Mary Lynn Rajskub of “24” wants to set the record straight – Rush Limbaugh has not bedded her, nor will he ever. “Last summer, I was on a panel about terrorism that [he] was moderating,” the blonde tells FHM. “He said hello to everyone and kissed me full on the lips. I was like, ‘Oh, that was odd.’ Then the picture was on the Internet and people thought I was going out with him. He’s brilliant and hilarious, but I wouldn’t say I wanted to get it on with him!”

Well, she’s not my type either. Oh, who am I kidding; yes, she is.

But that’s not the story here. Part of it, as Brian Maloney notes, is Rajskub’s flirtation with career suicide:

You’ve got to give Mary Lynn credit for one thing, however: in Hollywood, it takes guts to admit you believe Rush Limbaugh is “brilliant and hilarious”. Could that alone cost her a future role or two?

The other part:  The forum in question was about terrorism.  Rajskub plays a supporting role in a show about terrorism…

…oh, never mind.  I’m sure it makes perfect sense.

If you don’t live in Saint Paul, you might not know or care about Porkys’, a University Avenue institution for about fifty years.  The drive-up restaurant, with its greasy burgers and heavenly, American Heart Association-condemned onion rings, has been an anchor on the Uni cruising circuit since Eisenhower was in office.

While RT Rybak apparently can do nothing about crime, and is intent on taxing Minneapolis business into Eden Prairie or Sioux Falls, he does know his fast food, according to Doug Grow:

But there’s nothing normal about Porky’s, which has achieved icon status in St. Paul, or the debate the drive-through restaurant has stirred in northeast Minneapolis…To some, like Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, Porky’s conjures up romantic visions.

“As a kid, I rode my bike there,” he said, referring to a time when there were three Porky’s in the city.

All three closed decades ago, victims of the “Big Mac-ing” of America.

Rybak gets almost misty-eyed when he talks of the deeper meaning of Porky’s onion rings. They represent local ownership, a destination point, affordable family dining.

“If a piece of our history can’t be part of our future, the city has lost some of its soul,” the mayor is fond of saying.

And while I think Rybak’s romanticism is out of control – Minneapolis has lost vastly bigger swathes of its history than Porky’s – I wish all the best to the restaurant’s expansion.

And by “all the best”, I mean “good luck”.  They’ll need it.

Some clearly don’t share the mayor’s cosmic view of Porky’s. An organization — Neighbors Against Porky’s — believes it’s the wrong restaurant in the wrong place.”I like the onion rings, too,” said Doron Clark, a member of the group. But not in this place.

Some neighbors say the drive-through restaurant, which will have limited indoor seating, would dump too much traffic into the neighborhoods just off Central Avenue. Porky’s will bring more crime, graffiti and litter, detractors also say.

Finally, Porky’s foes have expressed concern that Porky’s will attract the classic car crowd that has attached itself to the Porky’s on University Avenue in St. Paul.

As part of the zoning committee’s approval, Truelson must agree not to encourage the classic car crew to show up on Central if he wants to build in Minneapolis.

Ah, yes. The dreaded “neighborhood activists” are sounding off.  They’re the ones that have basically shut down the hot rod cruise on University and Snelling on Saturday nights, the ones that extincted the Midway’s biggest, coolest June event, the Minnesota Street Rod Association cruise nights during their annual weekend convention.  Cars – the most amazing assortment of hot rods you’ve ever seen – would jam Snelling and University for miles, from Porky’s up Snelling to the Fairgrounds and down Uni to the Capitol…

…until the “neighborhood activists” got it shut down.  They couldn’t let other people be different from them for one lousy night a year.

These are, largely, the same people who are pressing for more mass transit, people who are “happy to pay for a better Minnesota”, people who vote for Metrocrat DFLers.

In other words, they want to live in a big, cosmopolitan city – but they can’t seem to stand people doing the legal, fun things people do in big, cosmopolitan cities.  These dolts want all the benefits of city life, and they want it to be as loud as an Iowa cornfield, 24/7/365, in the bargain.

I’m about ready to declare war on this hamsters.  They should…:

• either learn to compromise once in a while, and recognize that their blessed “diversity” includes “diversity of recreation” and “diversity of noise tolerance”
• or, if at the end of the day they really find the scrum and bustle of city life so intolerable, move to friggin Burnsville or Chanhassen or Hugo and leave the city to those of us who appreciate it.

Rybak, for once, is right.  But he might not know why.

Red saw an apparition from the past:

— And then …. JOHN CAFFERTY!

— You know, people make fun and all that, but here’s the deal, and here’s what I saw: I saw someone who has not gone bitter and pissed because his moment of fame did not pan out to a lifetime of fame. According to the folks in Rhode Island, he IS a star. And he IS. And not only that: but there he is, playing the songs that everyone knew once upon a time – way back in the 80s when they suddenly were national, rather than local … and he has probably played them thousands, and thousands, of times. And to me it felt like the first time. He had that same enthusiasm. He’s not pissed that people remember. (A lot of one-hit wonders ARE pissed if you remember their one-hit … because all it means to them is that they didn’t have TWO hits. Now I get that … I get that it’s freakin’ tough to not have your dreams pan out … I get that on almost a cellular level, because I’ve lived it … ) But to see someone who LOVES that people remember … and who plays those songs with as much gusto and as much enthusiasm as when he played them in the 80s … You know, I just really loved him for that. I loved him for being okay with being loved. The crowd goes NUTS for the Triple B … and I was telling Beth and Michele about it the next night and they both were saying, “Oh my God, we all HAVE to go the next time you’re in town.” This is our high school years. There he is. The same band. All together. John Cafferty would come out into the crowd with his guitar – and people would jostle him, crowd around him … give him a stool so he could then step up onto one of the tables in the middle of the crowd. Jean and I, watching, were just laughing and clapping and loving him. He’s an entertainer. He’s a local staple. He made it big for about 2 seconds. And people remember and still come out in droves to see him. And he loves that. I had a couple of moments when I teared up. Because I am a geek of the highest order. But I’ve also been an emotional basket-case for about 3 weeks now. Just let’s go way up, shall we? And then let’s go way back down again, shall we? Seeing John Cafferty stand up on that table, in the middle of a sea of pulsing throbbing arms in the air, people shouting up at him, people who know all his lyrics, who remember him when … gave me a little lump in the ol’ gizzard, I’ll tell ya.

— But we also sang along at the tops of our lungs. Pat was openly laughing at us. And Sean was openly scornful. I think he didn’t want to go to Burning Man with me after seeing me go nuts over John Cafferty. Hahaha

— It was a BLAST. TRIPLE B!!!

Livin in the C-I-T-Y! Livin’ in the city!

Or …

On the dark side, oh yeah
On the dark side, oh yeah
On the dark side, oh yeah

John Cafferty must have the life of riley; he’s had one megahit, which will keep the royalties coming in forever (in fact, I’ve been hearing “On the Dark Side” more in the past year or so than I have since the song was on the Top 40), so he doesn’t have to suck up to any recording industry weasels; he’s a local hero (think Martin Zellar or GB Leighton with royalty checks) who can pack bars around the mid-atlantic, which pays mighty nice.  He can do music for a living and actually (I’m thinking) make a decent living at it. 

How cool would that be?

What do Ed Gein, David Duke, Charles Manson, Michael Richards and Richard Ramirez have in common?

 THey all finished better than John Kerry in a likeability poll [1]:

“Americans know who he is, and have pretty much decided they don’t like him,” said Brown. He noted the poll found that 95 percent of respondents said they had heard enough about Kerry, who lost the 2004 White House race to President Bush, to rate the Massachusetts Democrat.

The poll of 1,623 registered voters was conducted after the November 7 national elections, which saw Democrats win back control of the U.S. Congress from Republicans.

93% of Americans apparently think John Kerry was found guilty of war crimes.

Blogads.com is the vendor that puts the advertising in the right margin of this blog. Selling ads via blogads has made this blog self-supporting to slightly profitable (if you leave out the time spent actually writing) for the past couple of years.

They’ve made some changes. Most of them were good.

One, I found out today, is not so much. While blogads used to pay up within a month of the ad starting, now they’re on a much-looser, net plus a couple of months arrangement.

Which I didn’t figure out ’til yesterday.

So the couple of hundred bucks in blogad revenue that was going to Christmas presents this year is…not.

Yet.

I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, I guess.

There was genuinely not much to report in the three weeks since the last “Twenty Years Ago…” piece.

Life had basically fallen into a very predictable routine:

• Mondays and Thursdays were for job-hunting. The Sunday and Wednesday Stribs had all the new job listings. I diligently trekked up to the library at Lake and Minnehaha both mornings, read the paper, copied down the information, then walked home to my apartment on 37th and cranked out cover letters.
• Most mornings I’d go to the Rainbow on Lake and Minnehaha. I’d wear a couple layers of clothes – jacket, sunglasses, etc; I’d walk around the store and graze on all the samples once, then shuck the jacket and shades and go back around again. I’d get a fair-to-middlling meal out of the circuit. I doubt I fooled anyone.
• Saturdays, I’d take the 38 bus over to Little Tin Soldier for a day’s worth of wargaming; Saturdays usually had some sort of “modern micro-armor” (little lead models of World War II or Cold War tanks and other equipment) battle; it was always open-play, and someone’d always lend me a company or two of vehicles. It was the cheapest eight hours of entertainment going.
• In the evening, I’d play guitar and try to write music around my roommate’s kitchen table; he worked swing shift, so it was easy; my upstairs neighbors were (apparently) Ukranian squat-dancers who jumped around on their linoleum floor all day in wooden clogs, and then either fought or had loud sex on mattresses made out of old transmission parts all night, so I figured I could get away with a little acoustic guitar and quiet warbling. I figured since I’d moved here in part to be a rock star, I’d better write some music.
• Sundays, I’d take a hike. On days like this – chilly, foggy, a stiff wind – I’d hike down Hiawatha to Minnehaha Park, walk down the endless wooden stairways to the creek, and walk down the stream course through the woods to where Minnehaha joined the Mississippi River, by the Vets hospital. It was cold, and fairly quiet (only the cars on the Ford Bridge and, occasionally, the horns of passing tugs; I’d sit against a tree for an hour or two and watch the river go by and just think, the chill settling into my bones in a way that felt almost satisfying after a week’s worth of the burning anxiety of being in my sixth week of looking for a job.
• I’d call KSTP every Wednesday, more to keep a routine going than out of any expectation for a job.

After my encounter with Tom Myhre at the demonstration a month earlier and the unsuccessful interview with Jean the Producerthree weeks earlier, my contact – executive producer Bruce Huff – told me to call back periodically. I did – weekly, on Wednesdays. I never actually reached him again. It was on November 27 that I finally got through to someone.

“Bruce Huff is no longer at the station”.

My heart didn’t especially slump; this was typical of radio, people disappearing from stations on no notice. I’d pretty much given up radio as a career – in fact, part of me didn’t want to work in the racket again.

“But I’ll put you through to Rob Pendelton”.

I waited a few minutes on hold, and Pendelton came on the line, in a voice that didn’t sound especially made for radio in the classical sense. He was the new “Executive Producer” – Huff had left…

…and there was a chance that another position was going to open up.

“Call back next week”, he told me. I made a note.

Next Wednesday.

If there’s anything that the almost decade-long battle over concealed-carry reform taught me, it’s these two lessons:

• Grass-roots organizing matters
• It can also be a lot of fun.

With that in mind, I’d like to echo Joel Rosenberg’s blanket invite to Second Amendment activists and anyone else who might be interested; come on down to Stub and Herb’s on December 16 at 6PM:

Pro-gun activists from all across the state will be meeting and sharing food, fun, and maybe a little bit of beer to talk how to move the ball forward over the next few years.

This past election was a setback for gun rights supporters – but it doesn’t have to be a fatal one. And it’s at get-togethers like this that we lay the real groundwork for keeping it that way.

Put it on your calendars. I hope to see you there.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is the most dangerous group in America today.

They’re not dangerous merely because of their ongoing effort to criminalize any drinking, any time, or even because of their massive assault against civil liberty.

No, the big problem is that MADD has convinced a lot of otherwise intelligent people that what they’re doing is an objectively good thing. The Strib editorial board opines in favor of MADD’s effort to force the law-abiding driver to prove his/her worthiness every time they step into a car:

MADD says you pull out all the tools we have — and work to develop some more. It has joined forces with insurance- and auto-industry groups to create the Blue Ribbon Panel for the Development of Advanced Alcohol Detection Technology. It will encourage the development of technologies that include and surpass today’s sometimes-used ignition interlocks — which test a driver’s breath for alcohol and, if the driver fails, prevent the car from starting. Minnesota and many other states already have provisions to require such equipment in some cases. New Mexico has had some success with a law requiring their installation after the first DWI conviction.

MADD wants these intrusive, not-always-reliable interlocks in every car. They want you, whether you’ve had a beer or are a complete teetotaller, to prove your innocence every time you get behind the wheel.

And they want you to cheer and say “please, ma’am, may I have another”.

It’s a promising line of inquiry. In the meantime, however, most of those who drink must make the same old choice: Stay put or find sober transport.

Simple facts: drunk driving fatalities are off by over 40% in the past decade. Very few accidents and fatalities trace to drivers with blood alcohol levels below .10 – indeed, the big spike starts at .14, and lowering the legal limit to .08 or even lower will have almost no further effect on the issue.

In response to success, MADD proposes…more and more onerous regulation. More punishment of the law-abiding. More power for them.

And if you dare criticize them? As they said when civil libertarians opposed random checkpoint dragnets:

Opponents of sobriety checkpoints tend to be those who drink and drive frequently and are concerned about being caught.

“If you criticize us and our ideas, it’s because you’re a criminal”.

The Strib – which sniffs and phumphers about the “Civil liberties implications” of surveilling phone calls from terrorists to their contacts in America – stands up and cheers at the fascist antics of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which in the long run are vastly more dangerous.

Yes.  I said “vastly more dangerous”.  If you want to create a nation with no civil liberties, you don’t go out and ban them.  You kill them with a thousand cuts – and get the people used to the idea that “civil liberty” is an obtuse, picayune concept meant for others.

Which, of course, has been the Strib’s point of view all along.  The Second Amendment refers to the National Guard, Freedom of Speech is for people with printing presses, and that whole Innocent Until Proven Guilty thing only counts if you’ve been arrested.

The Star/Tribune; our own printed Abu Ghraib

Tim Blair, whilst observing the current Australian parliamentary elections, asks:

The Greens are also a chance to win in Richmond. Melbourne and Richmond are probably the two most densely-populated and urbanised seats in the entire state. How come Green voters never live where it’s green?

Well, that’d be like a poverty activist coming from a neighborhood in the lower 70% of median incomes.

The good news: the Twin Cities’ blogosphere’s depth chart for the “hilarious Hubbells” position is apparently longer than your arm; not only does MLP do Casual Sundays with Mr. Curry (a great read) but now Katie has apparently inveigled brother Billy (at least I hope it’s her brother, not that I can keep track of all of her relatives, including her other brother, who I learned is a college classmate of mine) to chip in with some writing at Yucky Salad with Bones, which leads us to…:

I had just spent 10 laborious minutes choosing between a big bag of Cheetos or a big bag of Doritos– and I needed something to read while I stuffed my face. Anyway, I couldn’t help notice that George Clooney was on two covers. Not that unusual, I know, but one was People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” issue and the other was Esquire’s “Genius” issue. Talk about best week ever. Next they’re going to tell me he’s Jesus, son of God, returned to Earth to save us all and that he would have saved us sooner, but he wanted to be on “Facts of Life” and make a Batman movie first.

Analogous to Jesus turning water into toe fungus, I suppose.

So when does Joe start helping out, here?

No – it’s fellow veteran Chuck Rangel, not so much attacking the troops as claiming they’re too dumb to know better:

If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.

Allahpundit notes:

[the left need] to find a way to exculpate our all-volunteer military for their role in it; blaming them, however obliquely, is politically unviable, which is why even Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore insist they support the troops. Solution: deny their autonomy. Pretend that they’re either too stupid or too lazy or too poor to do anything but enlist.

As to that whole “decent career” thing – AlPundit and I both thought of the same example…

I read Lori Sturdevant’s piece on Betty “Rubble” McCollum’s waxing political fortunes.  It was the sort of paeon Sturdevant always writes for DFLers who aren’t being perp-walked:

On it, a list-maker was jotting names of — what else? — potential candidates to challenge Republican Norm Coleman for his U.S. Senate seat in 2008.

It was laughably early but irresistible…At the top of the list was the name “Betty McCollum.”I don’t know if she’d leave the House,” I overheard. “But if she wants it” — meaning the DFL’s blessing for a run at Coleman — “she’s our best candidate.”

Possible.

But it was the part I replaced above with the ellipsis that caught my attention:

…I leaned in, looked and listened…

Does anyone seriously believe that Lori Sturdevant – the most reliable DFL flak among the Strib’s columnists – had to “lean in” like some sort of spy to get the story?

I’m almost tempted to score tickets for this event:

We couldn’t wait until Friday! Tickets for the 2007 Blue State Ball are on sale NOW! Join Big Ed Schultz and Team Fargo for a night of food, music, and political celebration on Saturday, January 20. Attendance for the 2006 Ball was huge… almost too huge! So this year we have moved our party out to the Nicollet Island Pavilion so we can have plenty of room to spread out and celebrate! Keep your eyes locked to the website and your ears glued to your radio to find out who will be announced as the next special guest for the 2007 Blue State Ball!

Sounds like it could be a fun night out for conservatives needing a good, schadenfreud-y laugh after November 7.

Anyone in?

With perfect timing, Red notes that today is the 64th anniversary of the release of Casablanca.

It’s a movie I’ve seen about forty times, and for good reason.

Casablanca premiered at the Hollywood Theatre in New York City. It was not expected to be a long-lasting mythical evocation of the quintessential American ideals we all aspire to, from generation to generation. It was just supposed to be another one of the pro-war propaganda movies the studios were churning out at that time. It went on to win the Academy Award the next year – but again, lots of films win Academy Awards and don’t go on to achieve legendary status.

The legend around the film began growing in the late 50s, a couple of years after Bogart’s death. The stories about the Casablanca showings at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge Massachusetts are now famous … and make me wish for a time machine.

Oh, me too, Red. Me too.

I think I need to watch it tonight.

…the less I notice the difference.

This one never seems to get any less dead-on.

…is the one you get even though you haven’t had a drink in weeks.