Oh, hey, Patrick Swayze died.  I just saw it on a magazine rack at the grocery store.  The cashier said he died “like two days ago”, but oh boy is it clear that there was a full glitzy feature ready to run in People at the press of a button.

So, “like two days ago”.  And I find out from a magazine rack.  I think this suggests that the news I consume may be wide, but is not exhaustive.  Granted, the headline of my news article (if I had a blog, say) would be something like “Rich white guy who used to be in movies dies of natural causes after receiving ‘best medical care in world’”.  And I’d have to weigh that against any possible dog trials coverage, to see if it even gets a last-page mention.

But, OK, kind of scary again: another cultural bit I missed.  I have — snobbish? elitist? pass-the-espresso-with-lemon-twist? — news sources.  Does that make me superior to a Fox-News-And-Only-Fox-News consumer?  My intuition is “yes”, but the proof is eluding me at this moment.

(Mandatory) exercise for the reader:

1. Daily news sources
2. Multiple-times-per-week news sources
3. Once-in-a-while news sources
4. Oops-I-forgot-I-was-supposed-to-be-following-that news sources
5. I-don’t-consume-but-say-I-do news sources
6. Never-on-principle news sources

I have my list, but, if you cooperate (”coöperate” is so much prettier!), my list will be different at the end of this exercise.

Woman too loud during sex: will show up in the dock.  Exercise for reader: If the headboard banged against the wall 1984 times, would she have been let off (ha)?!

(Alternate joke: “We said ‘The privacy of your own bedroom, nitwit!!’”)

(Alternate bizarro fact: the word ‘sex‘ gets mcgees.org banned at U.S. K-Mart internet kiosks.  So as long as I’m banned anyway, “Eat shit and die, you motherfucking corporate cunts!”  Or something.)

It’s not quite Milgram, but, to the hotel employee’s credit, he did Break the Glass.

Beardy has a fascinating graph.  The responses are even more rad.

Stay tuned for a link to the MeFi question I am working on composing, after I make sure I understand a nonzero amount of this problem.  Note: a math degree does nothing to help with all of this.

The Independent:

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 … was passed in November 1967, after Israel had occupied Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Sinai and Golan, and it emphasizes “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and calls for “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”.

Readers who know the problem here will be joined by those who will immediately pick it up. The Israelis say that they are not required to withdraw from all the territories — because the word “all” is missing and since the definite article “the” is missing before the word “territories”, its up to Israel to decide which bits of the occupied territories it gives up and which bits it keeps.

In related news, I was just given a parking ticket!  Can you believe it?  Yes, there was a sign that said “No parking”, but I told the cop that I didn’t park there on Wednesdays or Thursdays!  Just Saturday!  When I was not parking on Wednesdays, I was indeed not parking!

Egads.

A group of laborers who refuse to be paid in cash have attacked a community of space robots with purple vacuum cleaner heads.

I’m sure I got some of that right.

Less goofily: in college I read a book called Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Groups that covered, in the chapter with the greatest depth, the Rom community.  Not cool how they’ve been treated.  Their common name, itself an inaccurate slur (inaccurate because they are not from Egypt; slur because it means, in Europe, “y’aint from ’round here, are ya?”), carries connotations of thievery and fraud, and can be used pejoratively in casual conversation, frequently by people who don’t know they are doing it.  They survived persecution, marginalization, and, finally, murder in the gas chambers of the Third Reich, but (AFAIK) no one has built a museum for them yet.

So, please, no riots, OK?  No attacks.  No “gypsy cabs”, nor having someone “gyp” you.  In a sense, they are where Jews were before WWII, an allowed target of hate.  We needn’t hate.

But, you know, keep your wallet in your front pocket.  Just to be safe.

The book: as of this writing, there’s one for a penny.  It’s a good book.  You can afford a penny:

For the record, I didn’t torch a high school (Except in the nineties with my wicked good looks!  Ha!  See what I did there?  Ha!)

In other news, the Euro topped $1.50, the Pound topped $2, and oil topped $107/barrel.

Anyone want to join me in a stirring round of “And I’m Proud To Be An American”?

East Timor president José Ramos-Horta has been the subject of a violent coup attempt.  He has been shot in the stomach.  He has been upgraded from “critical” to “serious but stable” condition.

Why the upgrade?  He was flown to Australia, at presumably some government’s expense, to undergo first-world lifesaving surgery and medical treatment.

Ramos-Horta is 58 years old.  The average male lifespan in East Timor is 64 years.  Why the low mortality age?  I’m not sure what proportion is war and insurrection, what percentage is tropical diseases, and what percentage is lousy medical care, but the latter has to figure in, doesn’t it?

I’m kind of thinking that when a president is shot, he needs to be rushed to the nearest public clinic.  I’d go so far as to say he or she could go to the front of the line, get the best surgeon, and have the government pay the bill.  But to be flown to Australia while your citizens drop like tsetse flies?  Defies belief.

Of course, in this case, that course of action would have been a death sentence.  Which is really the point, when you think about it.

OK, I know my readership is international, so please forgive the local news.  The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for today (24 January 2008) for Los Angeles and surrounding areas.  Please plan accordingly.

The Sun tabloid (U.S. Enquirer-style, not to be confused with the U.K. publication of the same name) was at the grocery checkout of my local supermarket tonight.

INDIAN DOOMSDAY PROPHECY!, announced the headline.  There was a picture of an individual in badly-faked Native American ceremonial makeup, and a reference to an ancient burial site.  It continued: “You will never believe how and when the world will end!”

Well, considering that I’m fairly sure the concept of “billion” did not exist in any Native American civilization’s mathematics, this is almost certainly true!  Quite impressive for this publication!

Reviewers found 109,263 errors when reviewing Houghton Mifflin’s math textbooks that were submitted to the state of Texas.  Seriously.  That’s with real math, not Houghton Mifflin math.  Texas imposes a $5,000 fine on each mistake.  The state’s letting them off on a technicality, so the textbook publisher will not have to pony up half a billion dollars to pay the education department.

Ah, Texas textbooks.  Ring a bell?  Go read that link if you haven’t.  It tells about Texas’s textbook standards, which, I swear I’m not making this up, must glorify “free enterprise”, “patriotism”, and the “values” of the state’s heritage (of Texas.  Uh-oh.  Then again, not to worry.  “Lying” is clearly one of their values, so when they deceive students, they’re actually teaching them an important lesson about the values of the state.  See?  Neat, huh?)

Go read.  At the time of that post, the chairperson of the Board of Education co-owned a petroleum company, and explained that “The oil and gas industry should be consulted” when it comes to textbooks, because they “always get a raw deal.”

Creepy — the priest stalks Conan O’Brien, demanding to hear his confession before he offers “absolution”, refers to himself as a “stalker” and a “dangerous fan”, and even contacts O’Brien’s parents.

One sees weird stories by watching for Google pages about Joshua McGee.  Does anyone else think I’d be laughed out of writing class (and then sent to the shrink) by naming my murderer Joshua Cain Outlaw?

Not to make light of this one, as there is, after all, a dead kindergartener and a fucked-up US Marine, but really, Joshua Cain Outlaw?

This is going to fall off Google’s archives quickly, as eBay has suspended his account.  Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was offering for sale on Half.com, under the alias blazers5505, the following books:

• Micro Fiction
• Oates’s The Female Of The Species
• Horror novel Hell House
• Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings
• John Donne’s Poetry
• Best of HP Lovecraft
• Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film
• Ten Little Indians, and
• Sabbath Night In The Church Of The Piranha

No judgment of his tastes is implied by posting the list, it’s just going to be forever-lost data in a few hours.  (Archive of search).

1. Find a wallet containing 1,000 euros.
2. Track down the owner and extort a 100 euro finder’s fee for the return of the wallet and money.
3. Profit!  I mean, jail!

“It sounds like a job for Wallace and Gromit. A ‘monster’ rabbit has apparently been rampaging through vegetable patches in a small village in northern England, ripping up leeks, munching turnips and infuriating local gardeners.

In an uncanny resemblance to the plot of the hit animated film ‘Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit,’ angry horticulturists in Felton, near Newcastle, have now mounted an armed guard to protect their prized cabbages and parsnips…

‘This is no ordinary rabbit. We are dealing with a monster,’ [local resident Jeff Smith] was quoted by newspapers as saying… ‘We have two lads here with guns who are trying to shoot it, but it is very clever.’”

Japanese firms divest themselves of whaling interests.

Scotland will now fine you £3,600 ($7,700) for smoking in public. How times are changed since I was there three and a half years ago, when you couldn’t escape the smoke to, as it were, save your life.

Mount St. Helens clears throat with steam eruption

Mount St. Helens belched a roiling plume of gray-white steam and ash Friday, more than a week after a flurry of earthquakes warned the volcano was reawakening [emphasis added].

I think David Ammons, Associated Press Writer is trying a bit too hard.

I walked to the cashier’s office. It was a Friday, and on Friday the Americans go on safari, so they were queueing up for money. Kenyans were queueing up for money as well.

The lady who was banking the money spotted me. Her name was Lucy. She said to jump the queue. I got the money and went back to my office. All those people I left in the queue died, including the cashier.

Good grief.  What lousy news today.  Massacre in Russia, another massive hurricane, Bill Clinton sick.

And check this out: “Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognise now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did.” Sounds a hell of a lot like a confession to me. How could it have been consensual if she does not view it as such?  Wouldn’t she have to agree that it was consensual?  For it to be consensual, that is?

On a far lighter note, BBC World Service asked Claire Danes if it was difficult to portray a bad actor in her most recent role.

And what is Michael Biehn doing slumming?  He got $4 million for a John Landis movie.  He must have gotten more for the massively, almost unbelievably under-rated The Art of War, which I give 8.5 stars to (contrast with the 5.2 it gets on IMDB.) Maybe he just likes to get a paycheck while living in Hawaii. To be honest, I thought they’d kill him in the premiere, after I saw him in the commercial. Then they gave him a ringer credit (”…and Michael Biehn”) in the opening credits, and I thought, wouldn’t it be great if they gave him a proper listing as a star of the show and still killed him?

And what am I doing writing a blog post this banal?

Dewey Beats the Tampa Bay Lightning

One wonders just how much journalism is composed and never published. Last weekend, when Reagan died, the networks were ready with graphics and retrospectives that I assure you were not assembled in four hours. The death of Reagan, at least, is predictable, but sports and politics wins aren’t. How much must be relegated to the trash-heaps of history.

MISYS GIVES PECKER HEAD JOB

“Larger pieces of flesh torn off by the lizards were scooped up and taken back to the webs of tarantulas and other bird-eating spiders.”  Typically sensationalist Sun journalism, but I’m captivated.  I know it’s morbid, but really, he had it coming.  Poisonous animals are not pets.  And make no mistake, nature needs scavenger animals, and there is no reason humans should be exempted.

I know I would have regretted it, but I wish there were pictures.

“They say that all that is left of Ait Kimrat is its name” (and even that, if I may note, barely exists.)  More on the Morocco quake.

An assistant high school principal in Michigan had a troublemaking student.  He was “virtually positive” the kid was a drug dealer, so prior to a police drug check he planted a baggie of marijuana in the student’s locker.  The administator was only caught when he laughingly told an on-duty police officer about it at a varsity basketball game.  Where did he get the pot?  He had a habit of stockpiling seized contraband in a drawer in his office.

(When asked if he had planted drugs in the past, the officer notes that he “infatically” denied doing so.  I guess no one hires cops for their compositional skills.)

Five British citizens held at Guantanamo Bay for two years without trial are set to be released.  The British government lobbied for their release, and does not expect to file any charges against the men, if for no other reason than the fact that they were held so long in violation of international law.  Some academics are speculating that the men have a good case for seeking compensation from the United States.

I completely support this.  The way we treated these men is a disgrace.  I say let them sue.  I say settle the lawsuit.  Make a big deal about it, have a special investigation, create a constitutional amendment that explicitly ratifies the Geneva Convention, let heads roll.  All of that.

That being said, if The Herald wanted me to believe the men had been falsely imprisoned, as I believe was there intention, they did a horrible job.  Really, three young Muslim men from the same town (one third the size of Pasadena) all happened to end up in Pakistan, at the same, with shaky reasons for being there?  All three of them disappeared and ended up in the remote mountains of Afghanistan by complete accident?

The father of Rhuhel Ahmed, one of the detainees, said of the 23-year-old man that “He is a kid, straight out of school.  How could he be a terrorist?”  Who the hell does he think terrorist groups recruit, senile pensioners?  I started the article believing them to be innocent.  I finished it very skeptical.  Read it for yourself and see what you think.

An orangutan, a European bison, an elephant, three chimpanzees, three tapirs, and four camels have been murdered by poisoning at the Sao Paulo zoo.  Some of the bodies show the presence of sodium fluoroacetate (CH₂F-COON), used in powerful rat poisons that are outlawed in Brazil (and the U.S., as far as I have been able to determine, although it used to be used to kill ground squirrels in California.)

Composer Michael Kamen has died.