Posted 8:59 PM by Gene

And KAPLAN, INC. had to remind me of JAKE with this spam, once more, in my mailbox.

P. S. The clown who inficts JAKE on us has put a .PDF FILE on His company's corporate Web site defending ITS NUMBER-ONE BUSINESS. When these folks can't demoralize us they can cheat us.





Oh -- LOVE that snazzy new logo, Donny! How much did that cost ST. WARREN?

And you're STILL KAPLAN, INC.!

P. S.



Not so smart, Donny -- Wickes Companies inspired THREE bankruptcies! (The trademark was used until recently for a UK home-improvement chain which was a former joint venture of Wickes.)

Posted 8:47 PM by Gene

Well so much for that hope with this dreadful story:

One of the Arizona shooting victims was arrested Saturday and then taken for a psychiatric evaluation after authorities said he took a picture of a tea party leader at televised [SIC] town hall meeting and yelled: "you're dead."

PAUL KRUGMAN SNAPPED THE PICTURE!!!!!

Can we pundits shut up now? NO.

Posted 6:12 PM by Gene

We intend this to be our last post on this upsetting, exasperating story for a while: We are surprised no one's noticed there has thus far been no video of the shooting spree. In this age of iPhones and security cameras you'd think someone would have switched on something. We are fortunate if no one did; we are fortunate there appear to have been no videos from Ft. Hood or VT either (we were about to mention a certain highly successful anchorpoop but will refrain). The obvious explanation is that people are busy escaping; but you'd think someone, realizing the mortal peril, might have turned on a camera if for no other reason than to provide evidence. With Cyclops rearing his one eye in so many places our luck can't hold out.

And to those who think electronic security can stop such slaughters all they'll do is record them.

We were about to say seeing the catastrophe might shut up the loudest mouths; likely they'd only get louder. Nothing can shut up a pundit who's always right.

P. S. Doubly fortunate: If there had been video the TV NEWS CRETINS would have run loops. IDIOTS!

Posted 2:38 PM by Gene

David von Drehle's memorable essay has many things worth responding too, and not wanting to relive last week's horror one more time we may add to them later. He says, for one thing, the audience for the cable screamers is small. True. But news hacks have provided them with megaphones. Take how practically every Web site must transcribe ED MURROW's courage -- His audience bolts from 1.5 million to the tens of millions exposed to the second-hand drivel spouting him. And he's a mere journa -- COMEDIAN. We hear that PILLHEAD has an audience of between 200 million and 80 billion. No one knows and no one has the curiosity to try to find out. That inflates His influence. "David Brock, confessed smear artist", is a master money-raiser. Kos is no mere blogger but a master organizer. Even His enemies call Roger Ailes a "genius". These blowhards have overcome their nominally small audiences or factions to become tyrants in no small part thanks to well-placed media friends. This does not exactly help the body politic.

Nor is PEOPLE WARNER blameless despite its "neutral, non-partisan" cable-news filler. Mouth of the South, after all, invented a show called CROSSFIRE. Though John McLaughlin may have invented screaming -- and I remember thinking how refreshing it once was, before I tired of professional wrestlers screaming -- CNN perfected it. FOX!!!!!!!!!!!News and the Mess owe their vastly disproportionate success to CNN.

But maybe this time something is different. We still cringe about how the fraud Dick Corliss blamed Columbine on GUNS!!!!!!!!!!. Today the TWXSTERS have decided not to blame what happened in Tucson on SARAH!!!!!!!!!!. This is an advance. But it comes too late; as THE MASTER said, "[W]hen a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully", and the TWXSTER newsrag's being hanged in the marketplace, its circulation over a million off its peak, its contents a shadow of the past. Why the TWXSTERS choose now to treat their readers as adults is beyond us. Perhaps the sight of the noose is concentrating it. We will take what little scraps of respect we can.

P. S. The TWXSTERS, two years ago, interviewing Dave Cullen, the author of Columbine:

A lot of myths sprang up immediately after Columbine. Why were we so quick to jump on pat narratives?

The problem with Columbine was we felt the need to explain it right away. It was so horrifying, and the public wanted to know why it happened. We in the media wanted to know why too, and we thought we had to answer them. What we should have said was, "We don't have any good information, and it would be irresponsible of us to say why." When you speculate in a case like this, it very quickly morphs into "fact." We started with the assumption that school shooters tend to be loners, outcasts and bullied. That turned out to be a myth: some are bullied, but not even 50%. The majority are not any of those things.

We have had lots of morphing this week -- and pretty good answers too.

P. S.

A drug connection just adds to the probability that this was nothing more or less than yet another senseless incidence of violence in a country with a long history of senseless violence.

We got your mea culpa -- JAKE!

Posted 11:58 AM by Gene

Received opinion has it Windows XP is a wonderful OS. Anyone who's put up with its constant stuttering knows what a crock that is. (How many times do you press CTRL-ALT-DEL?) By contrast Windows 7 is a fine system. But it exposes me to another received opinion: that Firefox is a WONDERFUL browser. It freezes up on 7 even with 6GB of memory -- and I'm buying six more. From XP to 7 nothing has changed. Thanks to Firefox I'm now using five browsers so I can keep as many tabs open as possible without anything freezing up. IE taught the world the peril of relying on one Web browser. So does Firefox.

Posted 11:18 PM by Gene

BP and the Russians: a marriage made somewhere in the fire of a burning oil well.

Posted 11:03 PM by Gene

Sigh, one more -- post tonight:

The U.S Postal Service spent $31.9 million to underwrite Lance Armstrong's pro cycling team during its glory years of 2001 to 2004, approximately 60 to 65 percent of the team's total budget, according to documents newly obtained from the agency under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

We may safely say this was a complete waste of money, for several reasons.

Posted 10:12 PM by Gene

In light of this last week...

Onion News Network Promises 30 Percent More Screaming Than Competitors

...this is plainly a false promise.

Posted 9:58 PM by Gene

Sen. McCain says the right things, but we won't be judged by what we say. If we were Heaven would go deaf with talking, and Hell would be silent.

Posted 9:41 PM by Gene

My oldest son, Amato, who is on my Verizon Wireless plan, told me recently that even though he was perfectly happy with his Android phone, if given the chance to switch to an iPhone, he would probably do it. “I can’t even say why,” he said. “I don’t even know if there is any real rationale behind that desire.”

Is Steve Jobs a business genius or what?

Get with the program, Joe: Steve is THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST.

Posted 9:36 PM by Gene

An astonishing statement from AMERICA'S MOST PROFITABLE NEWS WEB SITE!!!!!:

Mental Illness, Not Politics, Was Likely Cause of Loughner's Rampage

We are getting profoundly tired of following the news, and wish someone would declare a national holiday from the Web.

Posted 9:32 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Der Homeland visits Congress, meaning untold bad leads, frayed nerves and no better security.

Meantime Der Homeland hasn't a clue on the border, which may still be an issue even after the current platitudes end.

Posted 9:13 PM by Gene

Playing major-college football remains a full-time job.

More than full-time, in fact.

Players in the NCAA's top-tier Division I bowl subdivision say they devote more than 43 hours a week to the sport during the season, and those in a couple of other sports — baseball and men's basketball — approach that commitment, an NCAA study shows.

43 hours a week -- PAY THEM!

Another area of the survey was unflattering to women's hoops.

Only 39% of its Division I players said their head coach "defines success by not only winning, but winning fairly." Just 39% said their head coach can be trusted.

Yep -- they learn 'em to be prima donnas early!

P. S. They've noticed the smell in Indy.

Posted 8:13 PM by Gene

And mere days after Jake's screaming GRATE.COM changes the subject with an article on how many spaces should follow a period. You're part of the royal we too -- and we'll pay closer attention to you because your technology promised us better.

Posted 8:02 PM by Gene

"I want to live up to her expectations," Mr. Obama said of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green. "I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it." By abandoning the royal "we," the president suggested that none of us is above the need for soul-searching. We in the media should pay heed.

This blogger intends to pay close heed to how the royal we that are the media handle themselves. He intends to pay close heed when they abandon the civility gag for ratings, when they pursue the horse race and the sound bite and the other strategies that exacerbate civic tensions, when they make facile phony apologies for their moral incontinence.

And we must not forget the royal we includes our superiors in government, who since day one have actively investigated all conceivable loopholes for their scruples.

This blogger will heed very closely indeed -- and he expects within a month every last self-serving platitude from the past week will have faded into a conveniently amnesic memory.

We all hope and yearn and demand for better; but decades of the royal we have brought us only constant worse.

Posted 7:30 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



It's SLINKY! It's SLINKY!

But what's that nozzle on the top?



SLINKY!!!!!





Transparent building blocks!



Building blocks!

Posted 3:47 PM by Gene

Distracting glare detracts from first game at Oregon's new arena

OR:

We hope it looks like HELL on ESPN, the ultimate target.

Pffh-hh-hh hh hh hh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

P. S. The problem was partly the fancy lighting -- but PHIL TWO-CENTS-AN-HOUR KNIGHT's design didn't help.

And Yahoo! wasn't the only outlet to notice.

Posted 2:33 PM by Gene

And further in well-meaning, the Monitor proposes "Four ways to kick the polarized partisan habit" -- and does so through a click-through listicle, whose very nature makes it counterproductive.

And the linking story is little better, being essentially a flack sheet for No Labels, which the usual con-SER-va-tives claim is a ruse to shut them up. No, intolerant idiots talking at the top of their right lungs or left lungs will NOT GO AWAY.

Posted 2:30 PM by Gene

"Washington has a magnet effect," observed Robert Kiesling, the medical director of Pathways to Housing and a former medical director at St. Elizabeth's. "We get a lot of folks from all over the country -- all over the world for that matter -- who come here to do business with the government for various delusional reasons. They make up a high percentage of the homeless population in DC."

NO COMMENT.

Posted 2:07 PM by Gene

We're starting ANOTHER MASSACRE RALLY!

Posted 2:03 PM by Gene

Speaking of Useless, its shrivelled Web remains are "reporting" that Dr. Ron Reagan, whose career qualifies him for a reality show, diagnosed his father with Alzheimer's in the White House, meaning that senile old coot should have resigned long before he retired, as Ron would have said on AIR AMERICA.

Ron! Did Sarah pull the trigger?

(Via THE NATION'S PR PAPER!)

Posted 1:36 PM by Gene

Today we reminded ourselves of the great public service the newsrags did by self-destructing. At their full strength of thirty years ago the Big 3 would all have run cover pictures of their hero-thug, two asking, "DID Sarah Pull the Trigger?" (Useless News would have said it differently being nominally "conservative".) Today Useless is gone, destroyed by the zillionaire's incompetence that refuses to teach SID a lesson; and for all the brave talk SIDSWEEK has practically vanished in print, leaving the TWXSTERS' relic, a ragged sheaf of sappy essays. We further remembered the great public service our newspapers did by self-destructing when our local StinkyInky ran a big front-page hed proclaiming, "GIFFORDS FULLY RECOVERED!!!!!" Yes it is true the hacks' desire to misinform is stronger than ever, as we've seen in the mindless conformity of this week; and yes, more people may be misinformed than ever, through the miracles of cable "news" and the Web; but the printed TRUTH is no more God's word, nor do the people, angered and chastened by the hacks' innumerable malevolent mistakes, believe it as a commandment.

Posted 12:21 PM by Gene

Here's the latest well-meaning fad in guvment: mixed seating in Congress. It won't work because the parties remain MENTALLY SEGREGATED, as segregated as whites and blacks in the old South, and as long as we have MENTAL SEGREGATION we'll have MORASS.

If we have any hope at all it's from an old song: "We Shall Overcome".

Posted 11:57 AM by Gene

How the Media Botched the Arizona Shooting

For God's sake we need an article on that? On a proposition that established itself long before this disaster? But the author has done a great service by describing much of hacks' scribble as "faith-based" -- a truly damning zinger, for so much of news hackery relies on the faith...that news hacks have in THEMSELVES. And they are GODS. And if "templates" is a cliché it does have its place, although we have a better term: concrete molds.

BIG caveat: He edits for Rev. Peters's tract -- a title frequently prone to the yips.

Posted 11:48 AM by Gene

New poll shows Obama beating GOP challengers [Home-page link]

Study: 20% of Americans have done heroic deeds

Disclosure of THE GANG OF 27 seems to have inspired THE NATION'S PR SOURCE to expel more publicity.

Posted 11:32 AM by Gene

The enormous success of Spider-Man: Turn Out the Lights confirms our notion that BRANSON EAST needs a big barn, a 5,000-to-10,000-seat theme park to hold huge attractions like this. The economics dictate it. These producer clowns will never make back their investment in the kind of box designed in the 1920s, when there was something called theater and it did produce something called art. Theme-park economics deserve theme-park buildings. HONORARY MAYOR SNOW JOB! Get out a trillion bucks of your turnips' hard earned wages and BUILD SOME!

Posted 11:23 AM by Gene

John STOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSEL!!!!! We'll say it again: Your FRIENDS the SPECULATORS are BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!

Posted 8:25 PM by Gene

?!?!?

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspended Ghana on Wednesday in a move which could prevent the west-African country from competing in the 2012 London Games.

We could think of a few OLYMPIC PARTNERS who should be expelled.

The IOC cited "political interference" from the Ghanaian government as the reason behind the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Ghana's expulsion.

By that standard shouldn't every national team be expelled?

Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC, claimed Ghana's suspension was as a result of the county's sports laws, which "do not respect the provisions of the Olympic charter."

We could think of a few Olympic presidents who didn't respect the Olympics.

Posted 7:08 PM by Gene

After a long and frustrating hiatus -- ARCHDaily!



Villa Amanzi / Original Vision

Original vision? FALLINGWATER!



That building should see a psychiatrist!



A Kermit the Frog museum!



Don't give the Chinese ideas!



Casa 4 Planos / Dear Architects

Dear Architects: What is with buildings that look like stupid square faces?



The filter that ate LA!



Danny Libeskind, the Tinkertoy Man, is out to prove that, yes, his buildings can leak more than Frank Gehry's!

Germany's Lüneburg university....

No! NO! It CAN'T be pronounced that way!

Posted 6:37 PM by Gene

Given this story when an ad says "Talk to Chuck" best talk to an attorney first.

(Via Marketwatch)

Posted 6:25 PM by Gene

This intense annoyance underlines the perils of NOW-ism, which we've seen in crushing abundance these last few days. Remember when Lucky was hothotHOT!!!!!? When every woman consulted it for the latest and greatest fashion and shopping hints? When the CRAINIACS named it their RAG OF THE YEAR? Now it is old, tired, ignored, a has-been leaking ad pages, and its publishers at SI-dom are whizzing around in a neurotic haze trying to figure out how to fix it; that they gas of making a "social shopping experience" out of its Web site says it might not be fixable. The problem with sensations is not IF they become passé, it's WHEN.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 6:20 PM by Gene

I am TIRED of seeing the world through news-hack 20/20, which is extreme nearsightedness. Nowhere is it more evident than in their beaming smiley-faced reporting on Rep. Giffords's condition. One reason that intolerable partisan bloviating on both sides makes us ache so intensely is because of her. And whatever the ASSPress says she is NOT dancing out of the hospital tomorrow. News hacks repeatedly demonstrate their scientific and medical ignorance and they're doing so now. At best, we fear, she is doomed to be Jim Brady -- a mental cripple, hopelessly dependent. We will not upset ourselves imagining worse. News hacks should abandon this don't-worry-be-happy routine for true anguish could follow if they're wrong. Nonetheless we pray to Almighty God she can fully recover, and as much as we can cut through the infernal hacks' daydreaming she has shown real strength, and her family has been a true inspiration in these last days -- far more than we can say for the scores of VILLAINS this psycho had to unleash upon us.

P. S. on 1/14/2011 at 10:00 p.m. Well, there is Bob Woodruff.

Perhaps I should not have said what I said but we must guard against false hope. Of course we ALL want the best, and pray for it.

Posted 3:46 PM by Gene

S&P, Moody’s caution on U.S. debt

Doe this mean His Omnipotence may not suddenly be our greatest president?

Posted 12:25 PM by Gene

PATRIOTISM IS THE LAST REFUGE OF A...screaming maniacal BIG C table pounder!

Posted 12:18 PM by Gene

America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality!!

ALL RIGHT, already, His Omnipotence made a BRILLIANT campaign speech. What gives us the willies is that hacks presume to write history. We have mentioned before that Warren Harding was called a brilliant orator. With a few obvious edits Om could have delivered the above oratorical immortality yesterday. We're not knocking Om but dammit I won't let these tone-deaf drones dictate to me what I'm to think, and by no sensible measure is Om a BRILLIANT speaker -- except, PERHAPS, in his delivery.

No one's saying it, but the hacks have that giddy we-rule-the-world feeling: the presidential campaign started yesterday.



And when will that blithering idiot DAVID GURGLE learn to STOP DANCING?

Posted 12:01 PM by Gene

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. Gen. Petraeus has done remarkable things but he does not deserve a fifth star. That should be reserved for the generals who led in cataclysms, like Ike or Gen. Marshall -- and Gen. Grant too.

Pundits said the same thing for Gen. Schwarzkopf, another fine general. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

Posted 10:22 AM by Gene

GLENN BECK BLAMES 'SPIDER-MAN' WOES ON LIBERAL THEATER CRITICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DAVID BROCK TELLS MATTHEWS: 'GLENN BECK HAS BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THREE THWARTED ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' [MediaBistro link] [Blame-worthy overemphasis added]

SHUT UP, BOTH OF YOU!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 7:15 PM by Gene

Well, one more post: Maybe if news hacks stop asking, DID SARAH PULL THE TRIGGER??????????, they could ask why "B- and C-list celebrities" tout penny stocks, but that would probably require approval from the GANG OF 27 -- and their answer would be NO.

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 6:13 PM by Gene

Finally -- and I meant to post this earlier, and I mean it in all seriousness -- you wonder if recent events haven't moved the Bunsen Honeydews of DoD to invent robotic Supermen to fly to the rescue, or portable force fields at rallies that would deflect bullets. We would remind our five readers of our post of three years back that pointed to the use of nanotube fibers to deflect bullets. As we said then, perhaps the Honeydews could "devise a means of implanting or grafting or cloning or whatever this material in humans, making bulletproof cops -- and ultimately bulletproof people.

"I'm excited too!!!!! -- at all the bullets that would fly."

Posted 5:54 PM by Gene

AIG plans to repay government on Friday

Another excuse for the Casino to go nuts -- but let us not forget the share price on this one either. Today it's $58.40. In late 2000, adjusted for its split, it was almost $2,074.

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

Poll: CONSERVATIVES not to blame for Ariz. shooting [Blameless overemphasis added]

When news hacks use polls as a sideways practical joke we think a one-party state press would be preferable.

And what do such polls prove? That each side has its identical crotchets. GANNETTOIDS, go back to running show-biz press releases and SUPER BOWL AD METER ads!

Clearly news hacks intend to drive us insane with this story, the better with which to assert their authoritarian control. The only faint glimmer of hope is that the public hasn't lost its senses.

Unfortunately GCI has come back from the happy days of $2, but it will NEVER see $90 again.

And so I make myself plain: Did SARAH PULL THE TRIGGER!!!!!!!!!!? No. Should the public dump her in the historical ash heap beside Huey Long and other political charlatans? Yes.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

SUPERADAM!!!!!'s site -- which we've stayed away from because yes, it too has the yips -- has created what may well be, and let us use His adjective, the GREATEST LISTICLE OF ALL TIME. I hate parlor games and this one's a parlor game to the nth. To have Robert A. M. Stern discuss architecture, or Frank Rich musicals, or Al Sharpton mayors, gives self-indulgence a bad name, and SUPERADAM!!!!! has so extravagantly indulged Himself that we think His LISTICLE will never be equaled. The only drawback is He didn't arrange it so as to quintuple the number of clickthroughs, which would have made the annoyance perfect.

BONO!!!!! Hire SUPERADAM!!!!!

Posted 4:40 PM by Gene

Very slowly, very gingerly, I'm wending back to the opinion sites. If I can find more like this just evisceration of the bowdlerizing of Huck Finn I should be okay.

Posted 4:32 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The news hacks' new hero-thug was a glorified anarchist, which will make it more difficult for them to whack us with their two-by-fours, but not impossible.

Posted 4:23 PM by Gene

Our distrust of the business hacks goes back long before they helped conspire in nearly destroying our economy with their fairy tales. That they continue to stink out the joint may be seen from the way they've "covered" Hef's business masterstroke. How does He intend to make money? With licensing? With PR0N? Who wants to read a rag frozen in 1955 (or, to be charitable, 1975)? How can a company with such dubious revenue streams pay off its debt? Yet the Emperor's courtiers kept oohing and aahing His raiment, and as with too much the hacks type, the truth will emerge without their copious help, with luck in a well-earned bankruptcy filing.

That's what gets me about news hacks: their blazing exaggeration, their urge to treat their heroes like a cure for cancer, and their villains like the bubonic plague.

Posted 4:07 PM by Gene

Continuing to write on the Arizona calamity is like beating your head against a wall. One thing's certain: I cannot overcome my distrust of nearly every prominent talking head. If they don't have ulterior motives they act it; they lecture us like retarded children, brandishing rhetorical two-by-fours; the most noxious make big money and rub our noses in it. I'm especially deflated to discover the millions of flowers blooming on the Web, the supposed antidote to their rhetorical thuggery, are mostly stinkweeds, differing only faintly from the smell. From here on out I must approach the Web as if entering a high-crime zone -- which in too many ways it already is.

This torture will soon end, to be replaced in time by an identical new one; what won't end is my belief that the organs of public opinion are against the public.

Posted 1:15 PM by Gene

We've found the source of those HUGE PROFITS!!!!! The Atlantic's boasting about: evidently lots of readers like wading through 5,609 WORDS to discover the obvious -- that modern KOLLEDGES (and especially DU-KIE UNIVERSITEEEEEEE!!!!!) may not be good for a young woman's mental health. (We wonder given that THE DU-KIES!!!!! bequeathed the world STANLEY "PE-EW!" FISH and a LACROSSE "RAPE" if it's good for anyone's mental health.) On days like these we'd almost prefer to read MR. MELLERDRAMMER cry, or throw a partisan tantrum.

Posted 11:42 AM by Gene

Awad: Market leaving no room for bad news

The Wall Street Casino banned it!

Posted 11:39 AM by Gene

And while ED MURROW ponders BUCHENWALD, ERIC SEVAREID makes a "documentary" -- on "indie" bands "selling out" to advertisers!

I don't know where the free press would be without you, fellows.

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

With Catholic kolledges secular in so many ways why should one be led by a priest?

Posted 11:08 AM by Gene

One solution to the problem of zillionaire loudmouths might be to get them to move some rubble in Haiti -- alas, it's too late for them to get the first honest work in their lives.

Posted 11:02 AM by Gene

And our NEW! IMPROVED!! PRESIDENT!!!'s the principal!

(We have avoided Politico.com too thanks to its yips -- once a day is enough)

Posted 10:54 AM by Gene

And the chasm between the professional anger makers will remain wide so long as Democrats believe in tax increases and no spending cuts, and Republicans believe in spending cuts and no tax increases, as is evidently the case in Illinois.

Posted 10:44 AM by Gene

Must anyone convince us friendships by electrons are not the real thing?

Posted 10:37 AM by Gene

This could be the next big fad in Corporate America: breakups -- and if so it makes one wonder why Corporate America had to buybuybuy if all that buying resulted in entities not worth the sum of their expensive parts.

Posted 10:26 AM by Gene

Another history lesson that must inflict itself on our loudmouths:

A century ago, yellow journalism ultimately burned itself out. But the tail end of that era is an object lesson that politicians and the media alike ought to be paying attention to now.

Both Hearst and Pulitzer made a sport of lambasting their political enemies, with Hearst’s New York Journal especially tormenting Republican President William McKinley. The paper ultimately even suggested—twice—that the president should be assassinated. As the paper put it in an unsigned April 1901 editorial: "If bad institutions and bad men must be got rid of only by killing, then the killing must be done.” The president was murdered five months later.

Neither Hearst nor Pulitzer ever fully recovered.

(Via the usual Romy; and we haven't yet directly turned to TINA's site because it too has outbreaks of the yips)

Posted 10:14 AM by Gene

Greed and envy at the home of America's leading news rags:

The bubble of post-bankruptcy euphoria has burst at American Media, publisher of the National Enquirer, Star, Men's Fitness and Muscle & Fitness.

President David Pecker, who delivered an upbeat speech to all employees after emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the end of December, has told all 400 employees that they must take a three-day unpaid furlough before the end of the current fiscal quarter on March 31.

"We are all being furloughed, from David to the mailroom," acknowledged spokeswoman Samantha Trenk. "It's a one-shot deal affecting every single person in the company."

Insiders were also up in arms this week when Chief Financial Officer Christopher Polimeni pulled into the employee parking lot in a brand new silver Corvette.

And insiders also noticed some language buried deep in the bankruptcy filing papers that allowed for an unspecified number of insiders to be rewarded with bonuses totaling $2.5 million for steering the company through bankruptcy.

Trenk said the two events -- the furlough and the bonus to top people -- were "completely unrelated."

Someone went to law school!

Posted 10:11 AM by Gene

NIKKI!!!!! "ZEIGFIELD" FINKE!!!!!, eternal trooper, gushes over another legendary "eight-figure" discovery -- an eighteen-year-old "heartthrob" whose face seems to have been designed by a videogame programmer! Well if that's what it takes to lure people to 3D....

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

And of course many of our public liars come from law schools, which seem to have done a bang-up job lying about their turnips' prospects.

Yes! Law schools are the advanced placement program!

P. S. Needless to say the late Useless News is involved:

And what about U.S. News? The editors could, but won’t unilaterally demand better data from law schools. “Do we have the power to do that? Yes, I think we do,” said Robert Morse [!!!!!], who oversees the law school rankings. “But we’d have to create a whole new definition of ‘employed,’ and it would be awkward if U.S. News imposed that definition by itself. It would be preferable if the A.B.A. took a leadership role in this.”

MORT ZUCK (Harvard Law, Class of 1962) says NOT MY PROBLEM!

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

And SARAH!!!!! should not have opened her big fat telegenic mouth because she doesn't know what a word is, and because she's a de facto organ of PILLHEAD, and all she does is start the round-robin screaming yet again.

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

We grieve that the only way to shut up the public idiots is to have a Webcam at Congresswoman Giffords's bedside -- and that would definitely NOT shut the PILLHEADS and KEITH Os up because they have no sense and no shame.

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

Is Congress Just High School For Grown-Ups?

Yes -- and The Paper of Re-CORD and The Daily Kaplan are the high-school paper, and PILLHEAD and KEITH O are the loudmouths who hog the PA every morning, and ED MURROW scribbles His brilliant satire in the boys room. And don't forget the food fights in the cafeteria. And then there are the proms where nerds boast of their trophy girlfriends and all the money they've spent.

High school is fun! Why would our superiors want to change it?

Posted 8:15 AM by Gene

The problems with the PIIGS are OVER!!!!! I think it's time for ANOTHER MASSACRE RALLY!!!!!

Posted 8:11 AM by Gene

The last of the TV Nelsons, David, has died. Fortunately TV IS BETTER THAN EVER!!!!!

Posted 10:51 PM by Gene

...to bind up the nation's wounds....

Ultimately if anyone can bind our nation's political wounds it is our president. Lincoln lives because his words set an immortal example of how a president can lead through the language. Our current president is a decent man, but as we've said over and over no recent president has led through words. And for a president to calm our boiling-over psyche he must be almost superhumanly brilliant in his language, and no agglomeration of speechwriters can help. The words must come from his heart, and while we've no doubt the president has good intentions that won't be enough.

The above-linked piece would not be possible without the frequently asinine, intolerably partisan coverage this story has received. We suspect it's running as a kind of mea culpa. However good its intentions this article's source cannot be believed as KAPLAN, INC. fought a civil war with itself, a war it LOST. Jake and his idle tendentious scribblers and the morons who run KAPLAN, INC. should be ashamed of themselves -- if news hacks can be.

Which reminds us -- where is Christopher Hitchens? We know he is gravely ill; we know also he is one of the few writers now capable of cutting through the crud. Where is he? And why has MICKEY kept silent on this matter? Where has he vaporized to?

Posted 3:44 PM by Gene

Speaking of Ed I commend to you this page from the U. S. Statistical Abstract, just released last week. It breaks down the population by age and sex. Read it and keep it in mind the next time someone does the Murrow routine, or invests PILLHEAD with superhuman powers. (I linked to both available formats, Excel and .pdf; take your pick.)

Posted 2:48 PM by Gene

ED MURROW DOES BUCHENWALD.

YOU SHUT UP TOO.

P. S. The real Ed Murrow reporting on the real Buchenwald. The closest the new ED MURROW has come to Buchenwald is when SUMNER almost paid him eighty quintahexazillioons instead of 200 gigaquintahexazillions.

Posted 10:28 AM by Gene

The strange thing about ROGER!!!!!!!!!!'s and PHIL!!!!!!!!!!'s profit centers is this -- from what we can gather they run ads more apt for public-access cable. I mean, how much money can you make from "NOW'S YOUR CHANCE TO GET INTO THE MARKET FOR GOLD!!!!!" and "AN INCREDIBLE TOENAIL-FUNGUS REMOVER!!!!!"? Here's the problem: as the vice-presidents of all the Madison Avenue-supporting fiefdoms in Corporate America know, advertising money is fungible. So these two frauds can afford the shills for MIRACLE VITAMIN JUICE MAKER!!!!! or whatever because they've filled their schedules with anodyne news shows crammed with mainstream ads. So the usual gang of idiots does pay for the screaming maniacs, and the fiefdoms can claim a benefit from a halo effect. In short, our money pays for factional incitement. It isn't enough then to call for boycotts of the maniacs; we must call for TOTAL BOYCOTTS of FOX!!!!!!!!!NEWS and the MESS.

And while we're at it, we should hurt the pocketbooks of SLIME and VERY LITTLER JEFFY and BRIAN ROBBER and LOWSY MAYS and every other grand corporate poohbah who'd encourage factional incitement.

Needless to say these don't have the proverbial snowball's chance in Hell of ever happening; but if the talk of the last few days is to be more than a corrupt nation's severe bout with flatulence we should TAKE OUR MONEY FROM WHERE THEIR MOUTHS ARE.

P. S. from last November 5:

Mr. Olbermann's "Countdown" program drew $13.1 million in the first eight months of 2010, according to Kantar Media, up slightly from the nearly $12.4 million "Countdown" drew in the year-earlier period. Many advertisers on the cable-news channels make deals that place their commercials across specific parts of the day – early morning or prime-time, for instance- rather than only in certain shows. In 2009, MSNBC took in approximately $131.5 million in ad revenue, according to Kantar.

Like other TV-news programs, Mr. Olbermann's top sponsors hail largely from the pharmaceutical industry, which often pitches its wares at the older spectrum of TV watchers. For the first ten months of 2010, "Countdown's" top sponsors included Pfizer Inc., Eli Lilly & Co, and Nissan, according to Kantar Media. [Emphasis added]

While we're not so certain now about the sponsorships -- and we'd watch the screaming maniacs only if someone paid us what GLENN!!!!!!!!!! and KEITH!!!!!!!!!! make, combined -- this affirms what we said about the sneakiness of the fiefdoms, and their desire to sponsor insulting programming without appearing to sponsor it.

And we must say we understand Big Pharma's desire to finance the screaming maniacs; if they can inspire enough disease among potentially vulnerable viewers that means more pills to sell.

Posted 10:16 AM by Gene

For all the ROGER!!!!!!!!!!s and PHIL GRIFFIN!!!!!!!!!!s and their zillionaire screaming maniacs who are launching millions of screaming comments from zombie followers on untold Web sites, at least this catastrophe caused one anchorman to open up with great anguish about his late schizophrenic son, so it might not be a total national loss.

(Today's the day for Romy!)

Posted 9:46 AM by Gene

"I told ALL of our guys, SHUT UP, TONE IT DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (Quiet overemphasis added)

ROG, you are OFFICIALLY on our S-LIST.

(Also via the usual Romy)

Posted 9:41 AM by Gene

If The Econowiz is so gee-whiz-gosh-golly-wham-bang better than anything else why is it selling itself for $1 an issue?

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

PresidAHnt Ke-RRRRY declares FRAHNCE our CLOSEST ALLY!

Wait -- he isn't president?

(Caveat -- THE DAILY MAIL!!!!!)

Posted 9:26 AM by Gene

It is easy to forget, in the absurdity of our democratic system, that the people running the show can actually behave as a plurality of the American people want them to behave, responsibly, protectively with more than a particular ideological, personal or professional advantage in mind. It is easy to forget that these men and women who dominate our newscasts are not as rotten as they seem. They just want desperately to win, and feel forced to play the role.

For once, and for the first time in ages, our superiors may be almost as good as the people.

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

"I do wish we could all go comment-free for 24 hours. How about we just pray and be quiet?"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMEN!

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

Buyout Firms Are Set for a Selling Spree

MARKET TOP?!? Pfffffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

Shucks, those b-U-tee-ful uniforms didn't work.

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

Okay, at what point do The Onion's parody shows become "utterly self-absorbed" and "egocentric"? Look at ED MURROW's.

Posted 8:53 PM by Gene

We will conclude tonight with one small section of the partisan sphere where calmness and compassion prevail:

It should go without saying that most mentally ill people are not violent—and that those who are violent might not be if they received appropriate treatment. But, too often, they don't get it. And that's when tragedies occur.

Was this such an instance? Was the Arizona gunman among those the mental health system left out? If so, might a stable, coordinated care environment have offered effective treatment—the kind that might have changed his behavior and, in so doing, spared the victims of yesterday’s violence? If so, were there missed opportunities—and who or what missed them?

After a major disaster, like an airliner crash or terrorist incident, we conduct thorough investigations to determine what caused the tragedy and how we might avoid another one like it. This occasion calls for a similar response. We may never know whether a better mental health care system would have averted this massacre. But we can be sure that it would avert some future ones.

Posted 8:44 PM by Gene

D.C. fundraisers canceled in wake of Arizona shootings

SO? You'll get hyperbolically mad later, and wallow in ill-gotten dough later.

Posted 8:44 PM by Gene

Perhaps if our superiors weren't so busy seeing to it that their respective enemies get killed, they could tend to the business of governing, something sorely lacking lately. Like him or not, like his plan or not, Jerry Brown is attempting to govern California -- and it won't be easy.

Posted 7:51 PM by Gene

Even after SARAH PALIN PULLED THE TRIGGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, sad news from the realm of professional -- baloney makers:

NASHVILLE, TENN. – The Executive Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists voted Saturday to recommend that the organization retire the Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement. The recommendation, which will be sent to the full board of directors within the next 10 days for a vote, states that the award will be retired with Thomas’ name attached.

Elsewhere in the world of bullhockey, KAPLAN, INC. can't make up Its mind on whoever it was who pulled the trigger, or whatever caused it to be pulled -- and unfortunately the indecision occurred on a day the market was very decided about what KAPLAN, INC.'S PRINCIPAL BUSINESS is.

The schmuck Kos, the schmuck Breitbart -- this is why I've avoided parts of the Web these last few days, and why I may have to avoid them a while longer.

(First link via the usual Romy)

Posted 6:12 PM by Gene

Courtesy of our friends at GE BANCORP we've spent the last hour beholding a West Philly apartment building on fire, spectacularly so -- ghetto housing probably from the Great War, perhaps a nice place once, and despite relatively solid walls and perhaps a steel frame made almost exclusively of wood, we guess, and the whole thing roaring to death. The conflagration seems to have traveled the building from west to east, borne on a stiff wind. We imagine this times a thousand during the Chicago Fire or the San Francisco earthquake. The firefighters (as they must) fight such battles by remote control, and the flames laugh at their puny streams of water, belching smoke as they laugh. I salute the forces of fire extinguishment on occasions like this; theirs is a thankless task, made more so by buildings almost designed for self-destruction.

Posted 3:43 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Another food fad.

Posted 3:27 PM by Gene

The bad news is Vivendi is sloughing off a huge chunk of its back catalog to our guvment -- we presume for a HUGE tax break. And there's no guarantee it will be made available without charge. The marginally good news is if the Library of Congress knows what it's doing (questionable) it will free something from copyright's tyranny.

Posted 3:19 PM by Gene

How do you know it's AHTSJournal?

When someone says, "[Fill in the blank] are doing a rotten job!"

Or "[Movies, theater, jazz, ballet, etc. etc.] stinks!"

Like today!

And how do you further know it's AHTSJournal?

But although he refuses to single out those he targets for criticism, two contemporaries he excludes from that list are British conductor Sir Simon Rattle and the French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez. He described them as "real masters" of their art.

When the fierce iconoclastic critic hedges his bets!

Posted 1:35 PM by Gene

What are the odds instead of making jokes ED MURROW, all but dressed up in a tuxedo, begs of His audience -- STOP THE MADNESS...NOW!!!!!?

And what are the odds He prefaces that with a two-word proper noun with words of five letters each?

By rights His audience should still laugh hysterically.

Besides it's the only way to top PILLHEAD and His DEMOCRAT gag. DO IT!

Posted 1:22 PM by Gene

OooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooh, the SIMPLETONS and IDIOTS of 60 Minutes got the GAMING industry's new spokesman EDDIE mad because a SIMPLETON or IDIOT kept asking about GAMING ADDICTION!

Remember gov -- BIG BUCKS -- and YOU don't have to hold YOUR tongue!

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 11:50 AM by Gene

US journalists back away from WikiLeaks founder [Romy link]

GASP! Freedom of the press acquires a third left foot!

Also in Romy:

Politico had more than 50 reporters "fully engaged" on the story

NO COMMENT.

Posted 9:44 AM by Gene

OH oh, guess who's back in the news -- Portugal!

We thought we'd banned it!

"The level of contagion in the euro zone periphery is higher than in the run-up to the Irish bailout in late November," noted Valentin Marinov, a currencies analyst at Citigroup in London.

That should at least DOUBLE the DOW!

Posted 9:37 AM by Gene

Although upgrading the level of political discourse may be much needed and changes in gun laws (whether stricter or more permissive) may be argued, these steps will likely not make a shred of difference in term of the incidence of mass murder. Mass killers, though often delusional, are deliberate and determined. They seek revenge against specific individuals, or against society as a whole, in large part regardless of whatever social policies we put in place.

Short of rounding up all the guns and all of those who spew angry epithets or appear psychologically unstable, senseless episodes like the Tucson shooting will likely continue to occur. Mass murder is but one of the difficult and unfortunate prices that we pay for our freedoms.

It would have been nice if we'd had statistics for the years before our own, and we might have worded the last sentence a little differently as we can always work abortion into it, but this is as close to a common sense approach as we can get, and the whole piece underlines why such disasters are a never-ending source of torment, especially when the hacks can obsess on them to no end, for no reason.

Posted 9:09 AM by Gene

NYSE plans 11 a.m. ET moment of silence

The moral equivalent of the moment of silence the croupiers observed when Howard Hughes died.

And what is a moment of silence but the aural equivalent of a yellow ribbon?

P. S.

According to one popular misconception -- evidently a by-product of the 1949 John Wayne film "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," in which the female lead did just that to express her undying love for a cavalry officer -- the custom originated during or just after the American Civil War. But even though the motif of that film, not to mention its title and theme song, derived from a folk ballad dating back hundreds of years in different versions, there is no historical evidence that Americans of the Civil War period (or any period since, through the mid-20th century) actually wore yellow ribbons to express such sentiments.

The fact is, according to research published by the late Gerald E. Parsons, longtime librarian of the Folklife Reading Room of the Library of Congress, the custom didn't exist at all before 1980, when the idea of displaying yellow ribbons in honor of the 52 Americans held hostage by Iranian militants seemingly emerged from nowhere and took the country by storm -- a tribute said to be indirectly inspired by the popular song "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree," composed in 1972, which in turn was inspired by an oral folktale circulating since the 1950s (for the particulars, see Gerald Parsons' essay: "Yellow Ribbons: Ties with Tradition"). [Emphasis added]

TRANSLATION: The yellow ribbon is a symbol of national defeat -- just like a moment of silence.

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

If THE WORLD'S MOST TRUSTED NEWS ORGANIZATION can make (get out your hearts-'n'-flowers tear jerking) "A SERIOUS AND GRAVE ERROR", why should we believe ANYBODY?

Between this and the Juan Williams debacle NPNTR has grown so much in love with the sound of its own baronial voice it's gone DEAF.

I think it's time for MUSIC TO FEEL VASTLY SUPERIOR TO FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!NEWS BY!

Posted 8:27 AM by Gene

Though gloomy and exasperated last night we took some small solace knowing The Dog-Fightin' QB lost his RSVP to the Super Bowl. While it was entertaining to watch the locals twist themselves into insuperable knots justifying his depravity we nonetheless think many fans would as actively root against him as against The Golfing Sex Machine. Their rooting may well have been answered. One can forgive an obvious fool like Plexi -- PLAXICO his stupidity, but even the die-hards who bleed green must confess that an animal killer may not be so easily forgiven.

Posted 8:31 PM by Gene

And lest we forget:

First Shots Of Civil War Fired 150 Years Ago Today

There was a reenactment too. Will anything from our time be worth reenacting in 150 years?

Posted 8:26 PM by Gene

Back in '74, Andreas van Kuijk, needing kuijk cash to help Kirk Kerkorian finance another six hotels on the Vegas Strip, released an all-talking record album of his cash cow Elvis in concert -- all-talking so he could chisel Elvis's piano-banging hacks and his tone-deaf label RCA out of royalties. Supposedly the King (who unfortunately started to resemble a cow at this time) got mad, though most likely he never did as his career was beyond caring. Since then the album, acclaimed as the worst of all time, has spawned four bootleg kissin' cousins, meaning over three hours of this sucker supposedly having fun on stage, and God knows how many more lurk in vaults and bedrooms. For the Elvis impersonators these should be the veritable motherlode. Anyone can do "Hound Dog"; who can do Elvis forgetting the lyrics to "Auld Lang Syne" in Pontiac, Michigan on New Year's Eve? There are so many shticks here the impersonator wouldn't even have to know how to sing. The first-rate Elvis impersonator must do the following:

Introduce yourself as Johnny Cash, Dean Martin, anyone to make people forget it's you in that skin-tight jump suit that's about to rip.

Remember that every audience is the most incredible, and to tell them that with a mix of unction and disdain.

Force J. D. Sumner to make an ass of himself singing as low a note as possible.

Make fun of your backing crew's names. "That's Tutt and that's Schiff. Tutt Schiff any way you look at it." (SIC!)

Announce at least three times during every concert variations on, "You know what I can't do?" -- followed by a ten-chord piano vamp and a rimshot, followed by, "Sing and drink water at the same time." (He sometimes called it "wawa.")

Remind the screaming ladies demanding a kiss that you passed the "creeping crud" onto one of them the night before.

Mock the screaming ladies by letting loose with a wild yakety-yak noise, and hope it's them you're imitating.

Drop the names of the half-a-dozen bigwigs in the audience who are paying you tribute though some of them don't seem so big anymore.

Sing a haunting blues called "Well Well Well Well Well Well Well", which somehow Elvis didn't have the brains to copyright after van Kuijk issued the album.

If you're desperate, mention van Kuijk by his pseudonym. That's always good for a laugh. (Evidently people held van Kuijk in contempt long before anyone knew who he was.)

Remind the patrons that Bob Dylan slept in your mouth.

And don't forget, if you're adding sound effects, as you should -- the polite applause is for Vegas. The screaming ladies are for the road.

And of course you can't be an Elvis impersonator in good standing unless you know the name of van Kuijk's production company, the one that herded its cash cow all across America (but NOT overseas. Wonder why?): All Star Shows. How apt.

P. S. Van Kuijk originally issued this on his one-shot Boxcar label before RCA foolishly acquired it. The man had some imagination, didn't he?

(Originally posted at 12:25 p. m.; moved so I could try to forget the civil war of talk that commenced yesterday)

Posted 7:56 PM by Gene

This will sound exceedingly crass but given that our superiors have evidently decided to turn yesterday's catastrophe into a political food fight to end all food fights, we must ask -- how would the massacre look on an economic impact statement? It is not pleasant to contemplate that it might be exceedingly profitable -- starting with the millions to be spent (and made) on tending to the dead and wounded, long-term nursing assistance, police protection and other ancillary actions, and ascending to the many millions political screaming meemies like GEORGE SOROS will raise to declare a permanent state of war on their cold-blooded ENEMIES, the conservatives and Republicans WHO PULLED THE TRIGGER, and the many millions conservatives and Republicans will raise to fight back with their own blatherskite; and the many many more millions to be made by cable "news" organizations in "reporting" it -- and SLIME and PEPE LE PEW BEWKES and LOUSY MAYS and BRIAN ROBBER will make the money as big as possible by turning this into a long-term fixation. (And not just cable; Politico.com will be off the scale for WEEKS.) We cringe to say this but we think such a massacre is a net economic positive. Would BRIAN WILLIAMS and LITTLE JEFFY have plastered that damned NBC NEWS logo over their exclusive video if they didn't see big profits? All things considered, yesterday will prove extremely profitable -- except for the people, who lose things beyond mere money, like trust in their leaders, or hope for the future.

Posted 3:54 PM by Gene

"We live in a world of violent images and violent words, but those of us in public life ... should be thoughtful in response to this," the Senate majority whip said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday. "We owe it to our own in both political parties to at least have the good sense and common decency ... to say, 'Wait a minute that just goes too far,' whether it's from the right or the left."

TRANSLATION: America hangs its head in shame for one second, and then knee-jerk conservatives go back to being knee-jerk conservatives, and knee-jerk liberals go back to being knee jerk liberals, and PILLHEADS and KEITH Os go back to screaming for profit, and the whole angry cycle gets worse.

But now that it is coming to light that this may have been an anti-Semitic hate crime maybe the PILLHEADS and KEITH Os will quiet the attack dogs -- for a few minutes.

FURTHER TRANSLATION: SARAH!!!!! will raise her speaking fees; and Dick probably has trouble saying such well-meaning truisms without needing to suppress a giggle, although he's been at it long enough he doesn't have to worry.

And TOMORROW, PILLHEAD will grieve on the outside while bloating, "THE DEMOCRAT PARTY'S TRYING TO SUPPRESS...." And KEITH will pretend something close to a crying jag while finding someone eminently worthy of being shot.

And ED MURROW's three executive producers and two hundred writers are busy working on His jokes, and there will be jokes, and He is crass enough to joke -- and His audience has the laughs rehearsed.

A PLAGUE O' ALL YOUR HOUSES!!!!!

Posted 12:13 PM by Gene

I'm comprehensively avoiding the opinion sites today as they'll be a mix of revulsion and finger pointing. In this regard I must also cut back on Newser, a condescendingly partisan site at its worst, and on Business Insider, which is dominated by some high-decibel weather vane named Wiesenthal and runs some of the stupidest comments of any site. I always avoid WALTER WINCHELL!!!!! and MS. BIG PROFITS! as I know they're mirror images of each other's shrillness, and they talk down to their audiences too. I've followed the news by Web for fifteen years and have never found relief from its constant banshee scream, and you can't find the news anywhere without it, and no news organization is above-the-fray trustworthy so you could rely on it and escape the screaming. I must take an occasional vacation from the Web, for my sanity's sake.