sundries

[rm]

Did you blog about the "Fan Reactions to Character Death" panel at Gally? If so, please link me to it; I'd like to do a roundup.

It's super good to be home. Claudette (who we may be renaming Cricket) is a lot more confident and Pretty seems happier although there is occasional hissing. Meanwhile, Patty is the awesome.

Opening to weirdest email I've written in a long time: "Dear Virgin America: I was on flight VX 406 out of LAX yesterday, and -- and I know this is bizarre -- there were ants on it."

Looks like Saturday mail delivery may be doomed again.

Chilean quake may have shortened earth's days.

A nation's condolence book: Letters to Jackie.

For those of you not paying attention to the sheer WTFery in New York State, we've gone from an ineffectual state government run by legislators who can't agree on anything and never ever get voted out (even the guy who slashed his girlfriend's face and then got censured and kicked out of office by the rest of the senate -- he's now suing AND running for reelection; I'm not even kidding) and a governor who came to power due to the former governor's sex scandal to a state government that can't get anything done because of all of the above and the fact that now it turns out that that governor interceded to try to stop the ex-gf of one of his aides from pressing her own domestic violence charges. FAIL.

Ford, meanwhile, has, thankfully, decided not to run for Senate in NY, because wow, we have enough problems.

A novel about healthscare in America.

Haven't gotten through it yet, and sure to be a matter of controversy: Depression's Upside.

The legacy of Jew Süss.

"On the Internet, the First Amendment is a local ordinance."

On the Internet, I would also argue that everyone is a potential reality TV show. Which is a little scary. You wouldn't believe the ideas I come up with and cull.

Me as Jack; redstapler as Reinette:

Comments

[drfardook.livejournal.com]

The Ford campaign baffles and infuriates me. I wonder who sat Ford down and told him they had a room full of well funded, heroin addicted opposition researchers who would be denied their armful of sunshine unless they tore Ford into bite sized pieces. He didn't seem inclined to end his campaign on his own no matter how badly the public was receiving him.

I'm sure the line about not wanting to have the winner come out of the democratic primary so badly damaged that they would be knocked out by the GOP candidate waiting on the sidelines was not his own.

[jackolantern.livejournal.com]

My guess is that Merrill Lynch told him that if he lost, his $1 million job (the duties of which I've never heard described in any detail) wouldn't be waiting for him. As far as public reaction goes, he probably went for a while on the hope that, if only people got to know him, they'd love him so much more than Gillibrand. (I know that's not a lot to go on, but this is someone who managed to change a lot of people's opinions of him even though he got elected to the House straight out of law school and purely on the strength of his family's political machine; I was living in Memphis at the time, and I was one of those who hoped that Junior might be the one decent Ford in the whole bunch.)