This may be

one of the smartest things I've read in a while.

Even if

you're not much of a fan of South Park, I highly recommend the episode they re-aired last night on Comedy Central, ManBearPig. (Wikipedia description here.)

Aside from the usual gross ending (which as a guy I found pretty funny anyway), the episode was a lovely, beautiful, entertaining skewer of Al Gore. I enjoyed myself immensely.

Headline silliness

This one from the Christian Science Monitor cracked me up:

Palestinians in Gaza worry about becoming the 'forgotten war'

Oh, poor baby. Nobody remembers you kidnapped Israeli citizens, murdering one, and now the Israelis are dismantling your pile of rubble. That dingbat Abbas reportedly said "But it's more than that. We're the forgotten war. [Monday], there were seven Palestinians killed in Gaza. Does anybody know that?"

Sniff sniff.

Don't worry, pal. Israel hasn't forgotten. I haven't forgotten. I'm pretty sure you'll get what's coming to you, as soon as the Northern fracas is settled. Your Palestinians are being killed because you keep firing rockets into Israel and murdering their citizens. You wanted to be your own country? You want to commit acts of war? This is what you reap. Sorry if you're not the focus of everyone's attention, but they'll get to you when the time comes.

I am alive

for anyone wondering. I keep meaning to sit down & write, but other stuff and occasional work intervene.

Lots of stuff is going on around here, including masses of emails going back & forth. Those may be muddying the already murky waters around here, but I feel like we may be on the edge of clarifying roles and responsibilities. If we can all start pulling our oars in the same direction, we may get somewhere. There's also some potential good news coming, put I'm keeping my cards to the vest until I know more. Don't bother staying tuned - the way things sometimes go here, no updates are coming anytime soon.

We've got my nephew's Bar Mitzvah coming up this weekend, which has led to the sorts of family nonsense that always accompanies such occasions. I love my family, and I'd like to spend time with them, but certain blood relatives are being unnecessarily difficult. The actual celebrants, my brother & sister in law, and the Bar Mitzvah boy, are not the difficult ones. Add to that annoying neighbors who think my nearly 40 year old brother is incapable of running his own party, and there's a bit of tension around. Nevertheless, we will go and enjoy, and I told my brother that our goal is to avoid adding to his stress level.

We're on our way south next week for a conference/visit with the friends, so it should be nice to get away. I may bring my laptop, in which case there could be some ConferenceBlogging. Updates as necessary.

Librarians & the War Effort

Leaving aside the usual lefty/communist efforts of the library community to undermine our attempts to kill terrorists, there are still some out there doing their bit.

Check out the Corps of Engineers, and long-distance reference work. Now that's good service.

Talk about

Team Turmoil. As a Ranger fan, this sort of thing warms my heart. I'm delighted to see the Icelanders totally, utterly confused and inept.

As a hockey fan, I cannot imagine what is possessing Charles Wang. GM by committee is a ridiculous idea, and Smith's abilities as Rangers GM were mostly his own. He drafted well, mostly traded & signed free agents well (with the notable exception of letting Messier go in 1997, which was horrendous). He was clearly a guy determined to be the man in charge, which is why Mike Keenan was fired right after the cup win.

I think Smith is a tough guy to work with, but I think he did his job well. Hiring your own backup goalie as GM strikes me as odd, and asking him to negotiate with his own teammates is going to get weird. Whatever - nice for hockey to make the back cover of the paper in the summertime.

A Certain News Network

is reporting on its front page, under a big banner headline, the subhead:

• Several suspected Hezbollah rockets hit the northern Israeli city of Haifa

Umm, suspected? They suspect they are rockets? Or suspect they come from Hezbollah? Why not just call them "alleged rockets," as if these are merely accused of being large, rocket propelled, flying explosives? Aimed at regular people?

The whole thing is belied a bit by the following subhead, which follows immediately below:

• Israel has closed the Haifa port due to Hezbollah rocket attacks, Reuters reports

Shouldn't that be suspected attacks? As if there might be some other country lobbing bombs at Israel? I guess the "Reuters reports" is supposed to cover the alleged combatants as they allegedly try to kill civillians.

I don't expect better from See Enn Enn, but the idea that there might be folks who still think that Israel should sit back and take it still makes me sad. Not that I don't expect it by now, but you'd think that people would accept that as a sovereign nation, Lebanon is responsible for the actions of members of their ruling coalition. And that rockets over an international border are an act of war.

But I guess that's a bit too much to ask, certainly from the keepers of the truth of the brave, honest fourth estate.

In other, more interesting news

my co-religionists are set to take over the NYPD. (Registration may be required, and they'll probably take the article down in a week or so.)

I'd like to say

that I have posted tons of stuff, and it all got eaten. I'd like to say I've been traveling the world, with no internet access. I'd like to say I've been kidnapped by Martians.

The fact is, I can't say any of those things. I have been absolutely, utterly swamped the last few weeks with work to do. Some of it is what I get paid for (supposedly), most of it is stuff I've been asked to do. Add to that the company has issued "no ball playing on the internet" edicts, and I've been a little leery of spending massive amounts of time composing garbage for you to read.

I guess I sometimes lose my taste for blogging, especially when I'm solving other people's crises. Suffice it to say I am well, healthy, and typing this on a spankin' new IBM Lenovo ThinkCentre [ed. aside I don't know why a PC sold in the US, assembled from Japanese parts by some indentured servant in China, needs a British/Canadian spelled name, but I guess that's globalization for you. ] I finally got someone here to cough up some dough for me, as I was down, professionally, to my last $600, which was supposed to last me forever. So I spent a chunk of it on a new PC with 2GB !!!!!! of RAM, a UPS backup, and a flat screen.

So I may not be participating in the blogosphere, but at least I'm doing it in style.