'TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
DeLay's Dirty Dozen (Think Progress; Posted on Alternet)
A scandalous round-up of Tom DeLay's flagrant trespasses against decency.
Rachel Kramer Bussel: Casual-Sex Myths (Village Voice)
Harmless hookups offer hot no-strings action, but still get a bad rap
Candace Moore: Lily Tomlin's Evolutionary Career (afterellen.com)
"If evolution was worth its salt, it should've evolved something better than 'survival of the fittest,'" muses Trudy, Lily Tomlin's wisecracking bag lady in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, "I think a better idea would be 'survival of the wittiest.' At least, that way, creatures that didn't survive could've died laughing.
Jack Boulware: Bill Hicks, the black-humored articulator of doubt (Salon)
One of America's best and darkest comedians is eight years gone, but with a new biography and a new CD, his career shows no signs of stopping.
Sean Gonsalves: Say Hello to the New PC (AlterNet)
The new PC is about doling out Scarlet Letters through public moralistic scrutiny of individual private behavior with little or no concern for matters of public interest or institutional morality.
ROGER EBERT: 'Millions' writer wins "lottery"
An Interview with Frank Cottrell Boyce
Protect Free Speech
Thank or Spank Your Senators
The Two Faces of Bush
Reader Reminder
March 19
March 19: End the War - Rebuild Our Communities
Happening in Pittsburgh. If no one has sent to you, thought you might be interested.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny morning, overcast afternoon.
Gotta buy the kid another backpack for school. It'll be the 3rd one this year.
Since there are no longer lockers (except in the gym), the kids have to carry all their books (& jackets & stuff) all day, like little untrustworthy pack animals.
Yes, I realize the 'danger' with lockers, but what about the danger of teaching kids they can't be trusted?
Montana Man Arrested
Letterman Plot
A painter working at David Letterman's Montana ranch was charged Thursday with plotting to kidnap the talk-show host's toddler son and nanny and hold them for $5 million ransom.
Kelly A. Frank, 43, was being held on a felony charge of solicitation, among others.
According to the affidavit filed by Teton County Attorney Joe Coble, Frank had told the acquaintance that he knew Letterman and his family would be visiting their Montana home soon, and that Frank had a key to the house, knew where the baby slept and intended to kidnap the nanny "so that she could take care of the child."
The acquaintance contacted authorities Sunday, according to the affidavit. Sheriff George Anderson told the weekly Choteau Acantha newspaper that Frank was arrested the following morning at another area ranch where he was working. Anderson did not return phone calls to The Associated Press seeking comment.
Letterman Plot
Gets British Gig
Jerry Springer
Tabloid TV king Jerry Springer is to host a daytime talk show on British television, producers announced Thursday.
Commercial network ITV said Springer would present a morning show for a monthlong run in May or June. The program will fill the slot vacated by "Trisha," a long-running British chat show.
ITV said the new show would be tamer than Springer's trashy U.S. program, which is famous for raucous audiences and raunchy topics such as "Pregnant by a Transsexual" and "I Married A Horse."
Jerry Springer
Wolfowitz Discusses World Bank Mission
Bono
Paul Wolfowitz, whose nomination as World Bank president has stirred controversy, discussed poverty and development issues with Irish rock star Bono in two phone conversations on Thursday, an adviser said.
Wolfowitz adviser Kevin Kellems told Reuters the deputy U.S. defense secretary initiated the lengthy conversations with the lead singer of the rock group U2, whose name had been bandied about for the World Bank presidency.
Resident Bush on Wednesday named Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, to be the next World Bank president, but the choice has been controversial, especially in Europe.
An endorsement by Bono, who campaigns extensively for African aid and debt relief, could defuse some of the criticism of Wolfowitz.
Bono
NY Met Acquires Early Photo Archive
The Gilman Collection
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art said on Thursday it had acquired 8,500 photographs collected by industrialist Howard Gilman, whose archive it said had helped define the history of photography.
The collection includes American Civil War pictures by Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan, as well as work by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray.
The collection was put together between 1977 and 1997 by Gilman, the chairman of the Gilman Paper Company, who together with his curator Pierre Apraxine sought out iconic and classic works from the 19th century and early 20th century.
The Gilman Collection
May Split Into Two Companies
Viacom
Frustrated with a languishing stock price, media conglomerate Viacom Inc. announced late Wednesday that it is considering a plan to split into two companies to allow investors to value its businesses separately.
A breakup of the New York-based media company, whose properties include CBS, MTV, VH1 and the Paramount movie studio, would also solve the question of who would succeed Sumner Redstone as CEO. The company said it would provide more details on its plans in the second quarter.
Confirming a report on The Wall Street Journal's Web site, Viacom said late Wednesday it was exploring a plan that would split the company into two separate entities: One anchored by its fast-growing cable networks such as MTV, led by longtime MTV chief Tom Freston; and another built around the broadcast television businesses that would be run by CBS head Les Moonves.
Viacom
Convicted of Perjury
Lil' Kim
Rap diva Lil' Kim was convicted Thursday of lying to a federal grand jury to protect friends who were involved in a shootout outside a radio station.
Lil' Kim was convicted of three counts of perjury and one of conspiracy, but acquitted of obstruction of justice. She is likely to be sentenced to several years in prison - a maximum of five years for each count - at her June 24 sentencing.
The former sidekick and mistress of the late Notorious B.I.G., known for her revealing outfits and raunchy raps, testified that she didn't notice two close friends at the scene of the 2001 gun battle - her manager, Damion Butler, and Suif "Gutta" Jackson. Both men have since pleaded guilty to gun charges.
Lil' Kim
Book Recalls Forced Sex
Jane Fonda
In her new autobiography, Jane Fonda says her former husband Roger Vadim forced her into sexual encounters, a British newspaper reported.
The book, "My Life So Far," is to be published next month by Random House. Leaked excerpts describe Vadim bullying Fonda into inviting other women into bed, as well as other lurid situations created by Vadim, the Daily Mail reported Wednesday.
Fonda, 67, was married to the French director from 1965 to 1973. She was his third wife of five, which included actress Brigitte Bardot, his first spouse. He died in 2000.
Jane Fonda
$18 Candles
Smell Like Jesus
You can find candles with just about every fragrance imaginable, from blueberry to ocean mist to hot apple pie.
Now there's a candle that lets you experience the scent of Jesus, and they've been selling out by the case.
Light up the candle called "His Essence" and its makers say you'll experience the fragrance of Christ.
"It's a Messianic Psalm referring to when Christ returns and his garments will have the scent of myrrh, aloe and cassia," says Karen Tosterud.
The candles sell for about $18. They are sold in about 150 stores around the country.
Smell Like Jesus
Best-Seller In Turkey
'Mein Kampf'
Cheap cover prices and a rise in nationalist sentiment have made an unlikely best-seller in Turkey of Adolf Hitler's infamous autobiography, "Mein Kampf", analysts here say.
Since January, the book has sold more than 50,000 copies and is number four on the best-seller list drawn up by the DetR bookstore chain.
"'Mein Kampf' has always been a sleeper, a secret best-seller," said Oguz Tektas of Mefisto editions, one of several publishing houses to re-release the book Hitler wrote while in jail in 1925. "We took it out of the closet for purely commercial reasons."
But despite what the sales may imply, Turkey has never been an anti-Semitic country -- on the contrary, it has been a safe haven for Jews ever since the 15th century, when Sultan Bayezit II first took in Spanish Jews fleeing the inquisition.
'Mein Kampf'
Sparks Bomb Alert at Postoffice
Sex Doll
A blow-up sex doll sparked a bomb alert in a German post office after it started to vibrate inside a package awaiting delivery, police said Wednesday.
"Workers were unsettled when it began vibrating and made strange noises," a spokesman for police in the eastern city of Chemnitz said. "They were worried the package might be a bomb."
Officers brought the sender to the scene and discovered the source of alarm was an electrical device inside a life-size female sex doll. The man told police he had wanted to return the doll because it kept turning itself on at the wrong moment.
Sex Doll
Cut Backs In Buffalo
BYOTP
It was BYOTP time in Buffalo: Bring Your Own Toilet Paper. A county budget crisis left the bathrooms in a municipal office building with empty soap dispensers, paperless paper towel holders and bare cardboard toilet paper rolls. Employees also complained the bathrooms weren't being cleaned.
The county, on the eastern shore of Lake Erie, is home to nearly 1 million people and encompasses the city of Buffalo, the weathered city that has struggled to rebuild its economy since the steel and grain mills closed down. Since the 1950s, the city has lost half its population and now numbers fewer than 300,000 people.
The county has had to slash 2,000 jobs and cut services to close a $100 million-plus shortfall in its $1.1 billion budget.
Rather than raise the sales tax, it cut funding for personnel, health clinics, auto bureaus, snowplowing, parks, the arts, school nurses and others services. At one point, it was possible that zoo animals would become refugees, temporarily shipped off to other zoos for lack of funding. The county came up with the money to keep the animals home.
BYOTP
In Memory
Mary Elizabeth 'Betsy' Cronkite
Mary Elizabeth "Betsy" Cronkite, the wife of former CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite, died Tuesday, the newsman's assistant said Wednesday. She was 89.
She died of complications of cancer at the couple's Manhattan apartment, said the assistant, Julie Sukman.
Walter Cronkite met Mary Elizabeth Maxwell while they were working at radio station KCMO in Kansas City, Mo. They married in 1940, and shortly afterward she became women's editor of the Kansas City Journal-Post.
While her husband was overseas reporting for United Press during much of World War II, she worked for Hallmark, publishing a company newspaper that also was distributed to members of the armed forces, Sukman said.
At the end of the war, she joined her husband in Brussels, Belgium, and later accompanied him to Moscow, where he worked for two years as chief correspondent for UP. The couple eventually moved to New York. He joined CBS in 1950.
Mary Elizabeth 'Betsy' Cronkite
In Memory
Andre Norton
Science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton, who wrote the popular Witch World series, has died. She was 93.
Her death was announced by friend Jean Rabe, who said Norton died Thursday of congestive heart failure at her home in Murfreesboro, a Nashville suburb. Norton requested before her death that she not have a funeral service, but instead asked to be cremated along with a copy of her first and last novels.
Born Alice Mary Norton on Feb. 17, 1912, in Cleveland, she wrote more than 130 books in many genres during her career of nearly 70 years. She used a pen name - which she made her legal name in 1934 - because she expected to be writing mostly for young boys and thought a male name would help sales.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America recently created the Andre Norton Award for young adult novels, and the first award will be presented in 2006.
Her first novel, The Prince Commands, is set in a mythical European kingdom and tells of a young nobleman who returns from exile to stop a communist takeover of his homeland. It was published in 1934 when Norton was 22. The Witch World series, which details life on an imaginary planet reachable only through hidden gateways, included more than 30 novels.
She was the first woman to receive the Grand Master of Fantasy Award from the SFWA in 1977, and she won the Nebula Grand Master Award in 1984.
Her last complete novel, Three Hands of Scorpio, is set to be released in April. Norton's publisher, Tor Books, rushed to have one copy printed so that the author, who had been sick for almost a year, could see it.
Norton spent most of her life in Cleveland, where she worked as a librarian from 1932 to 1950, except for a brief stint in the 1940s when she ran her own bookstore in Mount Ranier, Md., and worked at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Norton and her mother, Bertha Stemm Norton, who also served as her in-house proofreader and editor for decades, moved to Winter Park, Fla., in 1966 for their health. Norton moved to Tennessee in 1996 because she wanted to start a library for genre writers and didn't like the population explosion in Florida. She found a farm in rural Monterey, east of Nashville.
But the hills of east Tennessee were too isolated for her and her assistant, Rose Wolf. A friend helped them find the house in Murfreesboro.
She established the High Hallack Genre Writer's Research and Reference Library in 1999 on a quiet residential street in the town southeast of Nashville. High Hallack is the name of a country in Witch World.
Norton opened the library in a converted three-car garage as a retreat where authors could research ancient religions, weaponry, mythology or history that they need to bring their stories to life. The library includes biographies, diaries, histories, science books - almost anything a writer might need to craft a realistic setting on any world in any time.
Norton said detailed research matters in fiction because today's education is so inadequate that many people must get their history from novels. If an author makes historical detail interesting, a reader might be inspired to research the subject more.
Andre Norton
