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Rabbit, rabbit folks. April will be fucking awesome, because, well, why not?

Another instance of the Bush regime is using public employees/public money to further their reëlection campaign. Maybe not as obnoxious as getting local news stations to run campaign ads dressed up as fake news reports , produced with public funds, but probably more illegal.

One loss down , 161 more to go. The Yankees are going to have a perfect season–you heard it here first.

Getting what I deserve for writing about politics (such as it is) before bedtime, I had a dream that I was G. W. Bush last night. The two highlights of what I could remember: going to the Olympics in Athens and walking out into the stadium crowd, with the Secret Service oddly unwilling to follow me out and offer any protection, and being introduced by Barbara Bush to a long string of extended family members, whose names I immediately forgot like those so many foreign leaders. It was disturbingly realistic, and means absolutely nothing.

I was trying to figure out what Condoleezza Rice might have meant on 60 Minutes when she described Iraq immediately following 9/11 as "a country with which we'd been to war a couple of times." Do you think she's referring to how we helped out Saddam's regime during the Iran-Iraq war in the '80s? I guess that kind of counts as having been to war with them.

Yeah, biatch. Tabloid-4-eva . I was right not to listen to, well, everyone else at the Spec who said we should go broadsheet. And colour's a fad, ya know.

This Hans Blix Questions thingy is pretty awesome.

Fantasy baseball stuff from McSweeney's.

You remember how Being John Malkovich ends? With John Cusack stuck inside the mind of his 4 year old daughter, plaintively longing for Catherine Keener, who is now his/her mother? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a full length feature version of that scene. In terms of sentiment, at least. Which is to say it's really wonderful. I highly recommend it to all.

The natural resources of Brooklyn Heights: puppies and kiddies. (Not kitties. Sorry.)

Spartan , I went to see this evening. I foolishly promised both halves of my favourite married couple a movie review, so here it goes. The viewing was almost notable by virtue of my being the only person in the theatre (111 person occupancy max., so they appeared to be 110 people shy of a sellout). This was a 9:50pm EST showing on a Wednesday night in Brooklyn Heights, and I don't think Spartan is the most highly anticipated film out there (though I obviously went out my way to see it), so that's not too surprising. But I didn't get to watch it completely alone, which would have been neat, as a dude wandered in 5 minutes into it, and then a couple came in 10 minutes into it--they asked me what movie it was, I said "Pardon?," they asked again and I said " Spartan " (italics mine), and they seemed satisfied and stayed. Meanwhile, there were two theatres (one 244 person occupancy max.) playing The Passion (of the Jesus!) , and I'd imagine they were fai...

Hey, you know which law firm really blows? Cravath & Friends.

For those wondering about the players on my fantasy baseball team this year: they're real, and they're spectacular. You're going down, Goldmans.

Elvis Mitchell's review of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which I'm looking forward to seeing) wins, as it contains references to R.E.M.'s Reckoning and to blue-haired Barnes & Noble information-counter girls "whose eyes haze over with contempt if you aren't asking for help finding Thomas Pynchon," both of which are hot. A.O. Scott's review of Greendale (which I am not looking forward to seeing) loses, because it compares the movie to Vineland , "Thomas Pynchon's underrated novel of the Northern California counterculture in twilight." Vineland sucks, despite the preponderance of undead space ninjas, which you'd think would be enough to make anything not-sucky. But Neil Young is great, especially On the Beach , which I just recently got my hands on.

Well, I was up reading Everything is Illuminated because Scotter finally lent it to me and because I finished A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (which was good ) and because I often am up late reading. I got to the part where they make fun of fax machines, which Scotter may or may not have, but certainly should have, warned me about, and I got a little offended. But then I realized that they're just making fun of paper fax machines, and not bitch-ass electronic faxing, and so they're on the good side of the fight. Now I'm to bed.

I haven't even bothered to read the article yet, but I saw Mysterious Fax Adds to Intrigue Over the Medicare Bill's Cost on the front page of the Times and got insanely excited, as only faxes can excite me. I'm better now, I think.

Quick note to all those not in the Northeast: fuck you. Nothing personal, though.

Which reminds me: do you know who was such a stupid get? Sir Walter Raleigh.

One spin on the Spanish elections is that al Kayda (the preferred spelling in the 34 style guide) determined the outcome . This November, what do you think the chances are of the following: we go into elevated alert in the days leading up to the election (almost a certainty), the media links the threat of al Kayda to a desire to disrupt democracy in America (almost a certainty), and voting for Bush is spun as the only patriotic thing to do, while voting for Kerry is portrayed as letting terrorists control the election (a certainty amoung some outlets)?

How many episodes before Tony Bee ends up in a wood chipper for sassing Tony Ess? Three more, maybe?

There's a Times article out about how the Department of Health and Human services produced a series of fake news segments extolling the virtues of the new pharmaceutical subsidies that Congress passed earlier this year. Apparently some news stations run that sort of thing. And while propaganda is usually a lot of fun and generally well-received , I'm not so sure that it should be coming directly from government offices. At least not our government's offices.

While surprise movie night proved to surprising for most to handle, something good did come of the evening. I learned that I am more than capable of beating Erin in pool, and unless she starts reading 34 again I think the record has been set straight.

If I remember correctly (which given the time and given the number of drinks I've had tonight is unlikely), my four takeaways from the Blue Pencil Dinner are thus: Ross McSweeney is the nephew of Tim McSweeney, and Tim McSweeeney is the namesake behind McSweeney's, the publication. Because of this, Ross has met Dave Eggers. I'd make some attempt to verify this given that I have A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius in my bag right now, but as I don't know that I'm up to any actual reading at this point. Ross McSweeney, who in addition to being a nephew also writes advertising copy for the Sci-Fi channel (amoung other more fortunate channels) is responsibke for the copy in the "Mad Mad House" (which is really missing a commna) ads. While those ads are not actually in my subway car right now, there was one on the phone booth right by the 96th St. station. The notable thing about the copy on that advert being an unnecessary comma in "People who live...

New Nietzschean Diet Lets You Eat Whatever You Fear Most is the first funny piece I've read in The Onion for a while, and that's probably just because I pretend to have a degree in philosophy.

In addition to my commitment to link to each and every article with even a vague reference to faxing , I'm going to do the same for discussions about electoral reform . It's almost as important a topic, and that's, you know, saying something.

I'd like to say that this is what's wrong with America, or maybe just California(/Utah?), but it probably only demonstrates what's wrong with very rich people.

Really, and this is pretty all of a sudden, everyone and my mother is up in arms over the outsourcing/offshoring of American jobs. It's safe to say you'll hear Kerry mentioning the issue a couple of times over the next few months, and for good reason I guess: people are pissed about unemployment, and people hate both big business and foreigners, so attacking offshoring would certainly seem to be an effective way to rally support. But while people should hate big business, many foreigners are cool, and some are cute, and I think you have to get a little uneasy about the thinly veiled racism/ultra-nationalism that goes hand in hand with the anti-outsourcing sentiment. People in India deserve jobs just as much as people in America. But the larger point here is that there's so many more economic issues that deserve massive displays of indignation nowadays. Take the money being handed back in tax cuts over the next 10 (or more, now) years and spend it on government service jobs ...

I was looking through some old pictures, and I don't think I ever posted the one of the aubergine-with-a-nose and the Not Green ketchup posed together. Which I'm doing now, right here , because honestly, isn't that wonderful?

Out to commit acts of cronocide before a meeting in midtown, I discovered a new game. You look for someone with the iPod's distinctive white headphones, and you start following him/her. You keep doing that until you see another person with an iPod, and then you start following that person. And so on. The game is much more subversive when you have an iPod yourself, but use third-party headphones, so nobody knows you have an iPod and can't retaliate by following you . A significantly less fun game to play is trying to drive a fire truck up 6th Avenue amidst midday traffic. That looks like a bitch.