The Washington Canard

IT'S ALIVE!!!

So, the iBook is working again, albeit with some minor screen damage in the form of colorful vertical lines. The dizzifying screen-shaking has receded, at least for now. I tried to capture a screenshot for you, but of course OS X doesn't actually take a picture of what the desktop looks like outside the machine's innards. And I'd meant to take a video with my SD 450, but I didn't know this computer would even be available to import and upload that video. And now it's stopped doing that, so there's nothing really to show any longer.

In somewhat related news, the MacBook Pro might be here as soon as Tuesday.

And in the meantime, here's a rambling blog post culled from three days' worth of notes, otherwise to be understood as blogging sans laptop:

Just bought the new Built to Spill album, You In Reverse, over iTunes. And doing so, I realize that I haven't downloaded much from LimeWire in awhile. BitTorrent is useful for TV, but most of my music comes over IM from friends, and now when I want to get an album new, iTunes beats whatever music store is closest to my current place of work. And for all the CDs I have bought since moving to Washington, the cases for them all are stored in a legal file box. Can't bear to throw them out, but I sure don't need them.

You know that FedEx commercial from the Super Bowl? That's the other contemporary caveman commercials. Well, you just know there are schoolteachers and other assorted sticklers out there who tsk-tsk every time, because humans and dinosaurs never lived together at the same time. Me, I want someone to commission a poll to find out just how many adult Americans actually believe that they did. What do we think, how many people — leaving creationists out of it — actually think this?

The local CBS affiliate uses a Chemical Bros. song, from Exit Planet Dust, I believe. Does that speak well of WUSA 9 or poorly of the Chemical Bros.? Probably a bit of both.

Did you know that famed mobster Dutch Schultz "was reportedly killed by his peers out of fear that he would carry out a plan to kill New York City prosecutor Thomas Dewey," the eventual two-time GOP nominee for president? That's almost as whoa-really-ing as learning for the first time that Teddy Roosevelt was New York City's chief of police even though he'd never been an officer.

More from tooling around Sopranos-related Wikipedia pages. Hesh Rabkin's sole listed quote on his Wikipedia page is: "You're talking to the wrong white man, my friend. My people were the white man's nigger when yours were still painting their faces and chasing zebras." Damn. It would probably not serve me well to note that Hesh is one of the show's most likable characters, given the current juxtaposition.

Somewhat uncomfortably, let's go back to cavemen. How about them Geico cavemen? It works for me, better than 70% of Geico's ads. Including every atrocious gecko ad, and specifically excluding the "Tiny House" reality TV parody.

Speaking of parody: Jon Stewart is going to miss Scott McClellan more than he knows. Time was I would find out Scott McClellan was a goner even before it was out on the AP wire. Instead I saw it on Drudge late in the day, whichever day that was. Stephen Colbert, or should I say "Stephen Colbert," argued that the White House press secretary position should have been retired years ago. After all, the job requires that the secretary leak information on a daily basis. What president wants this? Time was, once the White House spokesperson lost credibility with the press corps, that was it for them. Bush and Rove putting out McClellan every day for the past few months, it's like a once-a-day Zing! to the White House press corps. If you can appreciate the joke, you are not a journalist.

It's a golden age of comedy, no? Between South Park, Colbert Report, Daily Show, The Office (both of them), even the now-critically-acclaimed Frat Pack line of films, and the Internet to keep all of these entertainments in play and in discussion, you know, there's plenty of good satire out there. I dare say, more than there used to be. Perhaps it bears mentioning that we also seem to be experiencing a glut of horror films, now inspired more by the Dawn of the Dead remake and Saw than Scream or another Wes Craven creation. And assuming this is all correct, does it have something to do with malaise about the war in Iraq or the current state of geopolitics otherwise?

If and/or when my not-impossible fall from grace begins, I'm looking to Jacob Weisberg for guidance on which city will submit to be conquered next (I guess that would make me William the Conqueror). Weisberg isn't Kinsley's equal, but he can be a sharp columnist. But not sharp enough to make a "Lawyers, Guns & Money" reference toward the end.

Britain's Q Magazine once named Radiohead’s OK Computer the Best Album Ever, or something to that effect, and now they’ve placed Beck's Midnite Vultures on a 50 Worst Albums list. Huh? The former pick was implausible at worst and premature at best, but the latter selection is just short of mind-boggling. And it looks like I'm far from the only one who's confused.

It's a good thing the Blazers traded Rasheed Wallace when they did. Not just because his towel-throwing was uncalled for (other players have survived worse). Not just because his casual racism was starting to grate (this is the NBA, after all). And not just because he assumed his place in the long line of onetime Blazers to succeed elsewhere (Walton, Drexler, Robinson, O’Neal, etc.). No, it's really for the better because Sheed deserved a fanblog as un-self-consciously adulatory as Need4Sheed.com. For example:

On a related note, I just registered on and posted a comment to Lance Uppercut's SB Nation-franchise Scoop blog (it's Kos-controlled, just FYI) named Blazers Edge. And he's right, the Jason Quick exit interview with Darius Miles is impressively candid.

I'll never renounce the Blazers, but the truth is I don't follow them as much as I do the still-major Oregon Ducks football program or the almost-awesome Washington Redskins, or even the mostly-awful Washington Nationals. Plus I'm one of those reactionaries who thinks NBA went off the rails somewhere between Jordan's second-and-best retirement and Mr. Artest's Wild Ride. Or maybe between Jordan's first and last retirement.

If you've read this far, you might actually appreciate a column given over to Wikipedia humor, at Wired. Too bad Wikipedia didn't come earlier, or too bad Suck.com isn't still around (during the period it started from the after-hours computers at Wired) so Terry Colon could illustrate.

Anyway, I'm just happy to have my old laptop back for a short period. I'd originally planned to capture a short video of the iBook screen going nutzoid on me, but it does seem that nearly two weeks past the inadvertant saturation of the video screen with storebought sanitary swabs, this machine is 98% functional.

Update — As of Saturday p.m., consider the current version of this post the Complete & Uncut edition.

posted by WWB at 1:18 AM |