Picture says it all…

Every forecaster on the local stations first said rain would come on Saturday. Then they bumped it to Sunday. Well, it finally hit the LA basin this morning with better aim than a shoe-tossing Iraqi journalist. *rimshot*

So how exactly are we supposed to plan when we can’t trust the over-tanned-bleach-teethed-shiny-suit leprechaun on the telly? How about a pig spleen?

Divide the spleen into six areas, each representing one month. The top of the spleen (closest to the pig’s head) shows the current month. The bottom indicates the end of the upcoming six-month period. Where the spleen thickens, a change in the weather is indicated, usually pointing to a cold spell. Where there’s a pronounced bulge, expect even more inclement weather. Gus can even read wind and rain into the variations in the spleen.

I got word this morning that a friend had passed away. I hadn’t seen Phil in at least a year but there are a lot of good memories of shared adventures and hijinx.

I’m not sure what else to really say at the moment. It’s a bit of a shock when you hear one of your friends is gone.

Gonna miss you, Phild0g.

I’ve seen the prints are already putting out their Best Record of 2008 lists. So, sorting the iTunes library of this year’s release let me take a quick stab at my own:

The Nightwatchman – The Fabled City
Nine Inch Nails – The Slip
Razorlight – Slipway Fires
Kings of Leon – Only By The Night
Secret Machines – Secret Machines
Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
The Verve – Forth
Jack Johnson – Sleep Through The Static
David Byrne & Brian Eno – Everything That Happens Happens Today
Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid

No order to the list above; that was a bit tough to even consider. I may get questions about Radiohead or Portishead’s 2008 releases, but honestly they didn’t have tracks I loved 100% through the records.

Noteworthy mentions:

Margot & The Nuclear So-So’s – Not Animal
My Morning Jacket – Evil Urges
The Mars Volta – Bedlam in Goliath
Panic At The Disco – Pretty Odd
M83 – School = Youth
The Herbaliser – Same As It Never Was
The Kooks – Konk
Gnarls Barkley – The Odd Couple
Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles
Neil Diamond – Home Before Dark
TV On The Radio – Dear Science

It really was a great year in music.

Yes, yes… someone else is in pain. Yes, it’s wrong to laugh at that. But really, how can you not?!:

Page Six is reporting that right-wing agitator and controversy-seeker Ann Coulter’s jaw is wired tightly shut.

Apparently it was broken, but by whom, no one seems to be sure. We could hazard a guess, but why throw roses yet. – LA Times 11.24.2008

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *break for tear wiping* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *wipe coffee snorted off of screen* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Anyone on Twitter? If so, can you explain why one needs something like that when you already have Facebook, MySpace, a blog, and a full time job? I don’t get it.

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

…the Bush administration has committed $290 billion of the $700 billion rescue package.

Yet for all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste. Nor has the first monitoring report required by lawmakers been completed, though the initial deadline has passed. – Washington Post 11.13.2008

This seems pretty straight forward to me: No oversight, no money.

In approving the rescue package, lawmakers trumpeted provisions in the legislation that established layers of independent scrutiny, including a special inspector general to be nominated by the White House and a congressional oversight panel to be named by lawmakers themselves.

Some lawmakers and their aides fear that political squabbling on Capitol Hill and bureaucratic logjams could delay their work for months. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office, which also has some oversight responsibilities, is worried about the difficulty of hiring people who can understand the intensely complicated financial work involved.

One more time: No oversight, no money.

Those corporate shills who lobbied for the package in the first place can now begin lobbying for oversight if they need that money so badly. But they’re not likely to do that, are they?

Throughout McCain’s campaign we kept hearing about continuing to fight in Iraq so that our troops would not come home in defeat but “with honor.”

Question: Did all those who fought in Vietnam not return “with honor?” Does that then not include McCain himself?

Glad I’m not the only one…

Nothing about the CNN “hologram” made sense. Part of the value of sending reporters to different areas to cover what’s going on is to allow viewers to look beyond the onscreen reporter, and see the raucous environment. And it also affords the reporter the opportunity to walk around and show viewers some of the visual highlights at the event.

But with the help of its “hologram,” CNN destroyed the value in sending a reporter, and instead made it, in the paraphrased words of Wolf Blitzer, “a more intimate setting” for the interview that eliminated all the noisy people that would have been standing behind her. – CNET 11.06.08