The bad news just keeps rolling in. Yesterday, we heard the tragic news that Larry King – the “Monkey’s Paw” of cable news – is retiring. Speculation is now on who will fill Larry’s suspenders in the 9PM time slot for CNN. Personally, I think they just ought to show reruns of Crossfire with Bob Novak. Not full shows – just “best of” clips of Bob. That way they can continue the Zombie host theme. But if they must find a live person, I hope they don’t go with any of the Huffington Post’s suggestions, which include Ryan Seacrest (I must confess, thought I’ve heard the name, I have no idea what it is he’s ‘famous’ for. I assume it’s got something to do with American Idol, but, having never watched it, I’m not really sure), Jeff Probst (again, no clue who that is), Katie Couric, and Kathy Griffin. I’d like to siggest Matt Taibbi (who explains why Lara Logan – whose baby daddy is war profiteer State Department contractor Joe Burkett – sucks – and not in a good way). Oh, I know, CNN would never go with an actual reporter-type person over a ‘celebrity’, and they’d need somebody with a quick finger on the dump button, ‘cuz Matt tends to say “fuck” a lot, but I think it’d awfully nice to have somebody doing interviews that would ask more probing questions than “how old were you when you first found out how great you are, and has your greatness been a burden on you?”

Speaking of sucking, the White House did some heavy-duty sucking up to MA Senator Scott Brown in order to get his support on Financial Reform. And what did all that sucking get them? A face full of, um, egg. Brown now says he’s a ‘no’ vote on reform. Turns out that, after having the government bail out all these companies that pay their upper echelon management people (who drove their companies into the toilet) hundred of millions of dollars in bonuses, Republicans want the government to also bear the financial burden of reform. Shocking, I know. I thought for sure Republicans would be on the side of the small people.

Well, to get going, I guess. Maybe I’ll use my new $10 Dunkin’ Donuts credit card thay I just got in honor of 20 years of service. Fifty cents a year. Not bad.

Did you know that Thurgood Marshall was an evil, commie, activist judge? Me neither. I always thought he was one of those legal icon kinda guys, that even people who don’t pay attention to much of anything have heard of (plus, he was really good in ‘The Defenders’). Here’s an interesting thought. You know who succeeded Marshall as a Supreme Court Justice? Clarence Thomas, that’s who.

Speaking of SCOTUS, it was a busy final day of the 2010 term.

First, they struck down the ban on handguns in Chicago. I’m still not quite clear how the 2nd Amendment’s protection of a well-regulated militia means every teabagging moron gets to have as many guns as they want, but, as a strict Constitutionalist (we’ll forget that the 2nd Amendment wasn’t actually in the US Constitution as originally ratified, hence the term, ‘amendment’), I think that this should only apply to single-shot muzzle loaders. So break out those flintlocks, patriots! You’ll probably need a little practice to be able to reload and get off a shot in 20 seconds the way our forefathers did. And don’t pack too much powder in there, or you might just have the damn thing blow up in your face.

The Supreme Court also left the door open for software patents. Once again, I must reiterate my objection to a bunch of old men and women who don’t seem to understand the nuances of pagers v. e-mail getting to decide anything related to technology.

There was also a setback for the Kristian Legal Society, which was seeking official recognition from the University of California’s law school in San Francisco. The ‘Society’ requires that voting members and officers affirm a “statement of faith,” including the belief “Christians should not engage in sexual conduct outside of marriage between a man and a woman.” Apparently this violates the school’s nondiscrimination policy for groups. Damn San Francsico Libruls. By a 5-4 vote, SCOTUS agreed with the school. Damn activist judges.

So, Stanley McChrystal is retiring. Not a surprise, really. How ya gonna keep him down on the farm, now that he’s seen Kabul?

It’s a man’s world around the house this week. With the wife gone, the dogs and I now have dominion over everything – including the cats, who are trying to get used to the idea that I really don’t care whether they like the food I give them. On the bright side, they’re free to drink from the toilet, as the prohibition on leaving the lid (never mind the seat) up has been lifted (so to speak). And it’s finally cooled off a bit. If only I didn’t have to go to work.

But, I do, so….

Sad, though not exactly unexpected, news this morning as Senator Robert Byrd – who, for my entire life, has always been the Senator from West Virginia – has passed away. People will remember him for lots of things – being the longest-serving Senator, being a former Klansman, being a passionate, outspoken, and prescient opponent of the Iraq invasion, and no doubt for a whole lot of other things in his home state of WVa. Me, I’ll always remember his personal response to my mom, asking if they were related (family legend has it that my mother was in some way or another related to the explorer Admiral Byrd, and she wondered if they had that in common). As I recall, Senator Byrd’s response was, “could be.” It was very kind of him to reply (I only wish his letter was still around). RIP, Senator. And say hello to my mom if you run into her.

Better news for iPhone users, however, as it appears there really isn’t any problem with reception on the iPhone 4 (to quote Steve Jobs: “There is no reception issue. Stay tuned“). The unofficial official word now is that it’s a software issue with iOS 4, and a fix may be released as early as today.

The fix is expected to address a issue in iOS 4 related to radio frequency calibration of the baseband. Readers who saw the original forum discussions say that the issue is believed to occur when switching frequencies; because the lag is allegedly not calibrated correctly, it results in the device reporting “no service” rather than switching to the frequency with the best signal to noise ratio.

As an IT person, my first inclination is – like Steve Jobs, apparently – to blame the user. But maybe iPhone users aren’t “holding it wrong” after all. And, really, if you designed a phone that was so touchy it didn’t work when you held it in your hand, that would be a pretty poor design (Daniel Eran Dilger’s snotty tweet notwithstanding) . Nobody’s saying it ought to work if you’re sitting on it or using it inside a refrigerator or something, but, damn, you ought to be able to hold a phone in your hand pretty much any way you want.

Of course, the three stages of dealing with a flawed product/software release are somewhat similar to the five stages of grief. Denial (problem? what problem?), Anger (at the user; you’re not using it right, you idiot!), and Acceptance (oh, shit, I guess there is something wrong), followed by the release of a patch.

Hopefully iOS 4.0.1 will do the trick for anybody having a problem. It’s great that they appear to be about to release a fix so soon, though it kind of makes you wonder if they didn’t know there was a problem, and were kind of hoping they could get a patch out before anybody noticed (it’s a lot easier when the fan boys think you can do no wrong, but, in this case, it was the fan boys themselves that were complaining – though very gently, so as not to incur the wrath of Jobs).

Oh well, back to work again today. And, after a fairly sleepless night thanks to the combination of thunderstorms and scared doggies, it’s gonna be a long one.

Well, it’s official. We can all go back to not pretending we give a crap about soccer after yesterday’s devastating OT loss to Ghana. Hell, being the lone African team left in the World Cup, they needed it more than we did anyway. Now we just have to get through the “Dead Zone” known as baseball season, and before you know it, it’ll be time for football (yeah, that’s right, world, real football).

As for the talking head shows this week, on Press the Meat, it’s St. John McCain and a roundtable with Rep. Barbara Lee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, author Sebastian Junger, veteran Wes Moore, Tom Ricks, and Gen. Barry McCaffrey.

Faze the Nation has Pat Leahy, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, Carl Levin, Jan Crawford, and David Martin.

On Fux News Sunday, Weaselface Wallace has DINO Dianne Feinstein, Li’l Lindsey Graham (R-SC, and Mike Huckabee. Plus the “Fux News All-Stars” Bill Kristol, Mara Liasson, Liz Cheney, Juan Williams.

At the Goebbels network, it’s CIA Director Leon Panetta and a roundtable with George :jerk: Will, David Sanger, Robin Wright, and Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

Over at CNN, Fareed Zakaria has flathead Tom Friedman plus Eliot Spitzer, Arianna Huffington, Ross Douthat, and Katrina vanden Heuvel. Then a look at Great Britain’s “Tax and Axe” budget.

Oh well, lots to do today. Have a good one.

Sad, sad news. Dick Cheney’s in the hospital. Thank Lucifer (and modern medicine – when funded with an un-ending supply of money), it doesn’t sound serious though, so I’m sure he’ll be up and oozing around in no time. Just another reason to ban science from textbooks, I guess. Speaking of science, some guy named Larry Dossey (who is a ‘doctor’ so you know he’s very wise and important) has a story in the HuffPost basically saying that, because the conditions for life and the universe to exist as we know it are on very tight parameters, there just must be something out there that set things up for us. Which, of course, is kind of stupid. Because conditions were the way they were, the universe evolved the way it did. Had conditions been different, things, no doubt, would have evolved differently. And then a bunch of egotistical silicon-based funky-looking lifeforms would be insisting that the universe was created by some all-knowing, all-seeing invisible being who created them in his image.

Speaking of egotistical (not to mention silicon-based) entities, Apple’s response to many of their loyal fans’ complaints of totally losing their cell signal when they hold their new iPhone was to tell them they weren’t holding the phone right. Steve Jobs, in particular, seemed to more or less be calling his users idiots (but Steve tends to be pretty terse and testy these days; I think he got infused with some of Dick Cheney’s blood to keep him alive when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer – he’s been kind of on the dark side ever since).

So I was hanging out yesterday, and decided to play with my work-provided BlackBerry (which, sadly, is ATT like the iPhone). I tried holding it every which way – left hand, right hand, both hands, covering it completely, you name it – and I couldn’t get the signal to drop even one bar (let alone drop completely out). Then I tried my LG whatever it is that I never use anymore. Same thing (and that was in my basement). Then I played around with my wife’s Droid. Also, no signal loss. So, I dunno. One might conclude that – assuming there really is a problem with these phones (and for all I know there isn’t; it seems more than possible that a large percentage of iUsers are abnormally dense or something), the antenna design was less the optimal.

Speaking of less-than-optimal design, having only two days off a week really sucks. If I’m gonna get anything done, I guess I better get started.

Another week winds its way to an end. And what a week it’s been. We had the release of the best phone ever (as long as you don’t hold it in your hand; personally, I’m lusting after the Droid X, which will not only not be tied to ATT, but will also run Android 2.2 and Flash Player 10.1, and, of course, is open source and not subject to the heavy thumb of Apple), had the General in charge of Afghanistan get fired (gee, I hope things don’t start to go badly for us there), and we got to see Weds Johnson and Jonny Flynn get reunited (which makes us happy here, even if the Minnesota fans don’t seem to happy about it). Of course, the best part of this week was getting my USB plasma ball yesterday. And today, my “Your Mom Sells Weed” t-shirt from Showtime should be coming.

The dogs and I will be bach’ing it for a couple of weeks, starting tomorrow, as Granny heads off Minneapolis. It would be nice if she’d take the cats with her so I didn’t have to clean the litter box, but I figure if I don’t feed ’em, I shouldn’t have much to clean.

This weekend is Jazzfest, too! I only wish I had time to go, but, sadly, I don’t.

Oh well, time to get this week over with.

Big, huge, enormous, tremendous, outrageous day today, as Apple releases the best thing ever in the whole wide world: the iPhone 4g. The 4g will do all the things that the old, crappy ones should have done in the first place (not Flash, though; f*ck you, Adobe!), so if you have the old iPhone, you officially now own a piece of shit that you should be ashamed to seen using in public. Yep, yesterday you thought you were cool as you sat down at Starbucks with your $5 cup of shitty coffee, whipped out your iPhone, and downloaded your free Frappuccino® Beverage Music mix on iTunes. Today? Meh. You’re just another loser who might as well be using a CB radio.

It may seem kind of unfair that your old iPhone became obsolete before your two-year commitment was even up, but, well, that’s the price you pay if you wanna be the coolest kid on the block. Not to worry though, that smug, snotty son-of-a-bitch over in the corner trying to look like he’s not trying to be noticed with his new phone as he sips his nonfat milk and sugar-free vanilla Caramel Macchiato and nibbles his Chocolate Chunk Cookie will be in the same boat by next Christmas, when the next bestest thing ever comes out.

The other big news today, of course, is the NBA draft. The only thing any real basketball fan cares about is who Wes Johnson gets picked by. We’re kind of hoping for a reunion with Jonny Flynn out in Minnesota as the #4 pick (thereby making the T-Wolves my official favorite NBA team, dropping the Denver Nuggets into the #2 spot) , but the NJ Nets have been making some noise about taking him at #3, and even Doug Collins of the Sixers made a little noise about taking him at #2 (Philadelphia is my sentimental NBA favorite, since, as we all know, they were originally the Syracuse Nationals). Around these parts, we’re also hoping that Andy Rautins gets picked up by somebody in the second round.

The world’s longest tennis match ever continues at Wimbledon today, as John Isner and Nicolas Mahut pick up where they left off yesterday – tied at 59 games apiece in the fifth set. I hope they keep going for a few more days. They might wanna re-think that whole “you gotta win by two games” thing, though.

Good thing you don’t have to win by two in soccer, or you’d never know how long those damn matches would last. Come to think of it, you don’t actually know when they’ll end now. I mean, they have a clock, so you’d think that when time runs out, the game would be over. But the referees apparently keep some sort of double-secret extra time clock, and only they know when the damn thing will end (personally, I think they make that shit up).

But, despite getting screwed out of yet another goal yesterday, the American team managed to not only win their match against whoever the hell they were playing, but win their division or unit or whatever the heck it is they call it. So, they get a better draw in round two. Or something. I don’t know. I admit to not really following (or even caring about) soccer or the World Cup, but, hey, any excuse for a little jingoism, right? So, “USA! USA! USA!” and all that.

Speaking of jingoism, despite the weirdness with McChrystal yesterday, I think we’re all really, really excited to have Petraeus in charge of Afghanistan. I think that, ‘cuz that’s what they told me on the teevee. He’s gonna bring the ‘success’ he had in Iraq over to Afghanistan. Li’l Lindsey Graham (who I think has a man crush on the good General; Lindsey was all dewy-eyed and aquiver when he spoke, and his mascara was kinda running) says Petraeus is our “best hope” to make things right. God bless you, General, and God bless the United States of America.

Speaking of the good old US of A, Homeland Security is going to start using unmanned (but will they be unarmed?) drones to patrol the border. If you’re kinda Mexican looking and you’re down that way, I suggest you tape your birth certificate to the top of your hat so they can read it as they fly over. Otherwise you might get a Hellfire missile or two tossed your way. Oh, and if Afghanistan is any indication, I wouldn’t be having any wedding parties near the border. Could ruin your special day.

Speaking of ruining the day, I have to go ruin mine by going to work.

A cheery little story from my neck of the woods yesterday. NY State Troopers responded to a 911 call from a house (OK, well, a trailer) in the Town of Vienna (which is about 20 miles north of Wampsville, in case you were wondering). There, they found some 21-yr old kid named Adam Theall holding his 3-month old son (with another 1-yr old son inside) and a shotgun, threatening to kill the kid if the police responded. When the troopers got out of their vehicle, guess what? He killed the kid. I’m not sure what’s left of a three month old baby when you shoot him with a shotgun, but I reckon it aint much. I hope to never find out for myself.

Anyhow, then Theall turned the gun on the Troopers, who, not surprisingly, shot the bastard (though they didn’t manage to kill him). He was airlifted to the hospital I work for (doesn’t seem worth the expense, what with our budget woes here in NY), where he’s in critical condition.

Maybe he’ll find Jesus in prison.

Speaking of the budget, our Governor says Monday is the deadline for the legislature to have a budget in place, or he’ll use the next emergency spending bill to impose one. Governor Paterson stated:

“Maybe somebody thinks I’m playing around. Maybe someone thinks this is a game. … But let me just say: That budget is going to get passed Monday.”

In a sign of just how much respect the Guv gets (here’s a hint; it’s about as much as Stanley McChrstal has for both the President and Vice President of the United States) – not just from the legislature, but even from within his own party – Manhattan Democrat and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver responded with:

“There is no deadline. April 1 was the deadline.”

Lest you think we have a bunch of do-nothing slackers running the State, I feel obliged to point out a spectacular bipartisan legislative success.

The state Senate voted unanimously Tuesday to ban using embalming fluid as a recreational drug.

By a 61-0 vote, senators voted to make it a misdemeanor to possess embalming with the intent to inhale it, ingest it or sell it to someone to do so.
[…]
Embalming fluid is combined with the hallucinogen phencyclidine, also known as PCP, and used to coat marijuana cigarettes….

Took a lot of guts, but they managed to ram that one through.

Speaking of ramming through, it’s time for me to get ready to try and ram myself through another day. It’s getting harder and harder.

I guess I can’t put it off any longer, so it’s back to work today. Not that I haven’t been working all weekend, of course. Construction is more or less complete, though, so it’s down to filling in nail holes, sanding, and painting. Hopefully before the cats have a chance to puke on everything too much. I really hate the thought of going back to work today. I’m really getting tired of it – it just screws up my whole damn day.

An emergency spending bill passed yesterday (late, not surprisingly, meaning pay for state workers will be at least a day late next week). The NY State budget is now 183 days late, with no resolution in sight. I think they should just start working on next year’s budget.

Speaking of days, it’s, what, 64 days of the Gulf oil leak? They say the rate is 60,000 barrels of oil a day, and, at 42 gallons to an oil barrel (why isn’t it 55?), that’s over 2.5 million gallons and counting. And who knows how many gallons of toxic dispersant used to try and hide it. Makes me glad I live up her in the hinterlands, where all we get is a little snow once in a while (and whatever acid rain falls, courtesy of our neighbors in the Midwest). Oh, and if you’re on a well and happen to live near where they’ve done some hydrofracking, you might be able to set your tap water on fire. But they actually decided to pretty much outlaw that up here. Funny, nobody seemed to complain about the dirty gubberment interfering with the right to make your water flammable. Fortunately, there’s a loophole that exempts it from the Clean Water Act.

Speaking of hydrofacking, ‘Gasland‘ premieres on HBO tonight. Make sure you watch it before you smoke around your sink.

Smoking in NY State will cost you, though, even if your water doesn’t catch on fire. As part of the last spending bill, they’ve added an additional $1.60 a pack tax on cigarettes beginning July 1st. That make this the most expensive state to buy cigarettes in (an average of $9.20 a pack). Holy crap, I thought it was bad when they hit a buck a pack in a machine. I’m sure glad I quit back, oh, must be close to 15 years ago.

Oh well, time to fly. If you don’t watch True Blood, you won’t get this. But if you do, it’s pretty gosh darn funny. Apparently Snoop is a big fan of the Sookie, too.

OK, actually summer in suburbs. We don’t really have much of a city around here (which is okay by me). But, wherever you’re at, if you live north of the equator, summer will be here at about 7:30, my time. So enjoy the longest day of the year, ‘cuz tomorrow the days start getting shorter. I say we double down and set the clocks ahead another hour. Not today, though, ‘cuz I decided to take today off. Lets do it at noon tomorrow instead.

So, did you hear about the 8-yr old kid in Rhode Island who glued a bunch of toy soldiers to a hat as some sort of “patriotic” school project theme? Apparently, the tiny little plastic soldiers violated the school’s ‘zero tolerance’ weapons policy because they carry little tiny guns. Of course, they’re not friggin’ guns, they’re little time pieces of pointy plastic. Are we really this stupid? Really? It’s not quite as stupid as strip searching a girl on suspicion of Ibuprofen (thanks again, Arizona), but it’s still pretty stupid.

I was looking up ‘spitz’ for some reason this morning (not quite sure why). Near the top of the results was a listing for “Spitz Restaurant – Home of the Döner Kebab”, and right underneath that were image search result thumbnails showing a bunch of Spitz dogs. At first, I thought it was a menu (I was afraid Döner was some kind of dog, but fortunately it turns out to be kind of the Turkish equivalent of a Gyro, which, I suppose, could be dog, now that I think about it). Döner Kebab also sounds like something they do when they don’t get the transplant organs to the recipient in time. That’s why they use those little picnic coolers.

Anyhow, there was also a link to the website of somebody I haven’t though about in a long time – Mark Spitz.

Mark’s site caught my eye, because it says,

Mark Spitz, most notable athlete of all-time, is synonymous with excellence.

Really? Most notable athlete of all time? And most humble, too. I mean, don’t get me wrong – the seven gold medals were great, Mark. But, hey, it’s swimming. You know where you go from there? The motivational speaking circuit, apparently. Hell, I wouldn’t even rate Spitz the most notable Jewish athlete of all time (personally, I’d go with Dolph Schayes, but you could probably make a pretty strong case for Sandy Koufax or Max Baer – Jethro’s dad, the boxer).

Oh well, time to get back to work on the living room.