Another something I do not grok.

Dearest was nearly frothing with indignation after reading the 60 Minutes investigation into the kangaroo court trial of Alabama Governor Bob Seigelman. And it's hard not to understand why.

I didn't appreciate "Stranger in a Strange Land" as much as I probably should (rather like the--hopefully fictional--person who complained of "Hamlet" being full of cliches). But Heinlein's character Mike's horror at the idea of imprisoning a person--and, more to the point, his further dismay that the "...worst ones are on the outside" come to mind right now.

Innocent until proven Republican

Wow, I was almost starting to jones for a GOP scandal. The schadenfreude of watching the party of "moral values" caught with its hand in the cookie jar and its privities illicitly engaged is rather addictive. Hat-tip to Dearest for feeding the monkey: Congressman indicted for Fraud, Extortion. The funniest part was:

Renzi's attorneys also suggested that the prosecution may have been politically motivated. "We fear that the Department of Justice may have allowed the investigation to have been influenced by political considerations, which should never have a place in the administration of justice."

Memo to Senator Renzi: If you think that throwing your own party--that would be the same one which denied the "politicizing" of the DOJ when they were only sacking Democrats--under the bus to save your career is a good idea, you're gonna need a muuuuuuch bigger bus, sir.

The thing is, if I were in any way connected with that investigation, I'd seriously consider hiring a bodyguard for the duration. If the allegations are true and Renzi was that thuggish in the flush of power, I'd hate to know what he's like when cornered.

If the senior Senator from Arizona was envying Clinton and Obama for stealing the media limelight since his anointing as GOP heir presumptive, this is one of those "be careful what you wish for" kind of situations... Bad enough that Allen was caught trolling the Florida men's rooms for sex--this will just breathe a new glow in the embers of that embarrassment. Not to mention resurrect the ghost the Lincoln Savings and Loan (a.k.a. "Keating 5") scandal more times than a slasher-movie bad-guy.

Obama in November. 'nuff said. (Clinton lost my preference when she couldn't be bothered to show up to throw her vote in the way of the FISA disgrace. Neither did McCain, but it's not like he had anything to lose. Somehow men who broadcast their sperm shotgun with multiple extramarital affairs--a matter of record, by the bye--and then consistently vote anti-choice don't don't get my nod. Funny how that works...)

Two desserts

It's a full week, what with meetings, cheerleading a friend through her fisticuffs with cancer, remembering of Dearest's mother, who lost a much sharper skirmish with cancer ten years ago Monday, and fretting over a nephew hospitalized with mononucleosis.

But last night was a halcyon evening, mostly spent making dinner--specifically and pointedly a meal that Dearest's mom would have made--or enjoying it. Time enough to slip outside to watch the lunar eclipse at points in its progress. The bite of cold made those ventures short ones, though. I made the mistake of bringing the cat out on one foray, but he bolted once back indoors. (Somehow I doubt that the experience will cure him of whining to be let outside.)

So much of my world is defined by an LCD monitor (or, at work, two); it's good to gawp at a larger Universe once in awhile...

Who's fooling whom?

A big software rollout is slated for tomorrow, which pretty much rules out making the two-hour run to the old stomping-grounds for the annual screening of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." And that's assuming that I could scrounge up garters for the fishnet stockings to go with the French Maid outfit that's stored in a box somewhere in the garage-and-a-half.

So I settle for playing the RHPS soundtrack--with the obligatory (and disturbingly reflexive) mouthing of lines--while I pen a freebie article destined for the yet-to-be website of the as-yet-unincorporated entrepreneurship that will lure me away from the day-job when the latter gets around to brassing me off enough to leave. One of these days.

If I didn't know better, I'd almost think that I've accidentally staggered into adulthood.

Nah... If this were actual adulthood, my children would only have two legs (and no feathers).

Never mind. False alarm. Party on. ("Lettttts dooooo the Tiiiiiiime Waarrrrp againnnnn!!!")

The logical progression of poetic justice...

One has to wonder why your average White House henchperson would need Kazaa or what-have-you installed on a work computer. Given the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do mindset that prevails in any hierarchy, you can rest assured that the other two branches of the Constitutional tree have the same issue.

What would be genuinely funny to watch: The spectacle of watching the RIAA/MPAA cosa nostra kneecap their own padrone for not playing the knuckle-cracking "enforcers" on their own networks. But I suppose that flavor of schadenfreude--never mind the repeal of the DMCA, a reasonable shortening of the copyright extensions, and the rebirth of internet radio--would be too much to ask when fair use must bow and scrape for whatever scraps of its rights haven't been requisitioned to pad the wallets of the mafia-esque "entertainment" industry.

This, friends and brethren, is what comes of allowing policy to be dictated by the twelve-o-clock flashers of the world...

Can the 28 percenters* even see a reflection anymore?

* or whatever slice of the populace the Bush fanboys and girls comprise nowadays...

Honestly, how many more bullet-riddled messengers and burned messages do you people need to open your eyes?

I find it interesting that Dante allotted the foulest regions of Hades to frauds and oath-breakers, with nary a mention of those complicit in their own deception. Or does the definition of fraud extend to choosing to filter Reality through Fox Noise and AM talk radio and whatever-your-local-god-botherer-says-the-Bible-really-says? A toothy philosophical question, that. In any case, methinks it's time to bulldoze part of Purgatory: Hell definitely needs a new suburb.

Oooh...great meme!

Les Jenkins, prioprietor of the Stupid Evil Bastard blog, perfectly summed up a McCain Presidency as "Bush's third term." Too brilliant not to share, IMO.

Who's waving the white flag again?

Normally, I don't pay too much attention to campaign rhetoric, but the last part of today's AP article quoting also-ran-Romney d--ned near made my blood boil:

Mitt Romney suspended his faltering presidential campaign on Thursday, effectively sealing the Republican presidential nomination for John McCain. "I must now stand aside, for our party and our country," Romney told conservatives. "If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror," Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

Let me see if I have this straight: This man's party has shredded the Bill of Rights because it's too mendacious and incompetent to capture the architect of Sept. 11. This man's party has dismissed the Geneva Convention protocols as suggestions and basic human rights as dewy-eyed idealism. This man's party has squandered billions on an illegal war, and allowed the most naked of power-grabs by the Bush Junta, leaving the next generations to undo their damage. This man's party has dragged the reputation of the United States through the gutter at the chariot-wheels of its kingmakers, boot-lickers and hired thugs.

In short, this man's cronies have used the bin Ladin bogeyman again and again to do possibly irreversible damage to America--to the point where the question of whether it will ever again be the land of the free or the home of the brave is genuinely debatable. "Terror" is only a threat because the puppet-masters of the GOP need a mustache-twirling villain straight from Central Casting to distract from their profiteering--political and monetary.

Let's keep this permanently on record: This man's party gave the city over to sack, pillage and rape--by their own forces. After the enemy had long since decamped, I might add. They have damaged America more in six years more than bin Ladin and the other so-called enemies of freedom could have achieved in lifetimes. The War! On!! Terror!!! has been mainly prosecuted against the American taxpayer and the average Iraqi. If that's the definition of "fighting terrorism", "surrender" doesn't sound like a bad option. At least if the "logic" follows the same Orwellian newspeak syntax as the rest of the theocon universe. You know, the place where a futile war in Iraq can be won by declaring war on Iran? Yeah, that place.

Sadly, Romney--like the rest of his reality- and truth-challenged cohorts--will never have to account for his complicity in the FUD that passes for political discourse. He's doubly lucky that we don't have the same mother. With fibbing on that scale, he'd be tasting soap for months.

Reason #26917 to despise Microsoft

Understand that I generally see a lot of promise in open source software, zits and High Priesthood elitism and all. Grant you, it won't save the world. But anyone who underestimates the power of passionate folks to change the world by moonlighting in a world of craftsmanship and meritocracy--which they d--n sho' don't get from the suits at work--is a Grade A moron.

I had an a revelation at work today, namely why I so deeply loathe Microsoft. Bottom line: I resent black boxes for software that's as elementary as a web server and script processor. Alas, my company is not doing a very good job of getting the classic ASP monkey off its back. Current example: Rather than "waste" programmer time hand-coding our own solution, we instead serially waste three programmers' time trying to get a prima-donna IIS plug-in up and running for IIS 6. And, as you might have guessed, I'm the latest programmer to inherit this bit of infuriating scut-work.

What particularly chaps my pastey-white dimpled backside is:

1. When you're paying for the coin for so-called "Enterprise" software, the installer should do the messy work of "hacking" itself into IIS. Commercial software should never, EVER require manual registry edits.
2. (More to the point...) We wouldn't have to install this craptastic piece of gwano if ASP classic had any decent support for file uploads (or combined file/form POSTing) to start with.

Even more frustrating is IIS's utterly mulish behavior. I tried adding an extension to the list of file types handled. The first field in that form has you designate the DLL/EXE handler for the extension. The second has you specify the file extension. But apparently you need to specify the extension (with a leading period) and THEN browse for the DLL/EXE. Or the "OK" button is greyed out. Effin' brilliant user interface design there, hey? Just knowing that the incompetent twit who wrote that code (and the still more incompetent twit who allowed it through quality-checking) brings in more bling than I do--probably in stock options alone--just makes the steam curl from my ears.

Small wonder that Microsoft has to resort to mafia-esque thuggery to prevent someone more competent and user-attuned from eating their lunch. That's bad enough. But the less obvious result is that, in defending their own shoddy work against all comers, they have spawned whole cottage industries devoted to writing lame accretions to an already-lame codebase. All because Microsoft has apparently forgotten what made them the 800-lb gorilla in the first place: Namely, they made it easy to develop for the DOS and early Windows platforms. Nowadays, even a config. file for IIS is too much to ask for. Unacceptable.

And so, like open source folks the world over, I'll be happily parked in front of my Linux home workstation tonight, plinking away on non-proprietary software on a non-proprietary platform. Is it a perfect world there? By no means. But if my work draws one other person away from the clutches of a company that has the same attitude towards its customers that the Bush Regime has toward law-abiding taxpaying citizens, I'm happy be yet another stitch in the Evil Empire's winding-sheet.