Less Generic Than Originally Intended

Great weather for party prep: The rhodies are in bloom, as is the wisteria, and buttercups have taken over for dandelions in the yard. Speaking of taking over, "The Alien" has taken over Kate at the 11th hour, and she has suddenly replanted all the rose bushes that were not doing well in front of the house for the past four years. Two roses are in huge green planters at the driveway entrance and the others have been moved to safe locations. They have been replaced in the front garden by ferns.

What is the "The Alien"? The Alien is an extraterrestrial force that takes command of my wife and makes her buy plants, usually perennials but often a wide variety of foliage. I have known about The Alien for years, and can only assume that a member of the Lovecraftian Great Race takes command and makes her engage in botany, since she is usually much more sane.

For my part, it was housecleaning and lawn (they are moving my department to another building at work today). Pumped up some volleyballs, but I'm not 100% sure we'll put up the net. We'll see what its like tomorrow.

Kate has a H&R Block meeting tomorrow morning, and I am going to the Fighting 47th Legislative District Democratic Caucus. I deeply suspect this it going to be a rubberstamp rah-rah for the front-runner, but we shall see.

And tonight Nightline is reading a list of the fallen in Iraq, which echoes the old Life magazines, though the mags showed a week's casualties as opposed to year. Apparently a chain that owns eight ABC stations, Sinclair, has decided to protect its viewers from the idea that Freedom has a price by not running the program. Other arrangements have been made in places like Columbus and St. Louis, and a lot of dirt on the station owners that would otherwise be ignored is now bubbling to the surface. Among such flotsam shaking loose is the recent arrest of Sinclair's CEO in a prostitution sting operation, which involves him picking up hookers in a company car.

Yaknow, if my company is getting a lot of attention for its ethical decisions, the one thing I don't want to do is suddenly get myself busted for some ethical violation. But that would be me.

Sinclair does not have any stations in the Seattle area, but owns both Fox and WB stations in Pittsburgh. So the readership there will likely be protected from similar things there (like they were protected by Clear Channel from Howard Stern).

And speaking of media, I am regularly amused by the little box at the top of the blog. Blogger is paid for by commercials, so references to the recent Senatorial campaign in PA (which still looks weird with the sudden appearance of a candidate of far right "Constitutional Party" giving hope to disenfranchised Toomey-ites) brings up Repub messages. And before that the quip about Jesus gets me Christian commercials. So its a pretty dumb process, as processes go.

So it occurs to me that if I put the word "bondage" in the text, I might get kinky sex spam at the top of the page. Not that I would use the word "bondage" in this blog, other than to talk about "Of Human Bondage" or puns like "James Bondage" or "Stocks and Bondage". But I'm wondering if I say "Bondage" often enough it will balance out the rest of the commercial clues. Hmmmmm.

(looks both ways before stepping out into traffic)

Bondage, bondage, bondage! Bondage!

More later,