From the creators of Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

This soap opera has been coming into one of my gmail accounts.
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8:26pm
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Right now, it looks like this.

When I’m done, hopefully it will look like this.

…”On April 19, after a day of teaching classes at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, I went out to my car and grabbed a box of old poetry manuscripts from the front seat of my little white Beetle, carried it across the street and put it next to the trashcan outside Wright Hall.
…
Upon my departure, he called the local police department and told them a man of Middle Eastern descent driving a heavily decaled white Beetle with out of state plates and no campus parking sticker had just placed a box next to the trash can. My car has NY plates, but he got the rest of it wrong. I have two stickers on my car. One is my highly visible faculty parking sticker and the other, which I just don’t have the heart to take off these days, says, “Kerry/Edwards: For a Stronger America.”
…
One of my colleagues was in the gathering crowd, trying to figure out what had happened. She heard my description — a Middle Eastern man driving a white Beetle with out of state plates — and knew immediately they were talking about me and realized that the box must have been manuscripts I was discarding. She approached them and told them I was a professor on the faculty there. Immediately the campus police officer said, “What country is he from?”

“What country is he from?!” she yelled, indignant.

“Ma’am, you are associated with the suspect. You need to step away and lower your voice,” he told her.

At some length, several of my faculty colleagues were able to get through to the police and get me on a cell phone where I explained to the university president and then to the state police that the box contained old poetry manuscripts that needed to be recycled. The police officer told me that in the current climate I needed to be more careful about how I behaved. “When I recycle?” I asked.

The university president appreciated my distress about the situation but denied that the call had anything to do with my race or ethnic background. The spokesperson of the university called it an “honest mistake,” not referring to the young man from ROTC giving in to his worst instincts and calling the police but referring to me who made the mistake of being dark-skinned and putting my recycling next to the trashcan.”
http://alternet.org/rights/50939/

http://www.dropline.net/cats/

And just when the guy thinks it’s over, it happens again.

Is it a Sign to stay home when you follow a flat bed full of Porta Potties to work? 

” After an Oversight Committee hearing last month in which James Knodell, the chief security officer at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., testified that the White House Security Office had done nothing to investigate the source of the Valerie Plame leak, “multiple” security officers from the White House approached Waxman to complain about the loose ship being run at the presidential residence. The security officers, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation, had three main complaints:

–The White House regularly ignored security breaches. Security officers reported several incidents in which administration staffers left sensitive information lying around in the open. Some of the information was “Sensitive Compartmentalized Information,” the highest level of classified material. The White House Security Office ignored the violations and prevented officers from investigating.

–No West Wing inspections allowed. Security officers were denied access to the power wing of the White House, preventing them from making inspections, a power granted them under federal law. Senior White House officials actively blocked inspections.

–White House Security Office “flouted” security rules. The security officers who talked to Waxman lit into Knodell and his deputy director Ken Greeson, calling them poor managers who preferred to avoid embarrassing White House officials rather than to do their jobs. Knodell and Gresson routinely allowed people to bring cell phones or a Blackberrys into “sensitive compartmentalized information” facilities, a big no-no. Gresson also reportedly put classified information on an unsecured computer.”

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/04/white_house_pla.html#more

It’s an honest to god flying motorcycle with a 300 mile range. Hey, it’s not pretty right now, but geeze - if this guy can make one, how come Yamaha and Honda don’t have one out yet? At $37k, that’s about the same price as a new high-end Harley Davidson.


http://www.thebutterflyllc.com/sscycle/sscycle.htm

Took my first Chantrix pill today. Apparently one week from now, my body will be immune to nicotine. This should be interesting.