Embarrassing colleagues -- caught on film!

Must suck some days to be a cop, a good cop, and to know that this badged hammerhead is the image your profession presents to the world. (Extra moron points for apparently not realizing the whole thing was being taped; somewhere in Denver, a donut shop is missing a clerk who jumped to the other side of the counter and grabbed a uniform.) I suppose it doesn't help that the guy bears a certain resemblance to Vic on The Shield...

Go ahead. Make the case for mercy. I'll wait.

Unless you're advocating something really special for Joseph Duncan's life sentence -- daily anal rape by zombies, perhaps -- the only correct answer to the death sentence here is WOOHOO! Continued existence of this useless sack insults fundamental notions of civilization, not to mention criminal justice.

(RCS? AFT? The floor is yours.)

Del Martin, 1921-2008

One of the two coolest newlyweds in the world has died at 87. No words. Bless her fierce heart, and keep Phyllis Lyon in yours today. What a year...

Global positioning, all right

...as in, the tracking device is positioned on a human globe. Sweet skipping Jesus. I mean, it's a tragedy any way you slice it, but a 1,000-pound babysitter, a learning-disabled mother, and a dead toddler... god, so sorry to start your morning with this one, but my insomnia's kicking and I was compelled to share.

And it's United, ahead by a nose

That would be in the Worst U.S. Airline race, pulling ahead of American on the strength of this clusterfuck. Your subsidizing tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen. Not that jetBlue's perfect -- heck, not that jetBlue's the jetBlue of, say, 2005 -- but really, who knew that "United" was English for "Aeroflot?" (HT to AmericaBlog, currently asking who the hell Charlize Theron is and thus making me feel like an insufficiently committed political nerd, since I do know. She's the MRF from Arrested Development!) (and thus AG reclaims her nerd badge, only slightly dented)

...and it's good enough for me

This one's for you, MFH: Greta Christina's Blog has been doing some thinking about the song "Old Time Religion" --

Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
Gimme that old time religion
It's good enough for me

-- which sits in need of further expansion. (As if it wasn't already pretty, um, expanded by the various communities of belief / random acts of filk / Usenet community who've taken up the singalong over the years, but one craves the acknowledgment of His Noodly Appendage.) Her reader community came through and how; I'd direct your attention to the first comment, but I'm fairly sure you're going to read them all anyway. And then the song will be stuck in your head for hours and you'll never view the opening of Inherit the Wind quite right again. FTW!

Pattern (and procrastination) recognition

The last thing I need to do with my eight remaining brain cells is to play Wiclimo. Needless to say, that's all I'm doing for a while. It's an absolutely nonverbal pattern-discernment game, which ought to warm the hearts of those among us who like logic puzzles; gameplay's a little tetchy if your mouse isn't behaving well, but it's great to see some unapologetically weird thinking going on in the casual-gaming space.

Less romantic (unless you're a turbo-nerd)

Or, you know, not: It could be said that on that now-famous sort-of-first-date, Barack took Michelle out for igneous rocks. Or he would have if those two were geo dweebs* rather than the law geeks they obviously are.

* I can use the most fraught word in the geek-nerd-dweeb label continuum here because everyone knows that next to astronomers, geologists are some of the most blissed-out folk in science. So I'm saying it with either affection or envy. When I know which I'll report back.

...and repent in leisure

Oh, for god's sake:

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the eldest child of the late Robert F. Kennedy and a former lieutenant governor of Maryland, said the animosity that some Clinton delegates feel toward Obama "is getting worse."

Townsend, a Maryland delegate, was a strong Clinton supporter but now is fully behind Obama. She said she partly understands why some of her colleagues have not joined her yet.

"There's a moment that you want to enjoy your bitterness," she said.

Yes, and if the Dems don't pull it together that "moment" will be 4-8 years long, plus whatever happens with the Supremes. I realize I'm a bit obsessed about this right now, but I have a sick feeling that this election cycle could prove the acme of boomer self-involvement-at-the-expense-of-all-others behavior. I just bought a frickin' house; I am gonna be so pissed if I have to leave it and move to Canada...

In which Chris Matthews entertains the crowd

I'd say words can't describe the concentrated crazy that is Cristi Adkins on MSNBC this afternoon, but in fact, there is a word to describe the part where Nurse Ratchett here mistakes Chris Matthews for a child with dirty ears. And that word is HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I doubted Matthews' sense for doing a segment down on the PUMA protest line, but I was wrong -- this is great television, and a great glimpse into the bunny-boiling mindset that seems to be driving "these ladies," as Chris called them with such arch joy. God, I do love me some convention coverage.

We love you too, Mr. Ebert

From Roger Ebert's blog, a lovely and full-throated appreciation of the positive side of blogging. As you may well expect, it involves commenters. Aww. Let's all be sure not to tell him about the color-coded burnout level alerts.

Tramp the dirt down

Attention Gen X: If what we all wished for back in the day is any indication, it appears that dementia is the most gruesome imaginable way to die, at least of the ordinary ways to die: First Reagan, now Thatcher.

I'll buy that. Something that simply smites your elderly ass isn't nearly as horrifying to face as something that steals your mind, your memories, your dignity, and your personal relationships -- my father couldn't visit my grandmother for the last year of his life, as it was just too traumatic to his own dying system -- and leaves you locked inside your own body to witness it. (I asked my grandmother about her awareness of her decline, while she could still be asked. She was "still in there," she told me, and it was awful to see the disconnections. Like being fogged in, she said, and knowing that the signals you were sending out were coming through fuzzed and wrong. Beyond frustrating. Often beyond humiliating.)

So there's that, and the families of Mr. Reagan and Ms. Thatcher will have their own thoughts on who suffers now and how splattery karma can be when it comes around. But I have to confess that though we really did think that Maggie and Ronnie were about the evilest damn things we ever saw back then, I'm hoping that fate has something more... gratifying... in store for Dick Cheney in the full measure of his years.

Tastier blogging treat (the stocked shelf)

Hey, check this out -- Tyson Foods (you know, chickens and whatnot) has a clever fundraiser going on their site, and all you have to do to help out is read a blog post about Austin, TX and leave a comment indicating that you did so. For each comment, the company will donate 100 pounds (!) of food to a fundraiser in the Austin area, and they'll go as high as 35,000 pounds.

This could be a true Net phenomenon; the fundraiser is called the HAM-Up Tweet-Up, and it was conceived (and news has been propagating) up in the Twitstream. It launched today, and wouldn't you just love to hear that Twitter had caused 17.5 tons of food to appear along with the usual 8.3 cubic feet of virtual guano?