Exactly.

US Energy Sec says wife bargain hunts for gasoline | Reuters.com: "Bodman, who previously served as the CEO of Fidelity Investments and Cabot Corporation, said that he personally does not scour service stations looking for bargains because the U.S. Secret Service buys his fuel."

Another Broadway hit for Nathan Lane?

Saddam Hussein novel hits stores in Japan | Reuters.com: "'I really think this book should be made into a musical,' she said. 'And once this is done, it should play in the heart of his enemy's country, on Broadway.'"

Hey it worked for Hitler. So why not?

More like a third, in fact.

Iowa Co. Hopes to Make Gasoline Obsolete - Yahoo! News: "There, a clean six-cylinder engine that looks like it could have been pulled from a Ford pickup has been running for 110 hours, not quite half the 300 hours it must continuously run for certification."

A whole lot more like a third. But let's not trouble ourselves with little things like arithmetic, hmmmm?

Yes! I love this stuff! W00t!

Lay Defense Blames Auto Signature Machine: "The automated signature machine did it. Attorneys for Kenneth Lay suggested bank loan documents containing terms he allegedly violated actually were signed by an automatic signature device in the Enron Corp. founder's office and not by him."

People don't commit fraud, signature machines do. How awesome is that?

Carbon dioxide: "We breath it out."

(Not to mention it's in all those soft drinks.)

And plants breath it in. See? Not to worry, claims the warm and fuzzy (especially fuzzy) Competitive Enterprise Institute in two recently released carbon-dioxide-is-good-for-you TV commercials.

Think Progress » New Ads Funded by Big Oil Portray Global Warming Science as Smear Campaign Against Carbon Dioxide

And here's another thing, Bunky. Carbon dioxide helps keep you safe from breathing too much oxygen.

"...oxygen may be what ultimately kills you, rusting your body from the inside in a process called oxidation and free-radical production. Breathing pure oxygen creates an abundance of free radicals."

So there you go. The Competitive Enterprise Institute and their pals at ExxonMobil are helping to keep you safe from breathing too much oxygen. Gee, thanks, Competitive Enterprise Institute! You're like a breath of fresh air!

Or, OK, maybe not.

WIIIAI

Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: "Michael Hayden has a cunning plan for the CIA: “I would emphasize getting it right more often.” That’s so crazy it just might work. Makes you wonder why no one has ever thought of it before."

WIIIAI is, hands down (that would be IMO, but not IMHO), the best current affairs blog on the net. And the funniest, too. Of course my sense of humor might be different than yours. But nobody can deny that guy Hayden is a hoot.

More monkey news.

And birds. I'm not forgetting birds.

Some apes, birds can think ahead, studies show | Reuters.com: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Apes that remember to carry the right tools to retrieve treats and scrub jays that hide food a second time when they think a rival is watching prove animals can think ahead -- a trait once believed to be uniquely human, scientists have found."

Meanwhile recent evidence suggests the trait is receeding in humans. What's going on here? Are the animals taking over here? Couldn't happen - is that what you're thinking, Bunky?

Well maybe you ought to think again. The Reuters story was written by a Fox.

How green was her lawn?

Ark. mayor accused in sex-for-water case - Boston.com: "Another woman told investigators that she'd been having sex with Anderson for money for the past eight to 10 years. She said Anderson paid her $25 per encounter and that he allowed her to change the name on her overdue water bill, which kept her water turned on, the affidavit said."

Some spoilsports, these "others."

Teens suffer soap opera virus | Reuters.com: "Medical officials believe many children, after watching the show, feared their own minor rashes and wheezes were something serious. Others noted the outbreak came at the same time as end-of-year exams."

Kids in Portugal suffer mysterious illness dubbed "Strawberries with Sugar Virus" after an episode of a popular television show.

What exams have to do with it I have no idea.

So maybe the guy was just listening to something good on his iPod.

WW2 plane loses cockpit cover, hits takeaway stand - Yahoo! News: "BERLIN (Reuters) - The glass cockpit bonnet of a vintage World War Two U.S. fighter P51 Mustang came off in midflight over Germany and destroyed a takeaway stand near the western German town of Muenster, police said on Thursday."

Pilot seems not to notice, flies on. Now "wanted for questioning," say cops.

It's all about keeping you safe, Bunky. It really is.

CNN.com - CIA pick: Phone tapping might have netted 9/11 terrorists - May 18, 2006: "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's pick to head the CIA said Thursday that if the government's phone-tapping program were in place before 9/11, at least two hijackers would likely have been identified."

And you know what would have really prevented 9/11? If we had been arresting everybody who bought an airline ticket and sending them down there to Gitmo and pulling their fingernails out, that's what. The World Trade Centers would still be standing if we'd been doing that, Bunky. Have you ever thought of that?

No?

Spare us the whimsy, please.

From an AP story in the Examiner, via Raw: "Competitors say the idea stinks of unfair business practices and that Cilija is just looking to make more dough."

The story's about a restaurant chain in Lithuania that's trying to claim a trademark on the scent of freshly baked pizza. Reminds people of them, they say, and therefore it's theirs. (Don't get me started in that train of thought.) If the trademark request is granted other restaurants will still be able to make pizza, they just won't be able to claim it smells like "freshly baked." Or however they say that in Vilnius.

They could however claim it's saucy, I suppose.

OK all you Da Vinci Code fans.

Here's something you can think about while you're waiting in line for the movie.

Earthquake Rose --- Earthquake As Artist: "A sand tracing pendulum, located at a shop in Port Townsend called Mind Over Matter (since moved to Sedona, Arizona), produced some very interesting patterns."

You do know all about this rose stuff, right? And PHI.

And speaking of which - the movie I mean - judging from the reviews I've been reading all the furor about banning the movie (eeeeek!) might turn out to be the luckiest thing that ever happened to it boxofficewise. Although given that everybody seems to have read it everybody will probably want to see the movie too, I suppose.

Soggy days.

Parts of New England have had a rainfall-of-the-century week. Not so bad here, but still it sure ain't dry. The creek is high.

Oh no! Black is the new black!

I mean the new white! Black! Is! You can see for yourself. And here I am still trying to figure out cell phones!


Which is no, by the way, easy thing. All the reviews, it turns out, are written either by "editors" (which should put you off right there) or 12-year olds. And they're all written in the What's Good/What's Bad form. To wit:

What's Good: Cool camera! Megapixels! Awesome ringtones! Web browser. MP3s! Movies! Java! Neat keys! W00t!

What's Bad: Voice quality sucks.

Oh.

And you thought bears eat Quarter Pounders like the rest of us, Bunky?

Bears eat monkey in front of zoo visitors - Boston.com: "The park confirmed the killing in a statement, saying: 'In an area where Sloth bears, great apes and Barbary macaques have coexisted peacefully for a long time, the harmony was temporarily disturbed during opening hours on Sunday.'"

I don't know what "the park" means, though, by harmony disturbed. They shared, didn't they?

Hacking the vote.

Inside Bay Area - New security glitch found in Diebold system: "Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways."

Somehow I find myself imagining that if a flaw of this magnitude were discovered in Diebold's ATM machines it'd be fixed by start of business tomorrow. But here we're not talking money, just votes. California, Pennsylvania, and Iowa (assuming there really is an Iowa) have taken some kind of action but the National Association of State Elections Directors has responded with a collective ho-hum.

Pay attention, Bunky. Our electoral system is munged. We'd better get it fixed in a hurry or we'll wind up walking around with purple fingers, too. And all that goes with that.