President Bush wants to ban gay marriage...

...and Kate and I are scared. "Because," Kate reminded me, "our marriage is definitely gay, in the third-grade sense. We constantly talk in the voice of the cats, for example." Well, if that's wrong, then I don't want to be right.

Bunch o' stuff...

First off, friend Chris Jordan writes from the UK: "I thought you might find this tidbit interesting: over here in the glorious UK, various opticians, such as Vision Express, are now selling 'Harry Potter' frames. This next wave of spectacular merchandise is sure to get kids beaten up at school nation-wide! I mean, it's bad enough that anyone over here with dark hair and spectacles gets nick-named Potter anyway, but...maybe long robes and horrifically-knitted jumpers will start creeping into the big-brand clothes market?" I think Chris is right: it's only a matter of time. In totally unrelated news, I found this interview with Harry Shearer quite interesting...

The inexorable march of POD...

...or "print-on-demand," for all you civilians out there, is detailed in this newspaper article. Check out the kicker at the end, talking about a Florida company that has developed a Xerox-sized machine that can print and bind a softcover book while you wait. Hel-lo! Yes, people like to flip through books, but there's no way that being able to buy books in your local drugstore--without eating up scarce shelf-space--isn't a GREAT thing.

Run, don't spider-walk!

Oh, this will make the Middle East love us even more: there's a plot afoot to create a theme park in Iraq, based on the creepy first segment of 1973's "The Exorcist."

In honor of Valentine's Day...

...here's a collection of creepy Valentine's Day cards.

David Kaestle, R.I.P.

I've just learned that David Kaestle, one of National Lampoon's old designers--and thus, with Michael Gross, half of the world's total population of people who know how to design humor magazines--died of cancer on January 23, 2004. I spoke with David only once--last August, in hopes of hiring him to redesign the Yale Record college humor magazine for the students at Yale. Having admired his work for decades, I was really quite honored, and I hoped to learn as much as I could from a long association in the future. But time ran out. The world of prose humor is a little more impoverished now. Godspeed, DK, and thank you for your kindness to me, and all the beautiful, funny work you did. You can read Michael Gross' touching obit here. To hear what some designers thought, check out this article and comments section.

I've just finished a wonderful, creepy, fascinating book...

...called "The Devil in the White City," by Erik Larson. It tells the story of the 1893 World's Fair held in Chicago, and America's first recognized serial killer, H.H. Holmes, who ran a murderous hotel near the fairgrounds. The book, which is always interesting and often hair-raising, has a web site here.

O'Reilly apologizes...

In the great tradition of Lee Atwater, conservative blowhard Bill O'Reilly now apologizes for giving Bush a pass on the whole WMD thing. "What do you want me to do?" he whined on Good Morning America. "Go over and kiss the camera?" No, Bill, we just want you to be skeptical before soldiers get killed, instead of sheepish afterwards.

Fans of the legendary...

...horror writer H.P. Lovecraft will enjoy this site. Were I still in college, I think many of the books in Sterling Memorial Library would now bear the Miskatonic U. sticker.

Shine, Perishing Republic

Jon forwarded me this poem, written by Robinson Jeffers. "While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens, I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth. Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother. You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic. But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains. And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master. There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught – they say – God, when he walked on earth." Nice, huh? You can read about the poet here. I encourage you to do so. He had a philosophy called "Inhumanism" that is very thought-provoking.

Now that Lieberman has pulled out...

...showing us the limits of "Joe-mentum," Jon Schwarz and I mused on what other types of "mentum" are making their presences felt in this primary season. Howard Dean: Early in the campaign, Garry Trudeau-mentum. But after his outburst in Iowa, definitely crow-mentum. Will h.m.o-mentum get him back in the race? Al Sharpton: 'fro-mentum, naturally. The thing he has to watch out over: Jim-Crow-mentum. John Edwards: A sort of golden-glow, golf pro-mentum, don't you think? John Kerry: Thanks to his wife, lotsa-dough-in-escrow-mentum. Wesley Clark: Kosovo-mentum. Perhaps he needs a shot of Garry Hart-style ho-mentum. It couldn't hurt. Dennis Kucinich: More than a little Henry-David-Thoreau-mentum, hence low-mentum, but perhaps eventually a little Perot-mentum. Gephardt had the E-I-E-I-O-mentum, and any farmer could've told him that gets you nowhere. It used to be automatic that Democrats would get the A.F.L.C.I.O-mentum, but that's no longer a given. Will any Dem have what it takes to defeat Bush's formidable C.E.O/status-quo-mentum? Given the example of the last Democrat to run and win, the most important question of all may be this: who has the blow-mentum?

A Failure of Intelligence...

Jon forwarded this column by Richard Cohen in The Washington Post. It's simple why Bush and his cronies have to go: too much power, too little intelligence.

As I pour my lifeblood into Barry 3...

...pounding out, then often tearing up, page after page, I feel it is only fair to reward your patience with this funny piece written by my friend Ed Page: "The Natural History of the Moustache." I grew a moustache once, but it grew in calico, like a cat.