[Harder to make the time/read: muster the effort for "longer" (if I could put the marks around just the word long, I would) more, drawn-out entries. I dub thee, bitiblog.]

Riots and now looting in China. No greater proof that capitalism is in full swing there.

Look at what the first Reader Comment says, comparing these things to Geordi's visor. We know better.

The Bush Administration refuses to admit that muscling through Congress to keep a feeding tube connected to Terri Shiavo, autopsied with half a brain, might not have been the best use of the office (this, while malnutrition and lack of healthcare continue to threaten millions of full ones). Still, that's more evidence than they've yet to produce weapons of mass destruction in all of Iraq. And their supporters in Kansas want kids there to be taught an explanation of the way things are called "intelligent design", surely facetiously. I'll concede that America's a faith-based country; but you can only be so strong for so long when you're wrong.

D2031M75S196E8546.

I read this morning that Costco is going to begin offering health insurance to its members. Expect Sam's to follow suit, and sooner than you know they'll be declaring statehood.

Oh yeah, and about last night's Family Guy: while I'm titillated the show's back, and retains more or less the same hit/miss ratio with its gags (with airtime looking like the best candidate for an inversely proportional relationship), some of the recent reference material has got me wondering who's getting all this: so there's the likelihood of Gen-X'ers having participated in an emptied-MTV revival of "Rock Lobster"; the Superman logo straightjacket, though? And the 70's Saturday Night Live sketch staples, even I wasn't around for them until syndication.

There's a track on hitomi's Traveller CD called "SPEED☆STAR", whose opening I swore was identical to the Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight, Tonight." Except when I put them back-to-back (or as close as the CD changer allows), they didn't quite sound exactly the same. This isn't the first time I've done this: I derided Pearl Jam for making more money with a riff lifted from Living Colour; similarly remember being outraged when "Egypt, Egypt" got airplay over any Kraftwerk—history bore me out on that one, though; and for the decade I searched for the soundtrack to Barbarella, I heard the theme in a dialogue-free mountain-climbing short film that's come my way more than once and again in Pizzicato Five's クレオパトラ2001. Don't even ask me about people I think look alike. If it's creativity to see relationships where they don't exist, or at least where others can't, then what is it when you're wrong most of the time?

Is it proper etiquette, whether you're alone or occupying the other of two stalls in a smallish restroom, to flush immediately after releasing the bulk of your load? I understand the reasoning behind removing the lingering odor for the benefit of your neighbor or the next to enter (I believe I've also been witness to the variant whereby the water is timed with the drop, to muffle the sound as well), but is the practice so well-established that to halve the expense of natural resources is somehow uncouth? I so have plenty of topics for my idea of a toilet-only cartoon.

Learned that the old company is switching from Navision to Axapta, the morons. The slightest research—cost them a $50K consultant, I'm told—will tell you that the latter is higher-scale ERP for a user base in the hundreds, vs. the ~20 I left them at; programming and support will require at least the same-fold budget increase; and there's little difference between the two that a business their size will be taking advantage of to not be anymore (a business their size). Susan says it's Fortune 500 software, laughing out loud. For Chris'sake, their monthly sales often couldn't even cover its cost! Maybe the remaining "Executive Team" members, i.e., golfers, will sacrifice their salaries for it? Another fine example of them trying to make their work easier, instead of just plain working. This I must remember to mention in the epilogue to my book on hapless Asian-American entrepreneurs.

"[A] guard's urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Quran." At least they've finally plugged that familiar escape route.

But Grand Theft Auto, even over WiFi, is still not reason enough to get a PSP. Porn? Maybe.

Oh my Lord, the human race went and evolved on me.

wtf, second night in a row I've had to stay late, too late to get to that store in Monterey Park for a new cellphone. I rejoin the workforce again to afford such luxuries—no, not luxuries; luxurious versions—yet I am left without the time for them. Management for me has always been about the responsibilities, nary the privileges. IHML.

And how does a man of letters as myself—or my school records make me out to be—begin a new journal? With, naturally, my suspicion, after my third consecutive lunch at Taco Bell, that the codes on their Mountain Dew/Baja Blast 1,000,000-Peso contest cups are all the same (try-agains): today's, 3R7013P2281XL3041, seemed awfully familiar… alas, this record remains my only means of confirmation, as my re-discovery of the Chalupa is at its end.

Hmm, come back to find FTP publishing that wasn't working before now does.