WhimsyLand

It has occurred to me recently that the most important part of being in love with someone is not the incidental benefits of companionship and stimulation.  The greatest part is the gift of hope.  Notwithstanding what may be behind us, there is always that dark future that awaits.  Hopelessness is a burden that accumulates slowly, unseen and unnoticed, like road dust on a long journey.  One day, you awake and the morning doesn't hold the same magic it once did.  It astounds me to find out how simple is the antidote.  Thank you, Junie.

Speaking of whom, my sweet has been copy-editing a novel that rehashes shamelessly every major point in every right-wing nutcase novel:  black helicopters, New World Order, Skull & Bones, corrupt government agencies funding every notable assassination of the last 40 years, you know.  After laughing over her descriptions of this particular tome of paranoid fiction, I sat down to read the Wall Street Journal.  Here's what I found:

DaimlerChrysler's mustachioed CEO, Dieter Zetsche, star in all those crash-dummy commercials, allows as how their sales have suddenly gone South, just like Ford and GM.  It seems that even the Jeep Commander and Chrysler 300 can't keep people buying V8 cars with 18 miles per gallon.  It was thought that Chrysler had some sort of German juju that was preventing them from facing up to a fuel-efficient buying class and the same labor costs as the rest of the Big 3.

It seems that the Chairman of the Board of HP hired a consultant who hired a detective to use scams and deception to intercept emails and tap phones of her fellow board members.

Yes, it's a good year for Democrats, given that Bush's ratings are somewhere south of Nixon's and Carter's.  However, the truth is there is little up for grabs.  The unprecedented gerrymandering by both parties that has gone on for two decades makes it almost impossible for incumbents to lose.  California, for example, holds 53 of the 435 House seats and even in this time of GOP angst, very few are actually competitive.  California is not alone;  states with entrenched incumbents include Alabama, Alaska (even with all the recent scandals), Arkansas, Delaware, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, the Dakotas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island and Utah.

While the majority of the elected leaders of Thailand were out of town, the Thai military, with the quiet support of the King Bhumibol (frequently attributed to be a "quasi-divine figure"), took over the government.

There has been so much un-scientific infighting by industry-funded members of the IEEE standards committee on WiFi standards, that the group voted to remove the leadership due to blatant self-serving moves by technical representatives who work for Intel, Qualcomm and other firms.

The Department of Homeland Security will announce the awarding of a $2 billion contract to "secure America's border" to Boeing.  The contract was particularly open-ended.  Michael Jackson (no, not that MJ), deputy secretary of DHS told the firms that this year he wanted them to "come back and tell us how to do our business".

Monster Worldwide (God, what a great name) and Broadcom are some of the many firms facing investigation by federal prosecutors for backdating stock options for their executives and most-valued employees.  The scam was to retro-issue options at exactly the date at which their stock hit a low.  An independent analyst said that the likelihood that Monster's supposed random selection of option dates would hit their minima was 1 in 9 million.

Real estate specialists say that the federal government is paying way too much, at $59 a square foot, to move into 16 floors of the soon-to-be-built Freedom Tower at the former World Trade Center site.  There is speculation that politics is swaying an otherwise simple economic analysis.

I mean, there's this perfectly wonderful collection of shenanigans in the Wall Street Journal.  Why is it necessary dream up reactionary fantasies?

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OK, I'm starting my BAP analysis tomorrow.  For reals, as Ky used to say when he was 3.