America's uncomfortable relationship with celebrity

Unless you're, say, Oprah or something, becoming famous in America ought to come with a free 'Please destroy me!' sign you can wear around your neck. Honestly, we seem to like tearing down even more than building up.

I'm reminded of this most recently by looking at the savaging that Victoria Beckham's reality show got from the press, and similarly by observing the barely-concealed delight with which the sports press reports on David Beckham's injury-induced inability to practice or play with the LA Galaxy yet. All that money, and all he's managed to do successfully is find his way to California!

Neener neener.

In praise of the latest iTunes

I should preface this with two important facts: One, I'm a librarian by training, if not by profession. As such, I get weirdly obsessive about weird classification and categorization things. Two, ... OK, well, I forgot what the second thing was.

But anyway. Since the invention of ASCII, computers have improperly sorted numerals so they appear before the alphabet. That's wrong. And by extension iTunes has been wrong since its invention, because it always put bands like 10,000 Maniacs ahead of bands like a-Ha and Air.

Not anymore, though. With the most recent update, iTunes sorts your music library properly, putting bands, songs and albums with numerals at the start of their title at the end. Yay, Apple!

As for everyone out there who's complaining that they suddenly can't find half their music or something, shut up and quitcherbitchin.

Qatar Airways and the 787

What does it mean, exactly, when an airline half owned by the government of a Persian Gulf oil state orders 30 of the 'greenest' jet liners ever produced?

Hot dog!

Hurray for horrible, revolting, stupid, gratuitous overeating competitions. Because if there's one thing that reminds me how many people are starving in the world, it's the freakish, foolish waste of food for purposes of entertainment and fascination.

I'm just waiting for one of the contestants to die sometime in a very high profile manner, so it'll finally become fashionable to dislike these flagrant displays.

Sometimes I think we really DO need a drastic reallocation of resources to restore balance to the world.

Happiness is ...

Happiness is, according, to Aristotle, the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.

Just a miscellaneous deep thought for you today.

"Your Call is Important to Us"

"Please continue to hold. Your call is important to us."

Mm-hmm. That's funny, I could swear from the fact that you've had me sitting here for 20 minutes staring at the texturing on the wall opposite me that you really probably would rather I had never picked up the phone. But the recorded voice uttering syllables of hollow care and concern has really changed my mind about that!

It's so much easier to say the right thing than do the right thing! I'd never noticed that before. Thank you, Faceless Telecom.

A ludicrous, impractical and illegal, but morally defensible, suggestion

Go to your nearest megachain record store or, preferably, the Arkansas-based retailer we all love to hate. Steal some music by an artist you like, assuming you can find something in their stock that doesn't make you want to retch. Don't get caught.

Then, send a check for $5 to the artist. It's rather more than they'd get otherwise. Now that's really supporting your favorite musicians.