Wiping the tears with $100 notes I find it darkly amusing to see all the coverage "embattled" Merril Lynch CEO Stan O'Neil is getting. I'm not saying that the pieces are necessarily intended to elicit sympathy, but the focus on him gives it that tint to me... which is laughable considering what the man was paid in a single year . Sure, if one subtracts the $26.8 million that were stock grants based on their market price at the time (why, the poor man could have seen the value of those drop to an abysmal $20 million!) that still leaves over $21 million... in a single year. I know it's nothing new, but how obscene of a system is this? How many people will make $48 million over the course of their entire working life? Someone gets a single-year income like that and I'd support a law that says they have to retire, or at the very least a nearly loophole-free progressive tax system would have re-absorbed 70% or so of it into the national coffers. Taking 70% of $21
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FEMA Flap While this "press conference" was a sham , considering the kid gloves the "legitimate media" has handled the Bush regime for most of its tenure, I'm not sure there would have been much difference if reporters had actually been there. Here's the ABC News piece for the archive: FEMA Apologizes After Sham News Conference White House, Homeland Security Department Angered by FEMA 'Stunt' FEMA Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson talks about the agency's response to the California wildfires at the FEMA press briefing room in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007. It was later revealed that reporters were not given adequate time to travel to the event, so instead, the agency's public affairs staff asked questions. The decision prompted backlash from the media, DHS and the White House. (Bill Koplitz/FEMA) By PIERRE THOMAS, THERESA COOK, JASON RYAN and JACK DATE Oct. 26, 2007 It looked like any other Washington press briefing, with a
Feed! Test and potentially feed your vocabulary while helping to feed the world . Answer correctly and the next word will be more obscure, incorrectly and the next will be more common. Seems like a win:win. It doesn't demand you sign up or otherwise register nor visit any of their advertisers. Each correct answer essentially generates 10 grains of rice for the United Nations. Thanks to Crypt Leak (and, in turn, to Abbygal ) for the tip!
The best thing to come out of Freakazoid was the Johnny Quest spoof -- Toby Danger . While The Venture Brothers have vastly surpassed this, it was still fun to find it saved online. The most I can offer of Venture Brothers themselves is a few clips someone roughly strung together of Science vs Magic debates between Dr. Venture and Dr. Orpheus. The third season is scheduled to debut sometime next Spring.
Mid-Weekend... Once More! Today wrapped the Starro event series for me (I've quietly shifted my Heroclix postings over to a new blog for reasons stated in the first post there, back on October 5th), so with that done I'm back into the rest of the weekend. I have dinner cooking (a pot of steak and bean chili), tonight we might do most of the Halloween decorations (might even buy the pumpkins, but I'm not going to cut, gut and carve them until next weekend), and tomorrow (despite the reviews) at least Nick and I will be headed for a matinee of 30 Days of Night . Aside from that, I have some projects to attend to, and will finally be making a decision on which new comics service I'll be using, as I want to place my order for the month soon.
Run! He'll Turn Your Children! Ah! I see that J.K. Rowling has poked the social conservatives/Right wing Christians with another stick. She revealed last night that the wizard Dumbledore is gay . Ah, if only I had the luxury of being troubled by such insignificant crap. Edit: Ah! I see Tony Collett posted something about this Friday.
What's Eating You? I'm not a big fan of yogurt. Intentionally ingesting bacteria, much less in some culture medium that tries to deliver taste elements of dairy and a lemony acidity that tells me something's gone off and is no longer safe to eat, isn't high on my list of activities. That inappropriate combination of flavors is a big part of why (East) Indian food hasn't been a big hit with me. I don't even need the flies to scare me off. (Yes, I know that some of what's sold as yogurt doesn't contain live cultures, but it's close enough.) I wonder if whatever funky cheese and questionable dairy products in ancient times made for similarly off-putting flavor combinations leading to some of the original Jewish kosher laws, or if that was simply history's first recorded bit of OCD? Could it have just as easily have been " Thou shalt not allow thy string beans to toucheth thy mashed potatoes ?" Well, that's not what I'm here to writ
What Am I Not Looking At? Under normal circumstances I'd be either all caught up on what's happening in the comics I read or I'd at least have the resources in hand to be able to do so. Not so this weekend. As noted from time to time, for years I've been using Westfield Comics to place monthly orders and, in my case, have them delivered twice per month. While I've occasionally mused that there are almost doubtless better deals to be had out there, the service was sufficiently reliable that the comfort of inertia and fear of the unknown conspired with good old American laziness to keep me from looking around and doing anything about it. But that was before the dark times. Before DHL. This weekend I was due for another shipment of comics, which would cover all the items I'd ordered which had hit stores this week and last. Normally, this would have been coming via FedEx, and so normally I'd have had them Saturday or - has happened from time to time - a