No, no, not anger management training, you charmingly silly people. I refer to ArtRage the painting software. It's annoying that you would think otherwise. In fact, it's beyond annoying. It makes me see red. Or more like an Alizarin Crimson. The elderly gent, by the way, is Lord Strathcona. And believe it or not, he's the inventor of the strathcona. I know! You'd never have thought that the strathcona was named after a real person, but it was. Just like the sandwich, or kleenex. Now I'll never use a strathcona without thinking about this fellow.

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Where the hell was Pat Robertson this week? For you non-Hampton Roadsters, he has in the past claimed responsibility for praying away storms that were bearing down on us. This year he must have used up his quota of supplications getting his protegé elected governor, because he was nowhere to be seen when the nor'easter hit. Lots of low-level flooding, bridges and tunnels closed, power outages. This tree fell a few blocks from CSB World Headquarters, due as much to rain-softened ground as anything. Our cable (and therefore my internet) went out until about 20 minutes ago, but the electricity stayed on. Basement's flooded, though. City workers tell us the sewers are backed up to the Fairfax Avenue pumping station. The thought that Hague dookie is bobbing about downstairs really annoys me--never liked that crowd.

Last night Jon Stewart caught Sean Hannity faking crowd footage in a story about some right-wing mob gathering or other, and Fox advertised a response by Hannity tonight, so like a fool I sat through the whole hour waiting to see how he could possibly refute Stewart's charge. What an hour. If you'll notice, all the remarks above are followed by exclamation points. That's how they talk over there. They're one disgruntled bunch. You could see them working themselves up into a fine froth. The thrust of the evening's discussion (and there was nary a dissenting voice, except for the tiny peep I recorded above) was that it's an outrage that the Ft. Hood killings aren't being called terrorism by Obama's lackeys, who evidently include the Army brass, and this atmosphere of correctness promulgated by Obama shares in the culpability for the massacre. A sub-thrust was the delay in manufacture of the H1N1 vaccine, and if the government can't get that right, how can they possibly get healthcare right? Unfortunately, since there weren't any naysayers or question-raisers on this All-American panel, there was no one to say, "The vaccine is being manufactured--and its manufacture is being delayed--by the pharmaceutical industry, a proud pillar of private enterprise, not the government; so by your logic, how could we expect private industry to run healthcare if they can't even get this right?"

Oh, and at the tail end of his broadcast, Hannity did apologize for the false footage, but dismissed it as purely accidental. I'll strike a blow against political correctness by calling that bullshit.

Yesterday I received this lovely gift from a good friend--in honor of Veterans Day, I'm thinking. You can't put a price on good friends, can you? On their heads or anywhere else. What I like about this packaging design is its earnestness in hammering home the point, just in case you might mistake this for a tasteful mainstream product. Adding the value proposition "plump and ripe" was an especially nice touch. By the way, these things taste as wretched as you might imagine, and the mouthfeel is not really like a zit at all. At first I thought it was more like a boil, but now I realize it's exactly like a blister about to burst. But the package designers wisely stayed away from "Blister Bursters" as a name, zeroing in on its target audience instead. Which is another reason for cherishing good friends. They know you so well.