In the nooze.

Lots o' stuff floating out there today:

1) Sorry, girls, but it looks like Uma Thurman's single again, so I'm gonna have to put you all on hold while I wait for her to call me.....

2) You heard it here first! I said months ago that it looked like Bush & Co. were gearing up for Iran to be their Next Big War, and in the last couple of days, both Cheney and Rice have backed me up on that. As Leno said last night, "If there's one thing the Bush Administration won'’t tolerate, it's a middle eastern country that could have weapons of mass destruction, but doesn't."”

3) I'm still on a kick about election fraud ("Not back on it, Joe; still on it"). Here's a great article about how all we need to do to fix this is care enough to get involved. In other words: forget it, it'll never happen.

4) In another of my recurring themes: "We are the children of children, Mr. Banks, and we live as we are shown." Check out this guy in France who found it too stressful to worry that his children might lose their tennis matches, so he took to drugging their teenaged opponents. Or this topless dancer in Tennessee. She and her boyfriend have one of her fellow dancers over to their trailer. They slit the girl's throat (for unknown reasons) and dump the body so far out in the wilds that the police don't find it until she helps them later. They clean up all the evidence, pack up all their stuff and take off for DisneyWorld. When pulled over for speeding, she shoots the boyfriend in the head (they evidently had a suicide pact), but is unable or unwilling to kill herself, so she is arrested and confesses. And although she was sentenced in Florida, the authorities have agreed to let her serve her life sentence in Tennessee so that she can be closer to her two children. Sigh. Does it occur to anyone that these kids might be better off if she stayed in Florida?

5) I'll admit it, I'm definitely the target audience for downloading music. I want a song when I want it. But, I can't really argue with this: Some labels argue that although they want to release a single early for radio play to build desire for the album when it's released, they feel like selling the single for download that early actually decreases sales for the whole album. It makes sense, and actual results seem to bear out that theory. And I don't think I mind. As long as they let me buy just the single if I want it after the album is out, then that's cool. What I don't want is to still be forced to buy the whole album to get the one song I liked. But the anticipation of knowing I like the song and waiting to be able to own it; turning on the radio in hopes of hearing it; that kind of stuff can only be a good thing.

6) Heather's been asking about how we can stay happy when we've made mistakes we regret. This article about the Baby Boomers and their impending retirement raises many of the same questions in my mind. Where one comes down on the question of loving their job versus making a living can have significant consequences. I face that choice every day in my career. And every time I choose the "making a living" side of the coin, I wind up miserable. They say that one should "live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse," but isn't there a third option? Only for the very lucky, perhaps? I'm open to suggestions.

7) Is it just me, or is this AT&T merger a stupid idea? Twenty-two years ago, an anti-trust lawsuit forced "Ma Bell" to split into 7 smaller companies. With this week's announcement of their plans to buy Bell South, AT&T has now re-merged 4 of those 7. WHY IS THIS OKAY?! Dear God, this seems so self-evident that I can't believe we're even having this conversation. Worse is the concern over their CEO's comments on the internet and his desire to make money off of it. This is even worse than the whole charging for e-mail idea that AOL floated recently. Everyone thought that the internet was bringing us a new wave of grassroots information sharing, but it looks like it lasted even less time that the counterculture of the sixties before the Man found a way to buy us all out. At least this guy will be happy -- he seems angry because so much of the grassroots information being shared is poorly written. And while I concede that point (and share his concern that technology is not intrinsically helpful and has to rely on human nature), I can't say that I think most of even the big time media's information is very well written, and more importantly, I agree with this article from the BBC: "For anyone who cares about the future of media, these are complicated times - and great fun as well."

I certainly enjoy these little chats of ours. Now get out there and make some happy, y'all.