This is obviously a terrible story. However, if you share my general antipathy towards folk music, I hope you’ll join me in a little Schadenfreude. The Blues Brothers never would have fallen for that one.

I miss Mark Leyner. Especially when I happen upon things like this, in which he runs broad circles around an innocent online therapist. Damn you, Leyner! Write more books!

Cathy Young of Reason Online writes about domestic violence. I have no expertise in the area, and will not comment further, other than to say that the piece is a good read and the book mentioned sounds intriguing.

It Begins

Blog Presses The Button

The Prophet Launches A Volley

Blog Presses The Button, Again

The Prophet Tries To Settle It Up

Blog Declares Boredom!

Flog Gets The Last Word

Yes, it is over…finally, after many brave bytes went off to face their doom…. We salute you, byte veterans. Godspeed!

UPDATE: Prophet Breaks The Cease Fire!

When will the madness end? Won’t somebody please think of the children!

Time for my weekly reminder that Simon Hoggart will rock your world, if only you let him.

To coin a phrase: read the whole thing.

Here we go again.

We can’t just cut and paste the entire article into Spew. Please select from the following:

1: On Of Course!

“It is easy (and convenient) to assume — when one is in a position of cultural power — that medical research does in fact increase human welfare. Of course, the opposite is true…”

2: On Asides Requiring A Deep Breath

“…(as is evidenced by the ever-increasing levels of disease, violence, famine, psychological trauma and emotional isolation that have become the modern human experience, as well as the abusive and manipulative use of medical technologies in the global South, despite the dedicated science of the monolithic medical research industry)…”

3: On Slavery, Genocide, Rape, and Pet Ownership

“Friskie’s life is only Travis’ to use when he reduces her to something less than alive and sentient. The same holds true for the victims of slavery, genocide, rape, clear-cutting and factory farming.”

4: On Thinly Veiled Threats

“The truth is, Travis, that you are not more worthy of life than Friskie…”

(I’m not really a fan of Willse’s pieces either, but that’s going a bit far.)

5: On You Know, There Was No Traffic Congestion Before Cars Were Invented

“Science and industry have thus far only managed to increase rates of cancer, depression, and other illnesses to unfathomable levels.”

Did anyone catch this in the Oregonian yesterday?

Apparently, the state spent funds to pay the Portland-based Wieden+Kennedy advertising firm to come up with a new slogan for our state: “Oregon. We Love Dreamers.”

I think Phooeyhoo does a good job of expressing outrage over the new catchphrase.

Wow. Thousands of dollars and months of advertising meetings later, the best they could do is We Love Dreamers? Somehow, this doesn’t seem to be the tag line that’s going to help jump start an economy. When I think of dreamers, I think of people who sit at home all day watching The Price is Right and only occasionally getting up to piss. Did I miss something? Don’t we want to lure in hard nosed working Americans, illegal aliens who will work for less than minimum wage, and midgets that can transform the local entertainment industries?

Can we take the new slogan and put it to a popular vote? I propose a new state phrase: “Oregon. We Love the Little People.“

I’d get a new hairstylist. I’d also wonder why the lawyer who settled my case didn’t get the fees from the Pentagon as well. I mean, yeah they were settling to get her out of their hair, but I’m sure something could have been done. But, if $595k is a pyrrhic victory, so be it.

a five-part series on cheating. The article was complete with Charles Manson’s less dangerous, but more stressed and dishonesty-prone cousin decorating the front cover, a virtual barrage of vague, meaningless statistics and information so obvious one would think it was written by Jessie Cole-Hodgkinson herself.

I suppose this is what happens when The Voice, the magazine that is suppose to be sucking up all the really crappy stories, is too God-awful to print something of this caliber. The Emerald now has to take up their slack…or maybe both these rags are just fodder for house training a puppy.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s edition, kids. They are going to tell us exactly how to cheat in class, so be ready to take notes!

The Hit&Run post linked above gives us a nice link to a post on punative damages over at Marginal Revolution. It’s nice to see at least one judge trying to come up with a cogent method for determination of punative damages in civil cases, instead of just throwing his hands up.

Here are some photos from the I-5 traffic jam. Three killed in a southbound VW Beetle when a Jetta jumped the grass median from the northbound lanes and colided with it. The Driver of the Jetta may or may not have been drunk, but there was alcohol in his system. Makes me glad I stopped for 15 minutes in Lake Oswego to grab a burger, could’ve been involved if I were a little beat farther ahead on the freeway. In any case, if you’ve ever wanted to know what I-5 looks like at a dead stop, the pictures are ready.

Go about your business.

Also: Eric Merchant Beware!

Furthermore: I shall post pictures of what I-5 looks like at a dead stop sometime later. You’ll like them, I swear.