[NB: Since I moved SetonnoteS, emails to that address don't work. If you are inspired to email me, it should be directed to Tony@TonySeton.com.]
Bits & Pieces
Bits and pieces from this reporter's notebook.
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet....If the California gubernatorial race was gonna get any more bollixed up, it was hard to guess how. What with Incumbent Davis being despised to the point of squinting, and Challenger Simon being brought back from the dead when the $78 million jury judgment against his family firm was over-turned by a judge, you could do little more than shake your head and hold your nose. People were talking about a third party candidate. But oops, our choices just got narrowed. Gary Copeland, the candidate of the 98,000 member Libertarian Party, lost his endorsement over the weekend. The party big-wigs weren't happy that Copeland -- a Druid, but that wasn't a factor -- spat upon a radio talk show host. Not that if he hadn't spat he would have been a good governor, but now we'll never know. The radio guy's crime? He turned off the candidate's microphone.
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet....Speaking of nuttiness, the folks in charge of airport security have been busy since getting the job last February. During their first six months, the TSA confiscated nearly 2.4 million prohibited items from travelers. These include, according to news reports, 23,970 box-cutters and 527 firearms. Now I can understand being forgetful and going to the airport packin' heat -- yeah, right -- but box-cutters? And not only one, which under the circumstances you might think is a lot, but 24,000 of them. Are there that many people with such a warped sense of humor?
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet....The White Hats finally seem to have captured an Al Qaeda leader, in a raid in Pakistan. The next day we caught six A.Q. soldiers in upstate New York. The grunts were all American-born -- not to be confused with all-American -- and they were apparently waiting for orders to attack. I presume authorities will probe them for all the information they might have. If the probing doesn't work, they might try cutting off pieces of these perverted puzzles, slowly, one at a time, until all of their answers are on the table.
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet....Bill Gates has retained his position as the richest person in America with $43,000,000,000. He dropped $11 billion last year, mostly due to the decline in Microsoft stock. No tears on your pillow, you say? There should be. Not for Gates, but for all those people whom that money might have helped. Consider the myriad lives that might be made significantly better but for want of a thousand dollars; e.g., the difference between properly feeding the children or not. Instead of having this ludicrous amount of wealth dissipate into nothingness without accomplishing a thing, Gates might have given $1,000 each to 11,000,000 needy folks.
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet....Finally, someone who wouldn't be a Gates donee is Jennifer Lopez, known to the rest of the world as J.Lo. (I'm not sure of the spelling.) It turns out this singer-actress travels with an entourage of 100 people. (...but I know obscenity when I see it.) There's an irony here. Many of the folks among those 11,000,000 needy probably got that way by squandering their scarce resources to create JLow's entourage. Serves 'em right, maybe. I'm told by someone who spends his life listening to music that Jayllo can neither sing nor act.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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