goings on around the web

Some friends are doing some cool stuff this week:

Ben, who runs Virtually Blind and is an expert on legal issues in virtual worlds, has had an op-ed piece about the future of the Internet published in the Wall Street Journal.

Maggie, of Mighty Girl fame and a former colleague at Web Techniques, has launched Mighty Haus a new shopping blog focused on cool stuff for your house. As the tagline says, hooray for stuff!

Jeff, who runs the Digital Camera Resource Page, one of the top digital camera reviews sites, got to play professional sports photographer for a day at the Bank of the West Classic tennis tournament at Stanford. Love the photo of the flying braid.

the exchange

First, I'd like to say that the Wife is pregnant and we are having a boy. Yes, thank you. It's true. We are quite excited about this.

But that's not the story I wanted to tell you. The real story is this: In preparing for the arrival of the little dude, we decided to clean the spare bedroom of all the old books we had lying around. And by that, I mainly mean the old textbooks and supplemental reading materials and management guides and coffee table books and started-but-never-finished books and every other in-between sort of book that we'll never read again and will never recommend that anyone else read again either sort of books. We put all these in five or six paper bags and loaded them into the trunk of our car.

Our town has a large and wonderful recycling center with a not-as-large and possibly wonderful book exhange in it, so we drove our five or six bags full of books over to the center and parked in front of the book exchange. The exchange is basically a half dozen or more bookcases lined up against the wall of the recycling center, and as we hopped out of the car we noticed a few people milling about.

I smiled at them. They looked at me. And this is where the story gets interesting.

I hefted one bag of books out of the trunk, carried it over to the bookcases, and set it down on the floor. "Is there any order to where the books go on the shelves?" I asked no in one particular.

"No," said a man in fleece just to my left, startling me with his sudden proximity. Before I could quite turn and focus, this man had bent down and was taking books out of the bag I had just left on the floor.

"Oh, hey, thanks," I said. I watched him for a moment as he dug through the bag, efficiently examining the cover and spine of each book and setting it in a pile next to him. Well, that's nice of him to help me stack the books, I figured. Then I went back to the car and grabbed another bag.

This time, a middle-aged woman with black hair silently intercepted me before I got to the shelves. Again, I nodded my thanks, but made sure to catch the Wife's eye as she handed off her own bag of books to another silent receiver nearby. She shrugged.

As I walked back to the car for my third set of books, I tried to understand why I felt a bit unsettled by the exchange. Should we have offered to help sort and stack the books on the shelves? Were we not supposed to bring old textbooks? I lifted another bag out of the car and carried it back, but this time, as both the man in fleece and the black-haired woman descended upon me, I tried to strike up a conversation. "So, are you volunteers here?" I asked.

"No," said the man in fleece. And then he took the bag from my hands.

"Oh, okay," I said and turned away. Wait, what?

I turned back and saw the man and the black-haired woman sifting through the contents of bag there in the same spot where I had handed it to them. And then it clicked: They were book scavengers. And it wasn't just one group -- there were multiple competing individuals at work here. They weren't putting these books away or choosing a few to read themselves -- they were taking the best of them so they could resell them elsewhere.

I met the Wife at the back of the car. She had clearly just had the same realization. "Is it bad that I don't want to give my books to them?" she whispered. We quickly debated the pros and cons of dropping off our books here. It felt as if somehow our posessions -- as valueless as they were to us -- were being preyed upon before we had even set them down. And yet, that was silly. Why shouldn't someone else profit off our old books? Weren't we going to donate them anyway? This way, maybe they would get recirculated to other communities and even other countries that might actually want old physics and psychology textbooks. Right? It seemed to make sense, sort of.

I quickly grabbed the last bag from the trunk and took it over to where a woman with two sets of eyeglasses strung around her neck was waiting. I set the bag at her feet, the way one might tentatively leave an offering before a goddess prone to sudden fits of anger. "Okay, then. Thanks," I said and backed away slowly. She didn't return the acknowledgement and started to pick through the paperbacks that had gone unfinished on our shelves for years.

The Wife already had the car running when I slipped into the passenger seat. "Why do I feel so used?" she asked as she threw the car in reverse.

"I don't know," I said, "but let's get out of here."

And that, my son, is the story of the sacrifice we made to give you your own bedroom.

good headline

Yoda stamp the post office does release today

(That's the headline as it shows up in my news reader. The actual headline on the article is different, but still amusing.)

not related

about time

I'm pretty tough on products that have bad user interfaces, especially technical products. For instance, within three weeks of getting a Comcast (Motorola) DVR, I gave everyone who spent more than two minutes with me a treatise on just how much more I preferred TiVo's interface. All I'm trying to do is watch TV for crying out loud, so why does Comcast think my remote control needs to look like a graphing calculator?

But the one interface I've always hated doesn't have much to do with technology -- or high technology, at least. It's the Dewey Decimal System. While it's great to have industry standards, there's no reason to force end users to know the ins and outs of those standards to benefit from them -- which is exactly what librarians have done for over a century. Looking for books about technology? Look for the 600 on the spine!

So I have to say it's about time a library bucked tradition and started organizing books under plain-English headings and printing plain-English subjects on the spines.

It reminds me of one of my favorite stories about another type of usable "interface": that of the footpaths at the University of Oregon, which were paved after paths naturally appeared in the grass where student and faculty walked the most.

observations

I am enjoying a bottle of Hefeweizen from Gordon Biersch, a local brewery, when I notice that the label describes the beer as being full of "citrus, bubble gum, clove, and banana" flavors.

I stop and imagine what it would be like to mix those ingredients together in a bowl and dip a spoon into it.

Gak. I am no longer enjoying my bottle of Hefeweizen.

~ ~ ~

Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness is quite good. It's a look at the buildings and styles that have inspired us throughout history, woven into a convincing explanation of what that all means about our own beliefs and longings as humans.

However, I'm noticing a certain undercurrent in de Botton's similes and asides that makes me wonder if the author's home life wasn't on a, uh, solid foundation at the time he was writing the book...

P.12: People "...have imagined living in unattainably expensive houses pictured in magazines and then felt sad, as one does upon passing an attractive stranger in the street."

P.22: "We may need to have made an indelible mark on our lives, to have married the wrong person, pursued an unfulfilling career into middle age or lost a loved one before architecture can begin to have any perceptible impact on us..."

P.182: "Over generations, these codes prevented architects from using their imaginations; they hand-cuffed them to a narrow palette of acceptable materials and forms, and, like the institution of marriage, restricted choice in the name of delivering the satisfactions of restraint."

now what the f---?

By itself, this story -- about a 74-year-old woman whose personalized license plate (NWTF) was rejected because some DMV employees think NWTF refers to a bit of Internet shorthand (wtf) -- is already perfect.

But the fact that it also includes the following quote takes the story to a level where it quite possibly will win the award for being the defining story of the Internet era:

"Apparently, the young people use it on the computer," she said.

Yes, apparently they do.

That's the sort of line a reporter could spend his entire life just waiting to hear.

ohmy or oh my

The latest issue of the New Yorker has an article about citizen journalism and discusses, in part, OhmyNews -- the organization that hosted me at the International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul last month. I haven't quite yet decided what I think about the article, except that:

1. it was surprisingly unfocused and dull for a New Yorker piece; and
2. I can't figure out why the copy editors decided to refer to the organization as "Oh My News" when its official name is clearly OhmyNews.

The "Oh" in OhmyNews, by the way, is a reference to the founder's name, Oh Yeon Ho, and not to the English expression "Oh My". (In case you were wondering.)

bookmark

This one is for the in-laws, since I've been boring them with some of my posts recently and since every good editor knows it's never wise to alienate the core audience:

The latest issue of Fortune magazine features a half-page flap titled "Executive Bookmark: Required Reading." The items on the list are all about environmental issues.

What's item #5? The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture, by Alanna Stang and Christopher Hawthorne.

censorship in india

Good lord. I've just returned from the conference on international citizen journalism -- at which many of the discussions focused on overcoming government and corporate censorship (both explicit and implicit) -- and the news today is uncannily about government censorship of new media. In particular, Indian Internet service providers are blocking access to blogs at the request of the Indian government.

So the story so far is that the government only asked the ISPs to block a handful of sites, but that the ISPs had no way of blocking select blogspot and typepad sites, so they just banned them all.

In response, a group of Indian bloggers have set up a "Bloggers Against Censorship" wiki to collect and share news about the ban (and ways to get around it.)

So, two wrongs and a right:

• Crackdown on freedom of speech (by a country often referred to as the "world's largest democracy.")
• Terrible, half-assed application of technology to filter content.
• Affected group using the Web to organize, draw attention to the issue, and overcome the ban.

I'm curious to know: Why now? Is there any relation to the recent train bombings?

the panel went well

Greetings from the OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul. The conference so far has been quite interesting: a good mix of stories from the people building publications based on user-contributed content; and from the people who are actually creating and submitting that content to these publications -- mainly because it allows them to feel as if they finally have a chance to be heard in an environment where most media outlets tend to ignore their stories.

I thought our panel on the technology underlying the citizen journalism movement went well. You can check out the video online: Citizen Participation and Technology - OhmyNews International.

If you're interested in seeing first-hand what this rise in citizen journalism is all about, check out:

• OhmyNews International (International; in English)
• OhmyNews (Korea; in Korean/Hangul)
• Flix.dk (Denmark; in Danish)
• Scoop.co.il (Israel; in Hebrew)

mr. amit goes to korea

I'll be at the OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul this week, moderating a panel featuring Craigslist's Craig Newmark, Ourmedia.org's J.D. Lasica, and Witness's Bryan Nunez. We'll be talking about the technologies that are enabling (or could enable) people all around the world to contribute news, opinions, and stories to media organizations large and small.

I'm only there for about three days, mostly at the conference, but if anyone's got tips on what I absolutely must see or do in Seoul, let me know.

come see me

I'm going to be giving a real brief talk at the Creative Commons Salon next Wednesday about how Creative Commons licensing is helping nonprofits get information about technology.

There will be other speakers, too, giving much more interesting talks and demos. Plus, it's at a bar (Shine) and there'll be "drinks and discussion." So if you'll be in San Francisco on Wed, June 14, from 6-9pm, drop on by and say hello.

yakov smirnoff found!

Buried at the bottom of an article about the University of Pennsylvania's commencement ceremonies:

Comedian Yakov Smirnoff, who earned a master's degree in positive psychology, was among the approximately 6,000 graduates.

"In America, Jodie Foster speaks at your university's commencement ceremony. In Soviet Russia, your university jails you for seeing a Jodie Foster movie! Haa!"

space magician

From an article about magician -- er, endurance masochist -- David Blaine and his little accident last night:

As early as on the second day of his challenge, Gunel said, there was evidence that Blaine was suffering liver failure; the medical team consulted with medical experts at NASA before stabilizing his condition.

It's so nice to see NASA being put to good use.

below the gumline

In an article about the discovery of a 9,000-year-old dentist's drill, which was used without anaesthesia:

Dr. Richard Glenner, a Chicago dentist and author of dental history books, wouldn't bite on the idea that this was good dentistry.

why we are doomed

There are so, so many things wrong with this item that just appeared on my Google News page. Why does this story need eight updates? Why did it get picked up by Forbes? Why did it get picked up by nearly 300 other places? WHY IS IT EVEN A STORY, FER CRYIN' OUT LOUD?

the only people who

So, back in September, the marketing department at Simon & Schuster sent me a review copy of Untouchables, by Narendra Jadhav, in the hopes that I'd comment on it here.

You see, the kind folks at S&S apparently didn't realize that the only people who read this site are my wife, my in-laws, and the occasional ex-girlfriend who Googles my name to verify that her lot in life has indeed turned out a whole lot better than mine.

In any case, I was skeptical -- but I said I'd take a look at the book as long as I didn't have to guarantee a good review or anything like that. And they said they were fine with that. So I did take a look, and the thing is: It's actually a captivating read.

The subtitle pretty much gives you the synopsis: My Family's Triumphant Journey Out of the Caste System in Modern India. You could say it's a more uplifting companion to Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance.

Go get yourself a copy.

confessed

Leaving the theater where we saw Capote last night, we both confessed that we had, at one point in our lives, assumed that Harper Lee was male... and looked like Gregory Peck.

"One of the causes of unhappiness among intellectuals in the present day is that so many of them, especially those whose skill is literary, find no opportunity for the independent exercise of their talents, but have to hire themselves out to rich corporations directed by Philistines, who insist upon their producing what they themselves regard as pernicious nonsense.

"If you were to inquire among journalists in either England or America whether they believed in the policy of the newspaper for which they worked, you would find, I believe, that only a small minority do so; the rest, for the sake of livelihood, prostitute their skill to purposes which they believe to be harmful.

"Such work cannot bring any real satisfaction, and in the course of reconciling himself to the doing of it, a man has to make himself so cynical that he can no longer derive whole-hearted satisfaction from anything whatever.

"I cannot condemn men who undertake work of this sort, since starvation is too serious an alternative, but I think that where it is possible to do work that is satisfactory to a man's constructive impulses without entirely starving, he will be well advised from the point of view of his own happiness if he chooses it in preference to work much more highly paid but not seeming to him worth doing on its own account.

"Without self-respect genuine happiness is scarcely possible. And the man who is ashamed of his work can hardly achieve self-respect."

-- Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
    (Paragraph breaks are mine.)

Originally, I was supposed to have written about the space shuttle launch on location at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The article would have been part of a series of pieces I'd been working on for Wired News for the past four months.

But then the launch got delayed and so my photographer and I came home.

Eventually, the launch was rescheduled for today, and I was supposed to have watched it live on NASA TV and written about it from the office. It wouldn't have been an ideal scenario, but it would have been something.

But then, yesterday, Wired News laid off its writing staff.

So instead, I watched the launch on the Today Show (because the online version of NASA TV was bogged down). Matt and Katie chatted for a couple minutes about the problems that NASA has been having and then went on to a segment where they patted themselves on the back for arranging to get a scholarship for a young amputee. This was followed by an interview with an actress who's appearing in a new movie about online dating.

As of an hour-and-a-half after the launch, the Wired News page that advertises my series of launch-related articles still claims that NASA may attempt to launch the shuttle on Tuesday, July 26. Stay tuned for further updates.

Right. Good luck. I'm going to go make myself a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats.

on a conquest

Everyone's got comfort items.

For instance, in the days right after Sep. 11, 2001, when it seemed like every stranger on the street might suddenly turn and attack me for the way I look -- and a few actually did, though only verbally, thankfully -- I was up to two and sometimes three cans of Coke a day.

I didn't really need the extra sugar. I just found something relaxing about that damned red can.

Right now, my item is literature.

I dropped by the bookstore tonight in search of Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness and Studs Terkel's Working.

Take from that what you will.

Actually, though I'm a fan of Russell, I hadn't heard of The Conquest of Happiness until I started reading the bibliography to Scott Berkun's The Art of Project Management the other day. The title may make it sound dry, but trust me: Berkun's book should be standard issue for anyone who works in an office.

Anyhow, the bookstore didn't have The Conquest, but I happened to walk past Bill Clinton's My Life, which is now in paperback, and I couldn't help picking it up.

A few steps later, I walked by the audio version. On the package it said "Read by the Author."

Of course, I had to get it. If there is any more comforting voice than his, I have yet to hear it.

somewhat slow and anticlimactic

There is something to be said about not having anything to say.

*

I've recently finished David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day, which was not a bad thing to have had with me on the morning commute for a few days. But I think I was expecting the essays to build up to something more than they did. Sure they're mildly amusing, but then what?

Also, Camus' The Plague was somewhat slow and anticlimactic. Not nearly as good as The Stranger or, in the plague genre, Jose Saramago's Blindness.

If anyone would like to debate this or simply has some insight into whatever allegory The Plague represents (besides "evil"), I'd be interested to hear it.

Next up: Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father. It's non-fiction, so perhaps I'll be a little more accepting of the story than I was of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner.

*

Oh, and lest you think I'm nothing but a critic -- I'm writing again. Fiction, I mean. At least, I'm trying to, whenever I can spare an hour in the evenings. Nothing concrete yet, just trying things out again. We'll see where it leads.

a tad too poetic

Notes likely given by a wayward editor to Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, at some point between the book's second and third revisions:

• Thanks for working on your sentences to make things more "clear," re my earlier suggestion. But I wonder if they're still a tad too poetic. Bringing it down two or three (or four) more notches ought to do it.
• I'm not sure that readers will get that the Hitler-loving Talibani is EVIL. Seal the deal by, say, making him a baby-rapist, too.
• Foreshadowing: Learn it, love it, write it.
• Ohhh, I get it: You're doing a David and Goliath kind of thing there, right? Hmm, how about a slingshot to make that more clear?
• That part where the main character starts changing and acting differently? Too confusing. It's better if he stays the same so that readers recognize him.
• Remember, a drama isn't really a drama until it's got a suicide attempt.
• How about a big fight scene?
• Ooh -- one more word about the EVIL Talibani: Stoning. Two lovers. To death. In a stadium. Full of people cheering him on.
• Did I mention foreshadowing?
• If there's any way you could bring that slingshot back into the story at the climax, let's do it. God that would be so great!

cadence

I'm still amazed by the fact that I can immediately recognize my own words, no matter how long ago I wrote them. For instance, a couple years ago, I was working with the TV on in the background and overheard a quote from a movie review I had written. The quote was being used in a commerical and, sure enough, there was my name on the screen. Just nine words, spoken by someone else over the air, and I knew exactly when I'd written them and why.

The opposite is also true: I can tell you exactly when words that are supposed to be my own aren't. Just this afternoon, I pulled up an old article for reference and realized right away that the first sentence had been rewritten sometime between the moment I filed the story with my editors and the time it was published.

I can't explain it. There's just something about your own cadence that you always recognize. It's something that breaks when someone else touches your story, even if it's only to add a single word.

Good editors know this. And when they have to make changes to your story, they do their best to match your rhythm. If they're great, they can get an edit past you without you even noticing.

Bad editors, on the other hand, are easy to spot because they try to rewrite your story to match their own rhythm.

home

You thought I had abandoned you. And to be honest, there was a time when I considered it. After all, there is a point when you have not spoken for so long that it seems there is nothing more to say. But then you remember an anecdote. Or you force yourself to remark on the weather, or a book you just read. And slowly, you learn to make conversation again.

*

Though the trip to India lasted just two weeks, I have stretched it out for another two by reading A Fine Balance on the recommendation of a friend at work. Somehow, Rohinton Mistry has managed to capture everything I remember about Bombay from my summers there -- and then some -- from the way vendors market their wares on the sidewalks, right down to the descriptions of the beggars and their various deformities. It is only now, after having finished the book and putting it away for a few days, that I feel like I've left the country.

Of course, we never saw the worst of what Mistry describes. But, still, I am incredibly envious of his talent. It is the story I wish I had the capacity to write.

Regardless, you should get yourself a copy.

utah, day ii

You open your eyes just minutes before the three alarms that you have set are to go off. It is 3:45am. You turn off the buzzer on the clock radio. And the one on the cell phone. And the one on your other cell phone.

To your surprise, you are wide awake.

On the road, there is nothing but a dashed white lane line reaching out beyond your headlights to where you can't see anymore. To your left, darkness. To your right, darkness and more darkness, which you assume is the murky expanse of the Great Salt Lake.

You wonder if the salt in the lake makes everything float.

At the gas station, you wait for the clerk to make change. He looks gruff, weathered. And you ask him how the drive to Dugway is. "Lonely," he says. You laugh at this. But then you realize that he isn't making a joke. And you walk back to your car with two bottles of water and a packet of trail mix with the realization that you are the boisterous city slicker in this picture. Just another khaki-clad visitor amongst the descendants of ancient, tired settlers.

Or, at least, you make yourself feel that you are.

The road to Dugway is not as lonely as you would like. Pickup trucks blow by in the darkness at 20 mph over the speed limit, even though there are signs warning you to look out for cattle. The trucks rush up behind you, their headlights growing brighter and brighter like full moons until finally they are gone, hidden just inches behind your rear bumper. They pass you on curves that are marked with double-yellow lines. You keep expecting to find a twisted wreck around the next bend, but, thankfully, you never do.

It is still dark and you wonder if there are mountains nearby.

At the entrance to the Dugway Proving Ground, you board the bus with the other reporters, glad to get out of the cold. Later, in the sweltering heat of the desert, you will wish for it to be cold again. But for the time being, you zip up your jacket and settle gladly into a window seat where you can keep an eye on the military guards and their machine guns.

The sun rises over the edge of distant mountains.

They set you up on folding tables in a hangar in the middle of the desert. This is where you watch the helicopters take off. And this is where you and dozens of others crowd around a television monitor to watch a close-up of the space capsule tumble out of the sky. It is 9:58am.

The capsule hits the ground like an asteroid, burying itself in a crater three feet deep. You think you a hear a thud when it hits, but you know that can't be. It is, after all, 30 miles away.

You file updates every other hour, calling back to your editors on the West Coast with the one cell phone that gets any reception. Between those calls, you sit. And you wait. And when the press conference starts, you frantically take notes and arrange facts into neat story updates. And then you sit. And then you wait some more.

What news? Is the capsule intact? Will the mission be saved?

You eat a $2 hotdog that looks more hot pink than light brown. You hold up your press credentials for the guards with the M-16s to inspect each time you return from the bathroom.

By 3:30pm, you know there are likely to be no more major updates for the day. You head home. Or rather, for the hotel an hour and a half away. The drive is lonely.

All the news channels are replaying the capsule's fateful drop. Fight Club is on F/X. Tomorrow, there will probably be another press conference. Early.

You are tired, but you can't sleep. You close your eyes and try to sink, but you only float.

on display

Ugh. Spot the bad grammar in this AP article about the original manuscript of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road":

Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay bought the scroll two years ago for $2.43 million. Having already been on display in Indianapolis, Irsay plans to send what may be the Beat Generation's quintessential text back to the road from where it came.

A Little Nauseous

I have received a review copy of Karyn Bosnak's book, Save Karyn: One Shopaholic's Journey to Debt and Back. For those of you who have forgotten all about this little meme, Bosnak is the woman who racked up thousands of dollars in debt by purchasing Prada shoes and the like, and then paid it all off by soliciting donations through her Web site.

I have considered, briefly, reading the book and reviewing it for one of the publications that I write for. But every time I think about it, I get a little nauseous and that's the end of that.

Here's a shameless plug:

Here's a shameless plug: If you tune in to Public Radio International's The World on your local public radio station sometime this afternoon, you may hear me talking to host Lisa Mullins about how activists are using technology to aid their protests against the current World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun. I wrote an article on the topic for Wired News recently and the show's producers thought it would make for an interesting segment.

Now, mind you that I was probably speaking too fast and slurring my words, so don't tease me too much if I end up sounding a little nervous. Likewise, comments about any dumb statements I may make should be kept to yourself. Please.

The World airs at 2:00pm on KQED (88.5 FM) here in San Francisco. You can look up times and stations in other regions by going to the PRI Web site. I'm not 100 percent positive that the segment will air today, but we'll find out soon enough.

PS: When I told Lisa Mullins that I had had a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats for breakfast, she laughed and told me that she used to peel the sugar frosting off the top of the mini wheats and just eat that. I do expect this part to be edited out of the segment.

Update: The audio stream of the interview is now online.

a bit tired

Oh come on now, you knew I wasn't going to withhold comment on this one forever:

Yessir, we folks here in California are well on our way toward a real honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, darned-tootin' Recall Election if there ever was one (and there wasn't). So what to do, my friends? What to do?

First off, if you are a member of the press, we here at amit.asaravala.com kindly request that you stop making Total Recall references when referring to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not only have we heard it already (about 830 times the last time we looked) but we're also getting a bit tired of being reminded that our next governor may well be someone who once used to lift weights. In the nude. For a living. (Oh go search for the pictures yourself; this is a family show, dammit.)

Nevermind history, though. The publishers of this site are not the sort to look down their noses at someone's past or present profession. (Or at least when we do, we try not to stare too long.) Indeed, we believe it's this open-mindedness that has allowed us to do some long, hard research into porn star Mary Cary's bid for the governship. If you haven't been keeping up, this is the woman who has been poo-pooed by the press for offering to go on a dinner date with anyone who donates at least $5,000 to her campaign. But, we wonder, how is this so different from a $2,500-a-plate dinner with George W. Bush? (Sure, our President may no longer be a looker, but he's still a tease.)

Speaking of looking down our noses at candidates, did you know that it's not too late to order a Gary Coleman for Governor thong? We've been wearing ours all day and, my god, when will the chaffing stop?

Oh, we could go on and on about all the other Sideshow Bobs who have found their way into this race but, really, Larry Flynt jokes are just too easy to come by these days. Besides, that wouldn't leave us any room to talk about our friends, the Democrats. And what better way to start a discussion about California Democrats than to ask, where was this man on the day we all learned that the thumbs-up sign had gone out of fashion? It must be nice to be able to run into the people who used to beat you up on the playground and say, "Hey guys, I'm the Governor. For another six weeks. No really. Stop that. Hey, I said stop that!"

So who does that leave? Ah, yes, Cruz Bustamante. Cruz, Cruz, Cruz -- rather than showing up at the courthouse in a pricy, gas-guzzling Hummer or getting all the local network affiliates to cover your flashy pep rally, you chose to hold a press conference on the sidewalk of a middle-class neighborhood not too far from Sacramento where we presume you put together the fiscal plan that you presented to us that day (on CSPAN of all places). You explained all the dull, dull details about how you'd deal with the state's $8 billion deficit, and you even stuck around long after your advisor had told everyone that there would be more questions so that you could answer every last query -- even the tough ones, like how you felt about the issue of gay marriages. Heck, you even did it in clear, concise English. And Spanish.

Can you believe the nerve of that cheeky monkey? As if we actually cared about "the issues!"

Cruz, the truth is: we've got nothing on you. You're so serious that it frightens us. Perhaps you could pick up a nickname just to keep things lively. How about Cruz 'Busty' Bustamante? No? Okay, how about Cruz 'I - would - kick - Arnold's- ass - in - this - election - if - the - dumb - people - in - this - state - didn't - really - believe - that - he - actually - was - the - Terminator' Bustamante?

Oh come on, it could work. No? Oh, okay, you're probably right -- we nutty Californians wouldn't know what to do with a governor who had a plan that actually made sense.