• This is cool.  Zoom out.  It's a map of the universe, showing the location and position of our solar system, relatively.  My metaphor will require a larger haystack and a smaller needle.  If you are religious, keep reminding yourself that God made all of this, and we're the most important part.

• The men's final at Wimbledon was enlivened by a streaker, as so often happens with UK sporting events.  This article details it in humorous fashion, and they have pictures, though none with any visible dangly bits, if you were hoping.

• Yet another idiotic court decision trying to make hyperlinks illegal has surfaced, this one in Denmark.  I'd link to a Denmarkian (Danish) site just to flaunt authority, but I don't know of any and Google is so very far away...

• Article on worldwide police efforts to bust a very sophisticated ring of internet kiddy pornographers.  I found it noteworthy mostly for the k3wl style name of the group, "Shadowz Brotherhood".  So next time you see some kid typing "Z" instead of "S" you can laugh to yourself and pretend he's a pedophile.  Or more likely the young boy of the day on their homepage, if you prefer.

• Here's something I'd have been okay with not reading about, yet find strangely hypnotic.  Coroners are having problems with corpses now that are so grotesquely fat.  This article is from Elgin, Illinois, in the middle of the US.  Fatland, basically.

Imagine needing livestock equipment to embalm someone, or having to carry out an autopsy on a body that size?  It makes me sort of queasy just to think about it.  Amazingly-unhealthy diet and an enormous appetite is required to get that fat, but fortunately neither are in short supply in America.

After taking a few paragraphs to point out how much more "American" his life is than hers (born and raised in poverty, in the middle of the nation, compared to her being born to rich parents and growing up in exclusive schools and never really having to work for anything), Tom gets to the heart of the matter.

Ms. Coulter argues that the point of my cartoon "was simply to convey all the proper prejudices of elitist liberals against ordinary Americans." Actually it was exactly the opposite. The vast majority of people who read my cartoon live in places like Dayton and Austin and Athens and Des Moines and Missoula and Milwaukee and Buffalo and Savannah and Springfield, and while they may not believe that twenty-first century Americans are God's chosen people, and while they may find cause to disagree with Republican policies and priorities, I think they'd be very surprised to learn that they are anything but ordinary Americans. The point is, Americans are a hugely diverse people, with a far greater range of opinions and beliefs and ideas than conservative elitists like Ann Coulter give us credit for--which she might find out, if she ever got out of the self-contained wingnut lecture-and-conference bubble and actually talked to some of the rest of us.

I would call that game, set, and match, Mr. Tomorrow.  But of course I tend to agree with his PoV on most things, and certainly more with him than with Coulter.

I didn't go looking for more on Coulter, but it sort of came to me.  Looking at Poor Man, a frequently amusing political blog, there is this clever article on his Bottom 10 Journalists/Media Types.  He lists Ann Coulter at #8:

Ann Coulter - Fired from the National Review for being too right-wing. Mull that one over. She apparently is now being published in something called "Town Hall" or something like that, which seems to be another step down the ladder into right-wing paranoid lunacy. I imagine that Ms. Coulter will eventually wear out her welcome there, after suggesting that we nuke the entire world pre-emptively or something, and continue her descent until, five years from now, she is churning out a mimeographed newsletter from her private office in the Unabomber's old outhouse.

I saw a link from there to this article about Coulter being fired from the very conservative National Review, and this commentary about it on another blog.  From there I saw a link to this blog, which is actually devoted to fact-checking Coulter's articles.  I'd think that would be a full time job.  And from there I saw a link to this page on Spinsanity which deconstructs some of Coulter's techniques.

Coulter has, intentionally I'm sure, set herself up as an absurdly easy target for just about anyone with an ounce of objectivity.  As the Spinsanity article says, she lives in a cartoon world, with no shades of gray.  Everyone who disagrees with her is evil and liberal and on the side of the terrorists, liberals want communism and enforced atheism, etc.  She makes intentionally absurd comments and outrageous lies to gather attention to her, and I don't think she really cares if it's good attention or bad, as long as she gets some.  I assume that she's doing it on purpose, and doesn't really believe most of the stuff she says, but perhaps she really does.

I'd classify her as a sort of Goebbels of the modern world, a poor little insane propaganda machine, in search of her own private Hitler.  (That's actually somewhat of an insult to the Nazi, since Goebbels was far smoother, better-spoken, and more convincing with his bald-faced lies than Coulter has ever managed to be.)

Her vicious and unethical attacks could be quite effective if she had a strong hand to guide her and keep her on message, and to nix the nuttiest and most over the top of her rantings.  She does have an ability to twist the truth around, and she can lie quite convincingly, if you don't know better and want to believe in what she has to say.  Now wouldn't you find it ironic and frightening if she's actually hired as by some political campaign as a spokesperson?

ad a nice dinner out Sunday night. With dad, as usual (being as dinner out isn't free, I'm not dating, and I can't be arsed to go out to eat alone) and we went to a fish place in Mission Valley.  I forget the name, but it's some national chain called King's Fish House, or something like that.  Perhaps I can find it online?

Ahh yes, the miracle of the Internet.  Pointless blogs about a restaurant, and then the restaurant's pointless website.

King's Fish House.  Imaginative name, huh?  The one here looks identical to the one they have pictured on the site, both inside and out.  It's not a bad decor, and they have enormous mounted fish on the walls, though I suspect they're plastic models, rather than real taxidermied fish.  I took a couple of photos of it from the parking lot, but as I'm discovering, my camera sucks at night time photography.  All light is way overexposed, all shadow is Stygian.  And the whole thing is sort of purple-tinged.  I'll have to experiment with the light settings and color balances to see if there is any way to make it work better for night shots.  It's pretty much worthless for Peeping Tom action now, though.

We had eaten there once before, a couple of months ago, and it was okay, but through a screw up they had to give us a $10 off certificate, so we went back to use that up.  They have semi-high prices, so it would be gone on a drink and appetizer, if we'd gotten one.

When you enter the restaurant there is a hostess at the door who seats you.  Well not literally, but she takes you to a table and gives you a menu, which is a big piece of paper with the entrees on one side and the drinks on the other.  It's a pretty nice place, so they have dozens of wines, beers, all sorts of other drinks, and probably 50 entrees.  There is a huge variety of fish, pretty much every kind you could think of, steaks, wood oven pizza, and sandwiches, and much more.  They must have some pretty talented chefs and quite an inventory system in the kitchen to keep so much stuff on hand.

Anyway, the screw up last time was in the menu.  They apparently have lunch and dinner menus which are virtually identical, other than the prices.  Everything on the dinner menu is about $4 more, to be blunt.  So the Mahi mahi I got would have been $12.95 or so at lunch, but on the dinner menu it's $17.45.  The food is the exact same for lunch or dinner; same side dishes, same portion sizes, etc.  Just more money.

We were accidentally given the lunch menus last time, ordered from them fine, since as I said, the items are all identical.  But when the bill came it looked a bit high, and when we asked about it they realized what had happened, and the assistant manager came out and apologized about twenty times more than we needed him to, and let us (well, let dad) pay the lunch prices, as well as giving us a $10 off coupon for a return visit.  Good customer service, at any rate, though the food was just mediocre.

This time was much the same.  The waiter was hovering a bit much, with his robotic, "How is everything?  Okay thanks, enjoy your dinner." every five minutes getting old in a hurry.  They did hustle right over with my root beer refills though. The same assistant manager who wrote our coupon last time was even roaming around.  He has a disturbingly thick red beard.  The service in general I found a bit much.  Maybe some people enjoy having restaurant employees ask them if everything is wonderful all the time, but I find it irritating after the 4th visit when I'm still working on a piece of bread.  I don't go to a restaurant to a waiter, I go there to eat and talk to the people/person at my table.  Waiter advice: be handy if I want something, but otherwise go away.  And be quiet. Unless you're a really hot chick, in which case exceptions can be made.  *he said magnanimously*

Anyway, they had Cajun Ecuadorian mahi mahi in the specials portion of the menu, and regular Ecuadorian mahi mahi in the "from the grill" portion.  The Cajun version was $1 more, and came with grilled pineapple salsa, and of course Cajun spices, meaning they put a ton of pepper on one side and grill it black.  I got the Cajun style, since I like food spicy.

It wasn't of course, you never get anything spicy to eat anymore in America, other than in a Chinese or Mexican place, and even then you have to ask for it.

It was lucky that I got the Cajun style though, since the mahi mahi was pretty flavorless.  It's a relatively bland fish, I realize, but I don't like the fishy-tasting salmon that most people prefer, so the blandness of it doesn't really bother me.  However it was a bit too bland, with only the blackened surface adding any spicy taste, and it was just a peppery flavor that laid there, rather than leaping up and throttling me, as I secretly hoped for.  It wasn't real good texture either, sort of spongy, and the grilled veggies with it were a few limp bits of purple onion and about 8 small cubes of pineapple, which did nothing to give it an Island flavor.

For sides I had French fries (of course) and garlic mashed potatoes, which was a mistake, since it was too much spuds at once.  I did have a side salad for some greenery, which was crappy.  Just random squares of iceberg, mostly the middle ones that are all white and like flavorless celery.  Even drowned in Ranch they were lack luster.  The fries weren't bad, but weren't great.  They make them very thin and fry them crunchy, with light salt.  Nice texture, though maybe a little too thin/crunchy, but pretty good for restaurant fries.  I need to do a FFs page, when I eventually get the food/recipes section of the site online, since the fries are really the most important part of most meals out.

Dad more or less agreed with my sentiments.  He had some sort of grilled catfish, and thought it was okay, but not that great.  Next time we eat out at a decent place he suggested somewhere in Old Town, where there are tons of nice small restaurants.  As I never go anywhere or do anything, I let him make all the restaurant picks, since he knows places to go, and of course is paying, so I try to be a good date.  You women should take that to heart.  And put out, damnit.

The other semi-interesting subtext of the dinner was the hostess who greets you at the door giving me several appreciative looks.  I never really can tell if a woman is just being friendly as part of her job, or taking a good look, or even eyeing for an invitation.  Unless she carries it on for so long that there's no way you could misinterpret.  I err on the side of disinterest in all situations, since I don't want to be a pushy asshole and hit on a woman who isn't interested.  Which of course explains a lot about my nonexistent social life.  Anyway, we sat at one table, and then chose to move to another one since the booth wasn't real comfortable.  Dad moved over to test out a chair first, and the hostess came over to the table where I was the bring me along and the menus.  I grabbed them as I got up, and she said something giggly like, "You're doing my job for me."

As we walked over to the new table I caught her eye and handed her back the menus, saying, "Okay, here you are." in a joking voice.  Once we sat down she handed us the menus again and I said, "Oh thanks, a menu!" and she was all smiling and wide-eyed.

I don't really have any idea if this is flirting or what.  I constantly make jokes like that when I'm working, and in my RL, what there is of it, and it's just my personality.  I perpetually see the humor in small events, and that sort of little interaction enlivens my day.  My mind is never on just one thing, it's always viewing situations from multiple perspectives and angles and levels, and when another person is bright enough, or at least on my wavelength enough to see things with the sort of ironic/sarcastic detachment I generally view them with, they'll gain humor from my actions or comments that would go totally over the head of most people.  Or not really over their head, they just wouldn't have any idea something was funny or meant (by me) to be funny, since I usually deadpan my sarcasm.  I'm not one to explain why something is funny, or why something was a joke; I let people who get it get it, and people who don't don't need to have it explained, since they won't think it's funny then, and will just wonder WTF I'm talking about.  My dad is somewhat the same way on humor, but he's not as able to let a joke go by if someone doesn't get it, and will often make some humorous little pun or remark to a waitress/waiter, and then say, "I'm teasing!" with a grin.  Which is probably more humane and personable, but isn't my way.

Anyway, the hostess seemed to like me, or was just being her usual friendly self; as I said, I never know.  Dad noticed that she seemed charmed and commented on it, so perhaps she was.  I of course did absolutely nothing else to interact with her, despite ample opportunity, and will never ever see her again.  Ahh, love.

I console myself with the fact that she was wearing super tight stretch pants and they were either two sizes too small, or her ass was two sizes too large.  And since any woman I even consider talking to much be physical perfection, that ruled her out.

Try that one if you want, it's a handy excuse to never be bothered with dating, since it just eliminates 99% of the population off hand.  And on the very rare occasions you see a 1% body, you can just tell yourself she's way too hot to not have a boyfriend and/or husband, and pass her right by.

You might tell yourself she probably contracted AIDS and Hepatitis C when getting that big ugly tattoo on the small of her back, if you need extra incentive to remain alone.