riday, and while I don't have much in the way of fun planned for today (We're hitting the gym, then the laundromat, and then I'll have hours of alone time while Malaya's off at her Friday night women's Kali class with friends), the weekend should be better.  We're going to see Sin City at a Saturday matinee, and then detouring over to the Apple Store and picking up an Ipod mini. I've long resisted such a purchase, just due to the ridiculous prices Apple sticks on their products, but Malaya wants one, she's got a discount at the store, and I have several thousand songs on my computer (Some from file trading with friends, but the vast majority are from my own CDs, at least 200 of which I've ripped.) and want to start hearing better music in my car and at the gym.

We can't really afford an Ipod, but since we're splitting it the damage to our budget should be relatively minimal. And besides, we've been very cost conscious all year, me out of necessity since I don't have a job (other than writing, which is paying nothing now but will hopefully be worth it in the long run) so we deserve one. That's our reasoning, anyway.

We'll probably use our Ipod far less than most people since we spend far less time commuting than most people. I've got music on at my computer 99% of the time, and it's always through headphones from songs on the computer itself. I'll enjoy the Ipod in the car (though it's ridiculous what you have to do to hear one through your car stereo), but I'm hardly ever in the car; just running errands with Malaya and driving to Kali class twice a week. We'll use it at gym, in theory, but as sweaty as I get there I can't see being real happy with earphone in my earholes. Besides, there are two of us and aside from rare occasions when there are two elliptical machines free side by side we're never close enough to share the device, even if we get some sort of double-ear headphones, or just go mono with one earplug each. So we'll probably just take turns. It'll be worth it to drown out the godawful music they play at the gym, and especially the godawful chatter of our fellow gym-goers.

I've been adding to my notes for a blog rant about stupid gym behavior for months, and while I'm not going to go into it today, I must say that the recent addition of TVs to the gym has been an almost entirely-negative experience. I don't care that they're up there since I can just not look, and thank God that they have them on mute all the time, but they're distracting out of the corner of my eye, and worst of all, they make stupid housewife types chatter to each other about what's on the set. Last week Malaya was to my right, and to her right were two women telling each other how much they loved Oprah, and how whatever minor celebrity she was interviewing was way too thin, but they still had to admit that she looked great.

The constant shrill braying of a car alarm is probably my least favorite sound on earth, but the inane chatter of two clueless white 40y/o upper class house wives is a close second. Especially when one of them starts speaking in a very serious voice about how Oprah taught her that you can't fix every problem in your life in three days, not after two and a half decades of bad habits creating it.

I so desperately wanted to scream at her, "You needed someone on TV to teach you that? My god your husband must have married you for your looks!"

Instead I just mumbled "Dying... Please God... Dear Lord..." which was enough to crack Malaya up to the point that she almost had to stop Stairmastering along, since she knows that's what I say when I'm forced to tolerate something beyond insipid.  Usually the pathetically-slow driving of some inept fool poking along in front of me at about 10MPH under the flow of traffic, but that's a whole other story.

This is largely a rhetorical question, but I saw it posed somewhere the other day and liked it a lot. Right at this instant, I am searching for a .jpg on my computer, a .jpg that I know the name of, but can't find. Let me repeat that for emphasis. I know the exact file name! I entered it into the search box, told it what file type to look for, and kicked it. That was about 45 seconds ago, and the machine is still churning away with no results yet.

This isn't in any way unusual for searching speed in Windows XP, so answer me this: How in the hell can Google search 8,058,044,651 webpages and come back with 90,000 results, ranked and sorted and linked, in .1 seconds, but it takes my computer more than a minute (and counting), over 6000 times longer, to work its way through a mere 30gig worth of files on my hard drive, the vast majority of which can be instantly eliminated since they aren't the file type I'm searching for?

It's really pretty embarrassing for Microsoft, when you think about it.

To the news, down below today for lack of any other larger essay like topic or even any reviews. There's nothing April Foolish here today either. Every year in mid-March I briefly think I should work up some clever hoax, and then I completely forget about it until suddenly it's 4am April 1st and I'm ready for bed and I'm like, "Oh yeah... Oh well."  Hell, I've got to make up some bullshit for the annual April Fool's FotD on the D2 site, and I haven't given it a second of thought yet. Not that I give any more thought to the other FotDs there, at this point. I think I've got 2 or 3 more written, from a bunch I did like 6 months ago, and when they're exhausted, that may be it. I'm still playing D2 occasionally, but just SP and I haven't been involved in the D2 site other than with occasional articles for at least a year. Better to cut it off and move on than letting things linger forever?  Probably.

Anyway, here's some news on stalkers who need to die, a vegetable who just did, and popes who are about to.

Parche, who stabbed Monica Seles, incredibly never served any jail time; he was merely placed on probation after passing through the German legal system. Patrick Hallett, who harassed golfer Michelle McGann, avoided jail time by agreeing to the restraining order that required him to stay 500 feet away. James Conyers, who wrote of raping triathlete Sheila Taormina, could be released from prison as early as next spring.

Since the legal system is too far behind the curve to help, I hope some of the stars take matters into their own hands, and have the guys killed.

Seriously, it's not an option for the college players and such, but for the mega stars, Kournikova and Venus Williams and such, why not? They are dangerous, insane, and by trying to ruin your life they have given you plenty of cause. It would be effortless to lure them into a trap; hell, they'd come willingly given any opportunity. Get him somewhere private, have your bodyguard or husband shoot him in the head and once you've finished Rasputin'ing him, bury the body about 20 feet deep on your estate and go on with your carefree celebrity life. No one is going to miss the lunatic, and if you do get caught, go to Plan B. Say that he broke into your house, came at you with a knife, and that it was self defense. What jury would ever convict the star with a past history of Unabomber style letters from the guy and restraining orders on file against him? Hell, maybe just start with Plan B: make sure he's dead, then call the cops. You won't look guilty if some misguided prosecutor actually tries to take the case to trial, then.

And while the article is purely about sports figures being stalked, I hope that everyone knows this sort of thing goes on constantly in real life, where non-celebrities are the victims. I won't say that every woman I've ever known in my life has been stalked or harassed by an ex at some time in her life, but women with such experiences are certainly in the strong majority.  Their pursuers may not be as classically insane as these celebrity stalkers who invent fictional relationships between themselves and the famous person they are obsessed with, but their attentions are no less desired. And real people don't have bodyguards to keep them alive or assistants to answer their phones or lawyers to push through restraining orders.

There's a related article with some more info about the types of guys who turn into celebrity stalkers, and some amazing stories of their lunacy.

I repeat, who would miss any of them?

I'm not sure why this sort of case so galvanizes me to support murder, but stalking and identity theft are two things I am perfectly happy supporting capital punishment for, even if it's delivered vigilante style. It's probably since I so hate to be bothered by people who want to inconvenience me. Good thing I keep my life totally private and have no plans to ever become any sort of a public figure, eh?

Not to beat a dead horse, metaphorically speaking, but what debate? I know the media loves it since this story sold almost as many papers as the OJ trial and Scott Peterson trials, but every survey I've seen has something like 70-80% of people saying they thought she should have been allowed to die years ago and that the Republican congress and the president should have stayed the hell out of the issue. So I repeat, what debate?

¤ In other near-death stories, the Pope is on death's door.

Stories that he's fallen into a coma keep appearing and being disputed by official reports, but imagine if he does and descends into a vegetative state where he's being kept alive by machines and has no brain activity and no hope of recovery. He's Terri Schiavo in the Vatican, basically.  Somehow I don't see a living will appearing with John Paul's wishes not to be resuscitated appearing.

As for the pope in general, I don't really have an opinion on the man. I'm hardly informed enough to have one; though I've read a few things about him (good nutshell bio here, in the always-useful Rotten Library), and I've read a lot of things about religion in general, I haven't paid much attention to specific popes or other religious leaders.  I do know that he's stuck to every traditional literal interpretation of the Bible possible, when it comes to modern issues like birth control, homosexuality, capital punishment, abortion, etc. I disagree with his stance on almost all of those issues, but I respect that he has stuck to his guns on all of those issues, rather than watering down his religion to keep it relevant in the modern world.

I'm glad he has, frankly, since while it's caused a great deal of needless death and suffering in the short term (AIDS spreading and babies being born with no chance for a decent life due to a lack of birth control, for example.) in the long term it's done a great deal to make his particular brand of mumbo-jumbo irrelevant, and I'm all for the end of the age of religion. As today's Quote of the Day illustrates, the fact that there's Biblical support for a position isn't exactly a guarantee of decency or morality.

On the other hand, the danger of Catholocism fading away is that, IRA terrorism and innumerable child molestation cases aside, it's a largely-non harmful belief system, and the people who might have been taken in by it might instead take up something more virulent as they become fanatical Muslims or Born Again Christians or other bad things.

I also don't have any opinion on possible successors to the job. I would guess that they'll pick a new pope with somewhat more liberal views about modern issues, but I don't know anything about it, and it's entirely possible that they'll go for someone even harder line on social issues than JP2 was, just to show the Western World that's busy slipping away from religion (intellectual backwaters like the US aside) that the Vatican isn't going to water down the hard stances they've always taken on those issues, and that they'll gladly cut off their no-birth control and celibate priest noses to spite the worldwide face of their religion.