Friday, July 16, 2004

Authority at work

Hal Crowther has long been my favorite columnist, period. His prose, and his convictions, are both so strong that to read him nearly always stirs my blood — and not always with agreement. Here he is, in With Trembling Fingers:

This isn't your conventional election, the usual dim-witted, media-managed Mister America contest where candidates vie for charm and style points and hire image coaches to help them act more confident and presidential. This is a referendum on what is arguably the most dismal performance by any incumbent president — and inarguably the biggest mistake. This is a referendum on George W. Bush, arguably the worst thing that has happened to the United States of America since the invention of the cathode ray tube.

Here's more in that same vein, from a year earlier.

Dead flack slack

Inspired by a rant by Roland, PR is Dead is Adriana's call for company employees to make up for the DFS (see headline).

Read the whole things.

Back, sort of

It wasn't the travel story from hell (there are real ones), but it wasn't fun, and it isn't over.

I'm in the Bay Area now, crashing for the night at a friend's house, grabbing some free 'Fi from a neighbor's hot spot. (Empirical observation: Basic Netgear access points, on the whole, have the best range. This one has a signal strength of three bars out of four — S/N of 40 on the 'stumbler — and it's in somebody else's house, at least 70 feet from here.)

I'd plan to get up in the morning and drive the 350 miles to Santa Barbara.

I had planned to make the drive tonight (well, last night, this being 12:16am as I write this), but I haven't slept in more than 24 hours, so it seemed like the smarter thing to get some rest and a shower.

Hope I can catch up on stuff in the afternoon after I get back. I'm downloading 1,417 mails right now (mostly spam, of course).