One of my pet peeves is the store clerk who examines your purchases and tries to figure out how they’re related to each other. There’s one at the local Borders who’s done this to me twice recently, first when I bought a pair of O’Reilly books with Schneier’s Practical Cryptography, and again when I went in looking for the new edition of The Chicago Manual of Style and ended up grabbing a new dictionary/thesaurus and a bunch of gun magazines. I keep picturing him working at a grocery store:

"Cool-whip, bananas, and toilet paper? Big plans for tonight, eh?"

I understand that he’s trying to be friendly and start conversations with the customers, which is certainly not the worst behavior I’ve experienced in a bookstore, but if I wanted to chat about the books I was buying, I’d have said something first. Take my money, give me my change, and let me get the hell out of your store, okay?

Maybe it’s part of the transformation of bookstores into social hangouts, aided and abetted by built-in coffee shops and comfy chairs. Fine in their place, but I think they change people’s behavior in all parts of the store. A ten-minute conversation by the magazine rack that can be heard clearly from more than twenty feet away? A business call on your cell-phone that a dozen people are forced to listen to if they want to keep shopping?

Mother taught me a word for this sort of behavior: rude.

She did not consider it a compliment.

I was extremely surprised not to find this in MT’s built-in tags. MTEntryCategory exists, to tell you what the name of a blog entry’s primary category is, but there was no function to provide a link to the matching category archive page.

Well, now there is.

The only thing that keeps me from spending even more money than I already have at iTMS is the limited selection. Broad but not deep, that is. Some recent artists that I like aren’t listed at all, while some old favorites have just a fraction of their catalog online. And then there are the ones who were never on a major label, or who have renounced their sinful past (warning: the Flash in this site ground my browser into the dust).

Anyway, here’s what I’ve bought recently.

more...

I knew they were shameless, but it’s nice to see the proof. PETA, who adores violent crime and vandalism when it furthers their goals, runs squealing to the cops when someone uses the same tactics against them.

I think those tactics are always wrong, but if you choose to use them yourself, you should expect them in return.

You know, I’d be more receptive to claims that a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy™ somehow Stole The Election™ if there weren’t so much obvious whining by unpopular politicians like Gray Davis.

"The Republicans behind the recall say they want you to vote me out because of past mistakes."

…and many moderates and Democrats agree, Gray; how do you think they got all those signatures on the recall petition?

Personally, I’m more concerned about his present and future mistakes. Right now he’s running around like a headless chicken, making hollow promises and signing any bill that might keep him in office, no matter how much he’s opposed it in the past.

Wasn’t it the Republicans who were supposed to be willing to do anything to stay in power?

Update: now it’s claimed that 58% of the possible voters favor the recall. No doubt Davis thinks this is evidence that the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy™ altered the numbers to hide his well-known popularity.

Ever since DVDs were introduced, I’ve made a point of checking every few months to see if they’d gotten around to releasing Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Tonight I discovered that it came out last month.

Sadly, it only seems to be available in pan-and-scan, not widescreen. Beats hell out of my old VHS copy, though.

Since this was also the day that the state of California permitted me to take my new Browning Buck Mark pistol home, today officially qualifies as A Good Day.

I’m horribly rusty with a pistol, though; at twenty-five yards I couldn’t get twenty shots into a group smaller than four inches. With a .22, no less. Blech.

Earlier, I mentioned that the common claims about a kids-and-guns “crisis” are largely based on baldfaced lies, particularly when they talk about small children finding a gun and shooting themselves or a playmate. California activists used this myth to pass safe-storage laws mandating trigger locks, lock-boxes, gun safes, safety testing for buyers, and safety testing for all handguns sold in the state, and every year they ask for more.

Unfortunately, the number of children aged 0-14 who died in gun accidents in California in 1999 was… one (source: National Center for Health Statistics; total gun-accident deaths were 47). Note that this is the same year that all those “safety” laws were passed, which gun-control advocates promised would protect children.

Protect them from what, exactly?

This is a placeholder for comments from people viewing my photo archives. Now that I’ve got everything back online, I’m curious what people think of it.