So one week in to the new Presidency and what do we have? * The Californian power problem isn’t something the national can help out with. * Dissolving the separation between Church and State is. * DC’s license plates apparently are too political for the W who removed them from the Presidential limo… claiming he did not want to make a politcal statement. Correct me if I’m wrong, but as a President all you do is make political statements. Now I have never really believed that there is a separation between Chruch and State. It’s something that is paid lip-service, but that is about it. Remember (thanks to our new Pres) women don’t have the right to choose what to do with their bodies, but the Federal government has the right to endorse religious views. (Conversational Turn Signal) So the Superbowl ads weren’t that good. Monkeys are funny and thus the ETrade ad was funny. Otherwise, no a heck of a lot stood out. Except… did anyone notice the Verizon ad? It showed off the capabilities of SMS… for what purpose? A couple getting together. AH HA! I called it. SMS is only going to be used for sex. I called it.

I’ve been sitting on this email for a while, incubating it a bit. It’s not quite cooked, but I think it will do. I issue a challenge. I will give any $100 per device if they can get the following devices to a) show the exact same time (down to the nanosecond) and b) run perfectly in sync for a day. The devices are as follows:

• 2 analog wristwatches, both quartz movement
• 1 cellphone (AT)
• 1 analog clock in the dashboard of my card
• 1 digital clock in my car stereo
• The clocks on my oven, microwave, and Replaytv

Let’s see… 8 devices, $800. Not a bad deal. But it’s completely impossible. And why is it impossible? Because none of those devices actually measure time. They measure a shadow of time, a beating of quartz crystal or the tick of some far off timeserver. But, Ian, I have a watch; it measures time. Wrong. You have a device that clicks out arbitrary segments, which you call time. There is no time in your wristwatch; you can’t refill it. You simply replace the battery, and a battery contains potential electric energy, and not time. Think of this. Time is so arbitrary that we can simply “Spring forward, Fall back.” I can make it be whatever time I want just by monkeying with my watch. At most, time is an agreed upon convention of life. Time has become completely useless to me. Well, completely might be a bit strong. Time is convenient for paying bills, catching movies, and missing airplanes. I am tired of people (myself very much included) worrying about time and their lives. “I didn’t do this by age X.” “I wish I had done Y when I was younger.” A new decree: there is no point in one’s life when it is too “late” to start something new. Caveat: It is probably to late to start nude modeling for porno mags after the age of 60… in some cases, even earlier. One must live their life immediately. There is no arbitrary divisions of life; it is all now. I’m back in town for, I believe, a month (we all agree on what a month is? Right? 30, no 31, no 28, days!)

As some of you already know, the newer Nokia cellphones in the US have SMS capabilities. SMS (short message service) is a wildly popular feature of European cellphone consumers. It is the ability to send short messages (creative naming) via your cellphone to another cellphone. In its full implementation, you can respond to messages on your phone too. There are people on this list with such Nokia phones. They have been “testing” their capabilities. If you send a message from a Nokia phone to, say, an Ericsson, the receiver does not know where the message came from. Once that was discovered, it was a matter of time before messages like ,“urdburgalur-tay” started showing up in my phone’s inbox. And then I hit on an idea. As you probably know, most of the really big inventions on the internet (streaming video for one) were to aid the adult content industry. I can see a whole warehouse full of college interns, looking to make a buck or two, typing in blandly sexual SMS notes, like “Oh, you make me so ho” (remember, these are short messages) to business men lost somewhere in Topeka as they peddle their useless fake vomit products. Now, as bandwidth on cellphones increase over time, we will be able to have richer messages in SMS… sort of porn-o-grams right to your phone. Just remember you heard it here first. I just got back from NYC. Hadn’t been there in a while and a buddy of mine’s surprise birthday party seemed like a good excuse. We went to a restaurant (Plataforma) where the waiters simply walk around with enormous skewers of meat and they carve off bits for you as they go by. I have not eaten so much flank steak, sirloin, and other random animal parts in a long long time. Did you see the news? (http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29890-2001Jan7.html) Looks like the Chimp-Elect’s Labor nomination has been hiring / harboring illegal aliens. Am I the only one that finds this funny?

It’s over. 2000. Done. And what did we see in 2000? The usual mix of strife, hardship, and joy. What didn’t we see? Flying cars, plane falling from the sky, mass destruction. Personally, I am upset. If you look at things from the 50’s and their portrayal of the future, I want to know where my shiney mylar suit is and my personal jet pack. And what did the list see this year? The Season of Change was full upon us this summer. People changed jobs, left for diferent coasts. We saw a return of the Cavity Creeps. New Big Wong left a menu on my doorstep. I saw the product called “Foaming Pipe Snake!” Learned of Dianne’s flip-up headlights. At any rate, I wish you all a great New Year. Let’s hope this one is full of those utopian predictions from the 50’s. Some of you might remember last year’s attempt on New Year’s Day to break the Toledo Lounge record tab. This event will not take place this year because simply, we can’t drink $1000 of liquor. However, this Tuesday is on in full effect. See you then.

Happy, happy. Merry, Merry. Hope you all had a good long weekend. So this has been a much debated question lately: who is the best recording artist in terms of Christmas music? I go with either Elvis or Bing Crosby. Elvis has such a cheesey sound; it really puts a nice sheen on the season. Bing, well, there’s none smoother than Bing. Just a short note today. If you are in town, come on by Toledo. I want to close with a quote from another Ian, Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull. This quote is from a live album and preceeds his song called, aptly enough, A Christmas Song: “Really, we should remember, this is a time for spiritual uplift, a time for oneness with the Universe and Donnovan. It is NOT a time for heavy drinking, over-eating, and casual sex with farm animals.”

Picture a Fresh Fields. Picture the clientele. Picture happy people looking at once happy calves and lambs and ducks and salmon and spinach and the like. Happy people. Happy produce. Now… Think of someone who has never had a healthy meal in his life. Think of someone who represents the essence of overweight, beer-guzzlin’, steak and potatoes. Now… when I went to the opening Fresh Fields near me, guess who greeted me at the door. Not one, but 10 (or so) Elvis impersonators. Does anyone else think that having Elvis pitch a health food store is funny? I do. Well, we have a president. Not my choice, but at least we have a president. At least he had the good sense to put one-time Oracle pitchman, Collin Powel, up as Secretary of State. Needless to say that with the coming administration, some members of the Tuesday Night list are going to be without jobs. An unfortunate reality in the world DC. For those of you about to be displaced by the First Chimpanzee, I wish you the best. Specifically, those of you who are leaving the Department of Labor for the unemployment line… there is something odd about that. Seriously, I wish you the best of luck… I would try calling Joe Lockhart, he’s going to be Larry Ellison’s spokesman, and I’m sure he’s going to need help.

Our Lady of Blessed Over-eating don’t fail me now… Thanksgiving is here and gone. This year, it really snuck up on me. In fact, I am kinda confused how it became nearly December, and I did not realize it. Simply, either global warming has really messed things up or I need to get out more… or at least look at a calendar more often. Ever wondered why there is this huge chunk o’ holidays in the late-November, mid-December timeframe? I figured it out. It is to help us grow a protective layer of blubber. That’s right. We all remember biology class from who-knows-when and learning about seals in the Arctic. They have protective layers of blubber to keep the warm. We too have protective layers of blubber… but we don’t like to talk about it. Call it an ugly-secret hold-over that we haven’t evolved out of. So think about it… November starts to get cold, in December winter really kicks in… and you NEED something to keep you warm. Solution: build a few gluttony-based holidays into the calendar and bingo! you’ve got your protective layer of blubber ready to go. In other news, the word chad is getting way too much airtime. I wanted a better definition so I found this: Main Entry: chad Pronunciation: ‘chad Function: noun Etymology: origin unknown Date: 1947 : small pieces of paper or cardboard produced in punching paper tape or data cards; also : a piece of chad - chad·less /-l&s/ adjective It appears (at least, to me) that chad comes from the old data processing days when punch cards were king. What does one do with all these unwed pregnant chads? For that matter, what does one do with the chads who gave their simple lives so that a vote for Nader could be counted?

So I was sitting in a meeting in the basement of the Pentagon thinking, “Gee, this is kinda cool. I’m in the basement of the Pentagon.” And then the meeting began. And before I get two slides in, the barrage of questions begin, from a variety of older dumpy looking security people: * In what way does your software integrate with ACF2 on the mainframe. Does it use SAF or SRF? At this point, a thin trickle of sweat has begun to form over my brow. * So, can you integrate ACF2 with NIS+ as the authentication agent? At this point, my stomach is starting to churn. You get the idea… they were asking nasty gruesome nitpicky questions… and then… … the whopper of all phrases was uttered. This is a direct quote. “If E*Trade’s system get hacked, the worst thing that happens is that a few grandmothers starve. If our systems get hacked, we die, WE ALL DIE.” The following was said with a straight face. At this point, I was ready to tunnel my way to freedom using nothing but my ballpoint pen and my bare hands. I love my job! Hi gang - Well, winter is upon us. Turkey Day has arrived. I hate traveling home for Turkey Day and so will be in DC. Dave at Toledo, has promised a Wild Turkey special on Wednesday for us lame-o’s that are sticking around. (So if you are in DC this weekend let me know.) A really strange thing happened Saturday night. I reaffirmed the fact that Tom Tom Club is a horrid place to go… well, that’s not that strange; we all knew it. What was odd what the Bad Season’s reenactment that occurred there. No, it wasn’t that everyone’s ex’s showed up there. What was strange was seeing a few of my friends talking to women who had the same names as their ex’s. It just seemed a bit odd to me.

Flip-up headlights, like those on the Mazda Miata and Porsche 911, are cool. Ask Dianne, she lost $5 because of them. Hi gang - Yes, that’s right. Two weeks in a row. That’s right. Two weeks… I am here, in DC. I don’t really want to talk about headlights, though. I want to talk about socks. Moreover, I want to talk about the mystery of socks and the laundry room. We all know that socks have a way of disappearing when you do wash. Comedians joke about… most notably Woody Allen. But recently, I have been giving this some thought and it disturbs me. I live alone. There are no other batches of laundry to loose my socks in, and yet, some how, I have singleton socks. How can this happen? Possibilities include: * They simply disappear. Some how socks teleport into a better place… possibly the great lint ball in the sky. This is more of an X-Files type scenario. * Someone is getting into my house and stealing single socks. Well, this is plausible, not probable. Who could it be? People with keys to my place… My neighbors, Viv, Josh, or Todd. Hmmm….. Viv, are Hugo and Caroline playing with my socks are they? This is why you shouldn’t distribute a bunch of your keys… people steal your socks. * The socks haven’t vanished, but instead are in the next bag of laundry and some how got out of phase with their brethren. This is most likely what has happened… but the least fun answer. Come play pin the tail on the President nobody wants at Toledo tomorrow.

After 4 flights on United in 7 days, I’ve almost had it with them. 4 hours late out of Dulles for SFO, 1 1/2 to LA, and 2 back to SFO… They should change their little saftey announcement to read “In the unlikely event of an on-time departure, please do not be alarmed…” Unreal. Usually, airports bring out the worst in people. But, this Friday night, I saw the exact opposite. EVERYONE in the bar was delayed and had kind of come to terms with that fact, so we all decided to just drink. As someone went to the bathroom, whe he/she came back, we would get an update of who was delayed from the flight status board. The Sara Lee company has an interesting expense policy (several of there employees were delayed in the bar) - no alcohol unless you have food with it. So somewhere in Oakland is a woman with a receipt for about 20 beers and a couple bags of pretzels. Ian - After spending 1 night in a bar in Westwood, I now see why you despise LA as much as you do, and I would like to go on record as an LA-Hater as well.