Monday Debriefing....
Category: Kitchen Sink...
Posted Monday, May 19, 2003 at 05:51 AM [GMT-6]

We hit 105° yesterday, beating the previous record by 6 degrees. That's the meteorological equivalent of hitting 85 home runs in a season or running a 3 minute mile. OK, that's an exaggeration and a bad analogy to boot, but you get the picture.


I just heard Matt Laurer open the Today Show by saying that he's reporting live from the Korean DMZ, "the most dangerous place in the world." Hmm. Try telling that to the folks in Rwanda, or southern Sudan. Or to the bus commuters in Tel Aviv.


Headline in today's newspaper: "State health official warns of obesity at A&M graduation." I hope they've adequately reinforced the stage.


Piling on the French...even mainstream cartoonists are getting into the act.


James Lileks dissects the plot of an alien vampire movie and declares it illogical. Still, "Lifeforce" makes "Matrix: Reloaded" look like an algebra textbook. We saw MR on Saturday, in a theater that was half-empty, courtesy, I suppose, of the R rating. It had a promising start — the AT&T commercial featuring the terminally irritating Carrot Top had no sound; the audience sat in stunned gratitude. But the movie itself suffered from the dreaded "sophomore season curse," and I came away mainly wondering if I would contract SARS from the hacking cough of the guy sitting about four seats down on our row. (That's how it starts, you know; just watch "Outbreak," if you don't believe me!) We had been advised to sit through the world's longest sequence of credits in order to see the trailer for MRev, so we did. You can if you want; doing so does offer the advantage of letting the traffic clear a bit before you leave...but not much else.


One of the legislative victims of the Texas Dems' walkout last week was a bill that would give Texans the option of getting a personalized license plate reading "Choose Life." The proceeds from the sale of this plate would go to non-profit organizations who offer counseling about alternatives to abortion. How convenient for the Democrats, who managed to kill lots of birds with one stone (and there's absolutely no pun intended). This bill, however, will almost surely be re-introduced if a special summer legislative session is called.

And, finally...is there such a thing as a generic icon representing a blog? If not, don't you think we need one? You know, a small symbol that can be placed on a web page to indicate a link to a blog? Surely someone can come up with a decent simple graphic that we can adopt across the board.