I’ll admit it – at heart, I’m still a thespian. Well, I’m still a wanna-be thespian, damn Anna Aslin to hell for not nominating me to the Nat’l Thespian Association/Society/club despite six years of slaving away to achieve her vision on stage. At least I got to pinch Penny Grigsby’s ass as Uncle Willie in The Philly Story. Economics and lack of balls got me to go into engineering and the Navy, but I’ve always held a love for actual theater.

In any case, I’m not here to run down my failed and broken dreams. No, I’m here to sing the praises of Steve Martin, the craaa-zee guy who thrilled late 70’s and early 80’s audiences with wacky songs about dead dudes and arrows through his head.

I’m feeling like a kid approaching Christmas. The Tour de France starts in about a week. We’ve hit most of the story lines so far:

• Lance goes for 6 – noone’s ever done it, not the Cannibal, not Indurain – nobody.
• Tyler Hamilton is a badass.
• Bob Roll saying “tour day france” in straight American instead of “tourrr de fraunce” like an American trying to sound continental.
• Cipollini – He gave the director of le Tour crap about not being invited the last two years. Is he going to actually finish this year? How has he recovered from being cut in the Giro? And Velonews wants to know what he’s going to wear. (also funny for the cycling/Monster garage speculation)
• Is there going to be a young rider upset like Damiano Cunego waiting for the veterans?
• What is the euro press/French fans going to make of the recent doping allegations against LA? How ‘bout his ties to GWB?

In any case, it’s 3 weeks of inspired riding and scenery even if you’re not a cycling fan. I cannot wait.

Today’s reason: secrecy is taking a beating.

…[S]ecrecy czar J. William Leonard fretted over signs of a breakdown of the classification system for national security… complains that the system has lost touch with the “basics”: Some agencies don’t know how much information they classify; they don’t know whether they’re classifying more than they once did or less; they don’t know whether they’re classifying too much or too little; and they don’t know whether they’re classifying material for too long a period or too short.

This quality-control breakdown has resulted in agencies classifying too much information and, in some cases, classifying information that by law shouldn’t be stamped “secret” in the first place. Implying that the government classified the reports of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib to cover up the scandal, Leonard says:

??[I]n no case can information be classified in order to conceal violations of law or to prevent embarrassment to a person, organization or agency. … Specifically, “exactly from whom are we keeping the information secret?” In the case of detainee abuse, we are obviously not keeping it secret from the detainees—they experience the abuse and interrogation techniques first hand. And I assume we do not expect them to sign a nondisclosure agreement upon their release from custody based upon the premise that they had been exposed to classified information when they are subjected to abusive techniques.??

And here is an interesting parallel article where Bush is interviewed for 79 minutes about the Wilson/Plame leak.

As stated by the LA Times:

“It’s not every day that a onetime federal tax cheat gets an ornate crown placed on his head in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington before an audience of more than 300 while he explains that Hitler and Stalin, whose souls he claims to have posthumously redeemed, view him as the new Messiah. But then the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who has presided over mass weddings in Central Park, has always had a flair for the unusual.”

I just wanted to use this to emphasize that people outside of LA are weird.

The eighth president of these United States is blogging from purgatory, and he’s none to happy with Uncle Grambo — the blogger from Whatevs.org.

I noticed that whatevs takes particular pride in the dissemination of its quaint vernacular. Why, every outside reference ever made to a whatevs word is carefully cataloged and shared with its rather incestuous cabal of readers.

… What gives me the right to pass judgment?

… Let’s just say I invented a little word know as
OK.