ET TU, BUSTER?

First, they came for the Teletubbies. Then, they came for SpongeBob. And now, they're after Buster Baxter, the snack-food snarfing bunny known to any parent who's come within 100 feet of the book, TV and video empire inspired by Marc Brown's Arthur series (which are actually quite good, as kids books go, despite the fact that the author appears to have drawn them with his feet).

But I digress. Seems that Baxter unwittingly "visited" a real Vermont family that lives on a farm and makes maple syrup -- oh, and just happens to have two mommies. Or a step-mommy. Or something. So the Feds have layeth down the smack, ordering PBS to 86 this particular episode or lose a big chunk of funding.

To which I say bravo -- only they haven't gone far enough. If you've ever watched Arthur, you know that the universe in which these cartoon animals live has its own share of morally troubling issues. For starters, Baxter is growing up in a single-parent bunny household of his own. Apparently his father -- a hotshot pilot -- left his family, presumably after chasing another enticing critter down a rabbit hole. I mean, doesn't this just glorify tired old stereotypes about rabbits and their breeding habits? Or, worse, is it a way to inculcate impressionable youngsters to the coastal elitist moral relativism that gave us Bill Clinton, balanced budgets and unprecedented prosperity? Lest there be any lingering questions about this, consider that Baxter's mother -- his only parental influence -- is a newspaper reporter. With that horrifying fact in mind, I'm shocked that the FBI hasn't gone in to "rescue" him, Elian Gonzalez style.

You might think I'm blowing all this out of proportion. Perhaps. But when I get a sweet six-figure "grant" from a cabinet-level federal entity for my pro-traditional family proselytizing, we'll see who's laughing.

MY INTEGRITY WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD!

Hey, remember that time when that journalist guy got paid $240,000 to shill for the Bush administration? Yeah, that was awesome. But as is usually the case in the writing business, turns out there's someone out there willing to work cheaper. Today's market price for integrity: a mere $21,500.

My favorite quote:

"Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?" Gallagher said yesterday. "I don't know. You tell me."

Um, okay -- yes. Frankly, I'm just shocked that Gallagher is seen as having so much influence. Guess smashing watermelons with a mallet is a lot more persuasive than a bunch of stuffy op-ed pieces.

BLACK THURSDAY

No, I'm not refering to the inaugural -- I'm too much of a fan of John Ashcroft's Goulet-inspired "Let the Eagles Soar" to call any event highlighting the song an unmitigated disaster. But is it any coincidence that on the same day, the evil editors at Amazon.com decided to systemically delete every last one of my 90-plus well-reasoned, articulate and objective reviews?

I think not.

Perhaps I overreached somewhat. For instance, referring to the movie The English Patient as the "best critique of the British single-payer health care system ever committed to celluloid" might have been a bit... oh, I dunno, over the top. And I suppose giving Amber Frey's tell-all memoir five stars and calling it an "invaluable how-to guide on picking up desperate, single massage therapists" could be considered callous and insensitive.

Fortunately, I managed to save my reviews for posterity here. And maybe, over time, I'll begin contributing again, presumably under a different pseudonym. Who knows, maybe ultimately I'll rise back up into the vaunted echelon of the top 2,500 Amazon reviewers (watch out "iheartcats57" of North Spittle, Arkansas -- I'm gunning for you!)

Or maybe I'll start torturing the folks at Barnesandnoble.com instead.

WHATEVER YOU DO...

Don't get pulled over in Marshall County, Alabama. Meet the sheriff.

I was raised in era, the 1940's as a child and the 1950's as a teenager, which I remember with great affection.

[snip]

Parents could allow their children to go to a movie without having to screen it first because the good guy always wore the white hats. There was no question who the "Good Guy" was. Even the "Bad Guy" in the movie didn't use foul language.

Say what you will about Hitler -- at least he didn't have a potty mouth.

It goes on and on, hitting all the expected talking points, but my favorite part is the reference to the halcyion 1940s and the 1950s. Let's just say I've lived in the South long enough to know that what he's nostalgic for isn't Big Band music.

RECOMMENDED: SHAUN OF THE DEAD

Nothing like a quiet night in with your significant other, watching a romantic movie after the kids have gone to bed. Well, what passes for a romantic movie in our household, anyway.

The movie's a hoot--a clever but predictable premise you could jot down on the back of a business card, but so perfectly executed and well acted it's impossible not to laugh. A lot. In short, it's a romantic comedy for people who don't like romantic comedies (but do like zombies). Think Army of Darkness meets Four Weddings and a Funeral meets I Spit on Your Grave--or maybe that other well-known horror of horrors, Notting Hill. In fact, that's probably how it was pitched in the first place.

SO LONG, HFS

And hola, el zol. (I don't speak Spanish, but I'm guessing that, loosely translated, "siempre de fiesta" works out to "music everyone can agree on--even the boss.")

Long before the airwaves were paved over and strip-malled, WHFS was a legendary alternative-rock station. I remember listening to it when I was in high school, back when it was still on the trailing edge of being "cool" (the trailing part, though, is probably why I had actually heard of it). It had an awful signal back then, meaning that tuning it in from the Virginia suburbs was something of an accomplishment that, in its own right, gave one some limited hipster cred.

Of course, if HFS hadn't spent the past decade trying to attract a sliver of that lucrative 15-to-17-year-old skateboarder demo by playing Lincln Park (or whatever 3l33t misspelling they chose for their moniker) on the half-hour, maybe it wouldn't have come to siempre time. Of course, the same could be said for almost every cookie-cutter station out there. A few years back, I agreed to periodically listen to snippets of new "hot rotation" songs as part of an ongoing automated survey purportedly used to refine playlists at Top 40 and AC radio stations. A robotic voice would call, play six seconds of some crappy, angry-but-not-angry-enough-to-worry-the-parents Matchbox 20-sounding song and ask me to rate it from 1 ("like") to 6 ("really, really like"). The song would invariably suck, so I'd stab my phone's zero or star key until they'd pipe another snippet of an identical-sounding song down the line, which would also invariably suck.

Not surprisingly, the robot stopped calling me after a handful of times and, as we all know, Matchbox 20 achieved its longstanding goal of world domination shortly thereafter. Hey, don't blame me -- I tried.

MAYBE THEY'RE JUST UPSET THAT YOU CANCELED MARMADUKE

Here's the most brilliant idea I've heard all week: Calling people who've canceled their newspaper subscription and asking them to reconsider by pointing out that you publish pieces that are supportive of the president. (Also note the patronizing comment about interacting with the huddled, non-cocktail party-attending masses -- "If they want to talk, that's a bummer.")

Hey, if declining circulation revenue is the worry and you have no qualms making what's essentially an implicit offer of fealty for cash, why not just cut out the middleman completely and go straight to the source?

(via Poynter).

DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN IPOD, EITHER

See the footnote at the end of the display type touting the newest iPod's size? Here's exactly what the legalese says, buried amid a raft of other fine print involving AAC bit rates and Apple's always-questionable battery claims:

2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.

I don't know which explanation is more horrifying: that some corporate attorney billed upwards of $250 an hour coming up with that disclaimer, or that somewhere out there, someone might actually confuse a Flash player with a stick of Feenamint.

FOR $240,000, I'D WRITE A FLATTERING PROFILE OF... WELL, OF THIS GUY

Move over, Jayson Blair and our friend with the soggy cheese on the private island off Sri Lanka. There's a new kid in town:

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.

Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in."

The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers' money" that is "probably illegal." He said he will ask his Republican counterpart to join him in requesting an investigation.

Yeah, don't hold your breath.

Wow. Bear in mind that along with being a "pundit" (whatever that means), this guy is a newspaper columnist. I hate to add to the self-righteous rhetoric that pervades a profession that has long favored self-righteous rhetoric over actual ethics, but this is truly astonishing. I'm almost sick to my stomach.

(via USA Today via Eschaton).

REQUIEM FOR A MEGTRON(tm)

After two years at my current job, my ca. 1994 Megtron(tm)(R) PC has finally growled menacingly at Mothra for the last time. Much to my amazement, I now actually have a brand-name computer running this strange, futuristic OS by the name of -- what do the kids call it again? -- Windows XP.

But my Megtron is still sitting forlornly in a corner of my office, waiting for me to offload the last of my files (assuming I can without it locking up). And every time I look over at it, memories wash over me.

• No more rock-tumbler-like "fan" sound.
  
• No more waiting for 2 minutes and 20 seconds for Microsoft Word to load (I timed it once when I first started working here, largely out of disbelief)
  
• No more walking out of a meeting to see thick smoke billowing out of my office after my Megtron's attempt at self-immolation.
  
• No more thinking I'd get a replacement PC after an inconsquential mishap like a fire, only to have the IT folks have it up and running again in 20 minutes (which, I guess, makes sense when you're talking about a machine with roughly three moving parts).
  
• No more worrying about it crashing if I did something unadvisable, like attempt to work on two files at once.
  
• No more trying to pop in a CD before remembering that the Megtron concept of a CD drive -- a permanent, hermetically sealed tomb for any item foolishly placed inside -- was a bit different than mine.

It's been a long decade, faithful friend. May you slumber in peace at the landfill.

(Note: I did a Web search to look for an image of the Megtron(tm)(R) logo, and apparently this particular brand can now only be found in Yugoslavia, Germany (presumably what used to be East Germany), and other decidedly non-Coalition of the Willing countries. But check out the great price on this German site. Who says you don't get what you pay for?)

THE TRUE TRAGEDY OF IT ALL

Leave it to the Post to capture the full dimensions of the devastation wrought by the tsunami last week:

There were 15 of us gathered around the dinner table, from four continents, celebrating Christmas on a fantasy private island in the Indian Ocean... Hoots of laughter greeted my brother Geoffrey as he instructed us how to slice the Stilton cheese he had brought with him from England. On no account must the Stilton be dug into with a spoon, he insisted.

Sure, more than 150,000 people died, but I'll bet that Stilton got really, really soggy.