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Made it into Louisiana safe and sound this morning, but only because of an insanely lucky bit of timing when I got to the baggage check-in line. I managed to read a good amount of that Sam Cooke biography I’ve been procrastinating on.

Amy’s parents met us at the airport, and took us out for an early lunch. In keeping with my tradition of eating incongruous foods, they proposed that we go to a Lebanese place they like. So I re-upped with the Schawarma Police and chowed down.

Once we got in the door, I collapsed into a great three-hour nap. I had zero idea where I was when I woke up, which is a good indicator of just how tired I was.

My immediate impression is that things have improved a bunch in the 2 months since we last visited. We’ll be going to the French Quarter tomorrow, along with other areas of the city, so I oughtta have a clearer impression of things.

Derek Lowe, medicinal chemist extraordinaire, posted the following excerpt from the judge’s ruling in the Intelligent Design case in Dover, PA:

“. . .The Board contacted no scientists or scientific organizations. The Board failed to consider the views of the District’s school teachers. The Board relied solely on legal advice from two organizations with demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions, the Discovery Institute and TMLC. Moreover, Defendants’ asserted secular purpose of improving science education is belied by the fact that most if not all of the Board members who voted in favor of the biology curriculum change conceded that they still do not know, nor have they ever known, precisely what ID is. To assert a secular purpose against this backdrop is ludicrous. . .Defendants have unceasingly attempted in vain to distance themselves from their own actions and statements, which culminated in repetitious, untruthful testimony. . .

. . .Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activity Court. Rather this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources. . .”

Here’s a PDF of the full ruling.

The fact that TMFTML squeezed a Richard Farina joke into this post on the new Bob Dylan musical made me laugh like a retard.

World’s funniest mobster, Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, died in prison yesterday.

Yeah, he committed monstrous crimes, but he also wandered around his neighborhood in his bathrobe like a crazy person in order to build a “mental illness” defense to keep him out of prison.

Eventually, he copped to faking it, which added three more years to his sentence.

I guess there’s something admirable in working his way up from crime-boss-driver to crime-boss, if you can apply a Protestant work ethic to the overwhelmingly Catholic world of organized crime.

Call me crazy, but I think the Intel ad guys came up with a slightly misleading tagline for their new ad campaign.

Uness the company’s opening a new chain of Centrino-powered strip clubs, I don’t think “Want incredible entertainment experiences in your lap?” is where they really want to go.

Sorry there’s no new posts, dear reader. I’ve been pretty busy with the year-end giganto-issue of the magazine, and haven’t had time for much of anything else.

Except for our office Christmas party. This year, I joined the writing squad for our annual “Carnac”-inspired joke-fest, where our boss comes out in a turban and cape and does the “answer first, then question” routine. I only mention this because my favorite joke failed to get a single laugh, but managed to make the entire room of 80 people gasp.

Here’s the setup: one of our ad salesgirls quit earlier this year and moved to Florida. She was pretty incompetent, and never sold much. So, since our jokes revolve around current-ish events and departed employees, I came up with the following:

Answer: “Terry Schiavo”

Question: “Who did [ad salesgirl] replace as the laziest person in Florida?”

One of my fellow joke-writers almost choked when I came up with that one. Trying to be ‘sensitive,’ the committee changed it to, “Who is the only person in Florida with less brain activity than [ad salesgirl]?”

As I said, not a single laugh. I chalk it up to game theory; if one person started laughing, I bet others would’ve loosened up. But I wasn’t gonna be the one to start it.

Anyway, the party went well, even if our favorite office drunk failed to get blown up this year and break a table, like he did two years ago.

How do I feel about the execution of Tookie Williams? I have some misgivings about the right of the state to kill convicted criminals, but I also have misgivings about letting people live after they commit heinous acts.

Evidently, California was asked to provide clemency for Williams because, after being convicted of multiple murders, he’s seen the light. Of course, he still contends that he’s not guilty of the murders, so California is ACTUALLY being asked to provide clemency for someone who’s changed his life after crimes he didn’t commit.

As I told the official VM fiancee this morning, “If he was convicted of murders-during-the-course-of-a-single-robbery, I might have more leeway, because of the Tarantinoesque capacity for things going horribly wrong, but murders from different robberies in the span of a few weeks makes him much more reprehensible, in my eyes.”

Then there are Williams’ victims. This page contains links to photos of them. These are pretty graphic, so consider yourself warned. I took a look at four people who had their lives taken from them, and then asked myself if Tookie deserved “a second chance.”

My (occasionally long-winded) buddy The Brooding Persian has a good post about the latest rant from Iran’s president:

What we’ve got now—and I mean the Iranian nation, our neighbours and the broader global community—with this witches brew of nativist authoritarianism, Shi’ia theology, Mr. Huntington’s creative profundities and a bit of second hand Carl Schmitt from-god-knows-where, coupled with belligerent adventurism of foreign powers–is what a nice lady once described long ago as the “devil’s cauldron.”

He also posts about some good news.

I haven’t seen TBP in a few years. We had tentative plans to get together this summer, but that was contingent on Iran and Israel qualifying for the World Cup. (I figure that’s about the only circumstance under which I’d visit Germany.) Unfortunately, the Israelis didn’t keep up their part of the bargain.

Richard Pryor was one of the funniest performers ever to grace this world. He died today at 65. Condolences to his family.

When I was a kid, I used to laugh like a retard over this album’s cover. Amy & I will watch Live at the Sunset Strip tonight in commemoration.

Radley “The Agitator” Balko continues reporting on the Cory Maye case, with even more harrowing and messed-up details in the case of a man who’s on death row.

Here’s his initial post about the case.

Update: TalkLeft is proposing a legal fund to help get Cory Maye off death row. I’m all for that, and will post about it as soon as I get any news on the subject.