Category: Uncategorized

The House of Representatives passed a tax cut yesterday for the Gulf Coast, to help redevelopment after Hurricanes Katrina & Rita. The “Gulf Opportunity Zone” includes tax breaks to help rebuilding in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, including new bond authority and incentives to rebuild houses.

However, according to the Washington Post:

Bowing to pressure from Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) and other social conservatives, GOP leaders exempted casinos, country clubs, hot tub facilities, liquor stores, massage parlors, golf courses, racetracks and tanning salons from the tax breaks, exemptions the administration initially opposed.

My first inclination, of course, is to goof on the concept that massage parlors and country clubs got tagged as immoral by a right-wing rep. Unfortunately, Wolf’s name stuck in my memory, so I had to look up where I’d heard of him before.

Turns out he was the rep who introduced the bill condemning the genocide in Sudan. I wrote about him briefly last year. He’s been insanely out in front on this issue for a while now.

So, while I’m fully prepared to goof on his idiot moralizing and his contemptible idea of who “deserves” tax breaks, I have to be fair and say that he’s also trying to save a ton of helpless people in Sudan.

But tanning salons?

I kept reciting variations on the subject line above while reading this article from Radley Balko’s blog.

Sure, the Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2000, but at least they haven’t fallen apart like Manchester United.

Official VM buddy Tom S. got a jump on the holidays by sending me and Amy a passel of presents! We couldn’t resist, and opened ’em up last night! It’s great, having a good friend who lives far enough away that he can’t rely on the USPS for timely delivery!

But now I feel like a heel for getting him a half-assed gift this year. Sigh. At least I have time to come up with something else.

(Update: Sez the official VM fiancee, “You’re not going to post what he got us?”

“I thought it would be tacky,” sez I.

We concluded that I should never trust my judgement on tackiness.

So Tom got us a pair of DVDs (Local Hero and Mick Foley’s Greatest Hits and Misses), three Joss Whedon-inspired books (Seven Seasons of Buffy, Five Seasons of Angel, and Finding Serenity), a 1940s copy of Ring Lardner’s You Know Me Al, and a gift certificate at the website of Roger Langridge, one of my favorite cartoonists. I’ll probably use the latter to buy a page of Roger’s original art.

Tom sez, “Don’t thank me! As my younger brother pointed out during wrapping, ‘So you’re basically getting them books you can read on their john, DVDs you can watch on their TV, and a piece of art that will probably go in the guest room.’

“‘And your point is. . .?'”)

There are times that I marvel over Our Modern World. Other times, I take it for granted.

Last night, as I video-chatted with my brother and his family about 1,000 miles away, I admit to being a little amazed that it’s so easy for us to do this.

Kudos to iSight and iChat AV.

Amy: Have you given any thought to what sort of wedding ring you want?

Gil: . . .

or maybe . . .

I mean, I figure that Legion flight-ring’s going to be a tough find this season. . .

Ahoy, ahoy, dear reader! After nearly 3 years of the same design and platform for Virtual Memories, I’ve decided to move over to WordPress! I’m hoping this new model will allow me to post entries more smoothly, and give me more flexibility for adding functions to the blog (as is, you can now search through all the contents really easily).

In the next week or so, I’ll be done reformatting the 700-odd previous posts, cleaning up broken links, and putting in new features like e-mail notification, an Amazon database, flickr integration, and whatever other neat/useful stuff I can find. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to migrate over the comments from past posts, so I’ll need you guys to start commenting anew. I’ll try to keep up my end with some entertaining/infuriating posts.

I hope you like the new look.

This is not on my Amazon wishlist. Check out the “Number of discs” line and laugh over the idea that it’s TWO-HUNDRED AND TWELVE DISCS!

That said, I do know people who would likely fork over the dosh for it. All $2,800 or so.

Sorry about the lack of updates, witticisms, etc., dear readers. I’ve been swamped with work on the year-end issue of the magazine and taking care of wedding details, while Amy & I have been adjusting to our new living-in-sin work schedules. I oughtta be back on track in a week or so.

Part of the reason I haven’t posted is because my head was blown off by the news that David Duke, Klansman and former representative from Louisiana, spoke at a rally in Damascus to support Bashar Assad.

I thought, “There’s no way on earth this story is real. Sure, it’d make for a great ‘Anti-Zionism Leads to Strange Bedfellows’ headline, but come on.”

Amy, a Louisiana native, asked, “Do you think he hates Jews more than non-whites?”

I opined that he probably doesn’t hate non-whites so much as he doesn’t want them in America. As long as they stick to Syria, I bet he’s fine with the existence of Arab people. In principle.

So I finally sat down last night and tried to source the story. First thing I found? Why, “The Official Website of Representative David Duke, PhD”! And it’s filled with links and soundclips from Duke’s visit to Syria! Enjoy!

(And I’ve determined that it’s okay–despite all the hardships that hurricane Katrina has inflicted on people–to laugh about the fact that it also dropped a tree on Duke’s house.)

A lot of bloggers like to recipe-blog. I’m not one of them, because I’m a terrible cook. Maybe I’m not terrible, but I refuse to even try, so there’s no way to find out if I’ll ever be good at it. My only food-making abilities involve great scrambled eggs, a perfect PB&J, and good steak-grilling.

Fortunately, the official VM fiancee likes to cook. For Thanksgiving, she made this tasty number.

That’s right: bacon-wrapped dates with goat cheese. They were tremendous, combining the saltiness and texture of the bacon with the sweetness of the dates and, um, the glue-like nature of the cheese, which helped the little almond bits get stuck in our teeth.

And, that’s right: there’s actually a site called “iheartbacon.com“.