Oooh, a spider! Kill it!

I have to admit it: I feel a little guilty about making fun of Clinton’s book, because … well, because I didn’t read the book. In that, I’m like most of the people making fun of it now, frankly. Sorry, Michiko Kakutani may be a New York Times book critic, but I don’t believe she had time to plow through all 957 pages before panning it so viciously. Neither did the approximately 956 other pundits getting a quick 650 words out of it before they started their summer vacations.

That’s the dirty secret of modern life: It moves so fast you just have to fake it. Not sometimes, most of the time. When you’re a pundit, you have to do your faking in public.

No wonder the public hates us.

OK, that’s enough of that. Talker of the day: Indiana gets a bunch of money in settlement of a suit involving CD pricing, so they spend it on CDs for public libraries. But what happens next? The Indiana attorney general steps in and decides Meredith Brooks (remember her?) is too hot for the state to spend money on it. This album is, anyway. Must be that “Bitch” song.

Saints preserve us.

No, I’m wrong. This was the talker of the day:

An assistant manager at Champs Sports in the Oakdale Mall sprayed a flammable substance on a spider and then set it alight Wednesday, causing a blaze that evacuated the mall, village police and fire officials said.

That’s a link worth following, if only to see the pictures. I actually feel sorry for the dope. Like lots of disasters, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. As Jeff Foxworthy might say, “Hey everybody, watch this.”

Personally, I give spiders amnesty. They kill flies and other nuisance bugs, and any that give me a problem are captured humanely and escorted to the property line.

Busy, busy weekend ahead. I doubt I’ll be back before Sunday. But you folks have yourselves a good weekend.

Posted at 10:19 pm in Uncategorized |
 

7 responses to “Oooh, a spider! Kill it!”

  1. Connie said on June 24, 2004 at 11:56 pm

    Most of us in public libraries are not very excited about this CD settlement. We prefer to pick our own titles. We prefer new releases. And this was my first notification that the Attorney General’s office has censored the selection. At my library we are also concerned about the impact of adding some 1500 CDs to our already backlogged AV processing process. The AG’s office called me a few weeks ago and asked me to hold my library’s distribution for an upcoming AG PR visit. I take it he did one in Fort Wayne, here in Elkhart we haven’t heard from them again.

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  2. Connie said on June 25, 2004 at 9:01 am

    And to clarify, Indiana didn’t get money from the settlement. The settlement is the CDs, selected and provided by the record labels.

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  3. elaine said on June 25, 2004 at 11:43 pm

    You’d never know that Indiana’s A.G. Steve Carter is up for reelection. I mean, first he holds a tightly-controlled press conference – in a public library no less! – to announce his plans to push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages. Now he comes down from the mountaintop, in all his Ashcroftian glory, to tout his highly-censored cache of free CDs for Indiana libraries. Jeebus.

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  4. danno said on June 26, 2004 at 10:53 am

    have you seen mr. carter’s ads about the no-call list?? one would think that it was his idea alone! LET THE SPIDERS LIVE!! i say. except those who live off the public’s stupidity like the above mentioned. if i had bigger shoes, by god, most of the politicos in indiana would be a-fearin me!!!

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  5. danno said on June 26, 2004 at 10:56 am

    the link on the story about the spider-mall disaster seems to have been removed.

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  6. James Henry Trotter said on June 27, 2004 at 10:11 pm

    “And here we have Miss Spider

    With a mile of thread inside her

    Who has personally requested me to say

    That she’s NEVER met Miss Muffet

    On her charming little tuffet—

    If she had she’d NOT have frightened her away.

    Should her looks sometimes alarm you

    Then I don’t think it would harm you

    To repeat at least a hundred times a day:

    ‘I must NEVER kill a spider

    I must only help and guide her

    And invite her in the nursery to play.'”

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  7. D said on July 6, 2004 at 10:56 am

    Thank you for not killing spiders.

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