Thanks to reader Pete J. for the recommendation to check out C-SPAN Radio (90.1 FM on the Virginia dial, Internet-streamed here). They rebroadcast the Sunday yelling shows without the ads, they played today's Supreme Court arguments, and I think I've found a new default radio station.

When I visited St. Louis last week I was introduced to an 80's music station (104.1 The Mall) that was quite fun too.

Oh, and the Joe Jackson concert was beyond excellent. If he comes to your town, see him. Review forthcoming, someday. Maybe.

Flashcom (the provider I'm trying to get DSL from now) seems to have gone underground. Their "24/7" customer service lines now give operating hours of 8am-6pm Pacific.

And even when I call during those hours, I never get a person. Today's excuse was, 'unusually high call volume'. I'll bet.

Looking at their site, apparently something wet happened to Flashcom and my account's going to be taken over by Earthlink or some other major concern. Nice of them to tell me. Oy.

That Bush cousin who works at Fox and declared the election for GWB is going to tell his story.

• Fox's Ellis, A Little Too Close To the Story by Howard Kurtz [Washington Post]
  Ellis, who had stopped writing about Bush as a Boston Globe columnist because "I am loyal to my cousin," may well have committed no violation of the exit-poll rules. But Fox executives recognize that the appearance of their man working both sides of the street has damaged their credibility.

Oh look, it's out already:

• A Hard Day's Night: John Ellis' Firsthand Account of Election Night [Inside]

I guess New Mexicans can be trusted to count ballots properly whereas Floridans can't:

• A GOP lawyer makes the case -- for Gore [New Jersey Online]
  "These ballots are not difficult to tabulate by hand, and in the case of simply reviewing the results of a single race, can generally be counted by hand more quickly than by machine... There is, of course, no other way to determine the accuracy of this apparent discrepancy or machine malfunction other than the board reviewing the votes by hand and comparing them with the results." [Mickey D. Barrett, lawyer for the Republicans in New Mexico]

So, if both sides are equally hypocritical here, surely the Democrats screamed about the unreliability of New Mexican hand counts, right? Huh. I'm still waiting to see that reported.

I have no pithy comment about this:

• Woman allegedly killed for campaigning [Salon/AP]
  A woman who intended to run in Pakistan's local elections was allegedly killed by her husband because he objected to her candidacy, police said Monday.
  
  Nazia Mumtaz was stabbed to death Friday and her husband, Munir, has since disappeared, police said. He has been charged with murder...

Sorry to see Cluttered go... best of luck, P.J.

The new high-speed Amtrak train only gains 16 minutes on the old three-hour Washington-NY run? Humph.

• Amtrak begins bullet train service [Salon]
  All 20 Acela Express trains should be operating by next summer. If the service proves popular in the Northeast, Amtrak hopes to offer high-speed service elsewhere in the country.
  
  A one-way coach ticket between Washington and New York is $143 on Acela Express, compared with $122 on the Metroliner service it is replacing.

You'd think a big company like Amtrak could hire someone who knows how to make a home page that shows something useful to a visitor who doesn't surf with JavaScript turned on.

There's not even the traditional insulting text saying "You need to go get a 'better' browser (or turn on JavaScript, stupid, and let our poor code and your browser's poor implementation get together and crash your machine one-two-three! Why wouldn't you want that?)"; it's blank, which is even more insulting. If you View Source, you can figure out where to go, but: yeesh.

Inside.com is the same way. It's a simple <noscript> thing, people!

Anyone interested in more/better pictures of me than I have posted on this site are invited to visit Lyn's journal site, All Too Cozy (specifically, the Dec. 10 entry).