You know, I never thought there were that many yuppies in this town, overpriced real estate aside. Sure, we have Rich Wankers who live high on the hill in their sprawling pseudo-Craftsman mansions -- I know this because I have accidentally become trapped in their cul-de-sacs of doom -- but I didn't think we had many yuppies. We don't seem to have much in the way of yuppie jobs, yuppie clothes, yuppie restaurants, or even yuppie behavior. We don't have super-trendy restaurants where everybody wears an Italian suit and orders off the menu and spends the entire meal talking on their cell phones to LA or New York.

But some developer apparently thinks there is an underserved yuppie market here, and to tap into it Bellingham needs a sparkly tower of in-your-face yuppiness like what you might find in the lower mainland of BC, or San Diego, or some other locale with moderate weather and stratospherically overpriced real-estate.

Now, I abhor this manner of architectural abomination anywhere, and this particular project is hideously out of scale and out of character with the buildings around it, and, worse, if it is successful it will just encourage more of that sort of thing, which I will hate so much it destroys my ability to think straight, so, anyway, I will be praying every night that the project fails miserably, preferably before any ground is broken, like maybe whoever is behind it isn't really a real estate developer, but is in fact a con artist, and will be skedaddling to the Cayman Islands with all the money gullible yuppies have paid to reserve spaces in the proposed Towering Infernal.

Sigh. One can dream.

But I also despise this kind of stupid high-concept marketing for condos or apartments or whatever, where they always call them "homes" and try to make it seem like, somehow, if you live there you will have exquisite taste, fashionable friends, a personal maid, and a renewed dedication to your fitness regimen.

Oooo, and note the little slogan, so carefully spelled out with lower case letters, but periods, as if each word is a sentence all to itself, but somehow understated at the same time, like some moronic little post-modern poetic exercise: water. sky. home.

A condo is not a LIFESTYLE, okay? It's a BOX where you KEEP YOUR STUFF.

Addendum: As of March 2, 2008 the developers of Bay View Tower are refunding deposits. According to project manager Robert Howe, the project isn't dead. But they have vacated their sales office. Bay View Tower update.

So, this is it -- the end of "Percival and the Brain." The next series is "Terra Goes to Hell," followed by "Pages Torn Out of Alexandra's Notebook." All three cover the title character's life from early childhood until the summer of 1983 -- right before their senior year in high school.

Because, by the last couple of drawings of Percival and the Brain, it was already 1983, I checked out my senior year high school yearbook to see what their hair should look like.

All I can say is.... ew.

I knew that 80s had some very unfortunate hair trends, you know, the kind of thing that makes a mohawk look like a reasonable alternative, but I think my memory of the actual time period was influenced too much by pop culture -- that is, I knew what actors and musicians and counterculture types looked like in 1983, and forgot how irredeemably dorky actual middle America teenagers looked. Helmet hair. It's amazing. I had forgotten all about helmet hair.

Also, something extraordinary has happened. I knew it would, based on having laughed my way through my mother's 1964 yearbook, but I wasn't paying attention and so it still came as a surprise: enough time has passed that I can no longer tell, just by looking, who was cool and who wasn't.

You can tell who was a cheerleader, and who was dating a cheerleader, on account of homecoming photos and things like that. And you can guess who was popular based on how frequently they turn up in the incidental shots. And there are a few people who are obviously studs, because they have that look in their eyes, and a few who are obviously nerds, because they have that look in their eyes too. And of course, I remember -- but imperfectly. There are seniors in those pages whose names don't ring even a small, tinkly little bell.

And even the "cute" boys have ridiculous hair.

It's true. Deep down, leaders in the anti-abortion movement really just want to punish women. "Saving the babies" is their cover, their friendly crowd-pleasing message. They clearly don't actually want to prevent any actual abortions. Because they want to get rid of birth control too.

But then, from this perspective, the pill began to do terrible damage. "I cannot imagine any development in human history, after the Fall, that has had a greater impact on human beings than the pill," Mohler [president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary], continued. "It became almost an assured form of contraception, something humans had never encountered before in history. Prior to it, every time a couple had sex, there was a good chance of pregnancy. Once that is removed, the entire horizon of the sexual act changes. I think there could be no question that the pill gave incredible license to everything from adultery and affairs to premarital sex and within marriage to a separation of the sex act and procreation."

Got that girls? You are evil, fallen, if you want to have sex and not get pregnant.

(And a big, ahem here, their rhetoric decries sex without procreation as reducing people to "bodies," but I can't help feeling that they are reducing me to less than a human body, to an incubator, a life-support machine for a potential fetus.)

Now, these people seem kind of crazy to me. They seem like that guy in Dr. Strangelove who keeps going on about "precious bodily fluids." But if all they wanted was to convince people who already followed their wacky worldview to eschew contraception, they wouldn't be any worse than people who believe in astrology, or homeopathy, or the inerrancy of the Pope, or anything else I don't personally believe in. People are free to believe that having lots of sex infuses them with mystical energy, or that God wants them to have twelve kids, or that total abstinence is the gateway to Heaven, or whatever. It's still a free country.

Except these guys have something -- ambition, hubris, ego -- that makes them want to force the rest of us to appear to share their worldview. Like if an Amish cult took over and outlawed electricity. They don't want it to be a free country. They want it to be a country according to their own design. They have political schemes, and their schemes have no room for those of us who simply don't agree with them.

Even if you don't like abortion, if you are a woman, or if you like women, these people are not on your side. Shun them.

PS: The title is a Franz Ferdinand quote.

Okay, so, this installment of "Percival and The Brain" was supposed to go up on Friday, but we had to leave for a wedding and I hadn't finished it yet. And we were out of town all weekend. So, here it is. Just one panel. I know.

Sometimes it just works out like that.

Do do do do... next stop... the creationist zone. The linked video is quite long, so I'll give highlights: an achingly sincere and condescending Kirk Cameron, who spends the whole video acting like he's trying to convince slightly dim high schoolers to sell magazines for Christ, plus some Australian guy, are the hosts. They try to disprove evolution using each of the following:

1. Inability of high school students to adequately explain the theory of evolution.
2. Gaps in the fossil record.
3. Lack of table manners in even highly trained orang-outangs.
4. Airline policy regarding orang-outangs.
5. Sexism and racism in the writing of Charles Darwin.

Most head-exploding point: after demonstrating similarities between humans and orang-outangs, they show a biplane and a jumbo jet, "they look very similar, does that mean one evolved from the other?" I thought they were going to go with the watchmaker analogy here, because of course, a jumbo jet did evolve from a biplane, but under human direction. But instead, they claim the similarities are because God used a similar BLUEPRINT to design both humans and apes. Oh, I see, it all makes sense now. Your God -- the God you worship, the God you believe created the universe out of nothing, the God you believe is the supreme and ultimate power in the eternity of the universe -- made humans and apes look like each other because he ran out of ideas?

Most unintentionally hilarious host performance: When Kirk explains that the last couple of dozen times he has "witnessed" to someone, the subject of evolution hasn't come up, because "when you learn to speak to a person's CONscience" (indicated by two hands over the heart) "and circumNAVigate the INTELLECT -- " (indicated by pointing to his temple with two fingers, like he's shooting himself in the head) "the subject of evolution seems to... disappear." (indicated by an exaggerated, wide-eyed shrug and a weird circular hand motion.) So, uh, this guy originally made his living as an actor, huh? Wow.

At the end of the video, if you make it that far, you might notice they have mentioned "the fossil record" a bunch of times, but they haven't mentioned DNA once.

Do you suppose it's because DNA would provide too much compelling evidence in favor of the theory of evolution?

Just in case you don't get C-SPAN, check out Stephen Colbert's hilarious presentation at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Update: the original "youtube" links have been removed. (Hmm... suppression! It must be important!) So here is Colbert's routine in Bit Torrent format.Bit Torrent is here. Oh, and here's another Colbert link from filmportal.

There are some in the media who claim that his routine was a "flop" or "unfunny" because the people at the event weren't laughing too much (except Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who was guffawing fit to burst at an "improper Italian hand gesture" sequence directed specifically at him). It's true there weren't a lot of big laugh-getters, and when the camera showed the crowd, there were a lot of expressions that read as "Omigod! I can't believe he just SAID that!"

Which of course is what you'll get from most truly brilliant comedy -- the first time around. It's a sad, shameful fact that safe and predictable jokes are the most guaranteed laugh-getters. They just aren't the jokes that matter later.

But look at it this way. How many people go to a typical White House Correspondents Dinner? A few hundred? (Um. Turns out it's 2,000, according to Paul, who's usually right about such things.) How many people watch C-SPAN? A few thousand? And how many people take a gander at a "hot" Internet video clip?

Well, I don't know, actually, but I'm betting it's more people than watch C-SPAN.

Anyway, the video is funnier (timing and all), but a nice dKos person has typed up a reasonably accurate transcript of the brilliance in case you can't watch the video.

Related footnote: Wanna know why Democrats lose elections?

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) came to the defense of the commander in chief after Saturday’s White House Correspondents' Association dinner, where the president took a drubbing from comedian Stephen Colbert.
"I thought some of it was funny, but I think it got a little rough," Hoyer said. "He is the president of the United States, and he deserves some respect."

Yeah, yeah. You gotta fight politics by the Marquess of Queensberry rules. Except, when the Republicans are fighting a bar brawl, you fight by the rules and you lose.

A teen novel by a Harvard student accused of plagiarizing a successful author of young adult fiction was yanked Thursday from bookstores by its publisher, Little, Brown & Co.

"How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life" by 19-year-old sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan contained at least 40 passages similar or identical in theme and content to parts of two novels by Megan McCafferty, "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings."

In an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, Viswanathan, a fan of McCafferty's novels, blamed her photographic memory. Earlier, she had apologized to McCafferty, saying she did not consciously plagiarize her.

Although her novel received mixed reviews, Viswanathan had been the subject of positive news stories, mostly focusing on her youth, her ethnicity (she was born in India) and her two-book deal, worth a reported $500,000. DreamWorks optioned the book for a movie.

Now, let's go back in time and react to an article on Viswanathan from a year ago.

Kaavya Viswanathan is set on becoming an investment banker when she graduates from Harvard University in 2008 <..> Agent Jennifer Rudolph Walsh of the William Morris Agency, [told her] that Little Brown & Company, one of the oldest and most prestigious American publishers - now part of the Time Warner Group - agreed to a two-book deal with the teenager. The sum approached $500,000. Ms. Viswanathan said she expects to deliver the first volume, tentatively titled "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got In," by the end of next month. The novel is expected to be published next spring. Ms. Viswanathan said she's already written more than 150 pages, or more than a third of the manuscript.

Just a moment, while I reattach my exploding head. There. Okay. She is... a teenager and... unpublished and... she is getting $500,000 from a major publisher for two books she hasn't even finished yet?

All you other writers out there finished attaching your exploding heads? Okay. And stop grinding your teeth. Yes, I know anomalies like this are why the average person labors under the misapprehension that writers 1. Get lots of money for what they write, and 2. Get published without having to go through the emotional cheesegrater of rejection just because they're reasonably good, or your precious talented little girl, or any of those other sweet but unhelpful things that friends and family tend to think.

But the question is why? How?

"My parents had gone to college in India, and they felt unfamiliar with the college-application process in America," Ms. Viswanathan said. "So they signed me up with Dr. Katherine Cohen's IvyWise as an extra safeguard." IvyWise is a service that prepares students for college admissions.

"I was so charmed by what I read," Ms. Cohen said [of Viswanathan's novel]. "I immediately sensed that here was a star in the making. So I called my own agent at William Morris, Suzanne Gluck, and told her about Kaavya."

Ms. Gluck showed the manuscript to Ms. Walsh, who handles fiction at the agency. She was impressed and shopped it around, and Little, Brown offered the highest advance. Ms. Viswanathan was the youngest writer the agency had taken on in its 109-year history.

Oh, I see. Because Viswanathan is already privileged enough to have an expensive college application coach and go to Harvard, and because somebody knows somebody, she gets to bypass the cheesegrater of rejection.

So I guess that explains how... but it still, in my mind, does not adequately explain why. Is the unfinished novel really that good? Are the publishing houses really that desperate for another "chick-lit" star? Or was there a directive from up above that she happened to fit, something like, "hey, we need more ethnic diversity, and teenagers, in chick-lit!"

This article in Slate suggests that, indeed, she was selected on the basis of a larger-scale marketing strategy. The still-unfinished book was processed through a "book packager" called 17th Street Productions, which describes itself as "a creative think tank that develops and produces original books, television series and feature films" with a focus on the teen market. (Horrified shudder.) Previous 17th Street sins include the Sweet Valley High series, so that tells you right there what kind of evil they're capable of. In fact, the Salon article makes it sound like the final product, I mean book, no I mean product, was as worked-over by lame marketing hacks as the stinkiest Hollywood tripe.

I've heard that Stephen King benefitted from something similar -- that the publisher was looking for the "next Exorcist" and Carrie happened to be sitting on their desk. But, you know, it was a finished novel. And also brilliant. And King had been writing for years and had actually published a few short stories by that point. He hit the jackpot, yeah, but he hit it honestly.

"The main character is a girl of Indian descent who's totally academically driven, and when she senses from a Harvard admissions officer that her personal life wasn't perhaps well-rounded, Ms. Mehta goes out and does what she thinks 'regular' American kids do - get drunk, kiss boys, dance on the table," Ms. Viswanathan said. Does her fictional character get into Harvard? Only the novel will tell.

Um, no, that's incorrect -- the (awful) working title tells you she "got in," what, are you brain damaged or something?

I suppose that's why it was changed before release to "got a life," which doesn't reveal the climax, but is, if anything, worse. And man, does that description make the book sound tedious.

So, there's a thing I'm feeling now, taking those two articles together. I think that feeling is schadenfreude -- best expressed with a big ole' Nelson Muntz --

Ha-ha!

I'm not just gloating over the seeming karmic balance of big misfortune following great success. Well, I guess I am. But an important balance has been restored. The publishing world has been smacked down by the universe for their sins. And I certainly hope that all the suffering is theirs -- the recalled books, the broken movie deals, the unexpected spotlight shone on their cynical marketing schemes. It's horrid when any art is treated as a hollow lifestyle accoutrement, but doing that to novels... it just seems extra wicked. I don't really feel sorry for Viswanathan, since her family is still loaded, and she will become an investment banker when she graduates from Harvard.

Okay, maybe I feel a little sorry for her. She was only 17 when she wrote the novel. Many people involved in this were old enough to know better, but not her. Second, when I actually looked at some of the passages in comparison -- it seemed to me that the copying was very deliberate but not deliberately plagiarism. She started with passages from McCafferty's books, possibly even because the publisher told her to make it similar to the other writer, and then changed them. She changed them the way you change encyclopedia entries when you're writing a paper, the way you rewrite nonfiction.

And maybe she just didn't know any better.

Accused killer, 12, linked to goth site. Allegedly this girl, possibly with the assistance of her 23-year-old boyfriend, killed three members of her own family. After going "goth." And now, of course, goth culture defended in wake of triple murder.

I want to point out something here. Historically, an awful lot of crazy murderers have talked about God, or Jesus, but there's no "rush to defend Christian culture" whenever a religious fanatic drowns her family in order to save them from the devil, or whatever. Why? Because being Christian is already assumed to be "mainstream," therefore a crazy Christian killer is automatically assumed to be a statistically insignificant deviant from the norm of being Christian.

So, I shouldn't have to point out that "goths" who murder are statistically insignificant crazy weirdoes, just like "rednecks" who murder or "holy rollers" who murder or "investment bankers" who murder. I just feel the need to remind everyone about that.

Press Gaggle by Scott McClellan
Aboard Air Force One
En route New Orleans, Louisiana

Q It's come to my attention that there's been requests -- this is a serious question -- to turn these TVs onto a station other than Fox, and that those have been denied. My question would be, is there a White House policy that all government TVs have to be tuned to Fox?

MR. McCLELLAN: Never heard of any such thing. My TVs are on four different channels at all times.

Q Because you have four different TVs. But every time I've ever been --

MR. McCLELLAN: Every TV in the White House also has channels every -- has a split screen, where they can --

Q Well, they always seem to be tuned to Fox, and there's been requests, and these are paid for by taxpayer dollars. And my understanding is that you guys have to watch Fox on Air Force One. Is that true?

MR. McCLELLAN: First time I've ever heard of it. First time you've brought it to my attention, meaning the first time the press corps has brought it to my attention. In fact, I've watched other channels on here.

Q There's one --

MR. McCLELLAN: Hang on, Jim, come on. I've watched other channels on here, so I don't know where you're hearing that. But it's the first time anyone in the press has raised that question with me.

Q You've watched other channels other than Fox?

MR. McCLELLAN: On here, yes, sure.

Q I've never seen -- they're always turned to Fox, which a lot of people consider a Republican-leaning network.

Q Scott, is it one -- on the airplane, is it one for all? I mean, if it's tuned for Fox here, is it Fox everywhere?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think that certain areas may be interconnected, but I'll have to double-check which.

Q Is yours off, wherever you are?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, the conference room, or the senior staff office, the staff office, they're different TVs, and you can switch to different channels. I'm not sure if some of these in the back are connected to some of the others that are watching right here, right now. It doesn't look like it to me. I've never known anyone that's raised a complaint about a request from back here to watch a different channel.

Q I'm officially raising it and officially complaining about it.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I'm going to go see if we can change the channel for you. Have you called up?

Q I was the Fox victim, and I was told -- the quote was, "No," when I asked for CNN.

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know who you talked to, so -- it didn't come to my attention. You don't know who you talked to either?

Q Well, the magic people at the other end off the phone.

MR. McCLELLAN: The magic people at the other end of the phone. Well, I'll see if this cabin is --

Q I was told, "We don't watch CNN here, you can only watch Fox."

MR. McCLELLAN: As I said, it's hard to respond to something when I don't know who it is you talked to.

Q I used the phone back here.

MR. McCLELLAN: I find this all quite amusing, to tell you the truth. I mean, there are a lot of people on this plane that do watch that channel.

Q I've never been told, no. They're such nice guys up there.

MR. McCLELLAN: First time you brought it to my attention. I'll go see what we can do on it.

* * * * *

MR. McCLELLAN: We just called up. They're going to be changing it, at your all's request, to the channel that you requested, which is CNN -- from the press corps.

Q Thanks, Scott.

---

Oh, Scotty, we're gonna miss ya.

On April 26 The House Committee on Energy and Commerce rejected a bid to include strong network neutrality protections in a telecommunications reform bill that is slated for a vote in the House in May.

The SaveTheInternet.com Coalition, which includes a diverse coalition of content providers such as Google, Amazon, eBay and Microsoft, plus nonprofit organizations, free speech groups and consumer advocates vowed to continue fighting for stronger protections.

Meta-note: from this PC Magazine article you can find out that the sponsor of the original bill is a Republican, and the person who tried to push through the unsuccessful amendment to it is a Democrat, but the article itself does not construe this as a partisan battle.

However, on the Google news roundup, several headlines do imply strong partisanship: "US Democrats bid to write "net neutrality" into law fails" (Xinhua, China); "US Democrats fail to win Internet neutrality" (Inquirer, UK); "Democrats lose House vote on Net neutrality" (ZDNet and CNET News.com).

No, I don't know what it means. I just thought it was interesting.

"The national anthem should be sung in English -- not Spanish -- President Bush declared Friday". Which I think is a remarkably stupid thing to say, given that it was in response to a Spanish language version of the national anthem released by a British music producer -- I mean, it's like saying there shouldn't be acoustic versions of David Bowie songs in Portuguese, and we just KNOW that's not true. But then Bush says something that I actually do agree with (it happens sometimes, almost randomly, the way a stopped clock is right twice a day).

"I think people who want to be citizens of this country ought to learn English," Bush said. And I agree.

What! (I can hear in my head the shocked, and appalled, reaction of the 70s liberal orthodoxy I vaguely remember from my youth.) You think that immigrants ought to learn English? What kind of a fascist are you?

An English language fascist, as anyone who's known me for a long time will attest.

Well, not really fascist -- exactly -- but I am fiercely partisan toward my native tongue. English is a wild, undisciplined, slutty language, and I love her without reservation, stupid nonsensical spelling rules and all. Since books are pretty much the earliest things in my life I remember being passionate about, you could say that English is my first love. And still my best love.

This does not mean that I dislike other languages. I love other languages. English does, too -- she is a strumpet. She is also a pirate. If another language has a word that expresses a useful concept, or has a nice sound to it, she will steal it. Boldly. With a cutlass if necessary.

English is also, kind of, psychotic. She invents things, just makes 'em up out of her head. Sometimes she breaks down completely, capable of nothing but babbling to herself in grotesque nightmare fragments of meaning. In spite of this, somehow, we feel we understand her. What self-respecting language would allow a book like Finnegan's Wake to become a literary classic?

So, English is a psychotic pirate whore. How could you not love a language like that?

Anyway, I don't think people worldwide ought to learn English just because I love it and already speak it. Although, I admit it is handy to be a native speaker of the current planetary lingua franca. (Heh. That's funny. Because the term "lingua franca" originally specifically referred to French, which was the lingua franca of Europe for a very long time.)

I think immigrants to the United States ought to learn English the same way that people moving to France ought to learn French.

I don't support political movements that seek to declare English the "official language" of a state, or the country, or whatever -- although the U.S. ENGLISH, Inc. people may be sincere in their belief that it will "expand opportunities for immigrants to learn and speak English" (perhaps by necessitating federal funding or something -- I don't know, and their mission statement doesn't explain it). The whole thing strikes me as misguided and beside the point and just a bit creepy. There are a lot of things that I think people ought to do -- it doesn't mean I want those things legislated from the highest levels of government.

(House Bill 23,343.5: The Federal Flossing Act.)

But I don't think it does immigrants, or anyone else, any favors for them to remain in a little expatriate bubble forever. Do you want to do well in school? You need to know English. Do you want to succeed in business? You need to know English. Want to understand the political process, current events, pop culture, your bank's loan policies? English. Sure, a lot of those things are also available in Spanish (if that's your language), but if you never learn English, you will always be getting a lesser, incomplete, afterthought version of the information. You will never read the Declaration of Independence, or the Bill of Rights, in their original language. And it is likely that you will always be a second-class citizen, easily exploited by those who prey on your isolation.

So, I think the US should welcome anybody who wants to become a citizen. But I think they ought to learn English when they come here.

Besides, English loves you. She is, as I mentioned, a woman of easily negotiated affection.