I find it very humorous that a feature film based on a comic book about the further exploits of public domain characters is now the subject of a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Was John/Lee Boyd Malvo brainwashed? Maybe.

Heard on the radio yesterday, but as yet unconfirmed:

Kings of Leon at Skully’s, Wednesday October 8, $5.00.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Ex-Gen. Clark Decides to Join White House Race

Tuesday, September 16, 2003 12:14 p.m. ET

By Patricia Wilson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former NATO commander and political novice Wesley Clark has decided to join the 2004 White House race, making the retired four-star general the 10th Democratic presidential candidate, sources close to him said on Tuesday.

Clark, a former top Pentagon war planner who headed the 1999 NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo but is a newcomer to the battlefield of presidential politics, was to announce his decision in Little Rock , Arkansas on Wednesday, the sources said.

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The article also goes to talk about how Clark “agonized” over this decision for months. I was impressed with Clark earlier this year when I saw him on MEET THE PRESS, but when I read things like that, I cringe. Nobody “agonizes” over the decision to run for President. It’s not as if Clark was answering the clarion call of the American people — “Help us, Wesley Clark, you’re our only hope” — though I’m sure that’s how Clark appears to be seeing/spinning this. The “Draft Clark” thing is about as reliable and meaningful as the “Put the Star Wars Kid in Episode III” petition.

I dunno. I should be glad to have someone like Clark in the Democratic race, I suppose, but it just seems so… blatantly manipulative that it triggers my cynic reflex. Which happens more and more as I get older, I find.

On a related note, I started watching the first episode of HBO’s K STREET last night, but didn’t get a chance to finish it. Definitely tonight, however, because it was fascinating in such a bizzare way — real life intruding upon fiction intruding upon real life. I’m left wondering how, exactly, the real people who become tangentially involved in this show are treating it — as a momentary diversion, or, as with Howard Dean this week, as an opportunity to get some real work/prep done? When exactly did they shoot the debate prep scene, before or after the debate? Don’t the politicians have better things to do than to play in front of the cameras, or is this the new campaign and we’re just not realizing it?

Interesting stuff. I hope the show is as good as the questions it’s posing…

At least two companies, IO2 Technology of Hermosa Beach, California, and FogScreen in Seinäjoki Technology Center, Finland, have working prototypes for systems that broadcast two-dimensional images into thin air.

IO2 Technology’s Heliodisplay, the size of a breadbox, projects images onto a cloud of water vapor diffused into the air rather than on a screen. Observers can control the virtual characters as they would on a computer screen, but instead of using a mouse, they use their hands.

In the great “I Can Hold My Breath Longer Than You Can” staring contest between the United States Senate and Miguel Estrada, President Bush’s nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, it now appears that somebody blinked.

I saw this first over at Wired, whose coverage is brief:

“The source said Estrada, who has been blocked by Senate Democrats who see him as part of President Bush’s attempt to pack the courts with right-wing ideologues, simply got tired of waiting and having his legal career on hold.”

I suspect that the Senate Judicial Committee was pretty tired of waiting for straight answers to their questions, too.

We are returned from the Great West Virginia Odyssey of 2003, replete with tans and dirty golf clubs. I have pictures which I’ll have to do something with — probably put a few up here, somewhere…