HEATWAVE

The temperature hit the 90s in LA yesterday, and the same is expected today. This may sound wonderful to those of you just emerging from winter, but, believe me, it's weird. The cat is pissed because he still has his thick Himalayan winter coat, my metabolism feels like it’s been worked over by Paulie Walnuts, and I know for sure this is yet another symptom of global weather patterns lurching into dangerous chaos. The owl, hooowever, is still out there. (See yesterday.)

MONDAY, MONDAY

For Monday morning I would also offer the following snip from The NY Times.
To the extent that companies can squeeze another drop of blood out of their existing work force, they're doing it. Eventually you reach the point where there's no more blood to be given, but we haven't reached it yet. – Joshua Shapiro, an economic researcher in New York.

MEL THE MERCILESS

Also in The NY Times, culture columnist Frank Rich takes another crack at Passion and Mel Gibson, and how much money can be made from big screen bigot garbage, and how the whole trough of cash his movie actually is making has rendered Mel acceptable to a lot of people who should know better (including, I noticed, Roger Ebert)...

With its laborious build-up to its orgasmic spurtings of blood and other bodily fluids, Mr. Gibson's film is constructed like nothing so much as a porn movie, replete with slo-mo climaxes and pounding music for the money shots. Of all the "Passion" critics, no one has nailed its artistic vision more precisely than Christopher Hitchens, who on "Hardball" called it a homoerotic "exercise in lurid sadomasochism" for those who "like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time."
If "The Passion" is a joy ride for sadomasochists, conveniently cloaked in the plain-brown wrapping of religiosity, does that make it bad for the Jews? Not necessarily. As a director, Mr. Gibson is no Leni Riefenstahl. His movie is just too ponderous to spark a pogrom on its own — in America anyway. The one ugly incident reported on Ash Wednesday, in which the Lovingway United Pentecostal Church posted a marquee reading "Jews Killed the Lord Jesus," occurred in Denver, where the local archbishop, Charles Chaput, had thrown kindling on the fire by promoting the movie for months. Whether "The Passion" will prove quite as benign in Europe and the Arab world is a story yet to be told.

For the full story...http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/arts/07RICH.html?th
(you may have to register, but it’s free)

AND FINALLY J.F.KERRY

I just discovered that John Kerry supposedly once dated Morgan Fairchild. Since I have to support the cat anyway, that fact kinda makes it easier. My own mini-tribute to Ms Fairchild can be found on the live version of "Screwed Up" on the Deviants Human Garbage CD. (see Funtopia--Music)

CRYPTIQUE – You don’t need no ticket, you're just forced on board.