The King of Pointland

Slammed

Has anybody been following the brouhaha over a recent B.C. comic strip? Now, with this letter (scroll down) from Abraham Foxman, the ADL is getting in on the act.

The Year They Canceled Thanksgiving

After thirty consecutive Thanksgivings with the Eisner family, the streak is over. A sore throat, a slight fever, and concern for my grandmothers have conspired to keep me here in Maryland, sick, alone, and without turkey. Feel free to shed a tear for me. I'll wait.

I've learned a few things from this experience, though. For example, in an empty house, a man can get some powerful good napping done. And did you know Bravo is hosting a Thanksgiving West Wing marathon? I finally saw the pilot episode, titled "Pilot". And now I get all those jokes about Sam and the prostitute. An odd thing about the first couple of WW's: they're scored like an early Spielberg movie. I half expected to see Elliot and his friends ride past the Oval Office on their bikes with E.T. in tow.

Around 7 PM I was getting pretty depressed, so I decided to make this a very special non-Thanksgiving by going out to eat. After driving around for a little while, I can report to you this short list of restaurants open tonight:

1. McDonald's
2. Taco Bell
3. Bennigan's

I opted for Bennigan's. I'm pretty sure Bennigan's is even worse than it used to be. For starters, I couldn't get turkey, so I had a traditional sirloin steak dinner. Not good. Kind of dry and gristly. It didn't help that the waiter delivered my salad 30 seconds before the main course, confiding, "Oops, I almost forgot this!" I guess it must suck working the Thanksgiving night shift at Bennigan's. Actually, it must suck working at Bennigan's, period.

The choice of music was a bit peculiar, too. It consisted, without exception, of 80's pop tunes, played too loudly. Hall & Oates, the Go Gos, whoever it was who did that Twilight Zone song. Crap, now I have to look it up . . . Oh, right, it was Rockwell.

I hope everyone else had a lovely dinner with family and friends. God bless us, each and every one.

Defense

On Thursday, November 13, the University will be hit by a disaster, but there is nothing natural about it.

Here is just one example of the impact of this dread menace:

Office of Information Technology Closures and Coverage on 11/13

The Office of Information Technology Help Desk will close at 4 p.m. on Thursday, 11/13. Software Licensing will close at 3:30 p.m. The OIT Visualization and Presentation Lab (VPL) and the Statistics Lab will close at 3 p.m.

What, you ask, could cause disruption on this scale?

A football game.

Classes have not been cancelled, but they should be. We must not underestimate this threat. SVeH6i8DbYBek

Word Stuff

Hmm, I better write something or The People will stop checking for new content. Of course, they might remember, but not for three months, and then only to discover that there are tens of new entries. Faced with the task of reading so much David babel, they will give up in despair and stop reading the KoP altogether.

That's why it's now more important than ever before that I write something.

Here it is: I quite enjoy the new Fountains of Wayne album, Welcome Interstate Managers.

Now some special shout-outs. Dan: Yes, the album came out in June. Yes, it's as "new" as The Italian Job. True, all of it. Stop being a hater.

And to Jessi: even though I do love New Jersey, that hasn't colored my perception of this album. Even people who like other states can enjoy Fountains of Wayne. In fact, people in Japan like FoW. And you can, too.

Falluja

Here's a good article from today's Post. It doesn't tell a simple story, and you can probably take from it what you want. Depending on your disposition, whatever it is you believe now about the occupation, you'll probably believe it more strongly.