Back in November of last year I mentioned that I thought the painting on the wall in "Goodnight Moon" -- the one of the rabbit fishing for another rabbit -- was pretty bizarre.



Well, someone was kind enough to drop me an email on the matter:

I think it's from another book, about a baby bunny who wants to go be various things independently, and its mother says it will be something associated whatever thay are -- e.g., baby will be a fish, so mother will catch the fish; baby will be a sailboat, so mother will be the wind; that sort of thing. I can't recall the title at the moment, and I may be wrong about the fish/fishing thing being in it, but I think that's the case.

This sounded familiar, and a little Googling pointed me to "The Runaway Bunny," which was written and illustrated by the same people who did "Goodnight Moon." So what I mistook for a wacky picture was simply some clever cross-promotion...

I don't know if I'm the only one seeing this, but the new spam on the block is, oddly enough, Christian-related. Glancing at my spam folder -- which is caught and moved from my inbox by SpamSieve -- I see several messages for Christian dating services, which I can sort of understand. But "Refinance with ChristianFamilyLoans.com"? What the heck is a Christian loan company?

Personally, I don't think these are real "Christian companies." (Would Jesus send spam?) They have to be weaselly spammers (like there's any other kind) capitalizing on the current right-wing/"Christian" leanings of the country .

Just a quick rundown on some updates to websites I'm involved with:

• ToBits: site I designed and helped develop for a business that converts CDs and videotapes to digital format
• eWire: Brian contributed a bunch of new photos and articles from several flatland jams he went to in 2004
• Barbara Peavey: new original oils and Giclee reproductions added to the site
• Hofmann Joinery: two new custom furniture pieces added

Another rare occasion when McSweeney's is actually kinda funny:

Things I'd Probably Say If the Bush Administration Were Just a Weekly TV Show and I Were a Regular Viewer

Talk about bad timing... (ESPN)

Here's a movie idea: diehard Red Sox fan falls into a coma before the 2004 playoffs, spends the next four weeks fighting for his life, then regains his senses after the World Series. He survives ... only he feels ripped off, because as millions of Sox fans say, "I saw them win in my lifetime," this poor guy is the one who didn't see anything. It actually happened.

OK, I said I was avoiding politics, but...

Unsocial Insecurity
As this New Yorker article points out:
- Bush says there's a Social Security crisis right now
- there really isn't
- Bush's plan is to let people invest some of their taxes in private accounts
- this plan doesn't solve the "crisis" that Bush says we have
- having millions of people start investing sure seems to benefit Bush's corporate and Wall Street friends

I don't agree that this plan will "create Republicans" as some people suggest, but it at least has the perception "that privatization is a nice, clean way to transfer gigantic sums to Wall Street brokerage houses." Whether true or not, "making the well-being of the old dependent on the luck or skill of their stock picks or mutual-fund choices is not so good."

World fears new Bush era (Guardian UK)

A poll of 21 countries published yesterday - reflecting opinion in Africa, Latin America, North America, Asia and Europe - ... found that the bulk of people in 18 of the 21 countries surveyed had negative feelings towards the president.

Luckily, Bush doesn't give a crap about what the world (or half of the U.S.) thinks.

I still dislike this administration so much for so many reasons that I can't even follow politics anymore. However, it's good to note that "you forgot" Poland is one of the three countries that still supports us...

Just to try it out, I implemented sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) for titles on iPod411.com. What this does is replace plain HTML text with a small Flash control, so text is displayed in the font I want (Futura Book, in this case) and appears smooth (even if you don't have your font smoothing feature on). Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Fun new stuff from Apple: iPod shuffle, Mac Mini, an updated iLife suite, and iWork. I can't wait to see for myself how much easier Apple's word processor, Pages, is compared to Microsoft Word!

Happy new year!

You Sox fans out there can relive World Series games from '75, '86 and '04 (see? it eventually has a happy ending...) as NESN is replaying the games this and next month -- here's the schedule. Especially worth noting is last year's (and I mean 2004) ALCS series against the Yankees. Fire up the TiVo!