Via the newly-revitalized Blogatelle, this lovely pair of links illustrates first that Ann Coulter, as noted in the title of this entry, is a professional looney and second that thankfully there are people who refuse to profit from that fact.

I still have a 9-11-ish Thoughts entry to write. I was going to do it Tuesday but the computer I began typing it up on crashed hard, so I’m a bit skittish about trying again. No time like the present, perhaps. I think I’ll do it in Vim first, then paste it into Mozilla…
TownHall.com: Ann Coulter
CentreDaily: Letter to Coulter

I won’t have the luxury of waiting until day’s end to do this, so why don’t we just get this out of the way right now? Now’s a good time to point out that the Blogs of Note are randomized. Yes, that’s right, I’m such a geek AND I’m so stressed about the perception of playing favorites that I spent three hours hacking together a system whereby Blogs of Note are stored in a database table and randomly sequenced every time you visit this page. I really need to get out more. Anyway…

• Moving along the list of tabs at the top of my Mozilla window, we start with Emily. She just started school, bicycles a lot and apparently finds coconuts far more interesting than condoms. Not that I blame her.
  
• At the one-year anniversary of her site, the proprietess of Blogatelle experienced a crisis of faith. One devoutly hopes that the crisis passes and she resumes the butt-kicking work of which her fans are so enamoured.
  
• Phoemeister loves The Sims, though one could argue that she likes some strange things about the game. There aren’t any hamster updates, but we do get an interesting slang primer as well as a couple of long and funny chat logs.
  
• Matt of debris.com throws like a girl. You heard it here first, folks. Well, second.
  
• Captain Rooba digs the Punk Kittens, peering down on peoples’ homes from space, and amusing after-party anecdotes. He hates stupid people, but anyone with enough common sense hates stupid people. More to the point, he wants your “stupid people” stories so he can carry on the fight for more common sense. I can get behind that idea…
  
• Thanks to Melpster we know that this past Monday was Vance DeGeneres’ birthday. Cool! It is also revealed that in addition to being a big Vance fan, she also loves MST3K. More cool! She awoke this morning feeling The Love, albeit a generalized vague sort of The Love. But hey, everybody needs Love.
  
• Sar of Dragon Ink got another domain, though she probably shouldn’t have. The He-Man vs. She-Ra debate continues on into the new millenium, thanks in part to that gods-awful new rendition. (Ewww.) When you get right down to it, though, what Sar is all about is ideas. Lots and lots and lots of ideas.
  
• Fluttergirl. Let’s see… Punk Kittens, tainted Pepsi, overweight canines, casting your own movie, group blog, pricey sneakers, Anna Nicole marathon, possible job in Portland (yay!). Did I miss anything? You be the judge.
  
• At Argephontes, brevity is the soul of Friday Fives. (Hell, hers is even more terse than the one I did a few weeks ago.) The start of the football season is cause for celebration, doggie porn is probably not. Nor are CD-ROM drives that don’t like audio CDs.
  
• Meanwhile, Madame Sinister is an electricity freak, or so she says. Remember, it’s just three months. I wonder what it’s like to be a wheelchair wrangler… but not enough to actually go find out. Lip-syncing always sucks, though I find the notion that Axl Rose was the only person at the VMAs to buck the trend just a little bit weird.
  
• Jessy has gone back to her new home. Hopefully that DSL hookup will come soon so she can return to us.
  
• Snappy the Clam sent the rugrat to kindergarten this week, which is one of the most mind-altering experiences a parent can have. He’s doing a lot of testing, probably of the Moveable Type/Emacs thing though it’s hard to be sure. Duly noted is the nigh-inevitable weeding out of the rampaging hordes of blogs that started up over the last couple of years. (I’m not going anywhere, thank you. You should be so lucky.)
  
• This week, the Cosmic Babe started work, causing an inevitable drop in posting output. Money is a good thing, though, so who are we to complain? Earlier in the week she marveled at how an activity that should be sexy can somehow manage not to seem at all sexy. One of the demonspawn had a fever. School supplies were shopped for much the same way they were at the Kerezman house (that is, the day before school started). It would appear that the workplace will probably become rich anecdotal source material in fairly short order.
  
• Placed last by sheer blind luck, Q Daily News laments the decreased mindshare of the concept of free speech. Also sorely missed are sniglets. (I collected Far Side calendars, but I probably would have gotten a kick out of a Sniglets calendar.) Duly noted is a whale of a coincidence. We’re also treated to a couple of bits of neat medical stuff. (While I could never be a doctor, I find medical science interesting from time to time.)
  

Found on Blogatelle this link to a collection of lines from the “original” Star Wars trilogy that could be read… differently… given certain circumstances.

‘I look forward to completing your training. In time you will call me master.’

*chortle* I’ve always wanted to say that…

Going to go by the numbers this time, right down the “Blogs of Note” listing:

• Jessy is back! But only for the weekend. Go leave her a nice comment and catch up on the post-move enjoyment.
  
• Captain Rooba’s a straight-B student. Well, at one school anyway. So much for guidance counsellors. He wants to add a special something to his life: A dog. Like any good free-thinking man he hates having to listen to or otherwise endure religious preachery. (I just made that word up. Sorry.) There was some mild golf suckage, but that’s okay. Who cares about golf?
  
• At debris.com, a server move was accomplished with a surprisingly small amount of anguish, though as usual the telco guys had no clue. You’d think that in the communications business they’d, well, communicate better. There’s some good ranting about the pervasiveness of advertising, as well as a link to some braindraining IQ tests. (I tried to take one of them, but ended up getting a server error at question 26 out of 35. No way in HELL am I going to take that test over again, thank you.) LPs were sold, though if I’d known in advance I’d have asked for some of those old Genesis platters…
  
• Snappy the Clam is back from vacation and once again casting a steely eye on the BigBlogs. Most interesting this week, though, is how much traffic he generated by linking to a Tom Tomorrow bit… and how said traffic has nothing to do with the link and everything to do with the title of the blog entry he chose to use. It’s a weird world, matey.
  
• Madame Sinister endured the snootiness of friends, less than lackluster customer service, and a misogynist jerk. On the flipside she’s been pampered a bit, received pleasant comments on her appearance, and has probably dodged a terrible fate… if you believe in that whole “comes in threes” thing. I wonder how the Maize Maze thing will turn out?
  
• Emily has left the building. Fear not, however. She will appear in a new building in another day or so. Before she left she chose to grace us with the world’s fastest-growing pizza, some WordDuckArt silliness, and an account of the end of her old foodservice gig. She also feels like makin’ bugs, sometimes.
  
• The ever-lovin’ Melpster got herself a brand new… template. I wonder if I should tell her that it looks an awful lot like Phoemeister’s? The Melp’ is a musical person, as well as a MST3K fan and of course a dedicated Vance DeGeneres devotee. We’re treated to more segment reviews and a handful of musical recollections. There was also decent closure on the Fantasy job thing.
  
• When Jason of Q Daily News said his output would decline, he was not kidding around!
  
• Speaking of which, fluttergirl is still on the road.
  
• Argephontes teaches us this week that you can microwave wet cigarettes. I leave deciding the value of this information as an exercise for the reader. There’s a bit of survey that attempts to detail your personality based entirely on your name, and the kitchen sink works again. (She should change her website slogan to, “We really do include the kitchen sink!” Or something cleverer than that.)
  
• Not only does Blogatelle provide the usual huge masses of outraged and entertaining bloggage, but also another delightful birthday card. (Note to self, make sure she knows when my birthday is due.) Oh, and her daughter reads Machiavelli. I should try to hook the girl up with my son in about, um, 17 years… give or take a year.
  
• Sar of Dragon Ink may not be a world-class Monopoly player, but she does take nice photographs and is gracious enough to share with the websurfing public. She can, if she wants to, literally curse a blue streak. And don’t worry, Sar… I’ve chased after the wrong bus more than once in my life. It happens to us all. At least, “us all” who ride busses.
  
• New to the Weekly Recap is someone I’ve corresponded with for a while now but neglected to link to until recently. The Cosmic Babe writes a lot. Almost every day. It is all deeply personal material, the “dear diary” entries of a woman in the midst of a complex and engaging life. As with Blogatelle, those with weak hearts or rigid uptight morals need not apply. This week she endured anxiety (no pun intended) about the start of her job; as a Portland-area parent she grieved along with the families of those dead girls unearthed so recently; there was a priceless parent-children bonding moment; unmentionables are mentioned; candles were purchased but the futon temptation was avoided; a naughty kitten terrorized, was chastized, and got revenge as kitties are wont to do; and the love-type-thing-type-thing sent a bit of neat artwork. All this in between laundry, needlework, email, showers, driving around and other domesticity.
  
• Last but not least, Phoemeister is #1 for “kosher-blessed goodness.” That’s what Google says, anyway. There’s hamster-trouble in dorm-room paradise, but that’s to be expected. Grunger Sheep and past-life Philosophers are popular. Oh, and Phoe… just say to yourself during those darker times, “I’m not a complete moron. Some parts are on back-order.” That’s what I do, anyway…
  

In the wake of Thomson Multimedia’s announcement that they’re going to charge fees for MP3 decoding software and equipment, Emmett Plant of Xiph.org posted a cheerful and amusing Open Thank-You Letter. It’s probably too optimistic to think that this event will drive the masses to switch to Ogg Vorbis audio, but it certainly can’t hurt.

For the record, Thomson MM has for a few years now been charging license royalties on encoding equipment and software, but until now were content to let decoders remain free. And now, like Compuserve before them, they seem intent upon raking in the dough on technology they’ve been giving away for a number of years. Good luck, guys.

Because I feel rather strongly about this sort of thing, I’m going to be terribly gauche and not only link to a Q Daily News snippet that links to some thought-provoking material, but also post here the comment I made to that snippet because dammit, I’m pithy and interesting and stuff:

If only I had a solution to the problems of mob mentality, closed-mindedness and how to achieve understanding through deliberate perspective.

It’s all about the perspective. If you’re willing to take a step away from yourself and truly think about how things must be for a rational thinking being other than yourself, you can learn to understand and appreciate a great deal about your fellow human beings.

Feh. What am I thinking? It’s much more fun to be in a big crowd of people who like to make fun of other people. We merely graduated from high school, we never really left it behind.
Q Daily News