Friday

Richard's family will be arriving from southern Ontario tomorrow morning! We'll be visiting the conservatory, seeing the house that Richard's second-oldest son and his fiance just bought, touring the big mall, showing them around downtown, and whatever else they might fancy doing. It's a shame we have snowbanks and slushy sidewalks for the first time all winter, but what can ya do? Nothing.

At High Strangeness I'm going to be doing a monthly special on U.S. assassinations of the '60s (Martin Luther King, the Kennedys, etc.), and next month will be Da Vinci Code-related stuff. I'll post a link soon.

My dad, scrunch, just erased his blog for reasons unknown, which is a huge shame 'cause it was highly entertaining. Hopefully he'll come back.

And now, a few more of Bernard Goldberg's 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America...

#62: Howard Stern

#61: Michael Savage, the "conservative" radio host. "At a time when we can use a lot more civility in our national discourse, you can count on Michael Savage to tell you to take your pansy-ass civility and drop dead, 'you little hateful nothings', you 'stinking rat hiding in the sewers.'"

#60: Ludacris. "Is Ludacris the worst of the bunch? Of course not! They're all the worst! When it comes to gangsta rap and the glorification of ignorance, it's one big giant tie for last place! Still, given his popularity, and all the support he enjoys from the hos in different area codes, Ludacris certainly merits recognition on the list."

#59: Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin, for publicly honoring Ludacris for his good works.

#58: Eminem. "There are more [Google] hits for Jesus Christ than Eminem, but not much more." He does get more hits than Einstein, Churchill, Elvis, Osama, Lincoln, Princess Diana, Michelangelo...etc. Bob Herbert wrote, "A steady diet of this ugliness is poisonous, the equivalent of developing one's self-image by looking in a toilet." And it isn't just kids who are into him. Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times, "A gaggle of my girlfriends are surrepticiously smitten with Eminem. They buy his posters on eBay."