Maureen with a Shout-Out to David Lean Maureen Dowd gives a shout-out to my favorite quote from "Lawrence of Arabia."  ¶ 10:44 AM 0 comments

  "Episcopalians Are Reaching Point of Revolt" Meant to blog this Sunday, it was an NYT headline. I thought the whole point of being an Episcopalian was to avoid having to have strong feelings about religion, or, you know, anything except golden retrievers and Martinis (both of which, by the way, are great things -- although, not necessarily together).

But alas, it's a more prosaic problem about homophobia and organized religion and all that blah blah blah.

Pass me the gin, Muffy. Or rather, Muffin. Woof!  ¶ 12:36 AM 0 comments

  Xmas without "Jesus Christ!!!" We bought our Xmas tree today, and my wife had a panic attack. A flood of childhood memories of her furious father swearing while setting up the tree hit her like santa's fat ass coming down the chimney at 32 ft/sec/sec. But we put up the tree with no swearing, thus confirming Bill O'Reilly's paranoia. We are indeed taking the "Jesus Christ!!!" out of Xmas.

Joyeaux Noel, y'all.  ¶ 11:03 PM 0 comments

  Did I miss something? President Bush today on Rumsfeld (from the NYT):


“For nearly six years, Don Rumsfeld has served with exceptional strength and energy at a time of challenge and change, and he produced impressive results,” Mr. Bush said. He said the former secretary “took ballistic missile defense from theory to reality, and undertook the most sweeping transformation of America’s global defense posture since the start of the Cold War.”


We have missle defense now? Really? When did that happen?  ¶ 9:30 PM 0 comments

  Cheers* to Lufthansa, Jeers to Google! Cheers to Lufthansa for free WiFi on board!
* Now please put power outlets in coach. We will pay extra.

Jeers to Google for poor UI with the Blogger Beta. I like the new stuff, but it took me forever to get the hell in, thus frustrating my plan to post from my Lufthansa flight.

Come on, super geniuses, get it together...  ¶ 9:00 AM 0 comments

  Munchin' in Muenchen Munich is much nicer than you might think, especially if you stay in a swank cosmopolitan hotel in the ritzy part of town. Coffee and cake is available everywhere (except, of course, this hotel's lobby yesterday, which was very understaffed waitress-wise).

The city does overboard for Christmas with an open air Christkidlmarkt that, gluhwein stands every five meters or so, and even a tram totally decked out in holiday cheer, featuring a santa-hatted St. Pauli girl doling out warm drinks.

As a friend of mine said, "an age old trick get keep people from killing themselves in the dark and cold of a European winter." Burn the biggest log you can find, and tell everyone the Sun isn't really dying, honest.

Another random note: My disdain of Americans who are reasssured by McDonald's as a dinner option is snobbish and hypocritical, since I am comforted by the presence of a Starbucks in UK or Germany.  ¶ 11:28 AM 0 comments