That Letterman thing has the potential to be as damaging as anything that's come along yet, I think. I hope he keeps a grudge and keeps flogging it.

I don't know. I think if Letterman is over the top it could backfire, or at least be spun as NY Liberal Entertainment Elite picking on the poor defenseless war veteran.

Has this been posted?

Manuel: Mets 'suspending' pennant race

NEW YORK -- Mets manager Jerry Manuel announced Wednesday night that, due to the urgency and gravity of the financial crisis on Wall Street, the New York Mets will be suspending their pennant race.

"This is just too important," Manuel said. "It's time to put country first."

It's unclear what "suspending" even means in this context, but Manuel hinted that it would likely include not playing the four games remaining on the team's schedule.

Jerry_3Manuel called on the Milwaukee Brewers to join the Mets in suspending their pennant chase as well. The Brewers and Mets are currently tied for the National League Wild Card berth.

Informed that Milwaukee intended to play the remaining games on its schedule, Manuel noted that he was "saddened that the Brewers do not share my ostentatious love and devotion to this great country."

"But," he added, "even if they win out, we'll still be tied in the loss column."

Asked if this wasn't just a crude stunt attempting to stave off a repeat of last season's late-September collapse, Manuel bristled.

"The finanical crisis is very grave," he said. "If swift action is not taken to restore faith in our financial system, then this will begin to affect the daily lives of ordinary Americans. It may become impossible to get a mortgage, or a car loan, or to pay your center fielder $18 million to hit a lousy .280. And do you people realize what it's going to cost us to sign Francisco Rodriguez this winter? Decisive action is needed to restore faith in our financial institutions and our bullpens."

Life Magazine is being revived (AGAIN!) as a web entity.

from a friend of mine re: McCain -

"But as of 10 o'clock this morning, he was STILL in NY campaigning, while Congress is finishing drafting the bipartisan plan, and his only commitment to be in DC is for a photo-op at the White House later this afternoon. Said Barney Frank, “We’re trying to rescue the economy, not the McCain campaign.”

Burn.

Ha!

Ooh baby!

Pretty much worksafe.

I went to Subway for lunch and instantly fell into a junk food stupor. Cannot focus...must nap...

To go back a bit, the last thing that made me smile was when at the bookstore last night, I was calling the special orders we had received. I got to a stack of archy and Mehitabel books for a customer named "Richard Schingoethe." Now, when I call someone, I like to ask for the person using their full name, so I took a few minutes to figure out how to pronounce it. I knew that the author Goethe was pronounced "Grr-tuh," so I figured this name would "Shin-Grr-Tuh," and dialed and asked for him with that pronunciation.

There was a rather prolonged silence, then "Oh. My. God." I started laughing and said, "So, I got it right then?" His response was that he doesn't even pronounce it that way anymore because of all of the mangling it goes through, and has anglicized it to "Shin-Go-Thee." He then assumed I knew German a bit, which I let him believe instead of telling him I was just a book geek who knows my international authors.

Kathy, that's like the time I was doing phone support and getting lots of calls from Cajun country. I very rarely had trouble pronouncing the French names properly because I spent several years doing TV new monitoring from New Orleans. It was easier to just say I'd spent some time in New Orleans. Thanks to Hubby, who grew up in Hawaii, I could also pronounce Hawaiian names, much to the locals' delight. When I told them my husband grew up in Hawaii, they always wanted to know where he'd lived and tried to find out if there were people in common that they knew.