This is just a note to thank, shout out, and totally pour praise all over the Goodyear service center off 35E and Pilot Knob (a real road), which is the most gracious, friendly, helpful place I have done business with in quite some time. They are always cool, always easy to deal with, and always a relief to get in touch with in a bad situation. This morning, my hood decided to stop closing -- again -- after the dealer replaced the latch this summer (grrrrrr . . . ), and when I stopped into Jim's place, they just sent a guy out who fiddled with the latch until it shut, and then they sent me on my way so I could get to work on time. Wouldn't let me even give the guy a couple of bucks. It's the way customer service ought to be, folks. Five minutes of their time is worth my overwhelming gratitude, and given that I am always ready to gripe over bad service, I wanted to give big thumbs-up to the great service I get there. They rock.

That
is a creepy story. I'm very happy I wasn't there today, and very sad to hear anybody got hurt in such an unnecessary way. Bleh.

As you will see, Minnesota's first big snowfall of the winter is very good news for a lot of people whose incomes rely on it. The economic impact of snow is something you don't necessarily think about unless you live in a particular kind of climate. The cold, punishing kind, specifically.

The Vikings-Lions game this weekend was MUCH closer than 24-14 implies. Seriously. I watched the whole thing, and it was ugly as heck for most of the way through. The Vikings managed two interceptions in the fourth quarter, both of which they ran back for touchdowns, but other than those two plays, they played like crap. No, they did. Really.

It's remarkable that Congress can pass a bill that will almost certainly do nothing to reduce spam and still get it labeled a "measure to curtail spam."

In case you don't like reading federal legislation (and I don't blame you), let me break down the so-called "CAN-SPAM" Act for you.

You know what its actual major effect is going to be? It's going to preempt all of the state anti-spam laws that have already been passed. That California one they just passed? Gone. The Washington one that's been around for several years, actually getting people's spamming asses sued? Gone. Congress can always choose either to preempt only conflicting state provisions or to preempt everything -- here, they preempted everything (pretty much).

And what is the federal law going to do instead? Well, it's going to tell people who send you spam that they can't falsify the headers. It's going to require them to give you a way to be removed from lists, and it's going to require them to honor those requests when you make them. It's going to theoretically outlaw some of the more abusive address-harvesting practices, and it's going to address a few other activities that are probably already illegal -- like taking over other people's computers to send spam.

But here's my problem: there's no private right of action. A private right of action is what allows you, an ordinary person, to go to court and get, say, $500 a pop from a company that spams you illegally. Compare this to telemarketing -- the best weapon they ever gave consumers who don't like telemarketers was a provision in federal law that lets you sue a telemarketer for five hundred free dollars if they violate the law. Don't laugh -- Snowmobile Boy has done it. He got $500 off somebody in small claims court when he was in law school. The helpful thing about a private right of action is that it allows gadflies. It allows somebody to set up a web page that shows an ordinary person exactly how to sue a spammer. Will it be easy? Well, no. But could you do it enough to bug people? You could, in the case of any operation that's even remotely respectable. Instead, the only entities that can sue are going to be the federal agencies (who have no funding), state attorneys general (who have no funding), and ISPs (who can often already sue for trespass). So you, as an individual -- who may have had the right to sue under a state law before -- will wind up with no right to sue nobody for nothin'.

New estimates I've seen are that up to 90 percent of all spam originates with about 200 high-volume spamming operations. It's not as diffuse and impossible a situation as it seems. It's going to get solved one way or another -- spam now constitutes more than 50 percent of all email, up from about 7 percent in 2001. It's not a sustainable trend. The technology is going to change, the expectations are going to change, and probably some of the most enjoyable aspects of email as it began will likely be lost. I'm not convinced laws are the answer anyway. Nevertheless, to the degree you want enforcement, we were actually better off before, given that some of the states had been substantially more aggressive than this -- including Virginia. which has a sort of special status, like Delaware does with corporate law, by virtue of being the home of AOL.

It's sad when you find yourself saying, "The least they could have done is to not pass anything."

They kept them out of a high school dance with sheriff's deputies. It's important to stay awake and realize when things are becoming ridiculous.

I don't know if I agree with everything that This guy has to say, but I do agree that the harder Rolling Stone tries to be hip, the less successful they are at it. And seriously, the Beatles simply are not THAT much better than everyone else who has ever been in a band.

I have no idea why, but right now, at least for me, the new journal entry isn't showing up, despite the fact that IT WAS THERE YESTERDAY. If you have problems finding it, try this for the moment:

http://www.frolicanddetour.com/writings/archives/2003_11.html

I'm finding this a really frustrating bug that I think is MT-related; from time to time, entries are properly saved and then just stop showing up all of a sudden. Don't know why that is, but it's mightily annoying.

I knew Bob was going to pick Estella, but his mom was a total jerk, I thought. I think going into the family stuff, he was leaning toward Kelly Jo. His mom got so attached to Estella that I don't think she gave Kelly Jo a chance at all. And I think that in the end, Bob was very heavily influenced by his mom. The whole thing was kind of sad -- they both really liked him, which I kind of think he doesn't deserve.

Yes, I watched The Bachelor. No, I'm not proud of it.

I laughed until I cried discussing Jesse Ventura's official portrait with the Couch Baron today. Seriously, no one in Minnesota has really stood up and said, "That is just a HORRIBLE painting." Which is deeply difficult to believe, once you've seen it.

Lou Pearlman is one of the creepiest dudes walking, for about six reasons. If he's going to shut up and stop . . . just doing what he does, that's good news, no matter what brought it about.

I'm a little bothered by whether this calendar is supposed to be funny or not. I mean . . . they're not revolting or anything, but other than possibly Mr. August (whose nipple ring is kind of icky anyway), they're probably not guys I'd hang on the wall. Just saying.

My favorite part of this interview with Adrienne Barbeau is the fact that she TiVo'd herself. I'm not judging; it's exactly what I would do, I suppose.

I'm not particularly defending the miniseries about the Reagans, because it doesn't seem to me that casting Barbra Streisand's husband is going to put anyone's mind at ease regarding possible bias, but since when do networks allow political committees to review political shows ahead of time to see whether they want to run ads rebutting them? Ridiculous.

Oh, yeah, I'm doing it. Blame Sars. The novel is called Tracking Mack, and it's a political satire. More than that, I will not say.

Officially, I do not condone what these girls did. However, in retrospect, knowing the ending, that story RULES. Just a piece of advice: If you're going to mess with Catholic schoolgirls, do not pick the ones in South Philadelphia. I could actually have told you that.