And speaking of my local newspaper...

This column by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's own Jay Bookman puts the final nail in the coffin of the soi-disant "FairTax" which right-wing local radio blowhard Neal Boortz and others have done so much to ballyhoo. (Boortz has even gone so far as to co-author a second book with the bill's chief sponsor which purports to debunk the criticisms leveled at the proposal by Bookman and others.)

As Bookman points out, even with the better part of a decade under Republican leadership, Congress has never even let this thing out of subcommittee. That a Democrat-led Congress (which is likely to become even more so this fall, when one-third of the Senate and all of the House must again face GOP-weary voters) will be even less willing to entertain this colossally boneheaded notion is reassuring to me in the face of the continuing bloviation from the right on the subject. And the fact that it does continue nonetheless reinforces my long-held suspicion that, deep down, most conservatives really consider taxation of any sort to be government theft of their hard-earned dollars. (Unless, of course, we're talking defense appropriations, for which not even the sky is the limit as far as they're concerned, as proved by the perpetual funding of space-based missile defense AKA SDI/"Star Wars.")

A new funny-music act from Down Under you simply must see

Thanks to technoshaman , I have just discovered a delightful new comedy band from Melbourne, Australia called Scared Weird Little Guys (though oddly enough, only one is actually little; the other one is quite tall). Their latest song, "Party Like It's 1985," celebrates the decade wherein so many of us came of age (both musically and otherwise) and is a hoot all by itself for all the song-title references (how many can you remember?). But there's also this video for it on YouTube wherein John Chaplin-Fleming and Rusty Berther demonstrate they're willing to do almost anything for a laugh...including dressing up as everyone from Like A Virgin-era Madonna and Cyndi Lauper to the Village People.

Dr. Demento has played music by these two on his show as recently as February of last year (according to Jeff Morris' excellent database on the show), but apparently not since then. This is a situation the Request Line should be used to rectify tout suite.

Summer movies update: Sex and the City

As you will recall from this previous post, I made a list of all the new feature films coming out this summer I might want to see, and wound up with at least one new one for literally every weekend from June to August. So far, I've been able to cross Iron Man, the new Indiana Jones flick, Speed Racer and Sex and the City off the list. Yes, you read right on that last one; the Songbird was a fan of the HBO TV series, so naturally when she was given an opportunity to attend the feature film's Nairobi premiere, she took it. And I found I had watched enough of it with her to be at least somewhat interested in seeing the film so we could discuss it. (For an explanation of how anyone not female or gay could possibly find SATC and its characters interesting, see this L.A. Times column.)

( Serious spoiler territory beyond this point. )