That blood-curdling scream you heard this morning was me. I opened the coffee jar and it was empty!

I'm sure the folks at the local megamart are thrilled but early morning coffee purchases, and all the grouchy people who make them. "Don't tell ne to have a nice day! I haven't had my coffee yet!"

Actually, I know they are. The other supermarket in town doesn't open until 7 am. The Megamart opens at 6 am. While Mega-Lo-Mart is open 24 hours, they don't have whole bean coffee.

Lou Grant must be spinning in his grave about now. Well, he would if he was real. And if he was dead.

Please note that I am referring to the character, and not the actor, Ed Asner. Ed, as a card carrying Liberal probably beleives that any manipulation of the madia to expose the evils of Republicans is justified.

Those paragons of virtue, journalists, have been caught manipulating photos before. Reuters fired a photographer who was a little overzealous in using the Clone Stamp in photoshop:

A news story linked from Fark reported on a news photographer who tweaked the color of a photo of a fireman silouhetted by the rising sun and smoke from a fire. He made the brown smoke red. He got fired.

I wonder if anyone will get fired for this?

I have just finished reading Star Trek: The Manga. It was okay. Mike Barr's story "'Till Death" was a rehash of "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," or "Chosen Realm" except this time it's a war between the sexes, and it ends in Balok and Loki fashion. "Anything But Alone" by Joshua Ortega rewrites Enterprise's "Oasis" and Deep Space Nine's "Shadowplay." Chris Dows' "Side Effects" gives us yet another origin of the Borg. "Orphans" by Rob Tokar comes close to originality but brings mecha into the Star trek Universe in a Marvel Comics fashion. (Anyone remember the Loch Ness monster attacking the Enterprise? That was from the so-called "House of Ideas.") "Oban" redoes "Elaan of Troyius" with an cute animal instead of a hot asian chick. Micheal Shelfer's art in the Oban is passable, even though he can't seem to decide which incarnation of the Enterprise he wants to use--the Original Series version or the movie version, or he is just too dependant on his refrences.

Is it too much to ask that we get an orginal story?

So, John Mark Karr, didn't do it. The journalistic orgasm we just went through was all for nothing. The media crammed information into my our ears against our will, and, in the words of Ron White, raped our ear canals, giving us information that was incorrect, and unwanted. It's a good thing he didn't confess on Monday, or no one would have been available to report on how bad Katrina was; and why it's Bush' fault that despite spending 15 times as much on Katrina as on Andrew, and 5 times as much on Katrina as on 9/11 aid, New Orleans is still empty.

So Karr lied, and while we may never understand his motives for doing so, I think we can hazard a few guesses. My favorite theory is that Karr, who had been arrested on an unrelated sex crime in Thailand (which, in the words of one the planet's best* reporters, "may or may not involve children") was looking at some time in a Thai prison and decided it might be better to face the music on the child pr0n case in California. The second theory is weaker than the other, and isn't supported by what has been reported in the news: that he wanted to come home and thought ticket prices were too high, so he went for the free first class trip. And finally, definitely a long shot, but in our red state/blue state era, maybe he's a Hillary supporter, and they needed him back for 2008.

*I wish there was a way for the sarcasm that is dripping from that word can be conveyed in print. But if it can, tissues are available in the lobby.

Oh, dear Lord, please let it end!

We have the fifth anniversary of 9/11, when the Muslim World declared war on the Western World, now called Patriots Day, and today is the anniversary of Katrina, no doubt soon to be called Victims Day.

Please let me go to sleep tonight and wake up on September 12 so I don't have to watch another documentary on Katrina or 9/11. The History Channel, the Discovery Channel and CNN Headline news are in a race to see who can put the most hours for each event on the air.

Stop it.

Please.

Remember when the Taliban blew up a historically significant statue of Buddha in Afghanistan a couple of years ago? Remember the world's outrage? Keep that in mind.

"Canada's only major Arctic petroglyph site -- a 1,500-year-old gallery of mysterious faces carved into a soapstone ridge on a tiny island off of Quebec's northern coast -- has been ransacked by vandals in what the region's top archeologist suspects was a religiously motivated attack by devout Christians from a nearby Inuit community," writes Randy Boswell of CanWest New service.