The Wilburn Brothers says:

I met a little girl in Knoxville a town we all know well And every Sunday evening out in her home I'd dwell We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town I thought of how she cheated me so I knocked that fair girl down I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down Oh Willy dear don't kill me here I'm not prepare to die She never spoke another word I only beat her more Until the ground around me within her blood did flow I took her by her golden curls I dragged her round and round Then threw her into the river that flows through Knoxville town Go there go there you Knoxville girl with dark and rolling eyes Go there go there you Knoxville girl you'll never be my wife I rolled and tumbled the whole night through my dreams were living hell And then they came from Knoxville and carried me to jail I'm here to waste my life away and time is passing slow Because I killed that Knoxville girl the girl I loved so

Visit the Knoxville Girl. I haven't read her stuff, but she's hot, in a green-eyed emo kinda way.

I'm no boy scout, not any more, but I still sometimes suffer from a debilitating case of morality. As an example, I was swilling beer with some friends of mine last night, and one of them was explaining his marketing idea to me. He's driving into work, and he decides to leave his iBook on. He's got his wireless card turned on, and a sniffer program running. On his way to work, about 5 miles, he finds something like 20 wireless networks, only 2 or 3 of which are password-protected. His idea is to find drive around, sniffing out open wireless networks, and going into the businesses and telling them their networks are wide open to whomever drives up to the curb, and offering to fix it for them for a fee.

This is a little too chaotic for me. That would be like coming home and finding some guy sitting on your couch. Then he tries to sell you a new lock. We debated the legality of it, and I'm pretty sure that it's legal, but I could see some reasons why it wouldn't be.

One other thing I'm not really sure about is how the network techs who already work there will feel about it. I mean, if you're a network tech and you've got an unsecured wireless network hanging on on your LAN, you're incompetent, no question about it. But you're still a guy, and you'll still want to kick my ass when I saunter into your boss's office with a backup CD of his Quickbooks directory that I made from the parking lot.

There's nothing like ethical ambiguity and an almost certain ass-kicking to discourage a business venture.

Bill Clinton's book comes out today. Needless to say, I stood in line last night for hours in sleet and snow (summer in Germany). Clintons book reflects his sophisticated world view, and his disarmingly earthly sense of humor.

My favorite passage?

I LIEK MEAT!

(pp. 62-63, Harcort-Brace Edition)

Not surprisingly, my opinion of this book differs wildly with that of Mr. Schwarz, who is less than enthusiastic.

According to Drudge, American military personnel are to be put in charge of Saddam Hussein while he's custody in Iraq. This makes good sense, as the U.S. still has the best-organized and best-equipped military in the region. Here are some pieces of technology that could be prominent in Saddam Hussein's future:

	X-Tra Large 10-inch "Mega" Glowstick Just in time for the 4th of July, and the Iraqi Sovereignty Handover, these firecrackers will put a "spark" into any home movie!
	The Autolite Sta-Ful Battery With up to 20A cold-cranking power, the classic Autolite Sta-Ful will fulfill all your power needs. Recommended for use with Autolite Sta-Put Testicle Clamps
	Victoria's Secret™ Lace Trim Thong Perfect headgear for any occasion. The saucy, sexy Lace Trim Thong brings flair to any holiday snaps.

Enjoy!

It's about as warm and cheerful as a dead hobo clown outside, here in lovely Augsburg. I still haven't gotten the hang of the metric system, but I can tell you that 10C is the temperature at which the will to throw the baseball around freezes. It's June 20th, about 6:00PM in the workers' paradise, and it's butt-numbin' cold. It's even colder in my dank, ground-floor apartment. It makes you want to defenstrate yourself.

Things That are About as Joyless as a Cold and Grey June 20th

• Filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
• Cubs Fans
• Watching the Last 10 Minutes of Old Yeller, Over, and Over, and Over...
• Greenpeace Rallies
• Franz Kafka, Right After His Cat Died
• Laurence Olivier's "World At War" Voice-overs
• Robert Fisk
• A Morrissey Concert
• Masturbating While Looking at Pictures of Your High-school Sweetheart
• Dachau Field Trips
• The Augsburg Entry in the "Culture Capital of Europe" Contest

That last item actually cheers me up, just because of the absurdity of it. For those who either don't know or don't give a damn, Europe's having a marketing contest between various cities to see which can show that it's the cultural center of the continent.

Augsburg is a fine city, no question, but it's a little out of its league. Its own site (linked above) begins with the following burst of positive thinking:

"Cultural Capital of Europe"? No doubt about it: Paris, London, or Madrid. Maybe even Berlin. One thinks of the Louvre, and of Covent Garden, and impressive architecture and internationally-renowned artists. But Augsburg?

Optimism that borders on arrogance. It reads like a newspaper article, written by someone hostile to the project. But it's their own damn page! Their entry was quite possibly the most sniveling, humorless, depressing, and obsequiously "artsy" film short I've ever seen. It consisted of grey- and blue-toned shots of black-clad old men and women reading passages of Bertholt Brecht. Brecht! For those who aren't familiar with anything but Mack the Knife, Bertholt Brecht was a famous communist from Augsburg. He moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to escape persecution by the Nazis. After World War II, McCarthy chased him out of the country, so he moved to Soviet-controlled East Germany, where he famously assisted a crackdown by the Russians on students and intellectuals, assisting in the murders of dozens of protesters. A Brecht wikipedia entry gives some rough facts about him, but makes the predictable attempt to whitewash his support of Soviet communism by relating it to Nazism.

But I digress.

The contest itself is a sham. They've taken it upon themselves to steal money from taxpayers all over Europe, even ones that would never have a chance to win, and give it to the one city that can suck up enough to the snobs of some kind of unelected committee. Absolutely breathtaking immorality. And you just know that, when there's money involved along with government, it's eaten up with corruption. The winning city will have to bribe the judges, hire their cronies to produce their entries, give them kickbacks on the award money, you name it. All in the name of culture.

But really, what is culture? Looking at the contest, you would think culture is just paintings and movies. Culture is not just art; it's also language, currency, history, religion, philosophy. It's whether or not you leave a tip when you pay your bill (they don't); it's whether you're monogamous or promiscuous.

Probably the most insulting thing about the whole program, is that it's for all of Europe. Europe is made of many cultures. Germany alone has several: Bavarian, Hessian, Westfalian, Prussian, Jewish, Saxon. France is actually pretty homogeneous, if you loosen your definition of culture to include "just being a pussy". >/cheapshot<. So what they're actually doing is having a contest to see which culture in Europe should be appointed, by a non-elected committee, as the Master ber-Culture.

There! Now I feel better.