This one had me grinning. A Frenchwoman trying to get through the Evansville, Indiana airport got irritated at the security screener who kept going over her upper body with a search wand. Fed up with the repeated scannings, "she allegedly stripped to the waist," and you can hardly blame her.

During a routine security screening, authorities say Aguillaume kept reaching inside her sweater, forcing guards to search her again.

It Isn't Just You

New research proves that if you're a woman who isn't really happy with your body, flipping through a magazine a-brim with ads featuring rail-thin supermodels won't leave you feeling better about yourself. Did someone get paid money for finding this out?

The body satisfaction test, called the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale, is designed to assess to what degree a woman sees herself as an object, how ashamed she is that her body does not measure up to cultural ideas, and how much she believes she's responsible for her body not meeting the cultural standards.

Game Boys

The fact that Nintendo was caught artificially inflating the prices of their gaming software isn't the news here. After all, in Japan, they're notorious for jacking up demand for a title like Dragonball Z in advance, then undersupplying retailers in order to create panic buying. What's notable here is that they fully admit collusion and manipulation, they're just upset they've been fined 149 million euros by the European Commission for doing it. Chump change for them.

7:59:12 PM       

If you follow salonblogs in the sense of this being a coherent group of writers, then the discussion over at Radio Free Blogistan should be of substantial interest to you. The salon group of bloggers is formed of several cliques and lone wolves, all of whom circulate amongst each other, making for an interesting collection of personalities. You could VENN diagram the thing, if you wanted to. You'd need circles for "Technical" pages, "Artistic" pages, "News" pages, and "Avant Garde" pages. Or come up with your own labels, but there are about four or five logical groupings, all of whom comment on each other's work and tend to stay localized.

Then there are the lone wolves and interlopers, as well as the much-beloved community of readers who don't maintain Weblogs but come here to scan the community's output—we thank you.

Bloggers, you would have to agree, come in one of two types: introverted or extroverted. The former write for themselves. The latter write for you. Isn't there something noble about the writer who who can say, "I don't care whether I get any hits or not"? I find myself strongly drawn that way—pure integrity. On the other hand, writing 101 says that you pay attention to the reader. Thus the extrovert (who is interested in readership) needs to think about why people want to read his or her work. The Raven spends a lot of time trying to give you a reason to read this page. That's why we're all over the road.

So most of us, then, take up a position between the two ideals, putting as much integrity as possible into our work, but appreciating any feedback we get—whether in terms of total hits or comments on posts. Since nobody else to my knowledge has mentioned this except Giles at Life on Earth, comments are the payoff for blogging. When I check my page, if I don't have any comments, I figure I must be boring the bejesus out of you. This may not be true, and I know that, but when people drop me a line saying, "Right on," or "Piss off," either way I become aware of my relationship with you. I can work with that. Firing text off into the dark and getting no back-pings is dispiriting in some sense.

Ultimately, you have to trust your own power as a writer. Take care of your blog and the hits will take care of themselves. Post quality, and people will want to visit your page. Fall into a delusional belief that you have an "audience" or a "readership" and you are doomed. Because this isn't high school. You have a one-on-one relationship with the single person who decided to click on your page. Give that person a reason to come back.

6:43:04 PM       

Checking the mailbox this morning and—I say! It's a large manila packet addressed to me by someone named "Clerk, United States District Court." Could it be monies that are owed to me? No, you look at something like this, and you just know that it isn't going to be good. Let's take a look and see...

It's a Summons for Jury Service. Christ on a keychain, they need me December 2, which is Finals week. Same thing happened last year, too. The trick, as I recall, is to send them a letter that politely mentions school but also brims with enthusiasm for the American Legal System. Smedley was misinformed: Flattery will get you everywhere.

The enclosed "Juror Information Questionnaire" poses some interesting constitutional problems:

4. Do you consider yourself: [ ] Caucasian, [ ] Black, [ ] Asian/Asian American, [ ] Native American, [ ] Hispanic, [ ] Other:____

19. Have you, or any close member of your family, consulted with a lawyer in the last five years? [ ] Yes. [ ] No. If yes, for what reason? ____

30. List any hobbies, spare-time activities, outside interests:____

33. What newspaper do you read most often?

There's a few others here I don't like. Which magazines, etc. Are there any bumper stickers on my car or my spouse's car, and, if yes, what do they say? Do I attend church, and how often and which one? As an amateur student of jurisprudence, I understand why they want to know these things. But have they the right to demand answers to highly personal information? [ ] Yes. [ ] No.

A Lexical Education

Speaking of bureaucracies, I recently ran across the Hellatine Dictionary of Bureaucratese. This is so clever and interesting. If you love language as much as we do, you might give it a look. This collection could serve as a guide to survival in large organizations. For example:

blilb; v., To come in while the worker isn't there and alter a project he's been working on so that it no longer works. To surreptitiously remove an essential part of a device. "Wood blilbed the aluminum prism out of René Blondlot's N ray device. Blondlot saw no change, thus proving that N rays were a figment of his imagination."
(Hebr. bli leb: with the heart missing)

dreponify; v., To viciously turn upon one's colleagues in a transformation of personality fueled by ruthless ambition. To make allied subordinates into rivals of one another by restriction of resources or promotional opportunities.
(Gr. harma dreponyphor: a scythe bearing chariot)

repulent; n. One who is the last forced to leave a squatters encampment. Within a bureaucracy, the position of maintaining a presence in a moribund program.
(Fr. pule'en nais: the last vagabond chased with torches from a camp.)

Remember that story about the ossuary they found that is believed to be "the oldest archaeological link to Jesus"? This stone box, which made it here all the way from the year a.d. 63 has been "damaged in transit from Israel to Canada." They aren't saying how much damage, or who is responsible for it, but for Christ's sake they should have taken better care of the damned thing. Jesus!

Self-Promotion Dept.

Your host is giving a public reading today. My university's annual publication, The Copperblade Review, goes on sale this afternoon and one of my poems was selected for inclusion. It's a "laff riot" in the Spenserian vein, and titled The Legend of Cuthdell. They'll either enjoy it or stare at me with puzzled expressions. You never know.

9:27:17 AM