If there were an all-seeing eye of quality with a gavel of unquestionable authority, then in my opinion, the most highly ranked Weblog at Salon would be that of Gentleman George Mahood. This guy's getting what, ten reads a day? Either I'm a dimwit (always a possibility!) or the name of the thing is scaring off potential customers. Perhaps it looks too Arabic or Sri Lankan and people are scared that Echelon is going to sniff their packets out and mark their IP address as belonging to an Al Quaeda sympathizer. A reasonable fear, given these paranoid times, but we're here to tell you that this guy's writing is the best prose crafted since Gordon Lightfoot penned Sundown. Yes, it's that good.

Finally, Something That Works

Have you ever seen a commercial for Rain-X? You put it on your car windows and mirrors to make them impervious to rainwater. While I usually veer away from stuff like "Mechanic-In-a-Can," Rain-X is one product I can fully endorse. You dampen a rag with it, smear it all over your car glass, and let it dry. Then, take a super-soft cloth and spend an hour trying to get the stuff off. You'll be sweating buckets, but you can do it. The next time it rains you won't even have to turn on your wipers and a treatment is good for at least six months. The only weird part is driving around grinning and talking to your windshield—"Take that, O evil rain. Begone!"

Taking the Heat

We're running out of Bad Guys. Used to be, Hollywood had a huge cast of ne'er-do-wells, from Fu Manchu to the bandits in The Treasure of Sierra Madre. Those happy days are long gone, though, and one misstep by a studio can generate lots of bad press, protests, boycotts, the whole crapstorm of noisy aggrieved special interests and no, they don't make Whine-X yet.

Even the Russians get a pass nowadays—suddenly they're the Good Guys (K-19: The Widowmaker, Enemy at the Gates). Those Haitians in Live and Let Die were pretty much the last brothers to take the rap, with a few exceptions here and there. The Japanese were vociferous in their opposition to Chrichton's Rising Sun, so they're looking safe. And the rising stock of Palestinians caused a major re-write of Clancy's Sum of All Fears, leading to the replacement of Islamic fanatics with Neo-Nazis, who will still be fair game but it's tough to write them into every script. So who's left?

Thanks to the corporate melt-down of 2002, we predict 2003 to be the Year of the Suits in Hollywood. Expect the Bad Guy to be the rapacious CEO of some generic mega-corporation. He'll be white, tanned, and dressed in Armani.

7:15:55 PM       

Wrapping up 2002 are a few stories here about the End of the Line. For every door that closes, a new one opens up—usually. I'll let you decide which rails terminate at the gorge of chaos and which simply lead to new destinations.

The Unvanquished

That would be us. We had to deal with Enron, Martha, the "American Taliban," mothers killing their own children, and all of the pain of a tanking economy. As always, we looked for the villains and found scapegoats when necessary. It's all wrapped up here in a diachronic overview of a year thankfully over. Bright notes? We tightened our belts and are moving forward into an uncertain future.

The Wages of Sin

For Alicia Kessinger, it's 10 years of hard time in Pulaski State Prison, a women's correctional facility near Hawkinsville, Georgia. The 47-year-old mother had everything going for her until she had one too many at a 1999 Christmas party and ran head-on into a car in the oncoming lane. Did she get too harsh of a sentence? Her actions did end the life of Michael Landis, although not intentionally.

Her attorney said the environment on drunken driving cases is such that she would have had a better chance in court if she had shot Landis instead of killing him with a car, John Bader said.

The New Kamikazes

People going out with a bang made a lot of headlines this year. Whether you call 'em "Suicide Bombers" or "Homicide Bombers," they're bad news.

One of the top photos of the year has to be this one, of an infant dressed up for deadly business. This picture says it all, really, but ABC has an in-depth look today at the culture of Palestinian martyrdom. Here's a sample quote:

"We now have a young generation of children," Serraj said, "who, when you ask them 'What would you like to be when you are 20?' he would respond by saying, 'I want to be a martyr.' He don't say, 'I want to be a doctor, or engineer or a TV person.' They say, 'I want to be a martyr.' This is now the hero example. And this is very dangerous."

The man who straps 50 pounds of dynamite to his back and wades into a crowd of Israelis is probably someone who has experienced trauma either directly or seen damage inflicted on family members. Targeting civilians is seen as a way of terrorizing the enemy and weakening their resolve, although in practice it appears to have almost the opposite effect.

Homo Domesticus

That would be me. Some dreams die hard, and as I enter these middle-age years I notice a lot of options crashing down around me. There's nothing to take the wind out of your plans at living as a gay blade, a rake, and a gallivanting rascal than to find yourself shopping for a garbage disposal.

This is the beast I've scoped out right here. It's the Kenmore 3/4 hp Heavy Duty Waste Food Disposer and as always, I've done my homework. See, when you're shopping for appliances, you need to pre-arm yourself with the lingo and terminology so that the clerk doesn't peg you as a rube. I'm ready for him.

He approaches. "Good afternoon, Sir. May I help you?"

"Yes, I'm looking for a garbage disposal," I say, tilting my head, "These would be they, I assume?"

"Yep, these are the best we carry."

"I see..." I lean forward, examining model 60563, "Does this unit come with a single or variable phase induction motor?"

"Um... single phase, I think..."

Now I'm directing traffic! "How about the grinding chamber? Stainless steel elements?"

Still, what kind of guy is stuck at Sears on a pleasant afternoon shopping for something like this? I can see that I won't be DJing as Master R at any raves this week, and I won't be ferrying a limo full of chippies back to my loft, either. The guy who goes shopping for disposers has Rake Duty and Deck Washing in his future. Of all the roads to nowhere, this one is the most starkly brutal.

1:47:30 PM