That's how this afternoon's shaping up. But it's less galling than this morning's lineup, provided you don't offend the Lord of the Manor. If you make it through the fun, there's a game at the end.

The Gothic Dungeon

That's what Oakland Raider Fans call their infamous hometown stadium. It has something to do with the way the faithful show up looking like extras from a Middle Earth epic.

The Raider Nation's problem, as you might imagine, will be the reception they receive at the hands of security personnel at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium for Super Bowl Sunday. Y'know, back when we had Super Bowl I, or even Super Bowl X, you could kind of see the charm of using Roman numerals for these things, but "XXXVII" is just too much. Pity the poor Raider faithful trying to make sense of their tickets: "We're going to Super Bowl Ecks Ecks Ecks..." Poor clowns are gonna be there all day, moving their lips while they try to figure out which way to hold their programs, and dealing with some of the heightened security restrictions.

The Office of Homeland Security has designated the Super Bowl a "Special Event Readiness Level 2," putting it on a security par with a presidential inauguration or a political convention, according to San Diego officials.

That's just the turnstile; inside the stadium, a whole galaxy of high-tech surveillance equipment will be scanning faces, cops are going to be carrying networked PDAs, and anybody displaying untoward exuberance is likely to be gang-tackled and twist-tied into immediate submission. Outside of all that, should be a fun afternoon.

Paying the Piper

In a bizarre story coming out of Philadelphia today, details are emerging about the trial of millionaire Joel Sandler for his crazed scheme to murder his wife, Linda. Described as a modern-day Scrooge, Joel Sandler was a penny-pinching miser who couldn't bear the thought of paying alimony after his wife announced her intent to divorce him, so he hired a hit man to chop her into pieces. While he's facing 20 years for attempted murder, Linda still doesn't feel safe. "I know he has the money to hire someone coming out of prison to kill me. He's an extremely vengeful person. He won't give up," she says.

Linda Sandler said her husband would pee into a cup so he wouldn't rack up the water bill flushing the toilet. He would beat his wife when she forgot to use a coupon to buy shampoo. He would rage at her for a week if she put an extra stamp on a thick envelope in the mail.

Ghost in the Machine

Norway's Data Inspectorate, a governmental cyber-security agency, has some explaining to do after it was discovered that they accidently sent a virus-infected newsletter out to 1,700 subscribers.

"It is extra embarrassing that we pushed a virus on people who had put themselves on a news list that provides information on data security," agency spokesman Ove Skaara told Verdens Gang newspaper Tuesday.

Combo, First Blood

Here's the game we mentioned earlier. It's from the Style Invitational folks out of the Washington Post and called Combo, First Blood. You play by matching two names that connect, then adding a phrase the new person might say, for example:

Michael Jackson of Sam: His neighbor's dog told him to dangle that kid.

Dirty Harry Potter: "Go ahead, Draco. Make my fortnight."

Larry David Thoreau: Enjoys spending time alone, contemplating absolutely nothing of importance.

James Joyce Kilmer: "I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a thwotty pie freakfog moocow."

OK, we'll try one: Elizabeth Taylor Coleridge: Husbands, husbands, everywhere, yet not a proper shrink / The table's set with marv'lous fare, I'll eat it all I think.

Hmm. Tougher than it looks.

Update: The Ravenatrix walked by, took one look at this, and rattled off the following with hardly a moment's reflection:

Martin Luther Vandross: "I lost 200 pounds thanks to the Diet of Worms!"

Billy Ray Cyrus Vance: "My achey breaky Ayatollah."

Anita Bryant Gumbel: "A day without a vindictive memo is like a day without sunshine!"

William Macy Gray: "Try to ransom off my wife and I choke"

Bebe Rebozo the Clown: "I want a crooked answer to this question: Who's your favorite plumber?"

Ann Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Go-Go Boots

3:32:41 PM       

William Butler Yeats felt that history is a revolving sequence of cyclical movements, either spiraling outward from a generative nexus, or heading inward back to the origin, "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?" That's what I wondered after scanning the morning bitstream.

A Sky Full of Vultures

There are some outfits that the media just wants to see die. There's no reason for that, except perhaps envy and the desire to be the one who called it first. So you're happy when they beat the odds and defy the doomsayers. Apple does it year after year, and so does Salon.com, which is the focus of an LA Times deathwatch piece. Salon founder David Talbot makes the case for survival:

"There's too much media concentration. It's imperative that America has more voices. With the Internet we all thought there would be a 1,001 platforms to reach the public. That, sadly, hasn't come to be. Most of the usual corporate giants have gobbled up the Web. We feel a sense of mission here. There's not much like Salon left out there. We're doing something that's important. Not just for ourselves, but for the nation and American journalism."

The Beast of the Internet

That's what FBI agent Stacey Bradley calls the kiddie porn and child molestation part of the online theme park. This article looks in depth at how she and other agents hunt down the predators. One thing that comes across in Bradley's depiction of her work is that it's brutally difficult. Some agents quit after a year or so because they just can't take it—which is understandable since this occupation would tend to give you a very weird perspective on humanity. Among Bradley's arrests are "a physician, a professor, a nuclear scientist and even a 72-year-old retiree who traveled from Boston—his oxygen tank and Viagra in tow—to meet someone he thought was a 14-year-old boy."

Agents undergo regular psychological testing. "Sometimes the subject matter will become overpowering and will affect the private life and interaction with their children. They're suspicious of everybody and everything. They're on edge."

"Home from school today," Timberlake wrote.

"Sorry you're not feeling well," the Detroit man responded.

"Do you like to snuggle?" the Detroit man wrote.

"Yes, I guess," Timberlake wrote.

"I like to snuggle, touch, tease, caress," the Detroit man tapped back.

Fool Me Twice

You'd figure that banning a cybercriminal from ever using the Internet again would be a fair punishment for misusing the system, right? Well maybe not. Even Kevin Mitnick is getting his keyboard back now that he's finished his probation.

You'll recall that Kevin caused millions of dollars in damage to companies like Motorola, Novell, Nokia and Sun Microsystems. For the first time in 8 years, he's back online out there somewhere, fingers dancing on the keys. So why do we allow him and the baby-rapers the chance to do more damage? Notwithstanding the Fifth Circuit court's ruling that "people on probation may be barred from using computers and the Internet," two other federal appeals courts have overturned such prohibitions as being "too broad."

In overturning the sentence of a child pornographer last year, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the Internet was as vital to everyday existence as the telephone and that while the government could monitor an offender's computer use, it could not stop it completely.

The 21st Century Gulag

First I was reading this story about the 167 spared Illinois Death Row inmates who are in many cases not happy at leaving the comforts of the Green Mile for "a rougher place" known as GenPop. "Inmates' Isolation Also Meant Safety," read the headline, and it turns out that life on Death Row is not without its advantages. But then I ran into this mind-bending coverage of North Korea's gulag-like prison system, which is a true Hell on Earth.

This is Camp 22 in Haengyong, where around 50,000 prisoners labor under conditions that U.S. officials and former inmates say "results in the death of 20 percent to 25 percent of the prison population every year." You get sent here, you're in for a slow painful death at the hands of heartless screaming guards. This stuff is too gruesome to reprint here, but in addition to the article, you can also read Senate testimony given by former prisoner Soon Ok Lee, who survived, and the guard Ahn Myong Chol, who escaped the system. Tough reading and we wouldn't blame you a bit for skipping it.

Keeping His Head

On the lighter side, Marcos Parra is one lucky kid: The 18-year-old had his head "almost completely severed" in a car accident and doctors were able to reattach it.

Doctors had never seen such injuries. It almost didn't matter that he had a broken clavicle, pelvis, tailbone and ribs. They were stunned to learn of the injury to his neck that technically ripped off his head.

His skull was ripped from the cervical spine, detaching Parra's head from the neck.

11:11:36 AM