Eric Berlin

…but thank goodness I never had to deal with Sony Vaio customer service.

Even if I worked at it, I don’t think I could come up with a worse title and premise for his next movie:

The Krazees: Unable to deal with his daughter reaching puberty, a psychologist (Williams) has to get a handle on his emotions, which have come to life as different characters.

Update: And in other repellent movie news, Jim Carrey is evidently going to star in a Robert Zemeckis remake of A Christmas Carol. And it’s to be done in that same ultra-creepy animation style from Polar Express. Dear Mr. Zemeckis: Please go back to making movies with cameras and lights and all that. Thank you.

I spent the 4th working on the last few puzzles for next week’s convention, plus having a picnic with the kids (a short picnic; it was rained out), plus avoiding all mention of the annual hot dog eating contest, which one day a year gets coverage like it’s a Camp David summit meeting. The thought of someone eating fifty hot dogs in thirty seconds, or whatever, makes me green, and not with envy. I couldn’t turn on CNN for even a moment yesterday without being assaulted with footage of men shoveling food into their faces with both hands. Yee-ucch. It’s nice these people have a hobby, but that doesn’t mean I need to watch.

Tomorrow I pick up the new car. It was a real tossup between the Mazda 5 and the Honda Odyssey. I prefered the Honda, in terms of how it handled the road — I was already used to its Honda-ness, being a Civic owner for the last ten years. It was a different car, but I understood its intricacies almost immediately. The one exception: Backing the thing up. It felt like docking a rocket at the International Space Station. I turned around to look out the back window, and it was thirty yards away from me.

I can’t say I felt immediately at home in the Mazda. The pedals were in subtly different places — too close together, it felt like. It drove perfectly well, I guess, but it was like listening to your native in tongue spoken with a mild accent. Not wrong, but different. Takes some getting used to.

And I’m assuming I will get used to it. We just couldn’t justify spending $5,000 more for the Odyssey. There are times, maybe twice a year, when the Odyssey’s extra cargo space would come in handy. But 98% of the time, the Mazda will suit us just fine. So that’s what we got.

I wonder if I’ll continue bicycling to work now that we’re a two-car family. Eh… I don’t wonder. Not really.

And therefore, wow.

If you’re not going to the National Puzzlers’ League convention next week, and would like to test solve some puzzles, let me know.

So I’m likely to buy an Ipod in the next week or so. Perhaps those of you who are more technologically hip can answer a few questions for me.

1) True or False: I can take all my .mp3s and just throw them on there, assuming they are not crippled by DRM, which I don’t think they are. I can also turn my store-bought CDs into .mp3 files, and put those on the Ipod as well.

2) Songs bought from Itunes… can these be played anywhere other than an Ipod?

3) Does anybody use Yahoo Launch? I can also buy songs from there, but again, I don’t know exactly what I’d be getting. Are they, too, .mp3 files I can simply move to the Ipod?

4) Feel free to throw in any other miscellaneous advice or hints.

Orin Kerr:

I find Bush’s action very troubling because of the obvious special treatment Libby received. President Bush has set a remarkable record in the last 6+ years for essentially never exercising his powers to commute sentences or pardon those in jail. His handful of pardons have been almost all symbolic gestures involving cases decades old, sometimes for people who are long dead. Come to think of it, I don’t know if Bush has ever actually used his powers to get one single person out of jail even one day early. If there are such cases, they are certainly few and far between. So Libby’s treatment was very special indeed.

Pshaw! I’m sure Bush, now that he’s discovered he can correct injustice with a wave of his hand, will move right along to Cory Maye, Genarlow Wilson, David McNab, and Dane Yirkovsky. Uh, right…? Hello?

If you’re itching to get your hands on Winston Breen a couple of months early, here’s your chance.

…is in a New Yorker cartoon.

“Man Beats Peacock He Says Was Vampire”