I am growing weary of resisting the temptation to write MARCEL PROUST on packages instead of the required PARCEL POST. Methinks the purchase of a suitable rubber stamp is in order.
I finally got the reports done in time to go downtown and make the required payments on the store's loan and our mortgage. Our automatic mortgage payment hit last night, apparently, placing me in the red until I showed up shortly before the change in banking "day" (at 2 pm) with the cabbage for the deposit.
On the way home, I stopped again at Flaco Taco, where I had a bowl of
possole (sp?), which I don't think I've ever had before - or, at least, not made to this recipe. I asked the owner about the name of his establishment (the subject of
this muse), and he said that "flaco" had to do with the fact that his food was low-fat.
* * *Galina called this morning, which led me to ask why she was home and not in class. She told me that she arrived too late to register for the class this week, so she's going to register this week for next week's class. This news does not make me a happy camper, but on the other hand, Galina's been feeling pretty low about not having had any time off for a while, so this is an opportunity for her to relax a bit. I just hope she doesn't get delayed after completing the course, as I do not want to have to buy a pair of last-minute one-way airline tickets to exchange places with her.
The kids went shopping and then home. I'll start to close the store soon, and then as soon as Drew comes for me, we'll quit these environs and go home. I was too lazy to move a cable yesterday evening, so I ended up not watching the Kurosawa film. Instead doing some serious channel-surfing and did watch
The O'Reilly Factor on the FOX News Network.
* * *I don't know if O'Reilly normally acts the way he carried about last night on the screen, but I did not enjoy the display. In discussing the Enron scandal with his first guest, O'Reilly made a good point, to the effect that you can't really blame individual investors for having invested in Enron on the basis of their officially published financial data (which was misleading and probably fraudulently so). His guest kept hammering from the position that, sorry, Enron investors had nobody to blame but themselves for not really understanding what the energy company was doing.
At least that's what I think O'Reilly's guest was saying. The host seemed too busy shouting him down.
The second guest was an attorney for the three NYC firemen depicted in the now famous flag-raising photo at Ground Zero. The discussion apparently had to do with the fact that the City of New York had commissioned a statue, based on the photo, depicting one white, one black, and one Hispanic firefighter, instead of three white firefighters, as is the case in the actual photo. What was at issue here was not race, nor political correctness, but simply intellectual property rights.
What struck me during this discussion was O'Reilly's bluster and ignorance as he attempted to claim that the photo was in the "public domain" because it had been taken on public property, and further, that any attempt on the part of the copyright holder to collect a royalty for the display of the photo on
his show would be met with an unconditional snub and refusal.
I felt that was a heck of an attitude on the part of a fellow who was working for an outfit that sells advertising time to clients on the premise that the news and commentary programming broadcast by the network (including the display of newsworthy photos and videos) is going to attract an audience that will, ultimately, buy the products advertised.
I mean, just because something is "newsworthy" doesn't give one the right to rebroadcast it for free.
His last guest was L. Brent Bozell, the head of something called the Media Research Council, a conservative group that documents liberal and left-wing bias in the media. Bozell had written a column questioning recent FOX News decisions to hire Geraldo Rivera and Greta van Sustren. To be frank, although I think the MRC does a fairly good job of highlighting media bias, I think they're completely off base on this issue, and O'Reilly came off pretty well in this discussion.
* * *The Neomail software works pretty well. I'm able to access the Linux box at the house to get my mail while I'm at the store, which also demonstrates the router's ability to forward port requests to particular IP addresses on the internal network.
Lee, I am told, did not quite total the car, so she needs to come up with some cash to fix it. She is also quitting her apartment soon, and rumor has it she will live in the Pearland house for a while.
Anyway, it's about a quarter of six, and time to start closing the registers. I suspect dinner is going to be pretty good.
Cheers...
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avva set forth some of the background in a recent post. It would appear that the National Blood Authority in the U.K. was sued for having allowed blood tainted by hepatitis C to be received by patients. The Authority's defense was, basically, that said patients had received the blood prior to the discovery of the virus in 1988, and that it was therefore illogical and impossible for them to be held accountable for the blood being infected with an undiscovered virus. 
