Author: jbenton

FYI, a story about my time in Zambia will be in Sunday’s paper, in the Sunday Reader section. While it may depress the hell out of you — being an extended narrative about the death and burial of a 23-year-old AIDS victim and all — it should be more interesting reading than my education policy pieces.
Also, head over to zambiastories.com sometime this weekend to see a whole host of new Zambia photos. (Hopefully.)

In the category of Best Music Video By A German Quasi-Techno Band Featuring A Jellyfish Confused By A Desert Mirage, the nominees are:
– “Jelly Belly,” by Helmut Kohl and the Kohl Pencils
– “Happy As A Little Jellyfish,” by Dieter::Sprockets
– “Jellyfish Uber Alles,” by The Willy Brandt Explosion
– “One With The Freaks,” by the Notwist
– “99 Luftballons,” by Nena (Goldfrapp remix)
And the Oscar goes to…”One With The Freaks” by the Notwist.

I know we’re all essentially powerless against spam. We can try to adjust our workflow around it; we can try to beat it with technology. But in the end, spam’s going to win.
But this afternoon, some cretin decided to leave comment spam on my recent post about my grandmother dying. Comment spam for Cialis, the erection drug du jour, of all things.
It pissed me off. I reported his sorry ass, and I just got notice that his Internet account has been terminated as a result.
Sure, he’ll probably just set up shop somewhere else, the limp-dicked jerk. But still, small victories can feel awful nice.

You know, it wasn’t until after I posted that circumcision link that I realized that it was the 1,500th post in crabwalk.com history. I’d hoped such a milestone post would be momentous — earth-shaking, even. I’ll settle for foreskin humor.
Tonight’s task: Turning a 3,483-word story into a 1,200-word story. Wish me luck.

For the record, I absolutely, 1,000-percent agree with the folks at Gizmodo that this product will never be allowed with a 10-foot pole’s radius of me.

Dude, I totally scooped the Washington Post. Like, totally.

Now that John Kerry has announced John Edwards as his running mate, all global attention turns to KerryEdwards.com. But wait — is it owned by the Kerry campaign? The G.O.P.?
Nope: it’s owned by a fellow actually named Kerry Edwards, who happens to be a bailbondsman in Indianapolis. I’d imagine he’s fielding a few offers for the domain name right about now.
He bought it back in 2002, when a Kerry/Edwards ticket wasn’t on anyone’s mind.
This highlights another shamefully underreported element of the new Democratic pairing: It continues the Dem tradition of having tickets that could, in theory, be mistaken for a person’s name. If there’s a Gore Vidal, why couldn’t there be a Gore Lieberman somewhere in the Bronx? I could imagine meeting a Clinton Gore, somewhere in Kentucky. But Bush Cheney? Bush Quayle? Dole Kemp? Unlikely, all.
Okay, so Dukakis won’t pass Taylor and Madison on baby-names lists anytime soon. But my theory works perfectly from 1989 on. Perfectly.

Here’s my column from yesterday’s paper, on the way Texas universities admit their freshmen each year.

I simply refuse to believe this photo is real. “Colin Powell, U.S. Secretary of State, performs a version of the Village People’s hit disco song ‘YMCA’ at the conclusion of Asia’s largest security meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Friday, July 2, 2004. Powell took to the stage, dressed as a construction worker Friday, with other unidentified US diplomats to deliver their rendition of the 1970’s hit song to an audience of Asia Security meeting delegates.”

In honor of the late Marlon Brando, check out this old episode of This American Life, in which Brando debuts a line of acting instructional tapes, entitled “Lying For a Living.” The piece starts at the 44-minute mark.
(The show’s first piece, on the recovered memory movement, is also good. Although a bit of a downer.)