On a mundane note, the Dow closed at 9,126.82 yesterday, and I commented over dinner that it would break 9,000 today and the whole country would poop itself. This morning, we learn about the almost $4 billion in WorldCom fraud. At least I'm too worried about my checking account to care what's (not) in my portfolio.

I don't say a whole lot of nice things about my hometown. Hell, lately I don't say many nice things in general. But I've got to give my hometown Board of Ed some credit for making all the hapless junior high-schoolers take Keyboarding. I could touch-type when I was 12, and now I type 80 words a minute. I will be a god among temps.

In other news, I continue to lead the life of a parent, but without the kids. We watched some Sesame Street this morning and were disturbed to note that Elmo has a computer that bounces around the room screaming, "Elmo has mail!" Elmo also gets video email, which plays in a window above a cartoon progressbar. "That's just not necessary," I muttered, before I realized that, yes, it probably is.

I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. So I said, "Got any shoes you're not using?"
-- Steven Wright

What do they do for fun in Providence, Rhode Island? They light fires on the river. I saw Saturday's installment of this; apparently it's a big deal as there were a lot of people there. They also sell beer and play music, so it's not just porno for pyros. The mind boggles nonetheless.

Here's rant #1. I'm off to Ye Olde Temp Agency soon, so I'll make it short.

So you've got this article called "Repealing Estate Tax Not Good For Any Of Us," and by "any of us," presumably the otherwise insightful folks at TheStreet.com -- like my copyeditor, who I hope isn't reading this -- mean "those of us set to inherit, and the rest of you peons don't count." You've also got to love any column that begin, "Don't believe what you read elsewhere." Er, if you say so? Yessir?

I agree that the US tax code is FUBAR, but I have yet to hear any anti-estate tax argument that doesn't sound whiny and entitled. If someone left me a million bucks, you can believe the only thing I'd be upset about is the death. Even if the estate tax were 50%, that's still $500,000 that's yours, that you didn't have to work for, that you don't really deserve for any reason except that your dear departed whoever happened to have it, happened to like you, and happened to die. In other words, dig the Denis Leary school of psychotherapy and shut the f*ck up.

Remember when Halfway, Oregon changed its name to Half.com? It was ridiculous, but not original. I might be the only one who didn't know this, but my trusty copy of Let's Go USA 1996 informs me that in 1950, the game show "Truth or Consequences" got a town in New Mexico to change its name to, you know. "T or C," as they often call it now.

I'm still amused that Half.com has one of my snarky bits on its corporate press page. It wasn't a terribly positive take on the company, but I guess press is press. I also guess my cynicism was misguided, for once, since Half.com got bought by EBay and is doing just fine.

I'll steer the subject away from my predictive incompetence by noting that there's also a town in New Mexico called Elephant Butte.

Since when is C++ required for every programming job in the world? I know a lot changed while we were in Germany, but...C++? Seriously?

Culture shock comes in many forms.

I experienced many misanthropy-inspiring moments today, but the worst may have been trekking to the Boston Public Library to find it closed for Bunker Hill Day. That's one of Massachusetts' fake-ass holidays, like Patriots Day and Evacuation Day, that you can completely forget about unless you still care about the Revolutionary War. Yeah, yeah, whites of their eyes, whatever. Can I have my books now?

No, I don't have children, why do you ask? Part II. I don't know whether it was the SpaghettiOs or the Kool-Aid, but the cash register at the supermarket spat me out a coupon for Fruit Roll Ups.

And to think I used to be a food snob.

Okay, don't ask why I know this, because I don't have any children or anything. But there is an animated Nickelodeon movie coming out that appears to be about gentrification. That's so odd that even I have no comment.

For the last two days, I've written about the trials and travails of pharmaceutical company ImClone. (Shameless plug: check out Media Unspun so I don't have to go work at KFC.) Basically, this company made a cancer drug, which lots of people think will probably work -- if they can ever get FDA approval. But ImCLone munged its FDA application so badly (it admits this) that the FDA rejected it. Here's the kicker: a few days before the rejection, someone tipped off the CEO, and suddenly his friends and family sold lots of stock just before it tanked on the bad news. Dismissed as coincidence? That CEO quit a few weeks ago, and his brother took over and went in front of a shareholders' meeting on Monday, spewing bullshit left and right and insisting that the most important thing is the cancer patients. The shareholders ate it with a spoon (that's what my article was about on Tuesday). Today, I wrote about how the former CEO got arrested yesterday for all the insider trading nastiness; those of us with messy houses and real jobs are also giddy that Martha Stewart is involved. This should all be hilarious, but instead I filed one truly un-funny piece today. It bugs me when rich people lie, cheat, and steal to get ahead, but of course, I'm used to that. Despite my deep-rooted cynicsm, it still really bothers me that these sleazebags are lying, cheating, and stealing in order to make money on the backs of dying people. Reading about that sort of thing first thing in the morning can really sap a person's sense of humor.

I also didn't have room to mention in Media Unspun that the former ImClone CEO's 28-year-old daughter -- one of the family members Mr. Insider Trading supposedly tipped off -- not only lives with Daddy but was financially dependent on her ImClone stock. Now there's someone who deserves to work at KFC.