Weblogs

One of my new favorite sites is the hot word blog maintained by the folks at reference.com. Every day, they pick a word or phrase from the news and explain its origin, background and/or meaning.

Do you know what these are?

1) jetblue flight attendant, 2) steve slater, 3) bleach episode 283, 4) lindsay sloane, 5) ind vs nz, 6) shanna mclaughlin, 7) parenthood, 8 ) dish network, 9) rachel bilson and, 10) portia de rossi.

So we have the youngest, hippest, coolest president since JFK, and he admits he doesn't even know how to work an iPod, an iPad, an Xbox or a Playstation. Must be a bitter disappointment for those who were delighted to believe George H.W.

Since I'm on record as being dismissive of the whole beuaty pageant thing, I almost hate to end up taking the side of Carrie Prejean, the Miss California who may have been denied the USA title for having the "wrong" answer to Perez Hilton's question about gay marriage. Is there anybody out there more mean-spirited and self-involved than Hilton? I think he is not a very good representative of the other members of his group and might set back their acceptance by mainstream America for a very long time.

This is a minor irritation, really, but if I hear about one more "self-titled" album, I'll scream.

The Internet is full of meanness? Who knew?

There's a whole world of people out there, and boy, are they pissed off.

On political blogs, the invective flies. Posters respond to the latest celebrity gossip with mockery or worse. Sports fans set up Web sites with names that begin with "fire," hoping coaches, athletic directors and sportscasters lose their jobs.

Keep using that First Amendment, bloggers, while you still have it:

There's a huge concern among conservative talk radio hosts that reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine would all-but destroy the industry due to equal time constraints. But speech limits might not stop at radio. They could even be extended to include the Internet and “government dictating content policy.”

I was all set to enjoy a pleasant evening of blogging last night. One of my favorite old black-and-white movies, 1935's "G Men," with James Cagney and Margaret Lindsay, was playing on Turner Classic Movies. With my laptop set up in front of the TV, I could half pay attention to the movie (old favorites are comfortable background noise) while composing posts to thrill and astound my readers. But at 7:58 p.m., two minutes before the movie's start -- Zap! Comcast Cable went out. "This channel should be available shortly," the message said -- on every channel.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the unfiltered Internet, where legitimate history resides side by side with vicious fantasies:

A video showing a longtime supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton using slurs to describe Hoosiers spread through the Web like a virus Friday, triggering a firestorm of protest before the video was finally exposed as a hoax.

It was just the latest example of how the Internet is changing politics.

(Twenty times. That number is important later on, so remember it.)