Paul Murray's weblog, with news you may have missed and my $0.02 worth on a number of topics.

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it."
- Art Buchwald

I bet you don't have a friend who's an acupuncturist

E-mail me: pmurray [at] despammed.com

An honest, open debate. "We're gonna have an honest, open debate between the President of the United States and the one man we believe has the insight and the cojones to stand up to him." Excerpt from The Daily Show, Monday 4/28. Real Player and a fast connection required.
posted by Paul Murray at 1:17 PM | permanent link |

Exit laughing. Today we saw the obituary for Charley Douglass, who perfected the TV laugh track. Take a moment to read the obit, then check out this Mark Jeffries post at TVBarn that will likely explain more than you ever expected to know about laugh tracks (that's a compliment).
posted by Paul Murray at 12:04 AM | permanent link |

1945/2003 You can debate about how accurate Time magazine's analogy is with this week's cover and its precedent... but personally, I like that they have a sense of their own history and are willing to use it. The parallels are even closer when you consider the circumstances:

During the first days of May 1945, the world did not quite know what had happened to Adolf Hitler. There was no shortage of rumors: he had been arrested by Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler, he was on a U-boat headed for Japan, he had been killed by an exploding shell. What was known for certain was that Berlin was about to fall, and as TIME reported, "Adolf Hitler had been buried, dead or alive, in the rubble of his collapsing Third Reich." Unsure of what had happened to Hitler but certain that his rule was finished, TIME ran on its cover a portrait of Hitler with a bloody X through it.

I can foresee this inspiring Photoshop contests where entrants are asked to update other old Time covers with new stories. Time makes it easy with this searchable archive of their covers.
posted by Paul Murray at 6:39 PM | permanent link |

Saved by a weblog. Here's the beginning of a true story:
1. Man meets woman and hits it off.
2. Man shares his joy in his weblog.
3. Man receives e-mail from a reader that says everything you know about her is wrong.
4. ...

Well, go read the whole weird story.
posted by Paul Murray at 12:04 AM | permanent link |

What if Fox News were [sic] around during other historical events? That's the theme of this Photoshop contest at fark.com. Beware, it takes a while to load ... and dial-up users will need to be especially patient. (via TVBarn discussion group)
posted by Paul Murray at 11:33 PM | permanent link |

Stupid floppy trick. I say that with affection. How to turn a 3.5" floppy into a model of the starship Enterprise. Lest you doubt it, here's proof, produced by a Metafilter reader in eight minutes. Memorize this neat party trick and cultivate your own nerd reputation!
posted by Paul Murray at 6:59 PM | permanent link |

I think Blogger has a bug. Why do I think that? Because the same formatting problem that I had earlier this year has just reappeared tonight. The first time it appeared, I assumed that it was my fault, that I had screwed up my template, and it took me several hours to solve it. Tonight it appeared without me being in the template. I don't have time for this; that's why it took me a month to fix it last time!

I'm entitled to have an attitude -- I'm a paying customer, not a free user.

4/4 Update: Joel from Blogger solved my problem, a missing double quote mark (further proof of my adage that the Internet is the world's biggest typing test -- get one character wrong and you fail). Now he's trying to figure out what caused it. I'm happy again.
posted by Paul Murray at 11:33 PM | permanent link |

Pound for pound, who's the biggest, richest media mogul on the Web? According to the magazine Business 2.0, that would be Matt Drudge. He ain't talkin', but they estimate that his web site alone brings in more than $800,000 a year. Read how.
posted by Paul Murray at 11:01 PM | permanent link |