Professional alien abductee Whitley Strieber says:

A number of channelers are predicting that a large scale event involving aliens will take place this month.

You can prepare to welcome our new alien overlords with a bit of home decor:

The Alien Abduction Lamp is only in the prototype stage at the moment, but I predict that a large scale event involving aliens will push this one rapidly through the production lines.

The Atlantic Ocean is frikkin' wide.

I spotted this, umm, interesting display in the windows of a vintage clothing store on West 23rd Street recently in Manhattan:

Funny how it hardly looks vintage at all.

I'm off to England in the morning. I'll be renting a car and driving -- with great trepidation -- around the countryside of southern England and Wales. I've driven before on the left side of the road -- in Ireland, years ago -- and I damaged the rental car because I had a helluva time steering from the right. Well, not the steering itself, per se, but getting used to being aware of the fact that there's a whole bunch of car to my left, which isn't usually the case. (I banged the left rear bumper into a signpost, because there shouldn't have been a bumper there.) I'm a totally confident driver, but when you're driving on the other side of the road from the other side of the car, all your instincts go out the window. It's very unnerving.

So I plan to avoid, if I can, anything that looks like this:

That's the "Magic Roundabout" in Swindon, and apparently it really is a miracle at relieving traffic congestion, but just looking at it gives me the willies.

I'll have more insurance this time, though, just in case...

Naomi Klein is one of the sharpest observers of our culture, and from a particularly savvy GenX perspective, and she's fucking brilliant on a bad day, and now she pins the generational angst that really rankles in this economic 9/11:

Consider that in North America, everybody under the age of 40 grew up being told that the government can't intervene to improve our lives, that government is the problem not the solution, that laissez faire was the only option. Now, we are suddenly seeing an extremely activist, intensely interventionist government, seemingly willing to do whatever it takes to save investors from themselves.

I suspect that the next few years will record a high-water mark for Gen X snarking. Because ya gotta snark -- it's the only way to keep from crying. Well, snarking combined with consumption of massive quantities of alcohol (if you can afford it after you contribute your share to the $700 billion $1.8 trillion bailout).

And so we have the birth of Buy My Shitpile, Henry!, at which you can request that Hank Paulson -- former Goldman Sachs CEO who now wants a blank check he can write, over and over again, to his crooked Wall Street cronies, with no strings on how they can spend the dough -- buy out your worthless crap, too.

So now $700 billion has ballooned to $1.8 trillion. It must be nice to be so rich and so powerful that you're never allowed to not be rich and powerful.

A few years ago, I was shoulder-deep in credit card debt, and about to go under. It wasn't debt accumulated living the high life -- it wasn't the result of binging on designer clothes and round-the-world cruises but the result of splurging on groceries and new underwear once in a while, mostly during the period post-9/11 when the New York economy was in the toilet and work was hard to come by. (On the other hand, it was not accumulated as a result of a disastrous illness or injury, which is how many people come by their onerous debt. So it could have been worse.) But work had still not picked up, and I had reached the point where I could see, just over the hill, the moment when I wouldn't be able to manage even the minimum payments anymore. I was terrified, because I've never been a person who doesn't meet her obligations.

From Benito Mussolini:

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

On the other hand, we must remember:

I don't have $700 billion to spare. Do you?

Bloomberg says:

Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration asked Congress for unchecked power to buy $700 billion in bad mortgage investments from U.S. financial companies in what would be an unprecedented government intrusion into the markets.

The plan, designed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, is aimed at averting a credit freeze that would bring the financial system and economic growth to a standstill. The bill would bar courts from reviewing actions taken under its authority.

"It sounds like Paulson is asking to be a financial dictator, for a limited period of time,'' said historian John Steele Gordon, author of "Hamilton's Blessing,'' a chronicle of the national debt. "This is a much-needed declaration of power for the Treasury secretary. We can't wait until the next administration in January.''

William Greider at The Nation says:

I was gonna do this, but someone beat me to it:

Honestly, this is the kind of dork I am: When Something Happens, the first thing I think is, What domain name could I register to take advantage of this? I was watching Keith Olbermann rag on Sarah Palin the other night, and it suddenly occurred to me to wonder whether someone had registered ThanksButNoThanks.com.

Of course, they had.

I know. I am a parasite and a leech. But so far I haven't actually done it -- that is, registering a domain name to take advantage of the Something that Happened -- so I maybe I'm only potentially a parasite and a leech.

Actually, I'm not a parasite and a leech. It's just my GenX cynicism coming to fore as a defense mechanism whenever my sanity is threatened by the unbelievable inanity of the world.

(What, is this site gone already? I'm getting a "thanks but no thanks" from Firefox, which "could not find the host server" for this domain.)

Spotted on CNN.com:

There's a video.

But, wait, it gets better. The description of the video:

Jesus spotted on the ceiling

An image of Jesus on the ceiling of a weight loss center is keeping patrons honest. KWCH's Denise Hnytka reports.

No fat chicks in Heaven, I guess. And don't think you can fool Jesus into thinking it's just that you're a little bloated cuz you've got your period. He's watching you, and he knows you ate that Twinkie.

I wanna know: Why is it always Jesus people see? Why isn't it that guy from the Allman Brothers? Why isn't it that creepy guy hanging around outside the bar down the block? Why do they just assume it's Jesus spying on them at the health club?

From the novel Nature's End by Whitley Striber and James Kunetka:

[T]he basic problem people suffer from nowadays is passivity brought on by fear. It's a disease and it's destroying us.

From the Los Angeles Times:

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department is finalizing rules that would allow FBI agents to solicit informants and use other new techniques to bolster the agency's intelligence-gathering operation in the United States, officials said Friday.

The changes would expand rules the department enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks that permitted the FBI to conduct "assessments" of threats of terrorism and espionage even in instances where little or no proof existed of criminal activity.

And this (spotted on CNN.com recently):

This has been a public service announcement.

I feel like this some days:

Even the School for the Gifted has gotta have someone at the bottom of the class, right?

Just like Edward R. Murrow or something. Like totally:

Shortly after Sen. John McCain tapped Sarah Palin as his running mate, Brown directed pointed questions to Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for McCain's campaign, about the qualifications of the little-known Alaska governor.

She asked about the qualifications of the vice presidential candidate! The muckraker!

As the Los Angeles Times pointed out: "Tensions -- and voices -- rose after the anchorwoman told Bounds that she was just 'trying to get someone from the campaign to explain what foreign policy experience [Palin] has.' Bounds repeatedly skirted the question, choosing instead to criticize Barack Obama's lack of executive experience."

"It's surprising," Brown said of the ensuing controversy when we spoke by phone last Thursday afternoon. "It's what we do. I'm a journalist. My role and responsibility go beyond a job. It's a duty, an obligation. We're here to ask tough questions in a responsible way."

Brown was later quoted as saying, "Oh my god, I don't know where that nonsense about 'tough questions' came from. I must have forgotten to take the industrial-strength Xanax distributed to all members of the mainstream media each morning. Sorry 'bout that."

McCain's campaign said Brown's interview of Bounds had been "over the line," and it canceled McCain's scheduled appearance on "Larry King Live," according to a report on the Huffington Post.

This is the crazy-ass, topsy-turvy, Twilight Zone, mirror-universe hell we're living in today.

Perhaps the first order of business in the McCain/Palin White House will be the issuing of an executive order that any journalists asking questions in the press room be taken out back and shot.

Mostly out of habit from the days before my cable company carried MSNBC, I've been reflexively a viewer of CNN when I feel the need to get my blood pressure up by subjecting myself to what passes for the mainstream news media these days. When I want to "see what's on the news," it's CNN I go to. I have gone through bouts of watching Keith Olbermann's Countdown on MSNBC in the evenings, though I'm often not home during prime time -- I'm at film screenings -- so that's a habit that it's easy to fall out of.

But when I discovered that Olbermann was anchoring MSNBC's election coverage, I found myself reflexively turning on MSNBC during the conventions... what little of them I could stand to watch. Olbermann made them somewhat more endurable with his unwillingness to accede to all the bullshit or to take as truth press releases and the spin of campaign spokespeople. Olbermann is not progressive or even really terribly liberal -- or if he is we don't regularly see that on Countdown: he's middle-of-the-road with no tolerance for fools, which is hardly a political stance. That he gets labeled "liberal" for espousing the opinion of the majority of the country, the 70 percent who can't wait for Bush to leave the White House, is part of the cancerous problem with our cultural discourse.

The Onion used to be funny, and now it's just sad:

Gay War Hero Awarded Posthumous Dishonorable Discharge At White House Ceremony

WASHINGTON--In a solemn ceremony held in the White House Rose Garden Monday, recently outed Iraq War casualty Sgt. Maj. Michael Delacroix--a highly decorated career serviceman with an impeccable 22-year record--was posthumously stripped of his military honors and dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army. "For giving his life in the line of duty and selflessly serving his nation while being gay, Mr. Delacroix will be exhumed from Arlington National Cemetery and relieved of his rank and all attendant benefits," U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said during the ceremony. "We also ask that his mother return the American flag that was given to her at his funeral." A Pentagon spokesman said that Delacroix's cause of death--sniper fire while attempting to save an injured Iraqi boy--will be changed to AIDS in the official record.

I stopped reading The Onion years ago, because the world went insane beyond satire.

(via Ezra Klein at The American Prospect)

For those three people reading this site on their iPhones:

And for the one person reading my Doctor Who fan fiction:

They should show up automatically on your iPhones.

Good writing advice from Aristotle, in his Poetics:

Fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means; but they may also result from the inner structure of the piece, which is the better way, and indicates a superior poet. For the plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes place. This is the impression we should receive from hearing the story of Oedipus. But to produce this effect by the mere spectacle is a less artistic method, and dependent on extraneous aids. Those who employ spectacular means to create a sense not of the terrible but only of the monstrous, are strangers to the purpose of Tragedy; for we must not demand of Tragedy any and every kind of pleasure, but only that which is proper to it.

I think I have found the greatest thread in the history of the Internet. It's such a perfect soup of geekiness that I half suspect it's all invented. Whether it's real or not, it reaches a pinnacle that I think we've all been striving for since about 1997. It's like a "Nine Billion Names of God" thing: now that this thread has been achieved, there is nothing else left for the universe to accomplish.

It starts with a blog posting by SF author Charlie Stross -- who is a fantastically inventive writer, by the way. He writes: