The old Victorian homes that dot Providence and other New England communities convey the beauty and worksmanship of a bygone age. (As James Howard Kunstler has observed, there's no small irony in how when this country was less prosperous before WWII, the homes and public buildings were far more durable and aesthetically pleasing than those made following the boom years.)

Anyway, the emerging subculture of Steampunk weds Victorian ingenuity with contemporary uses while rebelling against streamlined design and the Wal-Martification of American culture. Sharon Steel writes all about it in this week's Phoenix:

The All-in-One Victorian PC is the perfect little black dress of computer modifications. It’s classic and timeless, but has a modern edge that makes it impossible to escape wolf whistles and elevator eyes. Like any good designer, Jake von Slatt knew he had to start with strong raw material. He purchased a 24-inch flat-panel Soyo monitor from OfficeMax for $299, and fabricated a shell to hide the rest of the computer — including a Pentium IV motherboard, disk drives, and a 350-watt PSU — behind and inside of it. Most DIY-ers, even some hardcore tech-geeks, would have stopped there, but von Slatt had barely begun.

He poked around his town dump until he found a knick-knack rack that reminded him of a Victorian-era stage set. Framing the monitor with the rack lent it the air of an antique pixel picture frame. Then, he added aluminum and pop rivets, followed by two long pieces of angle iron as “curtains,” to give the monitor-stage a trump l’oeil effect. Gold-painted flower scrollwork arches across the top like a crown, and tiny brass feet — miniaturized versions of the ones you’d see on a vintage bathtub — prop the utilitarian objet d’art a few centimeters off the table. A tightly coiled wire leads to an elegant, fully functional keyboard, the keys of which have been taken from a 1955 Royal Portable typewriter. The completed PC is a sexy, ebony-lacquered beauty trimmed in high-polished brass accents. Von Slatt, who is wearing a bowling shirt and a formal top hat, watches me admire his work with an affable smile. He looks, for all the world, like a man caught between two centuries. For that matter, so does his computer.

Up close, the PC is a tactile wonder, far more extravagant than the pictures I and thousands of others — it had been featured on Boing Boing, Engadget, and digg.com — had gawked at online. I’m itching to press the typewriter keys and, when von Slatt unleashes the DVD drive with a ping and a flourish, I’m tormented that I don’t have the luxury of loading in a movie, say, The Wizard of Oz, so that I can steer this gothic tech-fantasy to a whole other place. But there’s so much else to stare at in von Slatt’s Littleton, Massachusetts, Steampunk Workshop — itself a big, pleasant jumble of anachronisms — that it becomes difficult to focus on any one thing.

Von Slatt (a pseudonym) recently blogged about his PC on the Web version of his Workshop (steampunkworkshop.com), detailing the process of its construction and the unique modifications he’d included. Given all of this, it’s hardly surprising that he has been lauded as a kind of tinkerer visionary, a man with the mechanical prowess (he’s an IT professional by day) and artistic skills to solder technology with craftsmanship and form a new artisanal DIY movement.

Some years back, when Phillipe + Jorge picked up on a report in the Onion about anti-semiotism at Brown University, some readers failed to get the joke.

Now, as Boston Magazine reports, the Boston Herald has had its own problem with taking things a bit too literally (h/t Romenesko):

[T]he Herald got duped by a satirist.

On Sunday, Andy Borowitz posted an entry on the Huffington Post and his own website that claimed Cheney appeared on Meet the Press, and had challenged Clinton to a day of hunting. It’s a brilliant piece of satire, with some great fake quotes.

“To be frank, Hillary Clinton’s stories about her adventures with guns don’t exactly pass the smell test,” the vice president told host Tim Russert. “If she really wants to show that she knows how to handle a rifle, there’s an easy way to do that: meet me in the woods.”

That quote was picked up in its entirety by our favorite tabloid. Perhaps the piece’s kicker, which the paper also used, should have tipped them off.

But shortly after the vice president issued his challenge, Sen. Clinton seemed to back off from her earlier claims of hunting experience, saying that she had “misspoke” about her hunting exploits as a child.

“I fired a gun once, but I didn’t like it, and I didn’t recoil,” she said.

Clinton couldn’t possibly be that witty. But the, ahem, smoking gun is this—Dick Cheney did not appear on this weekend’s episode of Meet the Press.

“We were bamboozled,” Herald publisher Kevin Convey told Boston Daily. He explained that the item got picked up as straight news in Google, and was folded into unrelated wire reports from the AP, and appeared online and in the print edition.

The Phoenix is back with a new list of the 100 unsexiest men in the universe. Check it out.

Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth Roberts won the ad competition during last Friday's Providence Newspaper Guild Follies, rolling out a witty spoof of how Governor Carcieri's office didn't let her know -- a story first reported here -- that he was leaving the country before what became the December 13 snow debacle.

Don't just take my word for it. Check it out:

Published an anti-establishment polemic last year
LAFFEY: Primary Mistake: How the Washington Republican Establishment Lost Everything in 2006 (and Sabotaged My Senatorial Campaign), published by Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Group.
PALAST: Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans — Sordid Secrets & Strange Tales of a White House GONE WILD, published by Plume, an imprint of Penguin Group.

Rigorous academic credential
LAFFEY: Harvard Business School.
PALAST: University of Chicago.

Special talent
LAFFEY: Best retail political skills this side of Buddy Cianci.
PALAST: Best muckraking skills this side of George Seldes.

Past accomplishments
LAFFEY: Made waves, using his financial-services background, emerging as a self-styled municipal messiah in financially troubled Cranston.
PALAST: Made waves, using his background in investigating corporate fraud, exposing the disenfranchisement of black voters in the 2000 election, among other scoops.

Outsider status
LAFFEY: His book jacket says this about his 2006 US Senate primary fight with Lincoln Chafee and the GOP establishment in Washington: “It was the ultimate David vs. Goliath battle, drawing national attention as ‘the first skirmish in a very important war,’ as Pat Toomey wrote in the Wall Street Journal."
PALAST: His bio says that his exposes “have won him a record six ‘Project Censored’ prizes for reporting the news American media doesn’t want you to hear. ‘The top investigative journalist in the United States is persona non grata in his country’s media’ (Asia Times).”

Pet theory
LAFFEY: The national Republican Party has been taken over by expedient self-preservationists.
PALAST: US foreign policy has been taken over by neo-cons and the oil industry.

Milton friedman connection
LAFFEY: Studied the economist theorist’s 10-part TV program as a youth and named the family black Lab for him.
PALAST: Studied with the economic theorist at the University of Chicago, surreptitiously working with the electrical and steelworkers’ unions.

Eponymous Web site
LAFFEY: Of course.
PALAST: Ditto.

Criticizes boondoggles
LAFFEY: Congressional earmarks; The Bridge to Nowhere.
PALAST: The Virginia-class submarine; The Crusader, a “self-propelled howitzer” created by Lockheed and General Dynamics.
 
Schtick
LAFFEY: Distributed “Laffey Taffy,” while also riding in the “Rhody Reformer” RV, during his 2006 campaign.
PALAST: Distributed a remix, in which the words of Armed Madhouse are set to music, at gregpalast.com/remix/.

Cultural moment
LAFFEY: His work is name-checked by the conservatives who want him to be Rhode Island’s next governor.
PALAST: His work was name-checked by Florida college student Andrew “Don’t Tase me, bro” Meyer.

Just your routine Valentine's Day roundup:

-- Writing in this week's Phoenix, Amy Littlefield describes the making of a sexpert.

-- Daily Dose plays both ends against the middle, sponsoring an anti-Valentine's bash tonight while also reporting on the deleterious impact of the flower industry:

-- There's also "blood chocolate" to be concerned about.

-- Lastly, with apologies to Austin Powers, tech geeks have a story to tell about the approach of the sexbots.

Clinton and Obama would love to land the endorsement of former presidential aspirant Bill Richardson. But maybe that of SNL funnyman Horatio Sanz will do.

Letter of the Week, courtesy of today's ProJo, but WTF?

I have Rhode Island license plate 5588. This license plate has been in my family for 98 years and has been used by three people. It was issued in July 1910 to my grandfather and he drove with it until his death in 1963, at which time my father drove with it until his death, in 1995, and I have driven with it since.

CAROLE S. BOUDREAU

North Kingstown

Writing in the Phoenix, Sharon Steel describes how, in a time of global upheaval, many Americans are turning to Hello Kitty, Lolcats, and Juno, among other elements of what she dubs the cuteness surge. 

“We’ve had manifestations of this cute business, through good times and bad, militaristically,” says Robert Thompson, a professor of television and pop-culture at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School. “We’re living in dangerous times. There’s a fear of terrorism and a war we have no idea how to manage. That’s going to bleed over into lots of different things.” These “cycles of cute,” as Thompson calls them, might transcend the news, though they tend to hint at the gloominess that’s ever-present, regardless of what’s on Page One. 

If there is anything cuter than a photo of a snuggly kitten, it is a photo of a snuggly kitten festooned with intentionally misspelled cutesy text. After sparking an Interweb sensation in early 2007, icanhascheezburger.com has continued to prove its lasting value in Internet meme paydirt. The site began with the posting of a photo, a single pudgy, glassy-eyed, smirking gray feline with the words “I Can Has Cheezburger?” written above the kitty. It may have been accidental, it may have been part of a grand scheme, but either way it was the loudest salvo yet in the recent cuteness surge.

It also birthed the term “lolcat,” a coinage referring specifically to the combination of kitty photos and the intentionally misspelled baby-talk captions that accompanied them. It hasn’t hit Webster’s yet, but urbandictionary.com has five different entries for “lolcat.” (And 37 entries for “lolz.”) No matter which one you trust most, the “lol” root, clearly, comes from Internet abbreviation-speak for “LOL,” meaning “Laugh Out Loud.” OMG!!! Teh kitteh fren-zee iz makin us lolz!

As professor Thompson indicates, there's nothing new about elements of mass distraction. The late Neil Postman described this, pre-Internet era, in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Now, even sober news organizations like the Associated Press are prioritizing Britney.

And while I enjoy a good goof as much as the next person, when it comes to time-wasting, feline-related stuff on the Internet, give me some micro-kitties, set up on a pool table, playing the Vines.

If you're getting a little tired of Barack and Hillary, check out what Phoenix writers and editors have to say about the unsung merits of the universally loathed. Here are two of my fave items:

Country: France
Hypocrisy is a universally human trait, and nature seems to have endowed the French with more than their fair share of it. But to hold that against the French is, well, unnatural. We don’t expect naturally intense New Yorkers to be laid back, or genetically gracious Southerners to be rude, so why should we expect the know-it-all cheese eaters to be anything but Gallic?

The United States was built on the shoulders of French hypocrisy. It was the blockade of Yorktown by the French fleet that was the key to George Washington’s victory over the British. In fact, King Louis XVI more or less bankrupted his nation to help the American revolutionaries shake off the chains of King George III. While Louis was busy helping our rabble-rousers stick it to the Brits, he was busy suppressing his own homegrown revolutionaries, who — when they got the chance — chopped off Louis’s head. Even a nation of hypocrites has a limit to its tolerance. So next time a tired old fart or an energetic young fogy starts to complain that the US saved the Frogs’ lily pad when we bailed them out during WWII, tell them to relax — and eat some cheese.

To be annoyed by French perversity is an exercise in futility. They do it so well. When France failed to enlist in America’s jihad against terrorism, many — such as Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh — dismissed them as surrender monkeys. Well, the French do wonderful things with bananas. Parisians were, no doubt, mordantly pleased with themselves as the Bushies slipped on their own banana peels. Pass the flambé.

Every nation needs to come to terms with its own particular forms of national shame. And, all things considered, France has let itself off lightly when it comes its shameful record of collaboration with the Nazis. As one wit has said: France is just like Germany, but with better food. But that’s something. Eat up.

—Peter Kadzis

Rock song: “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”, Rod Stewart
Rod Stewart has been a whipping boy for 30 years, derided in the late ’70s for his footloose and fancy-free preening and the parade of blondes and the stomach-pump rumor (google it) and more recently for the Great American Songbooks and his American Idol night. Stewart’s swift and sorry free fall from beloved songsmith (“Maggie May”) and high-spirited carouser with the Faces to sordid sellout was crystallized in this kiss-off from Greil Marcus: “Rarely has a singer had as full and unique a talent as Rod Stewart; rarely has anyone betrayed his talent so completely.” Lester Bangs simply stated: “Rod Stewart now makes music for housewives.”

The real Rod rancor took root when “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” topped the charts for a month in 1979, giving disgruntled fans an even bigger target. But the song (which holds up better than the Rolling Stones’ equally trendy “Miss You”) is a sharp, streamlined, maddeningly hook-laden tale of a shy couple (“She sits alone waiting for suggestions/He’s so nervous, avoiding all the questions”) who surrender to the rhythm but might last beyond a one-night stand (“They wake at dawn cuz all the birds are singing/Two total strangers but that ain’t what they’re thinking”).

And it must be noted that Stewart was inquiring about the presence of sexiness on behalf of his dance-floor denizens. “It was frightening, stirring up so much love and hate at the same time: most of the public loved it; all the critics hated it,” Stewart said in the liner notes for his 1989 box set Storyteller. “I can understand both positions.”

 — Lou Papineau

Kenneth A. Capalbo of South Kingstown, who ran as an independent against US Representative Patrick J. Kennedy in 2006, is the only Rhode Islander on today's Democratic ballot in New Hampshire.

Capalbo's 2006 campaign was, uh, a bit strange. As G. Wayne Miller wrote in the ProJo at the time:

The 63-year-old Capalbo, a retired corrections officer, is spending virtually no money on his bid. He has few scheduled appearances and no pamphlets, no Web site, no corps of volunteers. He doesn’t even live in the 1st District. It is a long-shot candidacy, to be sure.

Never elected to any office, Capalbo hopes to bring attention to America’s foreign policy, which he has opposed for years.

Sitting in the living room of his home one day recently, Capalbo outlined his points of view. He criticizes the war in Iraq and other conflicts. “It’s more than just this war,” he said. “It’s the last war, the next one, the one after that and the one after that.”

Capalbo spoke extemporaneously for a while, but mostly he read from position papers he has written.

“Why are we at war with Iraq?” he read. “Weapons of mass destruction, involvement in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, collaboration with al-Qaida. All proven to be false. Yet, the spin doctors in Washington just keep changing the reason for going to war with Iraq. They talk about World War III. They salivate about going to war with Syria and Iran.

“Of the nine people considered to be most responsible for our war with Iraq, six are Jewish. Is this just a coincidence? Jews represent about 2 percent of the population of America. Their power in Washington far exceeds their numbers. Our foreign policy should be based on what is in America’s long-term best interests, not those of another nation.

“Muslim nations will never accept their world being controlled by the United States. We, the United States, are a threat to Islam, not the reverse.”

Details about Capalbo's presidential camapaign can be found at the Minor Candidate Report.

When it comes to leasing the state Lottery, the Pell Bridge, and possibly other institutions, this was the response, as reported today by Kathy Gregg, from the governor's office:

Speaking for Governor Carcieri earlier this week, his spokesman, Jeff Neal, said: “Selling our future rights to lottery proceeds so we can avoid making tough budget decisions today would be a huge disservice to future generations of Rhode Islanders. That’s exactly what the General Assembly has done several times in recent years with tobacco money, and it has only made Rhode Island’s budget problems worse, not better.”

Yet now is hardly the time for half-measures or conventional and narrow-minded thinking. Rhode Island, with its picaresque political culture, has cultivated a strongly developed national brand, and it's high time to exploit it.

Leasing some of the above-referenced state properties should be just a start. A potential windfall waits in the wings with the sale of corporate naming rights along these lines:

-- The CIA Big Blue Bug. Nothing helps to overcome the adverse publicity of losing torture videotapes like linking oneself with Rhode Island's favorite oversized insect. Projected value: $150 million.

-- The Halliburton Providence DPW. Trying to move past the stain of corporate boondoggles in Iraq? Doing a better job with the Capital City's next piddling three-inch snow storm offers the chance for redemption and accolades from a grateful public. Projected value: $225 million.

-- The Rogaine Squirrel. The current whereabouts of Buddy Cianci's collection of no-longer-in-use hairpieces is a well-kept secret. Yet considering the regenerative qualities of Rhode Island's rascal king, his hair helper has prodigous marketing value in making pitches to the follicly challenged. Projected value: $175 million.

These concepts are just a start. When it comes to the smallest state, despite the best efforts of our public officials, it's clear that we have been selling ourselves short.

*With apologies to Jonathan Swift.  

Taking note of my Rod Driver-Larry David pairing, our friends at the Providence Daily Dose offer some of their own look-alikes. Check this timely pairing:

LAAAAAADY…. just move the car. Speaking of doppelgangers…. when the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency is being run by Jerry Lewis, whaddya expect? A cover story in today’s ProJo about ‘The Storm’ indicates that RIEMA director, Robert Warren, has been canned. Now, how do we fire the thousands of Rhode Island drivers who really bolloxed the whole thing up by pulling into and blocking the goddam intersections?! 

I'm just saying . . .  (with apologies to the late, great Spy magazine).

Hope (our state motto), as it turns out, may be sorely overrated.

Every December, the New York Times Magazine does a special on the Year in Ideas. It's pretty cool, so you might want to check out the whole thing. Anyway, there with the stuff on vegansexuality and smog-eating cement is the finding that hope can be worse than hopelessness (perhaps there's a message here for facing our state budget woes):

People often display a remarkable ability to adapt to adversity, bouncing back to their usual levels of happiness despite extreme hardships. But people don’t always rebound, and scientists have long wondered what factors might account for the difference. In a talk at Harvard in September, a team of researchers suggested that one obstacle to emotional recovery, oddly enough, is hope — the belief that your current hardship is temporary.

From the beginning, the investigators suspected that hope might sometimes be counterproductive: prisoners with life sentences but with the possibility of parole adapt less well to prison life, for example, than prisoners with life sentences without the possibility of parole. But the researchers sought another empirical test. Their choice: Colostomy patients. The research team, led by Peter Ubel, a physician at the University of Michigan, tracked people who had portions of their colons removed or bypassed, such that the patients couldn’t defecate normally. The condition is extremely unpleasant and leads many people to say they’d rather be dead, Ubel reports. But a colostomy isn’t always permanent. Some patients are likely to heal and have their bowels reconnected. Whether your colostomy is permanent depends on your condition, but were it up to the patient to choose, “almost anybody would choose temporary over permanent,” Ubel says.

So it’s surprising that the permanent-colostomy patients ended up happier six months after the operation than the temporary group, whose members were still holding out hope. Patients with a temporary colostomy experienced a significant drop in life satisfaction versus patients in the permanent group.

It might seem strange that patients who are better off objectively were less satisfied with their lives, yet the finding makes sense: “If your condition is temporary,” Ubel explains, “you’re thinking, I can’t wait until I get rid of this.” Ubel says thoughts like these keep you from moving on with your life and focusing on the many good things that remain.

Just another week in the Ocean State:

-- My friend nun-turned-attorney general-turned-talk-show-host and analyst Arlene Violet is making a musical based on her life.

-- A poker enthusiast, for reasons that are not entirely clear, says he bought the rights to Ralph Mollis's 2006 campaign Web site.

-- Uber-capitalist and conservative strategist Grover Norquist will make the scene Wednesday at an Olneyville restaurant partially inspired by the Cuban Revolution. The Rhode Island Young Democrats will be there a day later.

-- The Phoenix's own Rudy Cheeks, clad in imposing fake sideburns and 19th-century garb, impersonated Martin Van Buren at the Providence Athenaeum last Wednesday. The highlight came when Ted Widmer, rocker-turned-Clinton speechwriter-turned brainy academic and biographer, played guitar while Cheeks sang Van Buren-inspired verse to the tune of Michael Jackson's "Beat It":

Who with a Sophist's subtle art,

Could act the politician's part,

And either party did thwart?

Van Buren, Van Buren.

 

When Madison for war declar'd,

And foreign tyrants bravely dar'd

Against him who was loudest heard?

Van Buren, Van Buren.

As the MILF becomes an increasing popular adult film character, and as Elizabeth Kucinich quickens the heart rate of romantically challenged political nerds everywhere, the Daily Show recently asked whether America is ready for a FLILF, aka a hot First Lady. 

It must be, as Ari Savitsky reports at the Providence Daily Dose, if even Kenneth A. Capalbo of Wakefield can run for president.

Capalbo was one of the challengers last year against US Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, and by the contrast he offered to Kennedy during an RI-PBS debate, he made Patrick more closely resemble the second coming of Winston Churchill:

A retired corrections officer, Capalbo, 64, made opposition to the Iraq war the centerpiece of the congressional bid. He claimed the attack against Iraq was the long-held goal of Zionist Jews who have too much control over American foreign policy. Capalbo got 7.6 percent of the vote in that election.

Yesterday's ProJo story about an artist who, with his friends, created a secret apartment in the Providence Place Mall was one of the best flat-out fascinating human-interest pieces that we've seen in Rhode Island in a long time.

Further kudos to the Journal for giving this tale the appropriate multimedia treatment with a series of links, including a map of the apartment, the artists' Web site, Yoto's Web site on "Malllife," comment space for reader reaction, and more.

About 57 percent of respondents on the ProJo online survey say that living at the mall was not art. Dan Yorke offered a somewhat dismissive reaction yesterday. When one caller observed that the artist and his friends resembled possibly both leeches on the land and the personification of the independent American spirit, Yorke sided solely with the former view.

Other reactions have been more enthusiastic:

Scott Duhamel:

Hats off to Michael Townsend. Four years of living, building, and interacting in a forgotten space in the Providence Place Mall, a grandly subversive bit of art from this so-called “public artist” in a room without a view, it was undeniably the kind of local news story guaranteed to make your day, maybe even your week. I can say without a trace of sarcasm or irony that this was indeed the kind of art (whether classified as public, performance, temporary, an installation, etc.) that was keen, provocative, and yup, humorous. When caught, Townsend went down for the count appropriately, offering up a possibly sincere mea culpa, resisting the predictable prank-in-yer-face antics or MIT-styled faux revolutionary crapola. Give the man credit for a sublimely conceived and consummately executed vision, and give him a nod for the all too infrequent ability of conveying a sense of aesthetics to those of us out here sweating our way through our daily middle class machinations.

Bob Kerr:

Providence Place, of course, had a wonderful opportunity here. The retail mecca had an artist-in-residence program and didn’t even know it.

When mall security uncovered the creative outpost beneath the I-beam, it uncovered a public relations windfall that might have been celebrated on a huge banner hung from the third level and declaring there was something unique about Providence Place. Mall officials could have had some fun with this whimsical find in an unexpected place. It could have gone with the moment.

But the opportunity has apparently been lost. There will be no mall packages offering a movie, an overflowing feed at The Cheesecake Factory and a visit to a living work of art in a parking garage.

A mall spokesman called the nearby apartment illegal and irresponsible. He said the mall felt “violated.” He really did.

It’s surprising to discover that Providence Place can be so sensitive.

The apartment has been closed down. Minor criminal trespassing charges were even brought.

But when the story broke yesterday, it was a good story that made people smile, laugh and offer tributes to the determined genius of settling down in a parking garage.

There was an instant appreciation for putting something so unpredictable in the heart of a very predictable place.

It wasn’t a violation. It was a celebration.

Townsend, meanwhile, remains polite and appreciative:

Thank You:

Thank you mall.  I have grown exponentially from having this opportunity and it has been a major and most valuable part of my life and imagination.  In the future I hope to share some of my experiences and observations with a wider audience and can only say that living in the mall is great.  I am saddened that I am not allowed to ever return to the mall again, but I understand.  The mall made me think very carefully about what we buy.

Apologies:

First and foremost I extend my most sincere apologies to the fine folks at General Growth Properties and specifically to the security staff at the Providence Place Mall.  I have always firmly believed that you do an incredible job and have remained professional and consistent.  This apartment was never designed in any way-shape-or-form to undermine the great work that you do. I recognize that it exists far outside the spectrum of expectation and as such - no fair, discriminatory, or level headed staff person would have expected something like this to occur.  It is important to me that you know that I have a great deal of respect for the work you do and I am very sorry that I wasted some of your valuable time today.  This project is in no way a critique on security or what defines safety in contemporary society.

In addition, my thanks goes out to the Providence Police Department for being a model of civility, fairness, good humor and professionalism.  Again, I am embarrassed that I chewed up so much of your time in the steps necessary to help assess what transpired.  I genuinely appreciate the honest and straight-forward candor of all those I have met and want you to know that I really admire the manner in which you have handled this peculiar case.

If you have any questions I can try to answer them:

trummerkind@gmail.com

Some frequently asked questions:

Yes, I have done other secret installations: The Tunnel.

Yes, our group has undertaken other massive projects: www.tapeart.com/hope

No, I am not homeless. Yes, I have a job. www.tapeart.com

The takeaway of the local coverage this week of the latest Texas Transportation Institute traffic analysis was that we're a lot better off than congested-clogged places like Los Angeles. Such conclusions, while accurate, distract attention from a steadily growing amount of local traffic.

Critical Mass offers one approach of challenging cars.

Tomorrow, some creatively park-minded local activists will take over a bit of downtown Providence, as part of National Park(ing) Day. Art parks will form from 11 am to 2 pm, or thereabouts.

-- The story about the RI State Police, the state DOT, and the distribution of adult-themed e-mails -- although overplayed on the front of today's ProJo -- was made for the Follies. Like we in the news business say, Rhode Island is the gift that keeps giving.

-- I agree with those who call it a mistake to include North Providence public safety personnel in that community's 9/11 Memorial. As Justin writes at Anchor Rising,

In what sort of environment could anyone possibly find it acceptable to place the faces of two local (and living!) officials on a monument to others who died heroically in a distant city?

-- Andrew Meyer, the Florida student who got Tasered during a John Kerry speech in Florida, although perhaps annoying and self-centered, deserved a lot better. Dan Kennedy has a good take:

It's kind of astounding to hear Kerry droning on while the student, Andrew Meyer, is screaming from the electric shocks.

Meyer was being an obnoxious jerk, but I didn't realize that was a criminal offense. As for Kerry — wow, talk about clueless.

Study Sees Rise in Men Not Washing Hands

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE – 12 hours ago

CHICAGO (AP) — The gender gap has widened when it comes to hygiene, according to the latest stakeout by the "hand washing police." One-third of men didn't bother to wash after using the bathroom, compared with 12 percent of women, said the researchers who spy on people in public restrooms. They reported their latest findings Monday at a meeting of infectious disease scientists.

Two years ago, the last time the survey was done, only one-quarter of men didn't wash, compared with 10 percent of women.

"Guys need to step up to the sink," said Brian Sansoni, spokesman for the Soap and Detergent Association, which co-sponsors the survey and related education campaigns.

The latest study was based on observations last month of more than 6,000 people in four big cities.