Milla Jovovich loves guns. It’ll be interesting to see how Hollywood reacts to this.

I guess those Eastern European Slavs know which way the wind blows when it comes to gun control.

George Will’s commentary on This Week was Yet Another Rail against farm subsidies. I’m glad that he’s willing to keep tilting at that windmill, but I found it amusing that he was too polite to mention Sam Donaldson’s ongoing mohair payments.

Mark Steyn is once again a lonely but articulate voice in a call for common sense in airline security (and our utterly unjustified trust in big government since September 11). Where is everyone else in the punditocracy?

Brian has been missing in action for several days. Stephanie is first worried, then angry, as he pays no attention to her, and instead hobnobs in Europe with his friends at their “la de da” web sites and blows kisses at Ms. Berlitz.

Will Brian’s jeep start? Will his hamsters be found lying in the shredded newspaper, their rodentary ribs showing, upon his return? Will they instead turn on each other, like a dinner party with Alferd Packer and Jeffrey Dahmer at the Donner’s?

Will Stephanie ever forgive? Will she instead attempt to seduce the noble and ever-faithful Instantman in his Kentucky trailer?

More to the point, has Brian decided to kill off the Stephanie Dupont character?

Find out next week, on “As The ‘Ain’t’ No Bad Dude’ World Turns…”

Brian has been missing in action for several days. Stephanie is first worried, then angry, as he pays no attention to her, and instead hobnobs in Europe with his friends at their “la de da” web sites and blows kisses at Ms. Berlitz.

Will Brian’s jeep start? Will his hamsters be found lying in the shredded newspaper, their rodentary ribs showing, upon his return? Will they instead turn on each other, like a dinner party with Alferd Packer and Jeffrey Dahmer at the Donner’s?

Will Stephanie ever forgive? Will she instead attempt to seduce the noble and ever-faithful Instantman in his Kentucky trailer?

More to the point, has Brian decided to kill off the Stephanie Dupont character?

Find out next week, on “As The ‘Ain’t’ No Bad Dude’ World Turns…”

Brian has been missing in action for several days. Stephanie is first worried, then angry, as he pays no attention to her, and instead hobnobs in Europe with his friends at their “la de da” web sites and blows kisses at Ms. Berlitz.

Will Brian’s jeep start? Will his hamsters be found lying in the shredded newspaper, their rodentary ribs showing, upon his return? Will they instead turn on each other, like a dinner party with Alferd Packer and Jeffrey Dahmer at the Donner’s?

Will Stephanie ever forgive? Will she instead attempt to seduce the noble and ever-faithful Instantman in his Kentucky trailer?

More to the point, has Brian decided to kill off the Stephanie Dupont character?

Find out next week, on “As The ‘Ain’t’ No Bad Dude’ World Turns…”

Patricia was home for the weekend from Reno, and we went for a walk on the strand in Manhattan Beach to watch the sun sink beneath the Pacific. As we passed the pier, heading north, I saw a vertical arrow of white smoke, its head a ball of fire rising upward from the mountains above Malibu.

I pointed it out to her. “There’s a launch out of Vandenberg.”

We watched as it continued to move upward, and then curved over, compelled by gravity, as it headed south. The stage flickered out, and a second one ignited.

A couple minutes later, and it disappeared, its propellant expended, its fire extinguished, and its body invisible from the distance of hundreds of miles.

I told her it was probably a Minuteman, perhaps to launch a target thousands of miles southwest, to the lonely atoll of Kwajalein in the South Pacific. In the war, it suffered what was probably the most dense and intensive bombardment in history–thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of pounds of explosives, on a tiny lump of coral, to ferret out or destroy Japanese soldiers dug into it like ants in a hill. Now, it is the launch base to test the weapons that may allow us to knock down smites from our new enemies.

The smoke trail was twirled on the fingers of the jet stream. It was dark on the ground, but the rocket exhaust was dancing in the dying sunlight, lighting the night sky in a sun-drenched kaleidescope of swirling vapor and chemical fumes. It was a beauty both natural and artificial, and we were glad that we decided to take a walk on the beach that night.

When I got home, and heard that the most recent missile test was successful, I was most pleased to hear that my surmise was correct.

Megan McArdle has a new logo that’s definitely worth a look. Worthy of one of Lileks’ collections.

Jeff Jarvis laments the fact that there are no pictures of the party at Gene Volokh’s house the other night. Me, too.

I took Patricia’s Olympus 3030, but somehow both of the SmartMedia (TM) disks with me had become unformatted, and I didn’t have a manual with me to figure out how to sort it out in real time. C’est la vie.

Better luck next time. Are there any from the Northern California party?

“Nothing could be further from the truth.”

In addition to becoming a hackneyed cliche (a phrase which itself is a “hackneyed cliche”), this sentence doesn’t parse, at least to me. What does it mean?

Does it mean that it’s possible for nothing to be further from the truth than for something to be? It reminds me of the old proof that a ham sandwich is better than eternal bliss.

Premise 1: Nothing is better than eternal bliss.
Premise 2: A ham sandwich is better than nothing.
Therefore: A ham sandwich is better than eternal bliss. QED

I hereby declare unconditional war on this cliche.

“Make no mistake about it…”

That last one actually does makes sense, but I also want to stomp it out anyway because it’s so overused, especially in Washington.

I’m figuring that if we can fully eradicate both phrases, most politicians will be struck dumb(er).