Today I saw (in Berkeley, natch) one of the new VW Bugs painted like one of the old VW Bugs, with rainbows and hearts and such.

Speaking of returns to the old ways, the Empire State Building is now once again the tallest building in NY, which is as it should be. Some of us never took too well to the sacrilege of the World Trade Center.

Speaking of which, the Empire State Building was briefly evacuated today after a bomb-sniffing dog made a mistake. Thrown off by the lingering giant-monkey smell, no doubt.

There was a story I heard this morning and then never heard again, which I assume means it was a fake, but feel free to correct me on this: one of the survivors of the World Trade Center was said to have been on the 82nd story when it collapsed, and sort of rode the collapse down.

As incredibly unlikely as that was, the tv people just put it out there, and there's been a lot of that. The thing I said yesterday about the flights to California having been chosen because they would have more explosive fuel, as obvious as that was, nobody on tv said it during all the time I watched. Another thing they were told and just repeated endlessly was how well organized and coordinated this was. Uh huh, once they were all trained and ready, they demonstrated this coordination by buying tickets for flights that took off within a few minutes of each other, and their organization by all showing up on time for their flights. Big freaking deal. And another: the FBI claims to have evidence that the Pennsylvania plane was targetted at the White House--and Air Force One. What was it supposed to do to Air Force One, which was presumably in Florida and is impossible to hit at the same time as the White House, since it rarely parks in the back yard, or even in the garage.

In the future, first class passengers will no longer be given steak knives. I like to picture a bunch of fat white businessmen eating steak with their hands.

While I was on the phone, I could see that Congress was in session at nearly 1 in the morning, and voting on something. It turned out to be a resolution against terrorist attacks on the US. Sorry I missed that debate. If you're wondering, I won't leave you in suspense: nobody voted against it.

Congress is so desperate to act as if it has a role in this that members are talking about declaring war. Against what or whom, they do not know or care.

Some favorite quotes from the front page of this morning's NY Times. From a guy at an Internet firm in the World Trade Center: "I'm a combat veteran. Vietnam, and I never saw anything like this." No shit, I'm guessing that's because there were relatively few 110-story buildings in the rice paddies?

And from Bush's speech: "These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat, but they have failed." Wasn't that Bush's campaign slogan, "Chaos and Retreat."

Personally I think this was all a plot by Gary Condit to get the media off his back. That's the corollary to the theory that Robert Blake killed Chandra Levy to get the media off his back.

The Latin Grammies were cancelled. Damn you terrorists to hell!!!! Now we'll never know what Jennifer Lopez was going to not wear. Also, Texas postponed an execution. No sense of irony, the Texans.