Who Were the Sea Peoples?

The other day I casually mentioned to friends at Anti-State.com that "I wouldn't trust Wikipedia to tell me my own name"... so naturally one of those clever rascals decided to make an entry for me. While this may just seem like another one of my whims, I just don't have any reason to believe in the validity of any information there. Absolutely none. Also, I've heard people mention that they have "corrected" information there only to have it "uncorrected" back to the original error. Which doesn't at all mean the service isn't unusable, just too flawed for me to count on. Even my buddy purposefully added a fact error for comedy's sake. (I really am not a hawt azn chick.) Not to mention that the entry was a simple gag in the first place. Then I noticed the entry was slated for deletion and I discovered a discusson page where people "vote" whether the entry should get the axe. What a hoot! At first I was incensed that th...

I realize it's cliched, but man those credit card companies can be sneaky!  The latest scam:  I got a letter from Providian offering me 0% APR on balance transfers with no fee.  So naturally I applied for this, and tried to transfer some big booyah from one of my higher APR cards. When I get back from vacation, I have a notice saying something like, "Congratulations!  Your new Providian card will be arriving shortly.  Your transferred balances will have the low low rate of 9.9% APR, and because you transferred balances with us, you are eligible for our special 0% APR on purchases for 6 months." Now, I assure you that I get tons of promotional offers from credit card companies, and I only apply for the ones that offer 0% on balance transfers.  The reason I picked Providian's is that they also had no one-time fee for signing up.  True, I didn't save their original letter, so I don't know if they outright lied.  But they certainly wrote an inte...

Today, I made my semiannual pilgrimage to the department store to buy new brassieres. I arrived to discover that a large proportion of bras this season are of the Wonderbra brand variety: The kind that give a lady the ample bosom that nature did not intend. The original Wonderbra was there but nearly every other brand is featuring a bra that provides an extra letter of womanly goodness. It seemed to run about 70% super-padded. The remaining 30% appeared to be made up of the ultra-sheer variety or the minimizer bras which do exactly what they claim to do. It seemed that nearly all bras featured at eye level were designed to amplify or reduce a woman's breast. Forget about truth in advertising this season, fellas. Which kind did I get? I'm not telling!

Well, it seems I've lost out on the chance to hold a seat in the Duma representing Moldavia, and perhaps will be expelled from the Party completely, as a result of the events of last Saturday night.   More to come.

The state of Florida recently sent out an $1800 Assessment Fee notice to all licensed talent agents. The reason behind the hefty fee is that the state needs it "to cover the costs of regulation". Apparently, there are so few agents that the mere Biennial License Renewal Fee ($405) is not enough to cover the costs of licensing the agents. To add insult to injury during the 2004 Legislative session, a bill was introduced to eliminate the licensing requirement. If it had passed the agents would not have to worry about the fee. Now, since this will cause many agents to close shop are they going to have to send out a second another assessment to cover the costs of agents who quit? Or, are they going to charge those that quit an $1800 "Quitter's Fee"?

I recently ran across an interesting list of the top 100 albums of the 1970s . It prompted me to think about my own pop favorites. As a result, I offer an albun list of my own -- a dozen or so, not one hundred, and from any decade, not just the 70s. My list may be missing one of my favorites right now, simply because the album didn't occur to me. And, I must admit, my knowledge pop before the 1960s and after about 1990 is scant. But hey, it's my list. I haven't commented on some of the albums named below as much as I'd like to do -- on a couple I haven't commented at all -- and I intend to add more remarks. But here is what I have so far: Stop Making Sense , The Talking Heads I knew nothing about The Talking Heads when I went to see Prince's film Purple Rain . The movie Stop Making Sense happened to be showing with it. I immediately fell in love with the band. I actually prefer the film to the album, both because of how entertaining David Byrne is on ...

When I was 18, I was a lifeguard at a beach in Norwalk, CT. One cloudy day, when no one was in the water, my friend and I stood on the porch of the guard shack chatting. Two middle-aged men walked up a sidewalk that passed in front of the shack. As they came within earshot, we heard one of them say, "First there was Rod McKuen , then there was me, then there was Spiro Agnew ." Then they were out of earshot again. To this day, I can't imagine what the context of the remark could have been. Not only were McKuen, this fellow, and Agnew in some group together, the group even had a sequence to it -- first McKuen, then him, then Agnew. Any suggestions?