What we have here is a color-coded map, courtesy of MSNBC.com, that reflects where respondents to their survey place blame for the U.S. economic meltdown. In the turquoise-shaded states, majority blame goes to “All of the Above”:  Wall Street, the Bush Administration, Congress, and Homeowner. In all those mustard-colored states, the majority of respondents pin the blame solely on the Bush Administration.

Let’s take a moment to note some of those states: Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indiana, North Dakota, South Carolina, North Carolina.

While admittedly this probably isn’t a representative survey of voters in general, sentiments like this have to provide further tailwind behind Barack Obama. Don’t they? Or is Christopher Hitchens right in calling him the new Dukakis (“vapid, hesitant, and gutless”)?

REQUEST FOR URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

From: Minister of the Treasury Paulson

Subject: REQUEST FOR URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship
with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country
has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of
800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it
would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my
replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you
may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation
movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need
the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these
funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly
under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for
a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the
funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund
account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to
wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission
for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will
respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used
to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully
Minister of Treasury Paulson

This suit helps him deal with any pressing emergency.

(Thanks to Larry Nemecek for sending this in.)

Trust me. You’ll be glad you looked at these.

Here’s a preview:

After exposure to radiation it is important to consider that you may have mutated to gigantic dimensions: watch your head.

Fifteen years after his death, Frank Zappa is undergoing a renaissance. Son Dweezil and band are touring the nation as Zappa Plays Zappa, and Zappa’s rock opera “Joe’s Garage” is receiving its stage premiere, a mere 29 years after the albums’ release. Yes, albums. Act 1 was released as a single LP, shortly followed by Acts 2 and 3 in a two-record set. I bought both (or all) of them when they came out in 1979, for what felt at the time like a healthy chunk of change for a guy still in high school. I haven’t listened to them in years; I remember thinking then that “Joe’s Garage” didn’t have any single song as good as anything on the previous album, “Sheik Yerbouti” (which I still listen to). That said, I have no intention of missing its stage debut, especially because it’s being done at Open Fist, one of my favorite theatres.

While we’re on the subject of Frank Zappa, here’s a piece from today’s LA Times about Zappa’s widow Gail and her efforts to safeguard his legacy. Something I once read that Zappa said about his marriage to her directly led to a play of mine, “Remember Frank Zappa”:  Zappa said the secret to their successful marriage was that they never talked. Hey, whatever works.

Just found this in my spam filter for comments to this blog:

“They could now hear Libby active outside, getting the fire stoked up, heating water, rattling utensils quietly and Don flinched. “Shit Kim, I’ve got work to do, gotta get that fire going, gotta get breakfast ready, that’s my job. Libby normally likes a slow start in the mornin’, else, oh boy, she can be a bit of a grumble bum and we don’t want that, trust me…””Thank you, Chief. Anything else?” I pocketed the communicator.”Can you say a little more about how you were feeling? During the affair, and then after it ended?” Sebastian’s words were gentle, his manner serious but welcoming.”We think he is in Philadelphia. We think he is trying to get to your house.”Kai Espiritu and Abner Espinosa exited the airport terminal. A taxi waited for them as the two Rim-Cat Mercenary Officers entered the cab and told the driver where to go.”

Despite the weakness of the writing, I wondered what this was pulled from. Generally, these snippets found in spam are porn, but this didn’t seem to be. A quick check of Google resulted in this: a “non-erotic” story on a site called Literotica. (The name of the site makes he wonder just how many people reading this are reaching right now for their mouse.) The story above is part of a suite that somehow concerns mercenaries, the KKK, a virgin Arab girl and a gang bang. One doesn’t usually find such a scintillating distillation of melodrama outside Tennessee Williams.

The best U.S. president in my lifetime was President Bartlet. Unfortunately, he was fictional. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have excellent advice for fellow Democrat Barack Obama.

Forty-three years ago this month, a friend of mine got his first writing credit. It was in a comic-book, and it was the weirdest (and possibly best) comic book ever: a sophisticated absurdist comic called “Herbie.” Herbie was a fat little boy who was viewed as worthless by his father, but who was capable of seemingly anything, including flight, magic, communicating with animals, traveling in time, serving as lady’s man to Cleopatra, and dryly solving the world’s problems while slowly sucking a lollipop. Given the theme and the audience it spoke to, I’m surprised this comic was ever canceled.

For the September, 1965 issue, the winners were announced of a contest to plot the latest adventure of Herbie. One of the prizes went to a guy named Marv Wolfman, who later created Blade the Vampire Hunter, most of the New Teen Titans, and many of Superman’s more memorable supporting characters of the past 30 years, who created the newly definitive Lex Luthor (not so much an inventor of easily smashed giant robots, but rather a supremely immoral corporate raider who later becomes president), and who at one time was editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. Marv Wolfman is the guy who came in second. The guy who came in first was my friend Rich Roesberg.

Here is Scott! Shaw’s remembrance of Herbie, and that winning story.

Here’s something from the Times of London that I haven’t see in U.S. media (although I’m sure I just missed it):  background on the “Kenyan witchhunter” who laid hands on Sarah Palin and prayed to God for her gubernatorial election. Don’t snicker:  She won, and she credits him with her victory (with an assist from God).

Also on the same page, note the animated banner on the top, which shows a deranged cartoon George W. Bush riding into the sunset. I take it that, like most Americans, the Brits eagerly await this event.  The cartoon leaves out one salient detail:  the land he’s leaving behind him should look more like a charred ruin.

Chris Wojcieszyn, recalling how excited I was earlier at the prospect of seeing A Flock of Seagulls perform live for the first time in decades, informs me that the band is playing here in LA Friday night and, to quote, Chris, “They are the headline act so maybe they will show up at this one….”

I won’t be there to find out.