Live from Austin!

From: Joe Biden
To: Barack Obama
Subject: Changes to your positions on key issues

I’ve been taking a look at your web site. There are some changes you need to make if we’re ever going to win this thing.

• Get rid of as many mentions of science as you can. That stuff scares the right-wing Christians.
• Remove the paragraph about surveillance being conducted under the rule of law. It just looks embarrassing after your FISA vote.
• Get rid of the stuff about providing opportunities for minorities to own TV and radio stations, or you’ll never get an interview on FOX.
• Remove the talk of parental controls and filtering tools. Parents don’t want to be responsible for their children’s upbringing.
• Get rid of the stuff about open government. A live feed of our meetings where we make important decisions? Are you nuts?
• Get rid of the stuff about redefining broadband to be over 200kbps. The telecoms industry doesn’t want to roll out the fiber we paid them for.
• Get rid of the paragraph about community use of the wireless spectrum, or the corporate radio stations will bury you.
• Pull all the stuff about immigration reform. Immigrants can’t vote.
• Remove the stuff about better enforcement of antitrust law.

Thanks in advance for your speedy compliance.

Joe

Ten books on my bookshelf which almost certainly aren’t on yours.

1. "Threaded Interpretive Languages" by Loeliger. Describes how to build FORTH systems. Published by Byte back when FORTH was mainstream. (Why, yes, I am that old.)
2. A.R.T.H.U.R. by Lawrence Lerner. Poetry from an imaginary AI. Much better than RACTER.
3. "The Third Word War: Apostrophe Theory" by Ian Lee. Starts off as a catalog of grocers’ apostropes, mutates into a collection of photographic meta-references and arch puns.
4. "Fortran 5" by Simon Leonard. Three surreal stories by one of the guys behind the bands I Start Counting, Fortran 5, and Komputer.
5. "RCL20". A celebration of 20 years of the Handheld and Portable Computer Club. Contains the story behind the design of a number of classic HP RPN calculators. Gift of the editor.
6. "Zenarchy" by Kerry W. Thornley. One of the authors of Principia Discordia; neopagan, libertarian, friend of Lee Harvey Oswald and allegedly part of the conspiracy to assassinate JFK. This book is his often-overlooked approach to Zen Buddhism. Copies seem to be going for $95 and up on Amazon, but I’m keeping mine.
7. "Zen Without Zen Masters" by Camden Benares. Continues the non-mainstream Western approach to Zen theme. Apparently the author was a friend of Kip Thornley. Like Zenarchy, this book is frequently hilarious, and shouldn’t a true religion be funny?
8. "Think Tank" by Roger Langley. "The Prisoner" fan fiction.
9. "Nineteen Ninety-Four". Novelization of the radio series. Think "1984 meets the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy".
10. "Bad Shave: The Story of Baby Bird So Far". Compilation of articles about lo-fi pop god Stephen Jones, aka Baby Bird, aka Babybird (the band).

Previous entries, withdrawn because they are insufficiently rare:

1. "Twitching and Shattered" by Frank Key. The gentleman is an acquired taste, and this is a taste I acquired back in 1990 or so. His books for children, such as "Derek the Dust Particle", are truly inspired, and recommended if you want your children to grow up to be like me.
2. "Beat Your Relatives To A Bloody Pulp" by Maxim Décharné. A Narrative Concerning the Proper Chastisement of Personages Without Whom &c &c.
3. "Literary Machines" by Ted Nelson. Describes the design of the Xanadu system. Self-published by Ted.
4. Bob Black, "Friendly Fire". Compilation of articles by everyone’s favorite anarchist.