A proposal to socialize the legal profession:

Whereas it is unconscionable that Citizens granted financial privilege by Society enjoy more expansive access to legal representation than those of lower station;

Whereas a single malignant prosecution may cast a well-lived and productive life into ruin;

Whereas the noble career of navigating legal waters has suffered damage of reputation by those seeking profit rather than the greater Good;

Whereas Citizens of and visitors to this Country are entitled to equal representation under the Law, such guarantees not being subject to the tides of fortune and circumstance but to the currents of Fairness and Justice;

The above being true and evident, we hold that the Profession of Practicing Law shall not be subverted by profiteers, and that its services not be reserved to the wealthy but instead made available to our Citizens and other eligible parties; this mandate necessitating that such services be provided by agents of the Government of the Country and not entrusted to private enterprises.

Our honorable brethren of this Profession and their guilds and unions will undoubtedly ally themselves with these ends, they appreciating the fairness of dispensation of service and financial stability granted and guaranteed by such arrangements. To those of baser motivations who would see the Rights of the People as means to personal gain and not the worthy goal of our Society, we say this: the time has come to sacrifice in the name of Justice, and the People shall have what is theirs by Right.

I read a nice newspaper story a while ago about Abe's Detailing in Norfolk, NE. When I wanted to have Jen's minivan detailed as a present, I thought I'd give Abe's a try and made an appointment for the $45.99 "express detail". When we picked it up later, the van looked nice, but they wanted to charge us for the $159.99 "presidential detail" that they performed instead.

I told the employee that I'd ordered the cheaper package. He said I must have talked to his brother and that his brother wrote it down wrong, and still wanted me to pay the full price for the wrong job.

I will never darken the doorsteps of Abe's Detailing in Norfolk again. If you choose to do so, I highly recommend you get a written estimate in advance.

Tom Cruise's new likely flop, "Valkyrie", is now scheduled for release on December 25. I was just thinking the other day that nothing says "Christmas" like a feel-good movie about Nazis.

While waiting for Jen to return from a conference, I thought about calling her to get her estimated time of arrival, or her ETA. I realized she might be might be pretty far away still and thought I better ask for an estimate of the accuracy of the estimate, or meta-estimate: her META. Hey, neat! META can be a recursive acronym for "meta-ETA", so it also references the nature of the acronym itself, sort of making META a meta-acronym, which truly makes it both meta and META.

There is a new time management application for BlackBerry phones called FCmobilelife. Just as a warning, potential users should know that FCmobilelife was written by SCO, a bankrupt company famous for suing AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler, customers who were moving away from SCO's software to something else.

Now, I won't directly tell anyone to avoid FCmobilelife, mainly because I think SCO is a collective of lawsuit-happy cretins and I don't want them coming after me, but would urge users to be extremely careful about building business relationships with its developers.

As of mid-August, I can't watch the local ABC affiliate TV channel over my satellite dish because they tried to jack up the rates they charge Dish Network for carrying their channel. Never mind that their advertisers pay them by the number of viewers, regardless of whether that's by antenna, cable, or satellite. Dish Network could almost get away with asking KCAU to pay them for the task of handling all the transmission details. Anyway, here's a letter I wrote to KCAU's president:

This is kind of a hard review to write. Short take on the music: it's brilliant. If you like Irish folk or punk, you'll like "The Meanest of Times". However, I just can't get past the awful recording quality, and by awful, I mean truly, utterly terrible.

As though the music industry didn't have enough problems to deal with, such as the string of lawsuits against its customers, the major labels have been busy with something called the "loudness war". The thinking is that the louder music is played, the better most people will think it sounds. In an effort to make their CDs sounds better than their competitors', the companies are recording music as loudly as possible. There's nothing inherently bad about turning up the volume, but they try to squeeze out a few extra decibels by smoothing out the sound so that even the quietest sounds can blow out your speakers.

In Nebraska, petitioners are gathering signatures for a ballot initiative that would remove all gender and race consideration from government hiring. This is a fairly polarizing issue and emotions run pretty high on both sides.

This morning I heard a radio ad attacking the petition, not because it was a bad idea or unjust or for any other debatable reason, but because the petition circulators might be convicted murderers. The ad said that if you sign, then you might be subject to identity theft, robbery, or worse.

Really. They said that. Never mind that all of the information you'd put on a petition is available in the phone book, or to anyone you've ever written a check to or used a credit card with.

Hi! You're the guy who sat behind me at my 8-year-old daughter's teeball practice. I thought you'd want to know that you were talking loudly enough for everyone to hear you, including the coaches. I mean, we could all tell that's why you were bitching so loudly the whole time, and I figured you'd be happy that you were heard.

Now, I'm sure you're an expert in the game. You definitely sounded like it from 30 feet away! Still, I thought perhaps you might appreciate a few clarifications:

There are few joys in life like using something that is the perfect expression of its intent. Each trade has its representative tools, and their common trait is quality, even if it's not obvious to the casual observer, and often counterintuitive. The best tools in a category are almost always the least flashy, and rarely the ones a new practitioner would choose.

A man calls into a radio show because his son received an obviously-spam email telling him that he's been kicked off of Facebook. The host gets worked up and sympathetic and wants to handle it like a legitimate eviction notice, even though no one's verified whether the kid can still log into his account.

Another man calls a radio show because his business stores a lot of personal information about its customers, and he wants to know what he should do to keep that data safe. The host tells him to install Norton Internet Security.

What do they have in common? They made the mistake of asking Kim Komando for help.

In Nebraska's May 13 election, two Green Party candidates ran for Douglas County Commissioner, District 3. Between them, they received one vote. How stoned do you have to be before you forget to vote for yourself?

At least neither can accuse the other of splitting the election.

I'm voting for Sue Fuchtman for mayor of Norfolk. I know her personally, and she's the sort of intelligent, decent, detail-oriented person we should have making city decisions. The other candidates might be alright, but I'd rather see someone elected that I'm genuinely excited to have in office.

Vote for Sue. I will.

I just saw a commercial for "Kinoki" foot pads that supposedly suck poisons out of your body through the soles of your feet. This is the dumbest, most scientifically impossible thing I've heard in a long time - and that's saying a lot. I mean, honestly. Asbestos from your feet?

In short, these are an outright hoax. I normally try to phrase things like that pretty carefully, but there's no need here. To repeat: Kinoki foot pads are a hoax. If you really want to remove the toxins from your body, use the bathroom.

Scott Adams, creator of "Dilbert", recently ran a series of cartoons comparing office politics with the Easter story. While many people thought they were funny, others found it offensive. In fact, given how close those strips ran to the actual Easter, I suppose a lot of people were very offended indeed. Adams's own blog claimed that he'd received several letters of complaint.

I'd like to point out something to our Muslim extremist neighbors, though. A cartoonist offended many Christians with drawings of a satirical Jesus just before arguably the most import holiday in Christianity, and yet there have been no reported threats against him. None. Some of us laughed, some of us got angry, but no one condemned him to death. This is how civilization works, and you'd do well to observe and learn from it.