So there's two items that kind of disturbed me in today's paper.

1. President Moron is talking about extending death benefits to same-sex partners of "lifesavers" (e.g.: policemen, firemen). Great. I have no problems with that. But I thought that death benefits went to whoever you named on the little form. I've had to fill out those forms at each job I've worked at, and they've never told me "there's people you can't name." I could probably pick some random person living in Peoria out of the phone book and name them my beneficiary if I wanted to. So why the big distinction about allowing them to name their same-sex partners? The big deal would be if he'd finally allow same-sex marriages, so they automatically be entitled to spousal death benefits because there would be a legally binding arrangement in place.

2. WorldCom -- which I own stock in, unfortunately -- suddenly discovered an almost $4 billion accounting error in their books. Analysts are saying if they go under, it'll be the largest bankruptcy ever, even surpassing Enron. Adelphia Communications, the sixth-largest cable company in the country, filed for bankruptcy yesterday after they disclosed that they inflated their subscriber numbers by around 50,000. Everyone seems to be going bust and it all seems related to creative math. You'd think that since they have auditors and accounting companies that they pay millions of dollars to keep track of this sort of thing, they'd be able to keep an accurate tab on things before suddenly -- and very quickly, I might add -- imploding. Don't even get me started on the ethics and morals of the accountants and the companies deliberating lying about these things. Pardon my naïveté and/or morals, but something tells me that in business, you can't make up numbers or eventually it'll catch up to you and you'll end up bankrupting a lot of people along with your company.

My car's in the shop this morning so I have to bike to work today. They seem overly interested in tracking down this small squeaking noise I mentioned, and not interested enough in the fact that I said I wanted them to check out the entire car because she's been idling too low and I just drove across the country so she probably needs a little tune-up.