More than one person has written me and told me that since I've been living in California for a month and a half now, it's pointless for me to keep my blog clock set to Eastern time. Well, it's not that I really wanted to do it, it's a matter of Greymatter not allowing me to do it. So I just tried updating the time to Pacific, and while the label changed to PDT, the time stayed the same. So we'll see if maybe this will at least start a new series of posts with the correct time. Greymatter's fouling up anyways, it won't let me rebuild. I'd install Movable Type and even do a redesign, but I'm not that computer-literate, much as I might seem that way sometimes. Might I remind y'all that the web goddess Candi is responsible for this site going active, and I didn't link her just then because she's on hiatus and told us not to link her.

The Rio de Janeiro tourist board is suing The Simpsons producers for an unfair and "unreal" satire of their city in a recent episode. Apparently, out of everything -- including the fact that Homer was kidnapped by guerrillas in a scenario that didn't appear to be labeled as an uncommon practice there and the country was portrayed as being poverty-stricken -- they really only had issues with the fact that monkeys were running around unchecked in the episode. The tourist board officials feared that the monkeys made Rio look like the middle of a jungle, and that it might hurt their tourism income. Never mind the fact that there's been several outbreaks of dengue fever down there and the fact that people really are kidnapped for ransom, they're worried about the monkeys on a cartoon. Pardon me while I go take a nice dosage of this new drug called "perspective."