Next time some Brit starts giving you a load of "Americans are so crass, and have no taste," and all that rot, give him a load of this story about the UK's first couple: Posh Spice and David Beckham.

She went on: "David and I are working on other things as well. We want to have our own brand. There are so many things that interest us — fashion, makeup. I'm kind of looking at the big picture now and thinking: `Yes, the music's great, the football's great. But this is about the big picture.' There are so many things we can do." Growing more excited, she said, "Because, obviously, you've got the sport, the music, the children, the marriage — there are so many areas you could hit."

First ever blog from work!

My boss just sent this Geek Test around our division, and the speculation here is whether or not it is somehow connected to our company offsite this weekend. Anyhow, I scored: 27.81065% - Total Geek. It could have been much worse...

Had a great weekend with our Chicago friends, Jason & Marla. One of the top coincidences of the weekend was that within an hour of me getting home on Friday, Jason revealed that his agenda for the weekend included Mah Jong -- a game that Anna and I have been desperately trying to learn for about a year now.

Mah Jong -- "bird of a thousand inspirations," is what the game store salesman told us it stood for. Harpy of a thousand mindfucks might be more appropriate, but we spent the better slice of a foggy weekend playing the game around our kitchen table, and by god it was fun.

So the new rule is, if you come to Filbert, you've got to play Mah Jong.

Pung! Kong! Mah Jong, baby!

Though my version can't seem to handle email attachments, I've been using the Mozilla browser for the last year or so. One of the reasons I keep using it is because it uses Bayesian spam filters, which really do seem to work.

Looks like I spoke to soon about guns in Iraq. How ever will they defend their freedom? Someone call the NRA. Quick!

Iraqi citizens will be required to turn over automatic weapons and heavy weapons under a proclamation that allied authorities plan to issue this week, allied officials said today.

The aim of the proclamation is to help stabilize Iraq by confiscating the huge supply of AK-47's, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons that are used by criminal gangs, paramilitary groups and remnants of the Saddam Hussein government.

Listening to Harry Shearer on Le Show yesterday, he pointed out that all those guns lying around in Iraq must have been great for preventing tyranny. It's sort of an NRA utopia, I guess.

Let's hope that Hunter S. Thompson is around to eulogize Regan when he dies, which I'm predicting to somehow coincide with the 2004 election.

It's the weekend. And a stunning weekend at that. San Francisco feels a little closer than usual to that City on a Hill ideal that men like Bill Ralston and Adolph Sutro envisioned 100 years ago: bathed in Saturday morning sunlight, people run stop signs, lattes in hand, and line up for over-priced eggs and scramble to tie on outrageously boards of every imaginable shape and size to their pregnant SUVs.

And these acts do not seem outrageous, and everyone seems content and driven and -- if only for today -- anointed by whatever god they choose to worship. We are all creatures of a different stratum today, and there is even room for contemplation in our City on the Hill.

That's what I'm doing, as I navigate the Cutlass through the stop and go Marina to drop Anna off for some sort of cosmetic appointment -- I've forgotten its exact nature, but I am supremely aware of the fact that no matter what she has pruned or moisturized or even blasted away, it is a holy act.

The top is down and the most delicate sunlight is playing around our leopard skin interior. There is a water bottle beneath Anna's feet going back and forth, bump, bump, like it's impatient to get on with the day ahead. Like the Cutlass's measured rise and fall over the hills of San Francisco is a tease and that satisfaction would only come at 80 miles an hour on the open road, heading straight for the sea.

I drop Anna off and head home, almost hitting a half dozen more caffeinated and distracted drivers, but none of us care, for none of us feels trapped and though some of us may live in sin, and some of us may live above or next door to it, the light and airy potential of a Saturday morning gives us the dignity and the right to live, in tolerance, side by side.

In case you were wondering how expensive and contrived Bush's stage-managing has been, this NY Times story ought to set you straight.

For the prime-time television address that Mr. Bush delivered to the nation on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used to illuminate sports stadiums and rock concerts, sent them across New York Harbor, tethered them in the water around the base of the Statue of Liberty and then blasted them upward to illuminate all 305 feet of America's symbol of freedom. It was the ultimate patriotic backdrop for Mr. Bush, who spoke from Ellis Island.

The analogies to Roman Empire seem to hold. It's just the nature of the circus that has changed. Personally, I'd prefer re-creations of the Battle of Midway in the Oakland Coliseum.

My apologies to everyone. I've sucked as a blogger since I got this new job. Life, in all its vertiginous splendor seems to be sucking every spare keystroke out of me these days.

It's been a hell of a week.

On Monday, my baby sister turned thirty. I called to wish her a happy birthday and got her husband. I was on a cell phone, outside, and I couldn't hear him very well. But when he repeated the message, I got it: "It's not a good time," he said.

No explanation.

No nothing. Just the tacit sense of something important going on -- something that would not be explained to me.

I was on a windy San Francisco street, barely understanding these strange words through Anna's cell phone, so I just said, "OK," and I hung up, feeling lame and bad at the same time.

The next day I found out that her dog, Lady, had died that day. Crappy way to spend your 30th birthday. I called again that night. Chris answered again. "Susan is not talking to anyone right now."

Again there was that crushing sense of being excluded. Of being reminded that whatever I might have to say would be useless, and worst of all, that sense that while some people were obviously talking to Susan, I would not be one of them.

It really hurt.

I mean, it actually hurt in a way that surprised me. Like I was being reminded that there was no real connection there. Like my phone call was an obligation that would be tolerated under normal circumstances, but now that the dog was dead... sorry, talking now would just be too much. Something, perhaps, just slightly above the caliber of a telemarketing call.

I know this was a selfish way to see the situation, but Susan has a history of hurting people in my family. And while I love her very much, and while I may never even mention this to her, this week, at least, I felt like I understood how families can hurt each other without even trying. How just being yourself can sometimes be a powerful and dangerous thing within the electric fields of family.

Anyway, that was just Monday. The upshot is, I've been busy my every waking hour since Monday morning, and am only now getting the chance to blog anything.

So for those of you who like links. Here's Saddam's art gallery

Why do mass murdering fuckheads always seem to want to see the world in cartoon?

When the solution is just part of the problem. Example 23.

'We could hardly breathe for over 10 minutes,' Suchart told reporters. 'It took my guard a long time to realize that we really wanted the window smashed so that we could crawl out. It was a harrowing experience.'

Even more baffling than the fact that this NY Times reporter could do such a crap job, is the fact that he could do such a crap job for so long without the Times noticing. Talk about arrogance and institutional intertia.

I'm completely in love with my new job as a news reporter for IDG. It's challenging, exciting, and I find it very rewarding. I had really felt more and more removed from the practice of writing and while my freelance life had been nice, it had also been something like retirement. I didn't have to work very hard to make a decent living, and I had reached a point where I really felt as though I was stagnating professionally.

Becoming a news reporter changed all of that. There is simply no time for anything like professional stagnation. In fact, there's no time for almost any of the indulgences that had been such a pleasure and such a trap in my freelance life. I like the pace of news reporting. The sense of competition. The whole idea that you're in a race with the rest of the world to provide the best story about what's going on, and that awareness of the universal, ether-like presence of scoops.

I like the concision of a reporter's life. Stories come and go like milestones by a speeding car. You have what seems like seconds to focus on them, and then they're gone.

Finally, I like working on a team. I like talking to people about stories I'm working on. I like getting attention from my editors every day, and being told what I'm doing wrong. I like being told what I'm doing right, too.

I find that with every new job, there's a period of about three months when you really feel like you could crash and burn. Are you making mistakes because everything is new, or because you simply can't do the job. This is always ambiguous, at least to those who are watching you, at first.

I love this period.

I love the learning process, and its attendant feelings of possibility and accomplishment.

Thinking about Bush's recent and un-necessary aircraft carrier landing, it occurs to me that his PR people actually stole this idea from the Onion.. When Bush's moral authority to wage ware is questioned, how best to deflect questions about Bush's military service during Viet Nam? Tell the big lie.

You know, I've been looking at your EQ and SQ numbers, and I definitely think that some of us are completely full of shit. I think we should take each others EQ and SQ tests. Maybe someone should start by doing Mike's (or mine :-)). Who wants to go first? I mean after all, this test is probably just as valid as a measurement of how others perceive us than as a measurement of how we see ourselves.

The third day was when it hit me. Walking by the parking lot behind 85 Federal. Now fenced-in and as out of reach as the effervescent 1990s. I walked toward the Brannan Street Cafe, which was just a couple of parking lots away from my desk when last I worked at IDG. The same owner and wife and brother-in-law team that worked there in the 1990s was there today. Making the same sandwiches for about 25 cents more than in the last century. And when I paid, there was that same quick knock on the counter, as if to say "thank you. I like you, but we're both too busy and efficient to bother with any further conversation." It always felt very French to me. Efficient and ostensibly cold, and yet somehow an essentially warm gesture.

When he gave me my sandwich and knocked on that counter, I remembered the unbridled silliness of the 1990s at IDG. The rampant eccentricity. The sense of fun and family that I had there, and my co-workers who, on reflection, I liked so very much.

I hadn't really thought about this at all on my first day back at IDG. It seemed like such a different place that it was like working for a different company. In fact, I was surprised that I hadn't had any real triggers of deja vu on my first day back. But walking next to that empty parking lot and hearing those knuckles rap, I remembered so much. Friday nights at the 711 Club (now sacked), dart games, and the people I worked with. It suddenly occurred to me that my time at IDG was very well spent.

Congratulations Slim Shady on completing your race. We anxiously await the brutal details.

This guy is tough.

Aron Ralston, 27, of Aspen, Colorado, used a pocketknife to cut off his arm below the elbow, then rappelled down a rock wall and hiked until he ran into some hikers who flagged down a rescue helicopter 60 miles south of Green River on Thursday. He had applied a tourniquet to his arm

Test time

What's your Empathy Quotient? How about your Systemizing Quotient? I got EQ=30 SQ=44.

Wow. turns out there are survivors from the space shuttle Columbia disaster.

156

This is the number of terrorist attacks that one could consider thwarted by this massive, bloody War on Terror last year. It's not an absolute result, but it's at least measurable. So, was it worth it?

Releasing the State Department's annual report on "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002," Mr. Powell said the number of terrorist attacks went down to 199 in 2002, from 355 in 2001, although the year was marred by major attacks in Bali and a theater in Moscow.