It's like we're having our own special summertime experience here in San Francisco this weekend, with Mike & Melissa and Vinnie in town and all of us hanging out at Nick's place last night. It's 90 degrees in San Francisco today and somehow this feels like a long weekend, even though I know it will go by all to quickly.

I've decided to unplug from the music industry. I am so frustrated that the record companies have been unable to muster the necessary imagination to differentiate their products from MP3s -- which I still view as an ideal marketing tool for a more nimble and customer-centric industry -- and by their highly offensive attempts to criminalize their customers, that I've decided not to buy any CDs for the next year.

I'm going to donate the money I would have spent on them to the EFF and I encourage you to do the same.

If you find something that people like, it is an opportunty for market development, not law enforcement.

How about calling them grovel fries?

But now, said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, we need to bring the French back to the table.

"President Bush is now urging that all parties put aside 'past bickering.' Delays in rebuilding international good will are costing Americans lives in Iraq, and billions of dollars to the American taxpayers," Lee wrote last week in a letter first reported by the congressional newspaper Roll Call. "A symbolic start to that effort would be reinstating foods in the House cafeterias and dining halls and their traditional 'American' names — french toast and french fries."

California 2003: Kindergarten Cop II

I saw my first Schwarzenegger campaign ad last night. He was sitting around a table with a group of unidentified people, saying in that unmistakable Arnie accent, "This is how the game is played in politics. You give money. You get favors. I will stop all of that."

As I watched this ad, it occurred to me for the first time that the Terminator might not win.

Now, never mind the fact that he has surrounded himself with the same political fundraising machine and network of Sacramento insiders that took former Governor Pete Wilson (in photograph, left) to office, and helped devise ways for disgraced and deposed Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush to cash in on the Northridge earthquake. That's not the problem.

The problem is simply that he can not act well enough to be a politician.

It's ironic that this would be said of a very successful professional actor, but the fact of the matter is that fans have only ever accepted Schwarzenegger acting one part: an angry borderline-psychopath out for revenge. After all, he's known as "the Terminator," not "the Kindergarten Cop." His attempt at playing a sincere politician with vision was so outrageously , foolishly, laughably bad, that one ad was all it took for me to understand why Arnie is only doing one debate in this campaign: The guy really can't act.

I used to think of Schwarzenegger as a shoo in for governor, but now I've come to realize that would actually be best cast as minority senate leader or in some kind of indignant opposition role where he could get angry and talk tough, and not be all smiley and nice and showing up on Oprah with his wife. Nobody wants to see that, and nobody will vote for a brainless, washed-up, son-of-a-Nazi phony who's also a nice guy.

Bring back the Terminator. Abuse us, don't woo us.

So hats off to Anna (literally) for the fucking stupendous addition to her bowlerama collection. And I'm not talking about the suicidal security guard in the background.

Meanwhile, Osama Bin Laden is still at large...

Actor Tommy Chong (news) of the spaced-out, dope-smoking comedy duo "Cheech & Chong" was sentenced to nine months in prison and fined $20,000 on Thursday for distributing marijuana pipes over the Internet.

Do a good deed. Get the Star Wars kid a role in the next Star Wars movie. Apparently over 80,000 people have signed up so far.

They killed my great lede, dropped my byline, and I'm not sure how or why they print IDG stories, but this is definitely the first time I've been published in the Times of Tibet.

Here's the lede that got cut:
There may be no software on the path to enlightenment, but there's little room for shameless commercialism as well. That's what Web-based CRM (customer relationship management) software company Salesforce.com discovered this week when outrage over a poster that appeared to feature the Dalai Lama as a pitchman for its products forced the company to cancel its participation in an event hosted by the American Himalayan Foundation.