If you think your mother is a pain in the ass …

... listen to the sample cuts on "Amy's Answering Machine" Volume 1 & 2 (available individually or as a 2CD set) by Amy Borkowsky. When you stop laughing, you'll probably decide that your mom isn't so bad after all.

iTunes is currently playing: Mother Stands For Comfort from the album Hounds Of Love by Kate Bush.

Imagine paying $3.19 a gallon for gas …

... and feeling as if you got a bargain! But I do.

Every station in town is at $3.29 except for this one sleazy, independent place. Normally, I wouldn't stop there since they have antique pumps that don't take credit cards (meaning you have to go inside twice -- once to give them your credit card before you pump and then to sign the receipt when you are done) and they devote more space to drug paraphernalia than to junk food. But I hate that these other guys are gouging people just because they can.

I'm also glad that I was filling up my little Scion xA and not the GMC Yukon at the next pump.

iTunes is currently playing: Driving from the album The Language Of Life by Everything But The Girl.

What Tracfone doesn’t want you to know

If you have a digital Tracfone (pay-as-you-go cell phone), your friends can leave you voicemail messages. On the Tracfone web site, they tell you how to listen to your messages using your Tracfone. They do not, however, tell you how to retrieve messages from another phone. The reason is simple. They want you to use up your minutes listening to your voicemail from your cell phone so you will buy more Tracfone cards and spend more money.

You can retrieve your messages from any other phone using the same method that other cell phone companies offer. Just dial your Tracfone number. When your voicemail greeting starts to play, punch in * (asterisk/star) followed by your passcode/pin. The greeting stops and in a few seconds you will be told if you have new messages, just as if you had called in on your Tracfone and no minutes are deducted from your balance.

iTunes is currently playing: Lost You In The Canyon from the album Live in Long Branch [legal bootleg] by Marc Cohn.

The job offers must be just rolling in for this guy

Imad Hamdi, former head of European security for Liza Minelli and her estranged husband, David Guest, says he has written a book about their marriage called "Liza and Her Diseases" and that "Two major European publishers are bidding on it right now."

While the 27-year-old Hamdi waits for his book to be published, he provides security for Saudi princes, unnamed celebs and other VIPs who, he says, "rely on my discretion."

iTunes is currently playing: Have You Heard from the album Besancon France - July 8, 1991 (bootleg) by Pat Metheny Group.

Want to be cursed at by teenagers?

Teach high school students at the Weavers School in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire [UK].

A secondary school is to allow pupils to swear at teachers - as long as they don't do so more than five times in a lesson. A running tally of how many times the f-word has been used will be kept on the board. If a class goes over the limit, they will be 'spoken' to at the end of the lesson.

iTunes is currently playing: Things We've Handed Down from the album The Rainy Season by Marc Cohn.

if you have a boring baby …

... turn him into an iPod!

The [iPod accessories] craze has even spread to clothing -- for infants. One Web site, iPodmybaby.com, sells multicolored baby jumpers with the familiar iPod scroll wheel on the front, for people who want their children to look like life-size music players. The site has made more than 1,000 sales since it launched a couple of weeks ago, according to Dave Schroeder of Reston, who co-founded the business.



iTunes is currently playing: God Bless The Child from the album Ken Burns Jazz Collection: Billie Holiday by Billie Holiday.

here is an example of why ….

... i am sometimes embarrassed to tell people i lived in California for twenty years. if Dianne Feinstein thinks the San Francisco city supervisors are out there, you know they must really be out there.

The USS Iowa joined in battles from World War II to Korea to the Persian Gulf. It carried President Franklin Roosevelt home from the Teheran conference of allied leaders, and four decades later, suffered one of the nation's most deadly military accidents.

Veterans groups and history buffs had hoped that tourists in San Francisco could walk the same teak decks where sailors dodged Japanese machine-gun fire and fired 16-inch guns that helped win battles across the South Pacific.

Instead, it appears that the retired battleship is headed about 80 miles inland, to Stockton, a gritty agricultural port town on the San Joaquin River and home of California's annual asparagus festival.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a former San Francisco mayor, helped secure $3 million to tow the Iowa from Rhode Island to the Bay Area in 2001 in hopes of making touristy Fisherman's Wharf its new home.

But city supervisors voted 8-3 last month to oppose taking in the ship, citing local opposition to the Iraq war and the military's stance on gays, among other things.

"If I was going to commit any kind of money in recognition of war, then it should be toward peace, given what our war is in Iraq right now," Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said.

Feinstein called it a "very petty decision."

"This isn't the San Francisco that I've known and loved and grew up in and was born in," Feinstein said.

iTunes is currently playing: Life During Wartime from the album Fear Of Music by Talking Heads.