Larry King interviews David Blaine: The rough transcript is here.

Here's the exchange I enjoyed, and emphasizes what I was talking about regarding Baine blurring the line between magic and reality:

KING: Out of all of the things in history, what's one feat impressed you the most?

BLAINE: I mean, I liked when Orson Wells did the "War of the Worlds."

KING: When he fooled us all.

BLAINE: The radio. And everybody thought aliens were coming down.

KING: Fooled my parents.

BLAINE: Yes, thought I thought was amazing.

KING: My mother and father went running into the street.

BLAINE: I also liked Castro came into power and seemed like a white dove flew out of no where and landed on his shoulder and he just continued his acceptance speech, but you could see a guy throwing the doves from his jacket. That's how I think doves should be used.

Dogs attacking their masters: I am fully in favor of this. I just can't decide whether it's an animal rights issue (does the dog have a right to choose?) or a gun control issue (A well-armed and well-regulated puppy militia being neccesary to the preservation of a free and secure animal kingdom, the right of pets to keep and bear arms should not . . .)

Anyone foolish enough to own a pet deserves what they get.

Except Roy, of course. Get well soon, Roy.

The Reagan Movie: I can only tell you one thing about why this movie isn't airing--it probably stinks to high heaven. I mean really, really reeks. Pungent odors and everything. A couple of producers and a writer thought they could string together a bunch of the ancedotes they liked to pass around at parties that made the President look bad without anybody having to actually understand anything about how the world worked, and they ended up making a stinker of a film.

With the ratings potential being as great as they were, with all the controversy surrounding the film already, there's no way CBS pulled out of this out of their own self-interest. Remember, we're talking about television here. They'll try to make Ted Danson sitcoms seem controversial to try and drum up ratings. To have actual, real live, honest-to-goodness controversy is like manna from heaven.

If the show had been at all passable as entertainment, they'd have put it on during a sweeps month and ridden the right wing radio's complaint coaster to ratings heaven. Then they'd have re-aired a "special, uncut" version two weeks later.

Controversy like this usually begin fabricated--when "The Last Temptation of Christ" came out, producers purpousely leaked script segments to religious groups to try to whip up a storm of controversy, and the religious right, like the good little puppets they often allow themselves to be, complied--to drum up free publicity on the news for films or shows with little promotional budget.

"Accidental" leaks of this type are like "accidental broadcasts" of weapons tests. You want the info out there, but you don't want anybody to know you want it out there.

But for them to pull the plug on a show with this much "Buzz"--I'm guessing the film was such a stink bomb that if they found it in Iraq, everybody would have called Bush a hero for stopping Saddam from unleashing it.

The war in Iraq: Were there weapons or weren't there? Was Saddam a threat or wasn't he? Is George leaving our troops to die, so he can get rich off oil deals?

Okay, here's the sitch: Saddam was parading around the middle east like the bad boy on the block. He'd used gas, and he gave the run around to inspectors, and all of the surrounding nations were scared to death of him, because they knew he'd used weapons before, and they were sure . . . sure . . . he had them now.

Even when they were arguing to give the inspectors more time, the opposing nations in the UN weren't arguing he didn't have the weapons. They were just saying they thought the diplomacy deserved a chance.

Everybody was sure he had the weapons. Saddam was acting like he had the weapons.

So here's the metaphor to help everybody see this one clearly. Imagine it's Columbine High School, and the administration is scared to death and wants to get all the weapons off the campus. And there's this kid, see, who may or may not have been buddies with the guys who shot everybody up last time--nobody's really sure--but now he's parading around as if he's got something to hide, reluctant to let anybody search his bags or his locker, and the kid's got a history. The administration doesn't really want to do anything, lest they get sued, security of the students notwithstanding.

So finally some kids, worried about everybody's safety, wrestle his bag away, bustopen his locker, and as he runs off, inside both the bag and the locker they find maybe a bong and some schoolbooks.

The analogy is obvious, but in case you can't tell the players without a program--Columbine is Sept. 11, the kid is Saddam, the friends are Al-Qaida. The administration is the UN, and the kids who were worried about everybody's safety were the "coalition forces."

I like this analogy a lot. It shows everything in a pretty accurate perspective. It shows the UN as irresponsible (would you stand for it if your kids school acted like this?), George Bush as courageous for standing up to them, and leaves open the only two real possibilities for what was going on with Saddam. Just like the kid in this story, he either had the weapons or he didn't.

In the case of the first option, the move was justified, because the weapons really were there all along, and if there's any criticism, it's for letting those weapons get away.

In the case of the second option, where there were no weapons--think about it. The kid was walking around posturing like he was dangerous while the memory of the real danger was still fresh in everybody's minds. Did he really expect not to get called on it? Would you really accuse the other kids of having "bad information" when they weren't acting on rumors and whispers, but on what everybody pretty much considered to be pretty common knowledge, information the guy himself was doing everything to keep perpetuating?

Even if it's true that Saddam didn't have one drop of one chemical weapon, the idea that he had them was a large part of what made Iraq the formidable force it was in the Middle East. Even if it turns out that front was a facade, it was a facade that Saddam himself was carefully constructing. Not something George W. Bush propped up so he could knock it down.

I mean come on. Use your head. If the administration had really been fabricating the mountains and mountains of evidence in order to blatantly deceive the American people, all the while knowing that once he got in, Saddam wouldn't even have so much as a bottle of cough syrup, wouldn't George W. also have come up with a few liters of Botox to plant behind a barrel somewhere, so he wouldn't end up with egg on his face?

Or, to put it in terms that Michael Moore can understand, wouldn't a fictitious President fighting a fictitious war produce a fictitious weapon of mass destruction or two?

Fact is, Saddam, at the very least, was bluffing. And bluffing in a very dangerous game. Calling him on it doesn't make Bush a liar, or an idiot, or a manipulator. It just makes Saddam a bad card player.

Abortion: There's a perfectly good, perfectly reasonable, non-controversial law on the books of every state right now that absolutely no one in America is opposed to, has never been thought unconstitutional, and which guarantees every woman in this fine nation the right to have nothing in her womb that she wants to prevent being there.

These laws are the rape laws.

I will argue in favor of the rape laws until my dying day, because I respect women and feel they have the right to choose what does and does not happen in their bodies. The rape laws say that no woman has to have anything in her womb that she did not consent to end up there.

In fact, I would even argue that, rather than facilitating more abortions, we facilitate tougher penalties, up to and including the death penalty, for rapists. Especially serial rapists.

One of the interesting things about this is that one of the supposed hypocrisies of the Right--that we oppose abortion as murder, while endorsing the death penalty--gets stood on its head.

Whenever I bring up this argument and logical flow, liberals are left arguing that its better to kill unborn children than kill people who are guilty of terrible crimes against women. The real hypocrisy becomes crystal clear.

The entire "right to choose" argument seems to have been formulated by second graders with no real working knowledge of how sex works. They act as if pregnancy can be caught, like cooties, and abortion is a convenient cootie-catcher to wipe away the inconvenience.

As absolutely un-PC and offensive as this statement is going to be to some people, I'm going to say it anyway: A woman chooses to put herself at risk of pregnancy the moment she consents to intercourse. She chooses.

So whatever other argument you may have about why abortion may be fine and natural and necessary, the argument that without it, women would be losing control over their own bodies doesn't wash. If you really want to put women back in control, you can argue for tougher rape laws.

Unions and Strikes: I'm actually not as vehemently anti-union as some might think I would be. I actually consider employees just like I would any other good or service, as anybody else should. You, as an employee, are pretty much just like the guys who make Pepsi. The guys who make Pepsi want to get as much money as possible in exchange for their product. They've got pretty much two choices for how to make more money. They can raise their prices, or they can sell more Pepsi. The problem is, people are then free to head on over and buy Pepsi.

It's the same way with you. You can either work more hours or ask for more money. The problem is, your boss is then free to find somebody else who can do the same job you're doing for the same price, since you're all just the employee equivalent of fizzy sugar water.

A union is the equivalent of an oligopoly. Coke and Pepsi get together and decide that ain't nobody going to get any more soda unless they're willing to pay a buck a can. Would anybody go for it? Should anybody go for it? Of course not. Coke remains coke, and still isn't worth a buck a can.

Now, say that since nobody wanted to pay a buck a can, Coke and Pepsi suddenly decided that, in order to teach everybody a lesson, they were going to stop making soda. No more, they say, until everybody realizes how much they miss us. Only when everybody changes their mind and decide to pay a buck a can for soda will they start making product again.

How wise does this seem? Would you, as a stockholder, put a lot of faith in the CEO if they acted like this?

So why does everybody think the Union leaders are so all-fired noble and brilliant for attempting pretty much the same strategy?

There's only one way to get more money for Pepsi, and that's to make Pepsi worth more money. If it, say, also cured cancer and regrew hair, then maybe people might ante up the extra money.

In other words, the grocer's union workers should find some way to increase the value of the work they're doing. Time it was that grocery store checking was a semi-professional job. You had to have flawless, lightening fast ten-key speed to punch up the prices of all of those items quickly and accurately, all while engaging in mindless banter with the customer.

Now, you pretty much just have to scan and scowl.

Do the grocery store clerks really think they're so irreplaceable that by standing in the parking lots they're leaving employers cowering in fear, wondering how the stores will function?

I'm sorry, but my two-year-old pretty much got it right her first try on the Barbie "Shop With Me" Cash Register.

I do feel there are unions and professional organizations that are able to exercise some leverage by unionizing, and I'm not going to deny them the right to do it.

But isn't it a little hypocritical to pick on monopolies and oligopolies as being unfair when a company is doing it, but then calling it unfair when individual people are doing it?

Actually, the person who gets screwed the most by Unions is the guy who does his job incredibly well, and competently. He ends up having to take up the slack of the less competent guy working beside him, who is making the exact same amount as him, even though he's nowhere near as good a worker.

But man, the unions sure are nice for the incompetent guy, aren't they?

Alright, today's going to come at you fast and furious. I'm going to tell you what you should think of some of the top issues in the news today. Prepare to be either enlightened or offended, depending on how open minded you are.

(Yes. This means I'm procrastinating working on my Nanowrimo novel.)

I'm kinda, sorta trying to do the Nanowrimo thing. I was pretty pleased with what I was writing last year, but I didn't finish, and when my computer pooted out in January, it took the half-finished manuscript with it.

Oh, who am I kidding. Half a quarter finished.

If that.

Track this year's progress here!

Or for similarly-paced action, check out the Duct Tape Cam.

Oh, and Tim, I had the exact same feeling about when they stopped airing Misfits of Science. Courtney Cox was no Linda Carter, but Lyle Waggoner couldn't shoot lightning bolts out of his hands.

From the "Why go public?" file: So PETA's latest publicity stunt is to buy a bunch of shares of Outback Steak House so they can go raise a stink at the shareholder's meetings.

For those unfamiliar with the company, OSI has been pretty strong, showing good growth this last year, and is trading higher than it ever has. The day's trading didn't show much reaction to the news, but it will be interesting to see what happens.

PETA's already made it's hit list of future companies to target.

What exactly is PETA's purpouse, anyway? A quick news search on them at Yahoo! News shows me they're trying to change a town's name, exploiting a dying magician by getting press time in his news coverage to criticize the magician's exploitation of tigers, and sending people gift certificates for brain surgery.

It seemed to me just a bunch of publicity stunts, that weren't really helping anybody or anything. However, on further examination, I discovered their real motivation; apparently, PETA gets the chicks.