Ramblings of a Wayward Code Slave

I had an experience last week that was reminiscent of an oft (too oft) quoted line from Dickens -- "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." As a college professor, I'm occasionally faced with some of the less entertaining aspects of the job. This past week it was concerning academic dishonesty. The exact nature of the offense and the number of people involved are of no consequence for my purposes here, except to say that it concerned multiple people, a final exam, and a blatantly heinous and rather gutsy offense. As I redesigned my final examination on Wednesday night I lamented the sad fact that nobody in any of my computer science classes when I was a student would have ever been dishonest. We were far too conceited, vain, and confident of our abilities -- faults in their own right, but none that violate university policy.

At the same time, in a class of 28 people there was one sole voice who spoke up. This kid had a lot of courage to do what he did, especially since an unknown fraction of my class was in on the scheme. At least one of those who knew about the scheme had the character to do what was right despite the potential harm it could cause him.

The worst of times. Truly an appropriate quote. As I leave the university and return to the world of business what final memory do I have to remind me of Tech? This incident. It's a memorable if not pleasant capstone to my teaching experience, to say the least. I'm reminded of another quote, although I can't remember who said it. Paraphrased, it reads something like "Character is what you do when nobody's looking." It's not exact, but close enough for government work. At any rate, these people showed their character all right. When I wasn't looking they schemed en masse to cheat on the final exam. To be fair, I'm sure not all of them did, but I'm quite sure that more than the two I caught were involved. I've often debated to myself as to the nature, extent, and quality of my character. Does it exist? How much of it do I actually have? How can I build it up more and be more of the person that I want to be? I was always of the assumption that this was a common thought, akin to the "Is this all I am?" question. I guess I must have been mistaken. At the very least, my stock has gone up a few notches in my own mind due to this incident -- as a student I never even entertained the idea of cheating. It just never entered my mind.

I think that academic dishonesty is symptomatic of our present society. We live in a society of consumption where every whim, every impulse, can be instantly satiated for a price. We've taught the kids of America that they can have it all and have it now as long as they're willing to pay the price for it. With the music video-induced 3-second attention spans, the constant pummeling by advertisers screaming for us to consume more and consume faster, and the instant gratification so popular in society today (fast food, the Internet, etc.) it's no wonder why students feel that short circuiting what is naturally a long and tedious process is not only a viable, but acceptable option. You can lock in that good grade, and the price is only a small piece of your soul...

I think that progress has been moving so fast that we can't keep up to bring it under the umbrella of societal control. Now I'm not one for dictating what people do and where they go -- I'm fairly liberal in that regard -- but we all live under a social contract where we give up some of our rights so that the vast majority of our rights can be preserved. We give up the right to go blazing down the freeway at 120 mph so that our right to not get killed by a madman in a Corvette is upheld. The social contract is being amended, but at a snail's pace as compared to the progression of technology. Whether you like it or not, we live in a technocracy and our laws and customs must be fluid enough to adapt either at or close to the speed of technological change.

To tie this all together, we must somehow connect the immediate consumption and gratification impulse with technology. This one's easy. The Internet. I can click on a button to launch a web browser, type any keyword in Google, and instantly read and learn about anything I desire. This is one of the more positive aspects of the Internet. On the other hand, in the same amount of time I could Google up more porn than you could shake a stick at. Or I could max out my VISA card at Amazon.com in a matter of minutes. Or I could search for the solution to a programming assignment when told not to do so by the instructor. It's all at my fingertips and it's all at my whim. With nobody looking over my shoulder it all boils down to personal responsiblity, my knowledge of right vs. wrong, and my ability to apply self-control. In other words -- character. Character is what you do when nobody's looking, whether it's not cheating on something or restraining yourself from maxing out your credit card to get some gadget.

So let's recap. Academic dishonesty is symptomatic of a society addicted to immediate consumption and gratification, which in turn is directly tied to the ability of technology to provide that instant gratification. Our only true defense from this is character. Now, how do we infuse character into people so that it can balance out this constant barrage of temptation from the television, the Internet, and elsewhere? The answer? Parents. Because we have to fund our consumption, most households have both parents working full-time jobs. This is often a necessary evil, so I can't argue the case for a stay-at-home mom. On the other hand, though, too many kids are latchkey, seeing their parents for a couple of hours every evening. Often times families don't even eat at the same time or in the same place. My parents stressed doing things as a family and were actively involved in my education and my life. Their participation in my life and their close supervision -- whether I liked it at the time or not -- is no doubt what gave me whatever character I have. With diminished parental supervision there has to be a diminished ability to convey the social contract from adult to child. This is a fundamental failure in the educational process for a child and I think directly contributes to that child's belief that he/she can do whatever he/she can get away with.

Now all of this might not add up to a hill of beans. I'm not a parent, but I've taught a lot of kids over the past eight years and my wife has taught a bunch at lower levels as well. I've seen firsthand (and heard secondhand from my wife) how family situations can affect kids and their ability to learn and function. Is it any wonder why liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, all say the same thing? Family and education are the keys to our future and the future of our world. Temptation has always been here since the beginning, but now it's everywhere you look. There are so many wrong paths and so little to guide kids. And when kids turn into adults, the wrong paths multiply and the guidance evaporates. It's truly a formula for disaster.

And with all of this, there was still that one person who saved my final exam. All it took was one voice. To be cliche, it is said that one person can change the world. Perhaps that it still true today, perhaps not. But one person changed my class. And that, despite everything else, gives me hope. The best of times, indeed.

It never ceases to amaze me how Hollywood treats New Orleans in films. I have yet to see an accurate portrayal of the city either culturally or geographically. In most films, every day is Mardi Gras and the entire city looks like the French Quarter. This is, of course, about as far from the truth as one can get...

Case in point: Heaven's Prisoners. Being somewhat bored and noticing a movie on TV centered around south Louisiana, I decided to watch it. It's not a bad film, but it's obvious that the only time the director spent in New Orleans was as a drunk teenager in the Quarter. It starts out with two people on a fishing boat as a plane goes down. They call it in to the Coast Guard and indicate that they're one mile north of the southwest pass. Okay, I can buy that -- a boat from the Venice docks could feasibly head out to the Gulf to do some fishing, although why they'd choose the southwest pass is beyond me. Anyway, it turns out that in the film New Orleans is right next to the Mississippi River delta. I guess it just up and floated about 90 miles downstream. On top of that, all New Orleans scenes look amazingly like Bourbon St. despite the fact that the (in)famous area of Bourbon St. is only about 4-5 blocks long. Naturally, every bar the main character goes in is a seedy, smoke-filled place with B.B. King on the jukebox and only 2-3 customers. Yeah, that's Bourbon St. all right, yep. Got it nailed. Geesh.

This film also suffers from the "missing suburb" problem common to other films set in New Orleans -- 5 miles out of the city and you're going past shacks and shrimp boats on the bayou. I guess there must be some wormhole on Highway 90 that warps people from Marrero (excuse me, Bourbon St.) all the way over to Thibodeaux and Lockport in the blink of an eye.

I guess I shouldn't dog this film too much for being inaccurate. Probably the only cities that get actual realistic treatment are L.A. and New York, perhaps Chicago. Still, while directors might have a time getting the culture right, at least they could get the geography correct. C'mon guys, look at a damn map! I realize that floating the city down to the mouth of the Mississippi might be a convenient means to allow the script to easily switch between being in the bayou and being in the city, but is it so hard to try to get the audience to believe that the characters might actually have to drive for 30-60 minutes to get to the city? You don't just turn the corner from Bourbon St. and see Forrest Gump shrimping in the Gulf. But according to most films set in New Orleans, this one included, you could pee off of the balcony of the Royal Sonesta and hit the water.

I'm going to be moving to Lafayette next Friday, so I wonder if that's floated off, too. If so, could it go nearer to a beach?

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a ... billboard. In a recent CNN article it is reported that the FAA is proposing to extend its regulatory power to ensure that orbital billboards won't be put in space by private corporations. Such billboards could appear to be the size of the moon. There is already a law on the books for this, but the FAA currently lacks the power to enforce it.

Just imagine, you go outside to see a lunar eclipse but the event is overshadowed by a Nike or Coca-Cola ad whizzing past. Dinnertime television is already destroyed thanks to the prevalence of hemmorhoid cream and medicated pad advertisements in the 5:30 - 6:30 time slot. From that, we can infer that Madison Avenue and the rest of corporate America won't let good taste stand between them and a nickel, so why wouldn't they put a Tampax ad up in space? Hey, they could even time-share the billboards, so one moment it's for Billy Bob's Ford in Dallas, the next it's for Didhey, Cheatem, & Howe the bankruptcy attorneys, and then it's for Massengil for those days when you're not feeling fresh. Spammers could use them to sell Canadian drugs and the Nigerians can use them to finally find that one person who'll help them launder their $50M dollars. Hackers could even get into the broadcasting system and suddenly a billboard could be displaying something quite inappropriate as it passes over an elementary school during recess. The potential for abuse is staggering.

As an amateur astronomer, I can attest to the implausibility of stargazing in our present society, much less a future one where we have the sky as our latest advertising tableau, awaiting whatever can be put on it for a buck. Of course, the argument the FAA is making is in reference to professional astronomers and the telescopes that cost billions of dollars to construct, but I would go so far as to say that even geosynchronous billboards are both obtrusive and a violation of our basic rights to not have our environment littered with garbage. It needs to go beyond the FAA, though -- it needs to be an international law. If some other country allows this then it wouldn't matter if we had the law or not -- we'd still see them whizzing past unless we had some agreement that the billboards wouldn't fly over American land masses; however, nobody owns space, so we can't call that our territory. More likely, if the FAA hadn't been on the ball, we would have been the ones putting the billboards in space and ruining the view for everyone else on the planet, too.

I certainly believe in free enterprise and I'm definitely a capitalist, but it's not a black and white issue. There's ethical and responsible capitalism and then there's screwing over anyone for a buck. Unfortunately, it seems that at least some major corporations tend toward the latter over the former. Space is a rich tapestry populated with objects of incredible beauty and terrifying power, and it represents not only our history but also our future. To be able to witness its splendor and its secrets is the birthright of every human, and to do anything to diminish that birthright is criminal.

Normally I tend to be critical of government agencies simply because they're typically inefficient, ineffective, and dogmatic in their approach to civil service. Kudos to the FAA on this one, though, because this was a real blue-ribbon moment for them. Let's nip this in the bud and get some kind of international law that does the same thing globally -- we need to get the ink dry on that baby ASAP.

Having grown up in Mississippi and having lived a sizeable fraction of my life (a bit less than 1/3) in Louisiana, I'm used to being from states that are the butt of jokes from the rest of the nation. It just irks me that, even in the light of progress, these two states still get a raw deal from popular opinion. The title of this post is about Louisiana, but I want to digress for a moment. Well, several moments, actually.

In Mississippi it was all about racism, poverty, and lack of education. Granted, in the history of the state all three things existed and to this day still exist. But let's address them one by one. Racism. Mississippi was extremely racist in the past and gained national notoriety in the 1960s by the fracas that ensued after admitting an African American to Ole' Miss. The Medgar Evers murder didn't do much to help, either. But Mississippi paid the price for its transgressions in spades and is now a much more integrated state as a result. The nation doesn't forget, though. Every time a major election is held there are people who come down to monitor the polling places to ensure that nobody's rights are being oppressed. I still remember my first experiences in voting -- marshalls were at the polling places to make certain that everyone had a say and the peace was kept. That was totally unnecessary.

Let's move on to poverty. Mississippi has been and will continue to be a state stricken with poverty to a rather wide extent. Having a history of being an agriculturally-oriented state, it isn't highly industrialized and isn't bringing in a lot of technical people. It's far better than it was, to be certain, but especially in the delta area (northwest, by the Mississippi River) poverty is widespread. That being said, why should people turn up their noses at Mississippi because of this? It smacks of elitism and snobbery. Nobody would like to see poverty in Mississippi wiped out more than the people living in the state. It just takes a long time to get out from behind the 8-ball. Still, to this day, cotton, catfish, and timber are the best known exports of the state and a state doesn't get rich off of cotton, catfish, and timber.

Lastly, lack of education. Mississippi, being a relatively poor state, only has so much money to go around. The ability to fund better education is what has historically limited better education in the state. This, in recent years, has been alleviated somewhat by the payments from the tobacco lawsuit settlement they won against the cigarette manufacturers. That being said, I personally was educated in Mississippi from the age of 8 until I was 23. I graduated with honors from high school, graduated with a latin designation from college, received a huge scholarship to go to graduate school, and have a Ph.D. from a school that is ranked tenth in the nation in my field. I turned out okay considering I went through the public school system my entire time in Mississippi and went to a public university there. And I'm not the exception -- there were a number of kids in the public school system along with me who are successful engineers, professors, attorneys, judges, etc. I have one friend who went through school with me who is now a successful attorney and lives on a reservoir outside of Jackson in a home that must have at least a $500,000 price tag on it between the house and the property. That's not too shabby for public schooling in a small town in Mississippi. So while Mississippi does consistently rank 49th or 50th in education, it's come a long way from where it was and it still puts out quality individuals.

Now, on to Louisiana. Racism, poverty, and lack of education are also things that this state has to live with. When I moved here in 1991 Louisiana had a resurgence of negative opinion from the rest of the nation thanks to that idiot David Duke who ran for governor. He actually got elected to the state legislature in 1989, but that was a fluke. The good people of this state sent him packing when he wanted to be a U.S. senator and they did it again when he ran for governor. Since then, he's dropped into obscurity in Louisiana, but the state has the mark of Cain on it thanks to him and his affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan. I've been to just about every place in Louisiana worth going and I can say several things without a doubt. First, this state is very integrated in terms of races. Second, racism still exists between whites and blacks but it's bidirectional and varies from community to community; personally, I've seen it more in the northern part of the state than in the southern. Third, the mentality and feelings of all races in Louisiana is no different from what I've seen in other parts of the nation -- Louisiana and Mississippi by no means have a corner on the market when it comes to racism.

Now on to poverty. You can more or less rubber-stamp what I said about Mississippi for here. Louisiana has some industry -- mainly along the Baton Rouge-New Orleans corridor (dubbed "Cancer Alley" as it is the most polluted area of water in the nation) -- but by and large the people of this state get their income from agriculture. Sugar cane and rice are popular in the south, timber is popular in the north, and cotton is popular in the flood plain from the Mississippi River. Now, to be fair, Louisiana is infamous for its corruption and deservingly so. I don't know how much corruption is left, but I'm sure it still exists. That being said, how is Louisiana any different from other states with historical ties to corruption, say, New York? New York is just heavily industrialized in some areas and has the #1 city in the nation to help fund its coffers. Louisiana isn't nearly that well off. Blaming Louisiana for poverty is somewhat correct, but it's still far off. I still call it elitism and snobbery.

Lastly, education or the lack thereof. Of all three issues, this is the one closest to being correct, but it's also far off. The state legislature has constitutionally protected much of the yearly budget items with the exceptions of healthcare and education. So when the budget comes up short, we either get a tax hike voted in or else one or both of those items head to the chopping block. Back in the '90s it was pretty grim, but then we got all of the casinos. Despite what people may think of gambling, the casinos rake in cash that gets put into several places, including education. For the past 5 years or so Louisiana has had a program called TOPS that gives scholarships to students, based on ACT scores and grades, to attend in-state colleges and universities. Kids with a 3.0 or better get really nice scholarships and even kids with GPAs in the midrange 2s get help with college expenses. This is a 180-degree turnaround from what was in place beforehand and has had an incredible effect on college attendance rates. The university where I've taught for the past 8 years (Louisiana Tech) has seen its enrollment increase from 8,000 in 1997 to 12,000 in 2004. That's a 50% increase in 8 years and this is commonplace with other major universities in the state. So while in the past education was consistently on the chopping block for funding, allowing the casinos into the state as a revenue source allowed the legislature to improve education with a staggering result. As a final note, even during the '90s when education was in a down phase, I still got a Ph.D. from a Louisiana university (USL, now UL-Lafayette) and the univeristy is consistently nationally ranked for my field -- then and now.

So I think that the popular opinion from the other states -- that Mississippi and Louisiana are backwards, racist states with a bunch of rednecks named Bubba sitting on their John Deere tractors drinking beer -- is a lot of hogwash. Sure, we have plenty of Bubbas, but we also have philosophers, writers, engineers, professional sports players, artists, scientists, linguists, and countless others who stand for the future and refuse to accept the moniker that many others in the nation want to put on them.

Now, on to the reason for the title of this entry. The latest horror movie to be released, House of Wax, is based in Louisiana. Apparently, a number of stupid guys and some bimbos get lost in backwoods Louisiana and find a town where two deranged people are abducting travelers and turning them into dead wax figures. Why Louisiana? Again? It's not like the rest of the country doesn't immediately think "Lousiana" every time they hear the banjo music from Deliverance or contemplate where in the nation all of the cannibals must be hiding out. Well, we don't have freaks abducting wayward travelers, we don't have cannibals making stew out of hikers, and Deliverance was niether shot in nor set in our state. Enough already! Can't people get abducted and cast in wax in Missouri? How about Montana? Vermont even? The Blair Witch Project was set in Pennsylvania (thank you!) and Children of the Corn was in Nebraska or Kansas (thank you again, but we don't grow corn here so maybe it's not deserved) but it seems that every other freak horror movie is either in Louisiana or in some other southern state. Texas got the chainsaw people, I think Georgia was where Ned Beatty squealed like a pig, and the list goes on.

So the latest freakshow film has Paris Hilton running around what they claim is backwoods Louisiana trying not to be turned into a dummy. Too late, she's there already. People watch her hairbrained self and have the nerve to complain about education in Louisiana and Mississippi? Please.

I've been trying to cut down on my salt intake as of late since I have hypertension (high blood pressure) and I've come upon the realization that we're all addicted to the stuff. My wife just headed over to the local Subway to get some late-night dinner for us and I browsed the nutritional guide since I'm trying to make better choices for what I put in myself. I was expecting the food there to be pretty healthy since they're all about low fat, low carbs, and low calories; it's funny how salt is never mentioned. Most of their 6" subs have anywhere from 930 mg at the low end (the roast beef) to 1600+ mg at the high end. That's 1.6 grams of salt, and you can double that for a 12" sub. Imagine eating over 3 grams of salt in one sandwich -- that's something like a teaspoon of salt. It was really a shock for me.

Low-salt inherently means low-calorie since the food that's bad for you usually is loaded down with the stuff. If you look at the McDonald's or KFC nutritional web pages you'll never eat there again. One word of warning: if you go the low-salt route then prepare to not be able to eat 90% of what's out there, including what's at restaurants. Some places you can ask for them to keep the salt out, but others just can't do it. Now when the wife and I eat out I just wind up tasting salt and nothing else -- it's downright overpowering. And the real kicker for me is that before I started adjusting my salt intake I never noticed it. We're literally addicted to it -- we put it in everything and then sprinkle it on the top as well. I can't even drink Diet Coke anymore since it's really salty; if you don't believe me, check the label -- sodium is a big component of the drink.

This is really discouraging since it just underscores the fact that food you don't make is usually bad for you. Even if you get a dinner salad with low-cal dressing, the ranch dressing is loaded with fat (even the low-fat ranch has plenty in it) and the Italian dressing is loaded with sodium. People low-carbing it still are getting pumped full of salt, and nobody out there seems to know how to put flavor into food without dumping salt into it.

It just shows how eating at home and avoiding prepared mixes and heat-and-eat meals is the only way to eat healthier. It's no wonder why we're getting heavier and having more medical problems these days -- we don't have the time to do this kind of cooking. So you either make the time or pay the price. As someone trying to bring myself back from the brink, I've got no choice but to pay attention to all of this. Like I said, it's really discouraging that restaurant food and even food we can buy in grocery stores can be so unhealthy. Is it a necessary evil for the manufacturers or is it corporate America cutting corners to increase profits while providing the unwashed, ignorant masses with convenience? I hope it's the former but I fear it's not.

At any rate, I'm now an avid label reader. Between avoiding salt, fat, and mystery ingredients (Polysorbate 60, guar gum, hydrolized vegetable protein, glycerol ester of wood rosin, etc.) I've written off about 80% of what's in grocery stores. Fresh, canned and frozen vegetables, meat and seafood straight from the butcher's counter, fresh deli cheeses, and a limited selection of refrigerated items are really all that's safe. If you like getting scared, read the ingredients on a package of bologna next time you go to the store. If you're really brave, check out the olive loaf or vienna sausages. Egad.

The media seems to be a source of constant ire for me these days. In addition to the fleeing bride-to-be turned towel-covered pariah, we have the media crosshairs firmly planted on Michael Jackson. Now, in all fairness, Jackson plays up the media angle like a true showman; this is part of the reason why they just eat it up and can't get enough of him. On the other hand, though, I'm getting fed up with it and I hope that modern civilization will follow suit soon.

Once you get past his grotesque facial features and coloring, the eccentric wardrobe, his outlandish behavior, and the melodrama of his many (too many) medical emergencies, what this whole thing boils down to is that, if guilty, Jackson is a really sick individual. I don't mean sick as in disgusting or repulsive -- although if he did what he's accused of then both words would fit -- but rather sick as in mentally ill. People are really polarized about him; half want him to be the good guy he seems on television and half want him to be a chicken hawk. I'm reserving judgement, but I've gotta say it doesn't look too good right now for him.

My wife liked his music in the '70s and '80s and desperately wants him to be innocent of all charges, which is understandable. However, looking dispassionately at what's getting dredged up in court makes one wonder just what goes on inside that head of his. He's been accused of child molestation in the past and he has several books showing nude boys "running, jumping, swimming, and having fun." Jackson even wrote a comment in one indicating how youthful and happy they seem and how that wasn't even close to his childhood. A psychologist could make a career off of that comment, but that aside, it's just not normal. Even if someone didn't have a childhood filled with joyous moments running, jumping, and swimming, it should occur to a grown adult that a book showing that with a lot of naked kids isn't something to take home much less show others. The girlie mags I can understand -- even if he's way too old for that kind of nonsense -- since at least it agrees with his presumed and claimed sexual persuasion. But having stuff with naked kids in it is just perverted. There's no other word. If I think of an unclothed child I cringe; it's natural to be repelled by that level of nudity. Fascination with it is abnormal.

This is why I'm thinking that Jackson might have more problems than just getting his nose to straighten out and stay put every morning. Discounting everything else as heresay, the evidence is damning. People like my wife desperately hope that he's just being misrepresented, but the simple fact is that child molesters come in all shapes, sizes, and from all backgrounds. There's nothing that says a celebrity can't be a criminal. Look at O. J. -- oh, of course, he wasn't guilty. Right. How about Robert Blake of Beretta fame? Oh, he wasn't guilty either... Okay. Well, perhaps being a celebrity doesn't stop one from being a criminal, just from being punished.

So what's the point to all of this? Well, there's a couple. First, to be cliche about it, where there's smoke there's fire, and there's a whole lotta smoke around Jackson. Second, the media blitz that's centered on him is turning the trial into a parade. I objected to this during the O. J. trial, where commentators for that trial launched entire careers from it (Greta Van Susteren, for one). It also plays right into Jackson's (gloved) hand since he can manipulate the media with a mastery seldom witnessed elsewhere. I'm having a hard time dovetailing this into one concise point since there's so many: money doesn't make one trustworthy, every great fall is preceded by a lapse of common sense, celebrities are hard to topple over, and one can always count on the media to exploit the situation to further careers and increase profits.

In the end, though, none of that matters. There's just Michael Jackson and what he knows he did and didn't do. And there's that kid who either was grossly abused or is an incredible liar. They say that the truth will set you free; with the rhetoric and obfuscation prevalent in his trial, the jury may never know the truth. All I know is that there's no winners on this one. One way, Jackson is a sex offender and that poor kid is scarred for life. The other way, Jackson's reputation will never recover and that kid and his mother are solid candidates for Slime of the Century awards. In reality, just like with the runaway bride, the only clear winner is the media. Seems to be a pattern...

Well, that bride-to-be wasn't killed and she wasn't abducted in a blue van, either. After the press that she received when she was missing, I suppose that she didn't want to announce to the nation that she had the jitters and just ran away.

So, who are the big losers in this whole deal? Well, for starters, everyone who had to listen to the story qualifies. How much time did the analysts on CNN, Court TV, and elsewhere spend hypothesizing on the non-crime? We heard updates every half hour from HNN on the story and could catch online updates on every major and most minor news sites. A lot of wasted time, wasted effort, and wasted money.

Another big loser were the law enforcement agencies. They spent money from their budgets to do searches, they had officers on the lookout nationwide for any sign of her, and generally they got themselves all geared up for nothing at all. How many real cases suffered thanks to this fiasco?

Yet another loser were the families of the happy couple. They asked for nothing except for their children to be happy and now have more than their fair share of heartache to drag around with them, not to mention feeling like the fools of the decade.

How about the woman herself? In all liklihood, she wasn't keeping up with the news while she was on her one-woman Greyhound tour-de-force. So, imagine her surprise when she realized that she actually (temporarily) deposed Michael Jackson as the top national story. So, faced with either admitting she's a spastic ditz or making up some lame story about the Blue Van Kidnappers, she went with the latter in the hopes that she'd manage to put one over on everybody. The problem is that the cops are trained to spot liars, so that story flew like a pregnant polevaulter. So, thanks to the media blitz, a really sensitive situation for her, her fiancee, and the parents is now dirty laundry hanging on every newspaper in the nation. It's bad enough to act like an idiot when nobody's looking; it's tragic to get nailed as one when everybody is. I don't know if the lucky couple is destined to get married or not, but if they don't then she's going to have a really hard time finding someone else in this lifetime.

Now, for Loser #1, El Loser Primo. The fiancee. Described in the past few days as a wonderful man by our fleeing bride-to-be, this poor fellow thought his future wife was dead and now has to wrestle with the reality that she was so scared of marrying him that she actually fled from Georgia to Arizona to get away from him. Personally, if I were him I honestly don't know if I'd still want to marry her or not. What's to stop her from running off afterwards when she gets jittery or nervous again? Of course, true love can't be stopped by bad press, but it sure can cast some doubts on it. This poor sap must feel like the ass of the century.

So much for the losers, now how about the winners? The media analysts all got paid to ramble on about it, folks watched TV, newspapers were sold, and advertisers spent money. So it seems like the big winners here were the advertisers, who had more people noticing whatever they were hawking, and the media giants themselves, who pocketed a fair penny for a juicy news story to attract viewers/readers. So through the misfortune, heartache, and humiliation, corporate America rolls on and pockets the change.