E-mails from widows or children or accountants of wealthy or corrupt leaders or bankers in Nigeria or elsewhere in the Third World are such a daily fixture of Internet life that I don't always remember that this particular scam has been around since it actually cost these scumbags a first-class stamp to get in touch. (Snopes suggests the earliest incarnation dates from the 1920s!)

But I'm a little bit curious about the version that showed up on the office fax during the night. Not about the details of the come-on. (Please! Only $24 million?) I simply wonder whether this signals anything beyond the extent to which our fax number has been distributed through the planet's criminal class.

The fax has long been a target of spammers, even though it has apparently been illegal in the U.S. since the mid-1990s "to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine (47 US Code 227)." A quick perusal through our recycling bin came up with a page of "super hot stock tips" that also arrived overnight. This kind of quasi-semi-legitimate-sounding business stuff is what usually chatters its way out of the machine.

A colleague contends that "all spammers are stupid." This would support my thesis that the "real" spam money these days comes from selling "spam kits" (including lists of addresses) to the kind of people who are likely to respond to any offer that's too good to be true. Like those envelope-stuffing ads in the back of the Weekly.

I've always liked Garrison Keillor, even if his radio show can be a little sleepy at times. But I like him even more after seeing his latest syndicated column. He discusses one of the Republicans' tactics when it comes to the upcoming election better than anyone I've seen so far:

I see by the papers that the Republicans want to make an issue of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the congressional races this fall: Would you want a San Francisco woman to be speaker of the House? Will the lectern be repainted in lavender stripes with a disco ball overhead? Will she be borne into the chamber by male dancers with glistening torsos and wearing pink tutus? After all, in the unique worldview of old elephants, San Francisco is a code word for g-a-y, and after assembling a record of government lies, incompetence and disaster, the party in power hopes that the fear of g-a-y-s will pull it through in November.

Check out this short syndicated column; it's worth your time, even if you do have  to register (for free) with the Chicago Tribune.

Are you looking for some good clean fun this Sunday morning, June 11?  Arizona Greyhound Rescue is looking for volunteers to come out and wash dogs for our doggy spa fundraiser.

Arizona Greyhound Rescue is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization that takes dogs from the local race track and racing kennels and finds them permanent, loving homes. Traditionally, the summer dog wash, held in front of Pantano Animal Clinic (8333 E. 22nd Street @ Sarnoff), has a record of being a great fundraiser, but we need more dog-loving volunteers who don’t mind getting wet. We provide free pizza and beverages.

The event is from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and volunteers are welcome during those hours or as early as 7:30 a.m. to help us set up. (I will be there.) For questions, call 886-7411, or comment here, and I’ll dialog right back.

The more the merrier and the hairy-er. Thank you.

The Weekly is blessed to have three wonderful interns this summer: Jacki Kuder, Beth Prosnitz and Ellen Ranta. Well, at least they seem wonderful so far. I mean, two of 'em have been here for a week or less, and could very well turn out to be deranged or something. But so far, so good.

I am digressing. My point here is to share with you, the Weekly blog-reading public, the very same Web sites that I force under the threat of extreme punishment ask our interns to peruse on a regular basis, so they get a taste of what's happening in the journalism world outside of Weekly World Central:

1. Romenesko on Poynter.org. I ask my interns to peruse this daily. It's an excellent blog, maintained by Jim Romenesko, which features links (with blurbs) to all sorts of media coverage of, well, the media. Lately, there have been a ton of stories on newspaper sales, mergers and cutbacks. Sigh.

2. The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. I ask the interns to check this out a couple of times a week. This is the Web site for the trade group to which the Weekly and 120-some other alt weeklies belong, and the site features association news, links to outside stories about members, a directory of all the members, and so on. Good stuff.

3. Altweeklies.com. I ask my interns to peruse this at least several times a week. This site, a service of the above-referenced AAN, serves two purposes: 1. It's a story sharing site for AAN members. (So, say, I have a space in the paper to fill in a panic. I can go here and get a story to fill that space.) 2. It's a hub for the public to easily peruse what stories some AAN members are doing, without going to 120-some different Web sites. (It should also be noted that John Banks and the good folks at DesertNet put together this site for AAN. Those are the same folks who put together the Weekly's Web site. John has also been helpful in bringing this blog together—and he blogs, too!)

4. www.tucsonweekly.com. This one is obvious.

These are all great Web sites for people who care about journalism.

It's a well-known internet axiom that no blog is complete without a broad array of cat photos/videos. So in celebration of the TWeekly's blog launch, I submit to you one of the cutest goddamn CAT.VIDEOS.EVER.

You'll thank me upon watching it.

Look! Zarqawi is dead! That means we won, just like we won when we captured Saddam Hussein! War is over! Again!

O, wait. Now "Abu Abdel-Rahman" is in charge of evil. Ok, war's on again! Yay! Another chance for victory!

Interestingly, a little over a month ago, the Washington Post reported that

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq...

So they've set up his death as an important moment, though

Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq ...remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," Col. Derek Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq and then was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., last summer.

Whatever. Who cares. We won! Yay!

Here at Weekly World Central—in a convenient location if you need to go to the airport or want to eat at Carl's Jr.—we're in the midst of one heckuva storm.

One of the news geeks turned on the police scanner, and apparently, some folks are in need of rescue already. When will Tucsonans learn to NOT DRIVE THROUGH WATER IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW DEEP IT IS?

Thank you. That's my rant of the day.

So the ongoing debate over whether the government should raise the fuel-economy standards was in the news again today, and so it seemed like an apt time to posit my new conspiracy theory.

It seems so obvious, I'm sure someone else has said this, but ... this Disney/Pixar film about cars, called Cars, seems awfully suspicious. Could it be possible it's being released now to brainwash small children into loving cars to create a whole new generation of autophiles? I know, I know; I'm reading way too much into this, but have you seen the trailers? I mean, c'mon.

The movie stars a red racecar named Lightning McQueen who goes on some kind of soul-searching journey away from the race track and meets a cute little blue Porsche named Sally and falls in love. It's set in Radiator City, Carburetor County, California, which is located along Route 66 and looks like something out of ... well, a Disney cartoon from the '60s. And the music! The Rascal Flatts' "Life is a Highway," Chuck Berry's "Route 66" and some Sheryl Crow song that likens herself to a Chevrolet. The other "car-ecters" (ha ha) project all kinds of stereotypes: the VW bus is the hippie, the greasy old Ford pickup a redneck, so on and so forth ... even the font of the movie title reeks of 1960s automobile nostalgia.

Is anyone else horribly disturbed by this? The last thing we need is a movie that further glorifies the cult of the automobile and the romance of western expansion ... and the most disgusting part is that it's geared toward CHILDREN. Gross.

Yeah, sure, the plot seems to center around saving a small town that's dying thanks to the creation of the big bad interstate freeway ("Look at that, they're driving right by and they don't even know what they're missing!" says Lightning), but it's still cute little cars with feelings that will only make kids say, "Mommy, Daddy, can we get a racecar like Lightning McQueen?" And love their cars so much that they will refuse to take trains and buses instead.

At least little red racecars get better mileage than a minivan or SUV. But wouldn't a family outing to see An Inconvenient Truth be a bit more educational? Might give the kids nightmares, but anything's better than more car-love.

I'm just sayin'.

I hate summer in Tucson. My brain processes at half-time. I lack any energy and enthusiasm. The simplest tasks require too much fortitude.

My friends back East suffer from (SAD) Seasonal Affective Disorder, which mainly describes winter depression. Who’s responsible for overriding the season to only apply to winter—some Harvard professor? It should be rightly renamed to WAD (Winter Affective Disorder), and Arizonans can then claim SAD (Summer Affective Disorder) as our own torch song.

In the summer, I spend numerous hours being HAD (hydrating all day) and then am more BAD (bitchier and dizzier) than usual.

This summer, I made a pact with no one in particular that I was going to make the most of the next four months instead of going underground. I promised myself to listen to more live music, view midday movies, take advantage of those $20 dining deals and interact more directly with people. Since I am self-employed and work from home, I can go for days without going anywhere or talking to anyone except to my dogs, who appear rapt by idle chatter.

Stay cool.

It's always a pleasure to watch the UA women win the college softball crown, especially when they do it in such a decisive fashion. Last night's defeat of Northwestern was not without some drama, though. With two outs in the opponent's last turn at bat, Arizona pitcher Alicia Hollowell gave up three consecutive singles, loading the bases and facing a hitter with a grand slam to her credit. Real edge-of-the-seat, nail-biting stuff. Given Hollowell's performance throughout the series, it was fitting that the final pitch was a strike that caught the batter looking.

Not long after the first report of the victory was filed at the morning daily's Web site, a commenter proposed that the Wildcat women could school the men's basketball and football team members in things such as persistence, dedication and determination.