For those of you who find a combination of navy, violet, purple, gold, orange and seafoam green too… garish… I’ve created three new skins. No moons, cows, lizards or sand.

I’ve Got The Blues and I’ve Got The Greens are basically the same skin with a slightly different color scheme. The sideblogs have been both moved to the right, and the main content is on the left.

Good Corporate Citizen is a teal-based color scheme with the far-right-hand sideblog removed entirely. No more news, reviews, weather, mood. In order to accomodate this, the style switcher has been moved back right under the calendar. In order to keep its length smaller, I’ve changed to a drop-down box.

So… if you hate my colors or my layout… pick a new one and come back!

Now that the election is over, I’ve made a few changes to PI.

The Wayback Machine is courtesy of Scriptygoddess’ “Today in weeks/months/years past” Wordpress plugin. I fixed a few bugs in it and added the post title display under the link to the date archive.

I’ve also installed plugins and hacks that put “next | home | previous” links on the page and date archives. I’m looking for a clue on how to do a “next/previous category” link on the category archives, but so far no go.

Gone is the “election” section of the news. Weather, Mood and Skin Me have been moved over to the right. This makes the right-hand blog carry all of the miscellaneous, non-PI-related stuff, while the left-hand blog has all of the more blog related items. It also makes the columns fairly even.

New York City officials were a bit embarassed to find out that ads for a clothing line that have been appearing on New York buses since September promise reading can be rewarded in unexpected ways.

The ads show a suggestively posed and scantily clad woman kneeling among a pile of books with the snappy slogan, “Read Books, Get Brain.”

Officials were apparently unaware that “get brain” is slang for oral sex.

After being tipped to the phrases double meaning, Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman Tom Kelly ran a little test of his own:

I went downstairs to the mailroom and showed some of the young guys a copy of the ad. I was watching their faces and they all start smirking.

Apparently it’s on all the music, in music that’s how they refer to it. I didn’t know anything about it and I’m sure the people that approved the ad didn’t.

To me and I believe to everyone else, while it was done by a clothing line, it would give the impression that it was also promoting reading and literacy.

The ads, from Akademiks, which intended the double-entendre, also run on buses and bus shelters in Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, San Francisco and Philadelphia. But the ads are no longer running in New York — they were stripped off buses on Friday.

Received via email:

ELECTION BREAKING NEWS:
NEW ENGLAND, NEW YORK CITY SECEDE
Kerry To Lead Breakaway Republic

Boston (Reuters) In a fiery concession speech at Boston’s historic
Faneuil Hall, defeated Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry accepted
the now inevitable conclusion of a long 2004 election night: New England and
New York City seceding from the Union.

“The voters have spoken and I respect that process,” said the
Massachusetts senator, before an audience of friends, family, supporters and
campaign staff. “And the voters have told us that it’s time for tolerant, open
minded and sane Americans to form our own nation.”

Kerry gave words to what many of his fervent supporters have long
believed. “If the rest of the nation wants to be led by a bunch of gay-bashing,
war-mongering, corporate-whore evangelicals, so be it,” said the
Senator. “We chose to live in peace, harmony and fiscal sanity east of the
Hudson river.”

Legions of lawyers working for the Kerry campaign have shifted their
attention from voting booth challenges to the legal paperwork
required for setting up a new country. “We’ll have the world’s 6th largest
economy, the world’s most highly educated populace, the best NFL team, and the
best baseball rivalry,” said Kerry. “Once Kofi approves the paperwork and
the new letterhead comes in we’ll be our own. Thank god.”

Kerry stressed this path was the only way for the nation to begin the
process of healing. “As a thrice decorated Vietnam vet I saw men
whose only hope of life was the sweet, swift and sharp healing of amputating an
infected and shrapnel filled limb,” said the hoarse Senator. “And now
we must amputate the cancerous red state tumor that is otherwise known
as Bush’s America.”

Details were not firmed up as to the fate of Democratic supporters in
the mid-west, Pacific west coast, and District of Columbia. “Blue state
citizens will be automatically eligible for membership in New America (TM),”
stressed Kerry. “The rest of you Bible thumpers, Humvee drivers and NRA
members can take your assault rifles, Confederate flags and gay marriage bans and
choke on the arsenic laden water and $6.50 per gallon gas prices that your
vote has bought you. Best of luck with Iraq, by the way.”

Bush officials had no comment, other than to confirm the pending
elimination of the E.P.A., the reduction of the minimum wage to $2.00 per hour,
the reinstatement of the Dred Scott decision and the nomination of Ralph
Reed to replace William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Providence, Rhode Island was being strongly considered as
a symbolic location for the new nation’s capital. “More than 300 years
ago, Anne Hutchinson led a stubborn band of colonists who refused to
recognize the maniacal, religious right morality of the Puritans and went off
to form Rhode Island,” reminded Kerry. “Today, we refuse to recognize the
Puritanical zealotry of John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld and form our own nation, free of Cracker Barrels, Dale Earnhardt
memorials and Lee Greenwood. This is a great day for New England.”

Let’s go for it out here, too. How about Westcoastland?

OK… what passes for normal in these parts, then…

I’m feeling discouraged. And I need to get out of that rut. I believe in my country and in our system of checks and balances. The country has suffered through some fairly terrible presidents before and yet managed to survive. The lame chimp Dubya will not be so differently bad that he managed to rip the country to shreds. He does not have a mandate. While a record number of voters voted for him, a record number also voted against him.

Our state and federal congressional members and our local governments need to know that we are out here, and we vote. I’m going to turn my discouragement into action, if at all possible. I want my voice to be heard. And, as a middle-aged, middle-class, taxpaying voter, I have more resources at my disposal than I did as a teenaged anti-war (Viet Nam), green (no strip mining in the Idaho White Clouds), hippy activist.

It will be better than sitting here on my ass watching my friends’ and colleagues’ lose their jobs due to offshore outsourcing. Better than sitting on my ass, period.

I never intended this to be a political blog. I do intend to continue blogging about anything I damn well please, including politics. But I may visit more categories as I did before the election heated up.

Other things may never be normal again. #1 Son unloaded the dishwasher this morning with out me asking him to. I didn’t even ask last night when he came home late after a gig. And he didn’t ask me for anything. I am really pleased. But it’s not “normal.”