Stafford, Texas, has had it up to here with those pesky churches:

Scarcella is mayor of this Houston-area community, which has 51 churches and other religious institutions packed into its 7 square miles.

With some 300 undeveloped, potentially revenue-producing acres left in Stafford, officials are scrambling to find a legal way to keep more tax-exempt churches from building here.

"With federal laws, you can't just say, 'We're not going to have any more churches,' " Scarcella said. "We respect the Constitution, but 51 of anything is too much."

Stafford, population 19,227, is the largest city in Texas without a property tax, and it depends on sales taxes and business fees for revenue. Nonprofits have been attracted by its rapid growth and minimal deed restrictions. "It's thrown everything out of balance, plus providing zero revenue. Somebody's got to pay for police, fire and schools," City Councilman Cecil Willis said.

In 2003, around the time the 45th church settled in, city leaders began looking for a way to slow the pace of construction. Public meetings were held; "we had people of different religions attending, people in their religious garb, Buddhists in their orange gowns and whatever else, talking about this very openly," Scarcella said.

But here's the proof you were seeking that God hates taxes and believes in unfettered capital:

Willis said he asked the last six applicants why they wanted to build a church in Stafford. "Every one of them said they prayed about it, and God said to come here," he said. "I can't compete with that, so here we are."

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Our phone's been out for about two weeks, with repairs delayed because Verizon insisted we be home between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm for any repair work and our bosses insisted we show up for the jobs they pay us for. Oh, the blissful silence! Nobody called wanting to sell us attractive long-distance rates to Mexico, or looking for the Mr. Guapo who owes Orchard Bank some money, or Eliot Spitzer telling us that Tom Suozzi should be more supportive of working families.

This morning it rang, suddenly and dramatically. It was the Verizon repair guy outside, who had shown up unannounced to work on the line and, no, didn't need a glass of water or something.

Fifteen minutes later, it rang a second time. My dad. He's good.

The phone rang a third time, five minutes after I hung up with my dad. It was the police sergeant's benevolent association, wanting to know in Spanish whether we want to contribute.

I feel like going downstairs to the Verizon guy and saying, "I can talk to my dad on my cellphone. Can we get it disconnected again?"

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Not only is my mom big news on Norlos, but her work was also recently mentioned in the New York Times.

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(Cue the tune...)

• ...you learn that every Thursday night the custodial staff beats the chair cushions with broomsticks. I do not know why this is done.
• ... you find out the custodian with the dyed red hairwho says "ooooooh!" every third word is Yvette, and she's from Colombia.
• ...you see other people at the gym at noon and say, "hey, who are these people, and don't they have jobs?" Then you remember that you're there, too.
• ...you learn to understand what kind of person works the late night shift in security. Like the guy who twice I've asked to let me into the garage to get my bike, only to forget me not 30 seconds later. I stand by the garage entrance, wave at the camera and buzz the intercom button, but the door remains stubbornly shut. So I trudge back upstairs to the main security desk and repeat, "Hey man, can you please let me in to get my bike?" How hard is it to forget 30 seconds after being asked?
• ...which makes you realize it says something about you that YOU work the night shift.
• ...you've already read the next day's newspapers online before they hit America's front door that morning
• ...you come home and turn off the TV, and Cinemax is playing porn.
• ...you have time to wonder why the hell you get Cinemax to begin with, since you don't pay for it.
• ...and then, since you have more time, you wonder why ANYBODY gets Cinemax. Besides, of course, the porn.
• ...you sometimes post to Norlos, and you're too tired to realize what you're writing

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Well, it's official 'cuz Orbitz says so. The Souls will be flying into JFK on October 11, 5pm (late only 50% of the time) and leaving on October 13, 8:15am from Penn Station to the Adirondacks and points west. Hopefully there will be at least one or two Norlosers about, preferably ones that have either cute babies to show or a place to sleep for 2 nights. Looking forward to seeing you.

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Last weekend, Dr. No and two friends did the trapeze. This is their sordid "Girlz Gone Wild" story.

(New York-area viewers: Don't settle for this crap. Hit us up for highly addictive DVD action. With deleted scenes!)

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Slug and I are hosting our last party in Lawrence (aside from the inevitable "load the truck 'party'") this Saturday July 22. All Norlosers invited to help us imbibe whatever we have left in the cupboards (which includes many non-alcoholic drinks for the pregnant wives of norlosers), twirl fire and leave with festive revelry.

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(Above link not safe for work, unless your workplace has a mature atttitude toward boobies.)

Wacky schedule has kept me from posting lately. For example, I learned this week that 2:30 a.m. my time is the absolute best time to call Oslo. In any case, as Adrian mentions below, I should have posted when Syd Barrett died earlier this week.

Some Norlosers remember a teenage Mr. Guapo who was painfully into Pink Floyd. The Atlanta album-rock radio station -- every city has one and most Southern cities have two, the radio station that hasn't changed its playlist since the day in 1982 when Led Zeppelin released "Coda" -- introduced me to "The Wall" and "Dark Side of the Moon" and all the arena rock stuff that made the band famous. So I went out and bought everything I could by the band. This was the primitive days of 1989-1991, mind you. Back in those days, if you wanted an album you had you, you know, go to a record store. Or a flea market or a thrift store, or make a list of what you wanted and visit a Greenwich Village record store when your Model UN team went to New York City. Even in those hardscrabble days I still managed to scrape together a Pink Floyd record collection decent enough to make the feather-banged kids in my high school say "duuude" upon perusing it.

That introduced me to Syd Barrett, the founder and christener of the band. He had long since washed out of Pink Floyd by the time it made the music I liked. I was kinda ambivalent about the old stuff -- to my young ears, lots of flowery hippie ditties from dudes wearing tight pink pants and blouses with big floppy dangly paisley sleeves. The exception was something called Interstellar Overdrive, which was seven minutes of driving guitar chords, then nonsense, then some more nonsense before the chords came back. God help me, it was my first prog rock. Then there was Syd's solo stuff, clearly made by someone who'd taken the off-ramp to Nut Town and plenty compelling for it.

Among my purchased books and magazine articles (yes, I sought those out too) there were rumors of hard-to-find Italian films and studio-floor outtakes and other apocrypha showing Syd playing this stuff, possibly while a melting Mandrax-Brylcreem concoction dribbled down his cheeks. But you couldn't find that stuff so easily back then. Meanwhile, as high school turned to college and college turned me on to other stuff, I listened less and less to to post-Syd Pink Floyd and more and more to Syd's Pink and his solo stuff, to the point where I pretty much forgot about the later Pink Floyd. (Except for Animals, which is still fucking great.) I think by the time I'd left Stephenson I'd at least given my collection of cassette rarities away -- to Jeff Lonard? The memory declines. But I kept my Syd.

Anyway, when he died earlier this week, I was discussing him with a co-worker who told me that YouTube has a kickass video of Syd's Pink Floyd performing an oldie called "Astronomy Domine." Indeed cool, though I think they're lip-synching. Even better, the video linked at the top of this post has the 30-minute version of "Interstellar Overdrive" I'd always read about, from the out-of-print Tonight Let's All Make Love in London.

I never thought I'd ever see it. It was a video mentioned in one of those long-ago articles or books, the kind of thing I'd looked for and given up on ever seeing. When I was a kid you have to know someone who knew a guy who got those weird catalogs, or had boxes of random stuff bought in swap meets boxed and piled up in a basement as if their layers would protect him from radioactive fallout, to get your hands on such golden material. These days, you just need YouTube.

YouTube has other golden oldies -- Stevie Wonder playing "Superstition" on "Sesame Street", Tom Waits' totally weird "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" video, Eddie Hazel and P-Funk doing Maggot Brain, shit even GG Allin. When you have all this at your fingertips, who needs memory?

It pleases me to no end to see Syd running his Zippo across the guitar strings, six years before I was born. There's something to the idea that people can dredge back to the Syd Barrett days and even earlier to feed this new collective memory bank. As an inevitable development from the very first created electronic media --the phonograph? -- we've reached the point where we will lose virtually nothing electronically distributed through mass culture. Only copyright law can kill this. Just remmeber that next time you watch a YouTube video of a bunch of guys barfing.

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Lindsay Lohan Supports America's Best-Selling Acne Treatment as One of the New Faces of Proactiv Solution

PALM DESERT, Calif. -- Underscoring its continued success as America's best-selling acne treatment, Guthy-Renker today revealed that Lindsay Lohan is one of the new faces of Proactiv Solution. The brand's 10th national television program featuring Lohan will begin airing nationwide July 2006. The new program will serve as a platform for Lohan to share her experience with acne sufferers of all ages.

Like Proactiv's many celebrity supporters, Lohan has used Proactiv for several years, has seen results, and felt so strongly about the product she was compelled to share her story about how Proactiv -- and its effectiveness -- has had a positive effect on her skin. "My skin, thanks to Proactiv, is clear all the time," said a candid and confident Lohan. "Proactiv heals acne, but the best thing is that it's super gentle, so it works every day like skin care. That's how I use it, and it works."

"Celebrities have access to nearly every skin care product, and they choose Proactiv because it works," said Karen Barner, senior vice president of Proactiv Solution. "We're thrilled that Lindsay uses Proactiv Solution and is happy to speak out in support of the brand. As Proactiv celebrates its 10th program, the life-changing product not only remains more popular and relevant than ever, but the response to the product continues to be remarkable."

Part of the success and growing admiration for the direct response industry can be attributed to Proactiv Solution and the brand's marketing company, Guthy-Renker, one of the world's most respected TV-driven companies with sales in excess of one billion dollars. The company is known not only for its longevity in this industry, but also for delivering quality products through award-winning shows that feature some of today's biggest stars.

Used by more than 10 million people, Proactiv Solution is the culmination of five years of hands-on research by two leading Stanford-trained dermatologists, Dr. Katie Rodan and Dr. Kathy Fields. Proactiv Solution was launched in 1995. In addition to the three-step system, Proactiv Solution has a complete line of products including concealers, sunscreens and body washes to compliment the core three-step system.

Honored in 2001 for Allure's Editors Choice Award and in 2003 for Allure's Best of Beauty Award-Editors Choice for Best Acne Product, Proactiv Solution remains a respected acne treatment in the beauty industry and beyond. Additionally, the productions have been recognized by the Electronic Retailing Association's ERA Awards for the past five years. Proactiv Solution is distributed by Guthy-Renker and can be purchased by calling (800) 950-4695 or online at www.proactiv.com.

About Guthy-Renker
Established in 1988, Guthy-Renker is one of the world's largest direct response television companies with annual sales of $1.5 billion. It is known as the leading producer of high-quality infomercials and products designed for direct response television sales, with offices in Palm Desert, CA; Santa Monica, CA; London; Beijing; Tokyo; New Zealand; and Sydney, Australia. Guthy-Renker has a superior track record of customer satisfaction for 18 years.

Originally launched as a television direct marketer by Co-CEOs Bill Guthy and Greg Renker, the independently-owned, vertically-integrated company has since broadened its focus into every area of electronic retailing, making quality products available to U.S. and international consumers through broadcast television, cable and satellite, as well as internet, telemarketing, direct mail and retail channels.

SOURCE Guthy-Renker

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My chances of winning the office's World Cup pool meet the same fate as Argentina's title hopes. Friggin' krauts.

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