The moving process continues apace, as Arminda strikes a blow for all my friends when she declares the staircase unnavigable. This is going to be expensive, this relocation thing. Meanwhile, I connected with my Irish-washerwoman roots by scrubbing the kitchen floor by hand. (And I ain’t done yet; this is no ordinary floor grime, and I am no ordinary quarter-Mick. Mickette. Mickeen? Leave it.) In other news, found a store that sells not only copies of the magazine my grandmother’s in this month but those wax-bottle syrup candies. Remember those? Imagine, there was a time when entire lines of sweets could be predicated on the fact that kids will put just about anything in their mouths, including paraffin.

And more tasty spam: the subject line on one just arrived says CLAIM YOUR FREE HUMAN BODY TODAY. (It’s for anatomy software.) I’ve always wanted one of those! Do I get to specify whose?

So I’m wading through the day’s email, which is as usual these days laden with spam, and I happen across (in one of the aforementioned spams) a porn-site ad that wants us to know that they are ADDING NEW LESBIANS DAILY. I have this alarming mental image of some poor schnook building shelf after shelf after shelf, only to watch them fill inexorably up with lesbians. Don’t think you won’t see THAT images in your nightmares tonight, kids.

From the halls of science, proof of the existence of the conscience.

Thought for the day: It’s the heat AND the humidity. It’s also general grumpiness, but we’ll try to let that ride. Also, when did the official preferred tech-show swag become the martini shaker? (Translation for civilians: My, but a lot of technology companies seem to be giving martini shakers as promotional gifts.) Hearkening to better days, or are we really all just drinking that much now?

Liu Zhang presents a brilliant refutation to Tim Parks’ insipid “Lender Politics” brainstorm that libraries ought not to buy new books. The logic — if libraries buy them, readers won’t — comes from a (charitably speaking) midlist author whose thinking, I should hope, is clearer in matters not touching on economics. Or human nature. Or word of mouth. Or… oh, christ, let’s just call him a slappy scribbler and have done with it.

If it’s any consolation to Mr. Parks, though, I won’t check his books out of the library, which will handily keep me from knowing anything more about him than what I’ve learned from his doofus attempt at an argument. Of course, when I am made Empress I will be burning Mr. Parks in the public square as an example to anyone else who would put profit before cultural heritage, and the right to a few pennies’ worth of royalties before the right to read freely. (Fear not, future subjects: I will naturally be using Hillary Rosen as kindling. Just because.)

Next stop Ethblog (no, don’t look, it’s totally out of date, my apologies): My beloved Blogger has a paid ad from The Thin Page, one of those pro-anorexia sites you’ve heard about. Free speech or incredibly irresponsible? For that matter, conscious performance/body choice or incredibly shortsighted? Like the lady says, your body is a battleground…

The final word on the true color of the universe: latte. And that’s not just my universe, either. (In closely related news, the following was overheard last week at the local Mailboxes Etc.: “Latte? What is that? Is it French for crazy?”)

Consortium News has a marvelous and terrifying piece connecting the dots of Bush policies here and abroad. Its conclusion? George Orwell, phone your office.

Well! Here’s something interesting: The Librarian of Congress has put forth his ruling on fees for Internet radio broadcasting. (You may remember that I covered this a month or so ago.) Chewy but nutritious reading. I’m slogging through it right now.