ThinkingSkull.com

What’s the big deal? Gov. Eliot Spitzer was obviously intent on pumping money into the local economy while promoting small business and keeping up public relations.

Greed, envy, sloth (laziness), wrath (anger), pride, gluttony, lust; these were the seven deadly sins. Now the Vatican has added seven new sins to the list: being obscenely wealthy, causing social ills including polluting the environment, drug dealing, abortion, pedophilia, causing social injustice, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments or allowing genetic manipulation.

Having too much money is always a bad thing (especially according to everyone who is actually poor) so not a real stretch there. “Causing social ills” is so ambiguous that it could be applied to anything from housing development to bullying kids on the playground… sheesh! Drug dealing is bad (and all pharmacists are now going to hell), but doesn’t that fall under causing social ills again?

Personally, I’m pro-choice on abortion; ask the unborn kid if he wants to die (I’m SOOOO going to get email for that one, but you have to admit it nicely takes religion out of the equation, doesn’t it?) Pedophilia is out (so now priests will have to play with themselves… ewww), but isn’t this just causing social ills again? “Causing social injustice” is another extension of “ills,” and how is that really any different? And finally, manipulating genetics and morally debatable experimentation are more social ills, right?

That leaves only obscene wealth, causing social ills, and abortion (by the way, I actually think the pro-whatever issue is a personal choice for everyone and every situation, so I harbor no ill feeling toward one view or the other). Instead of fourteen, I count only ten deadly sins, which balances ever so nicely with those Ten Commandments (by the way, “Thou shalt not kill” was mistranslated from “Thou shalt not murder,” which is radically different in context).

John McCain has Mike Huckabees’ official endorsement (well played, sir) to cinch the Republican nomination. Looking less like they have a clear vision of the future, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are still neck and neck with no clear winner and only Pennsylvania out as a major source of delegates.

Now the balloon is being floated: A Clinton/Obama Democratic ticket? Hillary has mentioned she wouldn’t be opposed to it, but also reportedly hinted she won’t accept “second banana.” In other words, she requires top billing on the marquee with Obama in a supporting role or there’s no deal. Unfortunately, until this is resolved, the Republicans have a wide open field to spend money in damning the “indecisive Democrats.”

“Dungeons & Dragons” co-creator and celebrated d20-wielder Gary Gygax has passed away (for you die-hard tabletop players out there, after rolling a ‘1′ on a critical saving throw, the Big Dungeon Master upstairs opted to retire his character). More over at CNN.com, but I’ll post whatever else I can find here as soon as I get it.

• John Kovalic honors Mr. Gygax.
• Dueling Analogs is thinking kinda what we were.
• Penny Arcade weighs in.
• Order of the Stick makes its tribute.
• Joystiq.com gets it right with Death and Gary.

I own two iPods, neither of which I paid for. I won an iPod Touch last Christmas that I have hooked up to my home network and pretty much use as a portable Internet device since it runs Safari to test my websites with (and I don’t own any Apple computers). My first iPod, however, was a 1st-generation 1GB iPod Shuffle, which was a gift, a so-called “geek whistle” with an all-white casing and lanyard that plugs directly into a powered USB 2.0 port.

Apple recently dropped prices for their 2nd-gen Shuffles to $49, so I had the opportunity to actually buy a Product “Red” iPod (to which I’ll confess they don’t make a cool shiny black one, so this red one is my second favorite color rather then those other “ugly” color metallic ones). Ordering the iPod online also got me a free engraving for the device, to which I cheerfully added, “Death’s Bloody Little GrimPod.” Is that personalized enough for ya?

Now, I confess to tracking online purchases religiously. I think that the infrastructure required to build and ship products like these is amazing, so I patiently waited for the first email telling me that my iPod was on a plane heading to my city of residence. And then, something funny happened. The name of the city of origin was called Suzhou… a city in China. Really?

Usually when I order through the Internet, shipping is fulfilled in the continental US, so normally I see stuff coming from Chicago or California or wherever. “China” never entered into my mind, but the free engraving had to be done on-site, so no regular-stock New York iPod for me. This one was hot off the line, laser-inscribed with my silliness, then personally bicycled (because my iPod is obviously too cool to just ride in a truck with a bunch of other strange devices) to Shanghai before hopping a plane to Anchorage, Alaska.

Now that I know what a world traveler my iPod is, I’m a bit jealous.