It sure is good to know that Scottish politicians agree that while Abdel Baset al-Megrahi served only eight years for murdering 270 people, it was all in the name of “justice” rather than any kind of quid pro quo. But what I want to know is, how on earth did Scotland get full jurisdiction over this matter, to the exclusion of all other interested parties? This was a flight from London to New York, whose only connection to Scotland was that the bomb happened to go off there. If the bomb had gone off a few hours later, while the plane was over the Arctic circle, who’d have had custody of al-Megrahi then? Santa?

Anyone tried it? I had VOIP with Packet8 and SunRocket in Cali, then had no choice but to revert to POTS in Virginia since neither cable nor DSL was available in the Land of Gooches at the time. I didn’t bother going back to VOIP upon moving to NC, as I got a pretty good deal on POTS, but $0 a month sounds like a better deal still. Any catch?

Shorter Bonefish Grill: we respect your rights, but no, not really.

Swedish names sound even dumber when butchered by Southerners.

One of these things is not like the others:

• Moby Dick
• Macbeth
• The Iliad
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Classic TEMS
• Treasure Island
• Of Mice and Men

IKEA has an annoying habit of being too lazy to write instruction manuals for their furniture, relying instead on a bunch of cutesy drawings that are supposed to tell you what you need to do. Recently I purchased a bookshelf (Expedit) and learned this lesson the hard way. For future reference, this:

means “on the off chance you are not clairvoyant enough to figure out from these cryptic drawings everything you could possibly need to know, but are clairvoyant enough to recognize that there’s something you don’t get from the pictures, and are also clairvoyant enough to know Ikea’s phone number off the top of your head, but are too stupid to know that it’s Ikea you should be calling for assistance, here’s what to do.

Also note that this:

means “Don’t even think of putting this bookshelf in an upright position until it is fully assembled or the damned thing will collapse under its own weight.”

Betcha didn’t know that.

UPDATE: To their credit, they took it back without incident. Heading home now with a new one, and one more opportunity to find my same butt with my same two hands and the same flashlight, but a slightly more detailed butt-map.

FINAL UPDATE: The butt-map makes all the difference. Once I knew what should have been in the instruction manual but wasn’t, assembling the next one, and the rest of Mrs. X’s new set, was easy.

The king can do no wrong, and neither can a Kennedy.

UPDATE: Looking on the bright side, could it be that the Kennedy Curse (which was always on us, not the Kennedys) has finally been lifted?

Today the North Carolina Supreme Court became the first court in the nation (if you believe the dissent, anyway, and I have no reason to doubt her) to rule that as applied to nonviolent felons, our state ban on gun possession by convicted felons is unconstitutional. You might wonder how they square that decision with Heller, which held only by a razor-thin margin that the right to bear arms protects anything at all, and where even the Scalia-led majority noted that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons.” So how did our Supreme Court manage to find otherwise? Simple. The Heller decision interpreted the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which provides that:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

while today’s decision focused on on Article I, Section 30 of the North Carolina Constitution, which provides in relevant part that:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed;

The difference is subtle, but important. Our right to bear arms has two less commas and one more semicolon than yours. Certainly no less of a distinction than can be found between the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the hidden Gay Marriage Clauses that keep turning up in an ever-growing number of state ones. Take that, non-Tarheels and Confederate Yankees.

Uncle has more.

Finally had my first check up with a dentist in the Triad, only two years after starting here. Conversation with the new dental assistant:

Her: So, who do we have to thank for referring you as a client?

Me: Kirk Turner.  All my colleagues had him as their dentist, so if he hadn’t murdered his wife he’d probably be mine now, too.

SC governor Mark Sanford vows not to be “railroaded” into resigning. I agree, Marky-Mark. Don’t go away mad. Just go away.