What is Your Conceptual Continuity? (The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe)

Ended another six-day run of WCOOP live blogging yesterday. Day off today, then back to the grind tomorrow. Combined with my other “life” (which includes continuing to show up dutifully for my “real” job), Shamus is sapped.

Otherwise, I’d have lots on which to opine. I’d probably try (not necessarily successfully) to write something meaningful about the suicide last Friday of David Foster Wallace, author of The Broom of the System (1987), Infinite Jest (1996), and many other narrative delights.

Instead I’ll just send you over to Spaceman and the Poker Grump for their thoughts about Wallace’s untimely passing here in (what I think adds up to be) the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.

And if the mental tank wasn’t so close to empty I’d also perhaps say something about what is happening this afternoon over in the House of Representatives, specifically the meeting of the House Financial Services Committee in which among other items on the agenda the committee will be “marking up” yet another newly-proposed bill from their chair, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) designed to counter the damage wrought by the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

This bill, titled the “Payment System Protection Act” (H.R. 6870), appears another attempt to pull off what Frank and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) had previously undertaken back in April with H.R. 5767. That bill was a very straightforward, very brief bill designed to prohibit the feds from finalizing any UIGEA regulations. It died in committee, though, toward the end of June.

The new bill is also quite brief and to the point, and is also designed to stop the feds from moving forward with the UIGEA. This time the tactic is slightly different, though, insofar as the bill doesn’t expressly prohibit the UIGEA regs from being finalized and implemented, but is asking the feds “To ensure that implementation of proposed regulations... does not cause harm to the payments system.”

Not quite sure how one exactly makes a law out of a directive like that, really, but like I said, I’m tired. Perhaps after the markup session (in which amendments to the bill may or may not be proposed and voted on) I’ll have the energy to talk more about this one.

Finally -- again, if I weren’t so bushed -- I might say something about the 2008 Bluff Magazine Reader’s Choice Awards (sic) currently ongoing, specifically regarding some of the selections they’ve listed (and not listed) for certain categories. Again, though, maybe I’ll just save that for later and for now just wonder why they would place the apostrophe there. What, they got only one reader? (To be fair, they get it correct elsewhere on the site.)

Talk about a lack of conceptual continuity. From suicide to punctuation. Plus yr odd Frank Zappa allusion, destined to baffle most, I’d guess. Ah, Wallace wouldn’t have minded, I don’t think...

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy...