Was hoping this piece in the Los Angeles Times online edition might not run until the book is actually out, but what the heck, here it is.

Deborah Netburn asked me to come up with a number of lists related to
the book’s content, one of which was my seven favorite exotic places
I’ve visited since starting to travel so much in the wake of Jeopardy!.

So this is the list I came up with.

UPDATE, 10:23 pm 8/24: A chunk of that tiny piece has apparently just been picked up
by United Press International, and is now running (online at least)
everywhere from the Washington Times to DailyIndia.com to the North Korea Times.  Whoa.

Before this goes any further, there are three errors in the UPI article,
one of which is my fault, and I’d like to correct these asap:

No?

Funny.  Because August 22nd was supposed to be the day we all died.  Remember?

If you can’t remember as far back as last month — a prerequisite for believing a word the right wing says — look here and here and here and here and here and here:

A slightly more sane commentator explained that it was all rubbish at the time.  But you didn’t see him on CNN, I imagine.

Still, looking at the clock, depending on your time zone, there are still six to eleven hours left for America to be destroyed by a fanatic horde.  So I guess there’s something the apocalyptic right can still secretly hope for.

And if it seems outrageous to suggest that Bush loyalists and armchair militants could possibly prefer watching Americans die in large number to simply admitting an obvious mistake… witness Iraq.

Here’s a glimpse of Bush’s notes at his press conference yesterday, published over at Arianna’s place:

I took a few minutes with Photoshop, and now here are the same notes,
rotated and made a little clearer, as if we’re looking down from the
podium ourselves:

Hmm. 

First thing that leaps out is the semi-literate capitalization, but we saw that before in his note telling Condi he needed to wee.  So, sigh, nothing new there.  Moving on.

Some of the writing is too fuzzy to make out, but by blowing the picture up and fooling with
the contrast slider, this much was pretty clear on the left side:

Imagine how addled you’d have to be to need to actually write down reminders to yourself to burp up meaningless phrases like "history not written."  And in case you were wondering, yes, he actually used some of the above phrases in the first two responses he gave:

Wow.  History may not yet be written, but every damn thing Bush says apparently is.  Man.

Pretty convenient, btw, that the first two reporters’ questions just happened to lead directly to the empty responses Bush was already planning to use, right there on the top left of his cheat sheet.  Gosh, that must have been terribly lucky.

In the center we glimpse Bush’s diagram of whom he’s supposed to call
on.  You’ll notice a few of the seats down front have big, bold boxes
around them.  I can’t make out most of the names, but the two visible at bottom right seem pretty clearly to be:

And sure enough, those two got called on.  I have no idea how Bush’s system actually works, but it sure looks like the poor kids in the back might be completely ignored.

Speaking of poor people being ignored: on the right, Bush has some specific notes about Katrina.  Here’s the
best I can make of it, omitting the impenetrably teeny sub-notes:

Prisoner of Trebekistan is currently in the top ten pre-ordered memoirs on Amazon.  Neat!

Incidentally, I’m still struggling to make time to build that section, but darn if I’m not gonna give it a shot here shortly.  There should soon be a bunch of things like stuff cut out of the book for length, excerpts and sample chapters, videos of readings, fun memories of the game from other players, and more.  Time is the only obstacle.  Working on it.

Can’t argue with this, uttered during today’s press conference:

No kidding.