The management of a new Hawaiian TV station is horrified at the realization that the last three call letters “UNT” do not lead to a particularly euphonic four-letter station name, considering that the first letter will assuredly not be “W.”

They apparently never noticed what their own station name spelled. Neither did the FCC, who would fine somebody hundreds of thousands of dollars if you reported this story on the air and pronounced these FCC-approved call letters as a phonetic whole.

Incidentally, in the same set of approvals, the company now also owns “KWTF.” (As in “WTF?”) Fitting.

Link via our Trebekistan pal Ken Jennings, whose blog you may find habit-forming.

A Sudanese official named Ahmad Harun is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

He has not yet been arrested, however.

Instead, as the L.A. Times just pointed out, he is currently serving as a Sudanese Minister of Humanitarian Affairs.

Incidentally, I mention this in the Sudan chapter of my next book, which will be out next month. But the book is a series of very short essays, so Harun gets all of two or three sardonic sentences. All I could squeeze in. I’ll be eager to see this given wider attention.

The Times story gives photos and a much fuller picture, including some very dark conjecture about Harun’s eventual poetic fate. Well done, and good reading.

A Sudanese official named Ahmad Harun is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

He has not yet been arrested, however.

Instead, as the L.A. Times just pointed out, he is currently serving as a Sudanese Minister of Humanitarian Affairs.

Incidentally, I mention this in the Sudan chapter of my next book, which will be out next month. But the book is a series of very short essays, so Harun gets all of two or three sardonic sentences. All I could squeeze in. I’ll be eager to see this given wider attention.

The Times story gives photos and a much fuller picture, including some very dark conjecture about Harun’s eventual poetic fate. Well done, and good reading.

I’m in the middle of an aggressive summer cold. (Or, possibly, a swarm of angry bees have gotten into my lungs. Hard to tell the difference right now.) Either way, my doctor has prescribed new and interesting meds whose side effects include some of the most fascinating, lucid dreams I’ve ever had.

Last night, for what felt like about an hour, I was about 15 years old and Dick Cheney lived next door to the house I grew up in, and he was trying to sneak into our yard without anyone noticing. He was clearly up to no good. But I kept yelling Cheney! Cheney!, sort of the way people in monster movies yell Godzilla! Godzilla!, and pointing and sounding the alarm, and Cheney would look up at me and sort of snarl and stay on his side of the fence. For now.

This went on for a really long time.

The weirdest part was that it was neither scary nor amusing; it was simply a fact of life, something you just sort of had to do every day. Kinda like real life, unfortunately. Sigh.

As long as I’m tripping, you’re welcome to join me. Here’s the Shat doing "Rocket Man." Seems about right.

P.S. While we’re at it, here’s a supremo computer ad from the pre-iPhone era. Just too cool not to post. Enjoy.

I couldn’t pudublog last week, so this week, I present the following, which contains enough cute to fill two weeks, if not actually warp the time-space continuum itself:

This is the fine work of Los Angeles Zoo photog Tad Motoyama, who deserves the Nobel Prize in Ungulates. The photo was forwarded by one of the great folks over there who gave this site a private tour a few weeks ago. The cuteness still tingles.