What is it that Athena is looking at so interestedly-like? Why it’s a bound copy of The Last Colony. One of four that exist in the whole wide world, which I had run off on Lulu.

No, you can’t have one. One copy is for me, as a reference. One is for Krissy, who doesn’t want to read the book off a computer screen. The other two I have, because, well. It’s nice to have spares. The point is: personal copies. They’re not leaving the house. If you try to break into the house to get one, the dog may have to eat you. And I don’t think you want that. Also, don’t bother checking Lulu. I ran off the copies and then deleted the book. Even before that I had the entry accessible to me only. Sorry. Anyway, it’s just seven months until the book comes out. You can wait.

This was also a test for me to see how Lulu works for me — I don’t really plan to do any major projects using the service, but as noted Krissy prefers to read what I write in printed form, and I wanted to see how Lulu did with that. My determination: Not too bad. To my eye it’s clear it’s not a professionally printed and typeset book, but for what I want and need, it’s perfectly fine. And reasonably cheap: A single paprback copy was less than $11, which is perfectly reasonable for a print-on-demand project. And the process of setting up the document to print was pretty simple as well. I have used CafePress before for a couple of previous POD things I’ve done, but Lulu does it better and more simply, so I suspect in the future if I do something like this again, I’ll come back to Lulu.

So, in recap: Mark Foley, the Republican co-chair of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus is an aspiring ephebophile, knew all about the online predator behaviors he was legislating against because he was practicing some of them himself, the Republican House leadership knew their man on kid’s issues was awfully chummy with the pages but appeared to think the way to deal with it was just to suggest to him that, you know, maybe he shouldn’t send personal messages to the boys anymore, and while the House leadership seems shocked, shocked that Foley might possibly be enjoying the company of teen pages (although not so shocked that they removed him from his kid-protecting post) the GOP staffers themselves knew back to 2001, at least, to tell the pages to avoid getting too close to the guy.

This just in: Someone tried to sneak a bomb on an airplane! Inside a schnauzer!

The good news in all this, however, is now that Foley’s going into rehab for alcoholism, everything will be okay. Because nothing clears up an attraction to teen boys like rehab for booze.

Mmmm… pie.

I particularly like the spin Brit Hume is putting on this, along the lines of well, you know, Bill Clinton did sort of the same thing, too. But you know what, I think I’m going to go out among the people in my very conservative, very Republican rural Ohio county — whose representative is in some hot water about this whole thing, incidentally — and ask them if there’s a difference between a male politican getting a hummer from an adult female staffer, and a male politician, charged with the job of keeping kids safe, asking one of his underage male pages to get out a ruler and measure the length of his wang and to essay his favorite techniques for jerking off.

Hmmm. Adult female, underage teenage boy. Consensual adult heterosexual sex, homosexual pedophile cybersex. Hmmm. Maybe it’s just me, but I think my conservative, Republican neighbors might be able to parse the difference between the two that appears to elude Mr. Hume.

This just in: Al-Qaeda’s #2 man killed!

Look, here’s the deal: If the House Republican leadership knew they had a teen-loving, nasty-IM-writing middle-aged man heading up their child-protection caucus, and they hushed it up and let him keep the job, how can they not be removed from their posts? Can you imagine if something like this happened if the House leadership were Democratic, and it was a Democrat asking a teen boy how often he polished Flipper? Rupert Murdoch would personally head up the lynch mob. Of course, having this happen so close to an election might just solve the problem for them. It’s one thing to support throwing out habeas corpus, because it’s not like the average voter knows how to spell it, much knows what it means. But most voters know how to spell “man-teen cybersex cover-up,” and they know what it means, too. November just got a little more interesting.

This just in: Al-Qaeda’s #2 man has risen from the dead! It’s Bill Clinton!!! And he’s got a schnauzer! On a plane! While getting a blow job!

Fellated undead liberal former president terrorist airborne with a dog bomb!

Red alert! Red alert!