Further notes, or What's with all this news stuff on BBC?

Hello.
A few things.

CORRECTION - I shouldn't have been calling the weather man "Chubby," or even "chubby" for that matter. As a friend of mine likes to say, that's like making fun of Rush Limbaugh for being fat. By joking about his weight, I took away from the salient point, which was his stupidity, or someone's stupidity, in thinking that a second-hand report of a phone call made for compelling televison. Run a scroll, we can read. Anyway, it was wrriten out of a temporary anger, and I'm already sorry that it was so malicious. I apologize for the error in judgment, which is an oddly spelled word.

Then just one thing I forgot. If anyone out there is a fan of books, or movies, or news, they should chase down the following news cycles and their history.

First, the Russian spy agent who was poisoned while meeting with someone to obtain information about his own government. This is the start to a book by Robert Ludlum, or Tom Clancy, or someone else, but this time it's real. Keep looking around, and you realize strange and bad things are happening to reporters and other interested parties. This is serious stuff. And those movies (based on Ludlum and Clancy) do very well at the box office, yet we hardly hear about this story anymore. I have, however, seen the Bahamian Minister of Tourism's father on television, to speak about Anna Nicole Smith, and those two kids who were cruelly rejected from American Idol.

Another story to get into is that of the British coach Bob Woolmer, who coached the Pakistani cricket team. The team lost to huge underdog Ireland at the Cricket World Cup, and it should be mentioned in this sentence that cricket has had serious problems with gambling and match-fixing in recent years. Later on in the night, Woolmer was found dead of strangulation. This is Agatha Christie and two dozen rip-offs, although, again, it's real.

Here in America, these stories will get covered as interesting little British stories. Quaint, even. And isn't it an odd game, cricket? It's like baseball, isn't it? Now then--

WHERE WAS LARRY BIRKHEAD THE NIGHT OF JULY 21, 2002? FIND ME THE FATHER OF THE BAHAMIAN MINISTER OF TOURISM!

But if you read about either of these two stories, you realize their weight. In one case, a man, well-liked, with a wife and two boys. In the other case, several people.

They're dead. Innocent, good people, some of them it seems very brave and decent people, dead. And we should morn their loss, and find out what happened.

I'm not saying it should be splashed all over the news. I'm just saying keep an ear out, and when a good reporter takes a crack at a book on either of these things (and, in the KGB case, lives until publication), go find it and read it. Or wait for the big-budget movie that gets made.

Also, read things by Erik Larson. And get some sleep, my God, you look like hell.

Goodbye.

-Mullen