The Internet is lousy these days with worms and viruses and trojans and things that want to sizzle your cable modem. The folks at Microsoft allowed some features into Windows 2000 and Windows XP that have made life way too easy for those who think it's fun to invade or crash others' computers. If you want to learn a lot about the problems and can deal with some high-tech lingo, visit Steve Gibson's website. For years, Mr. Gibson has been warning about these vulnerabilities and is now politely saying, "I told you so."

Even if you can't understand most of what he posts there, you can use an online service he provides called Shields Up! When you run it, it will attempt to contact your computer and, in effect, break in the way a malicious intruder might. It will alert you to potential weaknesses in your system and possibly send you in search of a good firewall program.

On the 'net these days, you need a good firewall (preferably, a hardware firewall) and a good virus checker. And it's becoming more than a matter of your own safety. If you allow yourself to be vulnerable, you make yourself a menace to both friends and total strangers.

One other point: We should make it a matter of Internet Etiquette that you should not post e-mail addresses. One of the major sources of mailing lists for those who send out spam is addresses posted on websites. They send out "spambots" (robotic scanners) to surf the 'net and record any text that appears to be in the form of an e-mail address. So if you post someone's address, you're setting them up to receive spam and perhaps a worm attack as well. The current Public Enemy #1 in the virus/worm world is a thing called W32.Sobig.F@mm, which harvests e-mail addresses posted on the Internet and then bombards those addresses with infected messages. (For info on W32.Sobig.F@mm, including removal tools, click here.)

It is possible to post an e-mail address in an encoded form so that the spambots cannot read it. But unless you're going to go to the trouble of doing that, you shouldn't post e-mail addresses — yours or anyone else's.

Lastly: We really don't like Spyware, which is a general name for software that you get on your computer — often without knowing about it — that tracks information about you and sends it on to someone. Some free programs you download will quietly put a piece of Spyware on your computer. Sometimes, just going to a website will install it, either as a cookie or a scripted program. However you get these things, they're bad news so you might want to scan your system for Spyware. There are several programs available for free that do this but the two best are Ad-Aware and SpyBot. Neither will catch everything so I run each of them once a week or so.

Back to work…

Tomorrow (Thursday) morning, I'll be a guest on the most excellent radio program of my pal, Paul Harris. I'll be on around 10:30 AM Pacific time, which means 12:30 St. Louis time. You can listen online over at Paul's website. But if you go over there, you'll find RealAudio recordings of past guests on The Paul Harris Radio Show and you'll probably find someone there more interesting to listen to than me. All I'll be doing is talking about my book, Mad Art, which chronicles the splendid illustrators for MAD Magazine. And don't forget to check out Paul's weblog.

As you read political writings and comments, you often come across a sentence that begins, "It is undeniable that…" or "No one would argue that…" or even "It is widely understood that…"

When you come across one of those, there's a 75% chance that the rest of the thought is horseshit.

That's all I wanted to say. Back to the deadline.

And once again, the proprietor of this website finds himself up to eyebrow-level in deadlines. He apologizes to all who've sent e-mail that has remained unanswered in his inbox. And he posts a picture of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, which as we all know is the traditional Internet symbol for "too busy to update website for a while." Mark will be back to normal posting in a day or three with more comments on the silly recall and more of the other odd topics that bring you to this site even though, with the same amount of clicks, you could be looking at something educational, newsworthy and/or pornographic.

I first knew Rick Parker as one of the better letterers in comics. One day, I heard a friend in the business say he wished they'd fire Rick Parker. I asked why. The friend said, "Because he's an incredible cartoonist and he should be drawing, not lettering other folks' work." Shortly after, I saw some Rick Parker artwork and had to agree. You can see some Rick Parker artwork at his website. You'll agree, too.

From tomorrow morning's New York Times, in the "corrections" section…

An editorial on Saturday misstated the projected federal deficit over the next decade. It is $4 trillion or more, not $4 billion.

No comment.

I just received an e-mail message from someone who has this as a "signature" block, meaning that it is automatically appended to every message they send out:

The information contained in this e-mail message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the designated recipients. This e-mail message and/or any attachments thereto may be confidential, legally privileged under one or more statutes, and/or exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the person reading this message is not an intended recipient, they are hereby notified that any review, use, disclosure, dissemination, publication, forwarding or copying of this e-mail message and/or attachments or taking of any action in reliance on the contents therein is strictly prohibited. They are instructed to notify the sender promptly by e-mail or telephone, and to immediately delete the original message and all attachments from their system.

That was at the bottom of the message. Here is the entire text of the message this person sent me…

Really enjoying your reviews of the Dick Van Dyke Show comic books. Keep up the good work.

I am quoting the above just paragraph only to be in violation of the one before. Come and get me, coppers.

…to record The Smoking Gun TV, which debuts this Wednesday on Court TV. I like the website. I like Mo Rocca, who serves as host and lead reporter. I'm guessing I'll like the show.

Over at this website, you can read the statement Gray Davis has submitted for the ballot, arguing as to why he should not be recalled. It pretty much demonstrates why this guy is probably heading for the unemployment line. It's a dreadful statement…

He reminds voters of his years of service as an Army Captain in Vietnam, State Controller, Lieutenant Governor and now as Governor. But voters never doubted that the guy had a lot of experience. No one who thinks he should be recalled is going to say, "Hey, wait a minute! I didn't know the guy had been State Controller!"

He harps on the cost of the recall. That was a great reason not to have one, but it's too late for that argument. We're having one. The money's being spent, whether Davis goes or not. If he was going to bring this up, he should have said something like, "If this succeeds, it could trigger a lot more costly, wasteful recall votes."

He says, "Because there are so many candidates on the ballot, the next governor could be elected with less than 15% of the vote! And voters won't know who the replacement would be when they vote on the recall." That's not a bad point but it would be more effective if he said, "While voters must always have the right to recall elected officials who commit crimes in office, this particular recall procedure is flawed by design. A public official could be removed from office because only 49% of the voters wish to retain him and he could then be replaced by a candidate who gets 10 or 15% of the vote. That's not how Democracy is supposed to work."

Beyond that, the essence of his case is that Republicans have caused a lot of our problems. And while that may be true, it does raise the musical question, "If you haven't been able to prevent the damage in the past, how are you going to be able to repair it in the future? Especially if you survive with only slightly more than half of the electorate that doesn't want to see you tossed out?"

Before I read the statement, I thought that if Davis took an aggressive stance and vowed to track down the Enron-like guys who bilked the state of billions, he might at least be able to reverse the direction of his poll numbers. Now, I'm thinking he's just going to wither away on us.

Here's a website that will interest fans of adventure newspaper strips. It's called "The Rules of Attraction" and it gives us a nice overview of illustrators like Stan Drake and Ken Bald who brought a dramatic, realistic look to the funny pages. (Thanks to Wayne DeWald for calling it to my attention. Nice meeting you in San Diego too, Wayne.)

I like comic strips about comic strips. Here we find Russell Myers making a nice little comment in a Broom-Hilda Sunday page.

Here's an interview with Carl Reiner about The Alan Brady Show, an animated project that debuts this evening on TV Land.

It isn't mentioned in the piece but Mr. Reiner was a member of the voice cast of the 1964 Saturday morning cartoon show, Linus the Lion-Hearted, along with Sheldon Leonard, Ruth Buzzi, Jonathan Winters, Gerry Matthews and Bob McFadden. Leonard did the voice of Linus while Reiner played Billie the Bird (an extremely annoying mockingbird) and most of the other supporting roles in the Linus segments. At the time, of course, Leonard and Reiner were producing The Dick Van Dyke Show, which I've mentioned once or twice on this site.

The Linus the Lion-Hearted show is largely unseen these days. Each of the cartoons in it was based around a different character from a Post cereal box (Linus was spokeslion for Crispy Critters, "the one and only cereal that comes in the shape of animals") and Post funded the series. One day, the F.C.C. declared it a half-hour commercial and it was gone. By the time deregulation decided that half-hour commercials were okay, no one was interested in reviving the program.

If you have RealPlayer installed, you can hear Mr. Reiner in action. A fine website called Toon Tracker has put up an episode at this link and in it, Carl Reiner seems to do the speaking voices of everyone but Linus. They have more info on the show over on this page.

So Wisconsin State Senator Tom Reynolds gets up at a town hall meeting in his state and vows that he will fight the appointment of a woman named Helene Nelson to a certain state office. Everyone present cheers.

But then afterward, someone has to tell Reynolds that Helene Nelson was confirmed to the post last June. What's more, the vote was unanimous, and Reynolds was among those who so voted.

Informed of this, he replied, "I would have to talk to my staff. I'm not sure if that's so…I'll have to check with my staff to see how I voted…It had not occurred to me that that vote had taken place."

Here's the long version of the story.

Andy Ihnatko pulls an Emily Litella with regard to the "Fair and Balanced" weblog campaign.

I get about three e-mails a week asking me where one can see Garfield and Friends, a TV series I wrote for much of a decade. Some folks also want to know if and when the last 48 episodes, which have never been in syndication, will be in syndication. I don't know about that last part but the first 73 continue to be syndicated to some cities and not others, and they'll be running on Toon Disney starting some time next month. Last I heard, they had us scheduled for 3:00 in the morning which means our main competition is Jeffersons reruns, the commercial for the Scooter Shop, and an informercial for blemish creme. I think we can take them.