Via Athenae comes this delightful tale of Alpha Villager Joe Klein, a.k.a. Joke Line, choking on his sausage while ranting about Wikipedia and Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald. The entire tale made my Sunday morning — and if you can’t stand the quality of political coverage in the “traditional” American press or the sycophantic antics of Beltway journo insiders, prepare yourself for a treat.

Real life has again intruded on semi-regular blogging, but look for some fresh comments later this week (including my review of a must-have Handel release). Meanwhile, I’ve picked a recent-but-not-new books for vacation reading:

• Barry Miles, Zappa
• Kevin Bazzana, Lost Genius: The Curious and Tragic Story of an Extraordinary Musical Prodigy [namely, Ervin Nyiregyházi]
• Ray Raphael, Founding Myths: Stories that Hide Our Patriotic Past
• Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene [that’s a subsection of a chromosome, not me!]

The super-fast web browser is fresh out of beta, and it runs much faster than and uses less memory than 3.0. Plus, it’s a great excuse for many users to dump Windows’ standards-flouting, notoriously vulnerable Internet Explorer. Download it here.

I’ve been saying it for years: do the denizens of Washington, DC realize what a joke they have become outside of their enclave? Go read Michael Winship’s edifying takedown of both press and politicians in the nation’s capitol.