The AP reports: Former first lady Barbara Bush gave relief money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund on the condition that it be spent to buy educational software from her son Neil’s company.
Nope, not gonna make that up. Wouldn’t be prudent.
However while that may be the most self-serving donation reported today to aid the victims of the hurricanes, it is far from the oddest. Someone gave $35K (presumably not for software produced by the company of someone he or she is related to) to VH1’s “Pay to Play for Hurricane Katrina Relief” benefit. For $25 you got pick one video to be played. For $35K? They gave a whole hour to the person to program any music videos they chose. And they chose … “the English and German music videos for the 1984 hit 99 Luftballons, aka 99 Red Balloons, by German rock group Nena.”
And?
And that’s it.
To hear and see an hour’s worth of the song, which is much better in German because you get the melodic hook without the having to pay attention to its lyrics, turn on VH1 Classic Sunday, starting at 2 PM. If you’re going to be out, you should set your Tivo now.
Collateral Damage 
I always kinda liked the 99Luftbalons video … which really isn’t the point of me leaving this comment.
Constantine, I was pointed to your blog today by a colleague of mine, Carol Zarrow, who used to be a colleague of yours. She told me that our respective writing styles are cut from the same cloth, some kind of polka-dot infested stripey thing with random threads sticking out all over the place. After reading CD for a bit, it struck that she might be on to something. You can read my blog at:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=buzzblog
And my column at:
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/netbuzz.html
I’d have put all this in an e-mail instead of this comment section, but if there is an e-mail address on your blog you are to be congratulated for hiding it so thoroughly.
I enjoy your blog (naturally).
Paul McNamara
Network World
HEY! He’s really funny! And with tech that’s not easy — (see the late unlamented blog Crashing the System, link at right). Hmmm, add an email…make it easier for people to get in touch with me? BRILLIANT!!! I’ll put it, with my scary photo in the ABOUT section…. BRILLIANT!!!