FREE ADVICE: If you are thinking of signing up for broadband Internet service from a company called Edge Connections, do yourself a favor and stick white-hot needles into your eyes instead. Trust me -- you'll suffer far less in the long run.

IT STARTED OUT LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET --
BUT IT ENDED IN TRAGEDY!

What drove that kooky kid, Charles Bishop, to fly a Cessna into the side of 40-story building in downtown Tampa? Let's see -- he wasn't a pampered do-your-own-thing Berkeley brat -- and for some reason, Dungeons and Dragons is getting a free pass here -- Aha! He had acne, so maybe it wuz that debbil medication Acutane what made him depressed. Heaven forbid we consider the theory of personal responsibility and pin the blame on Charles Bishop's free (if tragically irrational) will.

But wait! Now it turns out that it may have been genetics! Mom and Dad, it seems, once attempted to end their own lives in a bizarre suicide pact! Here's part of the story:

Charles Bishop's mother, Julia, and father, Charles Bishara, entered into a suicide pact after they were denied a marriage license in 1984 ... Bishop's mother, the former Julia Detore, tried to marry Bishara when she was 17 and he was 19, but the couple was denied a marriage license ... The couple stuffed rags into the tailpipe of Detore's car and tried to fill it with carbon monoxide to kill them both ... When that failed, they allegedly agreed Detore would stab Bishara with a butcher knife, and he would slash her wrists with the same knife.

It gets worse. Here's the whole sordid story!

Sorry for the paucity of new content lately. My DSL service is still acting cranky, and at this point, I reserve the right to do likewise.

Received an unprecedented amount of e-mail regarding last week's remarks about Paul Krugman's column. If I can find the will to slog through the old dial-up connection, I'll post a few of 'em later today.