Buckshot

* According to the Hamilton Spectator, a dead woman was discovered Friday in a home in Welland, Ontario. Police believe she might have been decomposing for up to nine years. The kicker is that caregiver Katerina Compel failed to report the death but continued to live in the house. Here is Sergeant Mark Flegg with some words of advice:

"There's certain things you should do when someone passes away, and totally ignoring it is not one of them," Flegg said.

The other heart-stopper in the article: "Niagara Region police were called by the woman's Mississauga relatives last week and asked to check on the welfare of the elderly resident, who relatives hadn't seen since about 1995." To quote Homer Simpson: "Aw, Dad, you’ve done a lot of great things, but you’re a very old man, and old people are useless."

* Conrad Black and his venomous henchman David Radler are in trouble. I love it.

* On Saturday, Dana Milbank in the Washington Post reported that Bush is a page one posterboy in the UK:

After coming to office with a vow to restore dignity to the White House, the president yesterday took a brief sabbatical from that effort: He granted an exclusive interview to a British tabloid that features daily photographs of nude women and articles akin to those found in our own National Enquirer.

[…]

Bush, meanwhile, has given no solo interviews this year to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time or Newsweek. And he hasn't given an exclusive interview in his entire presidency to the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and dozens of other major publications.

[…]

Word on Fleet Street is it's an obvious payoff to the Sun's owner, Rupert Murdoch, the conservative publisher behind many Bush-friendly news outlets such as Fox News. Officials at the White House acknowledge that it was a reward to the Sun for its unstinting support of the United States regarding the war in Iraq.

* I used to think Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in English, but his recent article about the Strokes gives me pause: "Musical tropes like the ostinato and drones are canny, simultaneously invoking the choral sound of the human voice and the blank backdrop of a scrim." Part of me likes this kind of rock-crit belch, and part of me hates it. For the remedy read the annual Da Capo Best Music Writing. The newest anthology just hit stands, edited by Matt Groening, of Simpsons fame. Always clear and strong writing.

* This action is mind-blowing to a research nerd like myself.