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Oral arguments

One swallow does not a summer make (to cop a line from indefatiguable Weight Watcher Monica Lewinsky), but the recent Tammany Hall-style machinations of the Grand Old Party in Florida and Washington, D.C., have left an aftertaste that even The Gay Blade’s patented Everclear -‘n’-Lidocaine gargle can’t entirely erase.

Even a cursory examination of this utensil’s magazine collection (not to mention his syntax) proves he’s second only to Clarence Thomas when it comes to tracking the unnatural contortions the flesh is heir to. Nevertheless, even this corroded Blade must confess he’s in awe of a political endgame unrivaled in the developed world since 1933, when Chancellor-“Elect” Bush’s paternal grandfather helped underwrite a pro bono building-renovation loan to ensure the Reichstag was adequately stocked with kerosene and plenty of old rags. (FYI to G.W.: That’s in Germany – look it up.)

Götterdämmerung! That’ll put bluing in your legal briefs!

The boys from Brazil

Speaking of clandestine power plays thinly camouflaged behind a veneer of legal authority, the Blade’s shadow army of fixers, trained geeks and corn-fed crypto-fascists report that Adobe Systems Inc. is busy assembling Version 5 of Acrobat, the crunchewy document-exchange technology prepress pros and Webmasters alike ask for by name.

Unlike some inbred scions of the Ivy League’s most sinister cabals, however, this whole-number upgrade comes by its title honestly by dint of its enhanced support for workgroup collaboration and document management along with Version 1.4 of Adobe’s venerable Portable Document Format.

According to documents currently steeping in a remote corner of the Everglades, the new Windows and Mac software – code-named Brazil – will allow users to cut and paste PDF contents and apply formatting, transparency, color management and text reflow to the selections. Enhanced Web features will let Acrobat acolytes review and mark up PDF documents via their Web browsers, open and save PDFs to any Web server and add extensible metadata to PDF documents in XML format.

And although the Blade’s spin doctors have yet to prescribe a precise due date for Brazil, this implement has marked his Tom of Finland desk calendar for Seybold Seminars Boston 2001 as the presumptive launch date for this hot-‘n’-hunky package.

Plotting a Mac Anschluß of your own? Expose your putsch to The NMR Report, and a commemorative naked mole rat can be yours!

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