The phrase, “The fish rots from the head,” is sometimes used to express the idea that all problems in a company or country can be traced back to its leadership. The phrase suggests that corruption enters a country through its leaders, filters down to its citizens and, in some classic tragedies, even affects the environment. The example that immediately comes to mind is Agamemnon.

But does the phrase “The fish rots from the head” hold true in a republic like the United States, where all citizens have the right to vote?

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Until recently, my wife and I were using Nokia 6102i phones. The phones weren’t anything special–the shell was fragile (which can be forgiven, since the phone was Nokia’s first clamshell design), the menus were laggy, and the phone had very little storage space. The features, on the other hand, were pretty good. MP3 ringtones, Java games support, speed dialing, Bluetooth support, and, best of all, voice dialing. When driving and using my Motorola H700 headset, I could tap the button on the side of the headset and issue a simple voice command and the phone would dial out. I could make calls safely and conveniently while driving.

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Okay, I’ve played through the first two sets of levels in Rhythm Tengoku Gold, a quirky rhythm game for the Nintendo DS. Now I’m stuck on the first level of the third set because I can’t read Japanese characters.

If you can read Japanese characters and would be willing to help translate the instructions for level 3-1, please check out this gallery and take your best shot.

If you’ve been putting off creating an account on Brainstorm Warning, now would be a good time to invest the few minutes it will take to register and view private posts. My most recent post includes a link to a photo of a man on fire. Don’t worry; his compatriots were able to extinguish him quickly, but not before I snapped an amazing photo of the blaze.

The previous iteration of Brainstorm Warning was hosted by PowWeb. I scrapped the previous site, which was based on Joomla, when I opened an account with MediaLayer (my current web hosting provider) and built a new site based on WordPress. As any cautious web site owner would do, I waited until I was certain the new site was in full working order to cancel my old web hosting account–which I did today.

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Well, I’ve been threatening to post some of my short-short stories online for a while now and I’ve finally done it.

Want to read it? You’ll have to register an account first.

Once you’re registered, WordPress will send me an alert e-mail. Once I update your account (moving you from the Subscriber role to the Friend role, for those who are curious about how things work behind the scenes), you’ll be able to view private posts–including “Subway,” a short-short story I wrote in April.

If you have any problems registering an account, post a comment or send me an e-mail and I’ll get to work fixing whatever’s wrong.

Expect to see more “Private post alerts” in the future as I can’t (yet) find a way to get private posts to show on RSS feeds for users with Friend-level access.

I’ve installed and configured WordPress, Gallery2, WPG2, and OpenDB. Time for a break.

And then! Content. Stay tuned.