I haven’t read the new Bob Woodward book, Plan of Attack, yet, but I gather that the one person who comes out clean–or at least only partially soiled–is Colin Powell. In one passage I’ve read online, Woodward says that Powell cautioned the President about invading Iraq: “You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people. You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems. You’ll own it all.” Woodward goes on to add, “Privately, Powell and [Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.”

Um nah, says Pottery Barn. In one of the best PR responses I’ve seen in a while, the company (or rather, its parent, Williams-Sonoma) officially objected to the characterizaiton of a you-break-it-you-own-it rule. “This is certainly not our policy in any of our 174 Pottery Barn retail outlets in North America. In fact, there is no policy regarding this whatsoever.” The PR manager, Leigh Oshirak, added “A good percentage of Pottery Barn’s inventory is beds and other furniture, and we do sell ceramics, glassware, kitchenware and other things that are breakable. But if something breaks, that’s the cost of doing business. We always put our customers first – that’s part of our corporate values. If someone breaks a wine glass, for instance, our managers just mark it down as ‘out of stock.’ The customer isn’t asked to pay for it.”

So, with that in mind, I’m off to test drive some metrosexual-chic furniture. Forgive me if I get a little rough.

Just put the finishing touches on an About page for this blog. All of the mysteries of the TurkeyMonkey and my personal life are revealed there. Everything, that is, except this photo of my fianc�e, Ana — this I can’t explain.

I’ve been looking for a logo for TurkeyMonkey.com, and lacking any inspiration of my own, I’ve decided to hijack the single greatest mascot idea of the modern era: Big Red. As you may know, Big Red is a giant, amorphous red blob who has called Western Kentucky University home since 1979. He’s quite well known in the college backetball arena (merchandising, ESPN commercial, etc.) and now, amazingly, he’s even been given his own satircal news show in Italy. Actually, that’s not completely true — the character on Italian broadcast TV is Gabbido, a dead ringer for Big Red. As it turns out, Gabbibo is huge star in his own right, and Western Kentucky is none too pleased. The university and one of its corporate merchandising partners is suing the no-good Italian company, Mediaset, for $250 million. I’m not totally sure, but I think that looks like a smile on Big Red’s face.

Okay, I changed my mind. Please meet Winifred and Francesca, my seven-month-old nieces. They live in Greenwich, CT, along with their mommy and daddy, Tara and Doug. They enjoy avocado, soft clothes, and things that go boodabeeboo. Aren’t they too cute? And boy does that Francis have some hooters!

It is with some trepidation and more than a little confusion that I declare turkeymonkey.com fully operational. The last time that I messed around with the web like this was freshman year of college. I’d recently graduated from Philips Academy Andover, a once prestigious New England boarding school. Of course, you probably now know it as the first in a long line of enablers of George W Bush. And yes, this is true. But please remember: At Andover, W was a male cheerleader. Can’t we at least be glad for that nugget of indignity?

Anyway, back in 1995, the big A will still very much on my brain, as was the new fangled Internet. Andover didn’t yet have a website and I took it upon myself to create one for them, complete with historical pictures of the campus, a brief bio of the Academy’s founder, Samuel Philips, and nude photos of Cindy Crawford. The site was one of those autogenerated student URLs with about twenty tildas marking the way. Yet, despite its obscurity, it somehow managed to be the first link on Yahoo! when you searched for Andover. All right, I know how—I listed it and passed myself off as a school authority.

Soon after the thousandth hit, I got an email from a Dean Wormer-like administrator asking me to take the site offline. I offered to call it “The Unofficial Andover Homepage,” but that didn’t exactly fly. The next day I got an email from Penn IT, and then the Provost’s office. I didn’t respond to any of them, figuring that it would be best to play this like a game of Marco Polo–keep quiet, don’t identify yourself, and they’ll find some other fella to bop. About a week or so later the website was gone, naked supermodels and all. Eventually Andover got a legit website of their own. Glad that I could help.

I share this story for one simple reason: There will be no naked people on this website.