Now that you know what the Links to Cure Boredom are all about, have a good time!

2/27

Greetings!

You know, why would anyone want Jesse's girl? He wants to know where he can "find a woman like that." Christ, go out and look around. There are "Jesse's girls" roaming the streets looking for men. They'll fall all over a guy who can sing, especially about them. No need to "play along with the charade." Then again, maybe he has some sort of problem akin to liking women that are already attached. On the other hand, it could be that he is smitten by _Uncle_ Jesse's girl from the Dukes of Hazzard, in which case we would all understand. Maybe not, especially if "she's lovin' him with that body (i just know it)." That'd be weird, him being drunk on moonshine all the time and all that. They don't have a term for that ("whiskey dick") for nothing, you know.

Cool controversial paintings, on display in Chicago right now if you're in the area. Apparently there's another controversial one not pictured here with Cap'n Crunch and Aunt Jemima (among other corporate icon breakfast notables) sitting in on a Da Vinci Last Supper parody. Popular painting to parody lately, it seems. Another woman released one in New York called Yo Mamma's Last Supper, where her picture is in the place of Jesus, and she's in the buff. Howabout that.

Keeping you up to date on the latest appearance of Christ - this time in the dime-tray of a cash register in Kentucky. Is Jesus making a deeper statement than usual? You be the judge.

This link could have only come from matt larson. The link is to a webzine article about a new kind of fetish porn that is coming out of the woodwork. Acnephilia (zit fetish). Although this article is thoroughly disgusting, it is also rediculously funny and a very good story with good writing. And there's no pictures, thank god.

A calendar with a reason to celebrate for every single day. Bookmark this one, especially if you ever need something to celebrate at any random time. And it's kind of aimed at kindergartner's, which gives it its own special sort of canned spreadable cheezy goodness.

Cool picture + explanation, as well as movie (2nd link) on the Prandtl-Glauert singularity, i.e., a weird thing that happens when a plane hits the speed of sound. Anyway, very neat. New picture for your wallpaper.

Random notes:

+Dozens of people die each year from bullets falling from the sky. It seems lots of people who shoot their guns up in the air and aren't using blanks fire bullets that eventually come falling back down to earth. Although 99+% of these are completely benign, a few do fall down on people and kill them, due to the velocity of the bullets falling from such a great height. It is evidence of either the existence of God or proof that he really doesn't exist, i can't decide which.

+Do people in hell really need or want icewater? Wouldn't they much preferably have eternal salvation and rest in the sight of god? I would definitely wager that icewater is far from the first thing they want. "I really wish my legs weren't being continuously burned by fire and flys constantly eating away shards of my face, while ravenous demons constantly munch away on my genitals, but first things first, get me some icewater!"

+The sugar on tables at restaurants is supposed to be set up a standard way, so blind and color blind folks can use them without fear of putting the wrong kind of sweetener in their drinks. So now you know what to do next time you're pissed about those handicapped spots that you can't park in being all empty and you have to walk a mile to get in to where you're going.

Songs of the Week:

Soggy Bottom Boys "Man of Constant Sorrow" (from move soundtrack "O Brother Where Art Thou?")

The Simpsons "Planet of the Apes Musical"

Dooley Wilson "As Time Goes By" (original Casablanca version)

(if anyone has any song suggestions to send out to the masses and/or good bands they wish to promote, send them along. a good many people on this list enjoy hearing good music, and most everyone on this list has good taste).

2/19

Greetings!

When the world starts to spin, close one eye.

i don't like that one infomercial psychic - Cleo. Everyone's seen her by now. The one with the accent that switches from Jamaican to Irish and doesn't seem to know much about reading tarot cards. She can go to hell. She can live with the hellbots in a BIG batch of hellpudding. I think there must be pistachios in hellpudding, because only in hell would anyone put pistachios in pudding. Especially vanilla pudding. Why ruin a perfectly good vanilla pudding with pistachios. That's the devil's work. Or Cleo's work. That kinda shit happens when you mix Jamaican and Irish. And then she's all fuckin' with the cards and shit, that just ruins a perfectly good vanilla pudding. In hell. At least in hell it might be served warm. Ain't nuttin' like a good warm puddin'. Vanilla puddin'. But not in hell.

The perfect Valentine's Day date. And champagne, AH!

The Rapture has begun, with brown mustard falling from the sky.
"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed..."
- Jesus, from Matthew's Gospel, i think.

And just in belated time for Valentine's: what is said about you by the kind of chocolates you eat.

Curious George W.

Awesome.

I am an elf. I will live to be a 1000 years old. I can cast spells (i have a witness, you know). I have a preturnatural desire to always go walking through the woods. I don't sleep - I only go into a dream-filled reverie.

And toilets. They swirl in one direction in the northern hemisphere, and another in the southern. But what about toilets on the equator? I mean, exactly on the equator. There can't be that many, but Brazil's a crowded place, surely there's got to be a toilet at exactly 0.0 degrees. Or on a ship when it's on the equator. Does it flush straight down? And what about a hypothetical toilet right on top of the North or South Magnetic Poles? Toilets in Little America, the only city in Antarctica? Does the water come flying out of the toilet or something crazy like that? Maybe it makes for more a log-ride-esque experience when going to the bathroom, with a big finale when you flush. I'd go to the bathroom so often in Little America if that were true.

From lst Lt. James Higgins, Ansbach, Germany:

>This is only an issue in a perfectly conical and adiabatic toilet. (free from friction of all forms. Adiabatic actually refers to any process which can be accomplished without a net increase in entropy of the universe. Increase in entropy is typically accomplished via friction.) In addition, the flush would have to be of some variety which would not induce any initial motion of the fluids (and other goodies) in the toilet itself. Only if ALL of these criteria were met (which would violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the same law incidentaly, which dissallows perpetual motion machines) would this arguement even need to be had.

Thus, sad as it is, I must conclude that the equatorial toilet debate must be left to physicists who have the luxury of assuming adiabatic conditions exist. There, I'm glad I could apply something I learned in engineering school!

From Jay (spelling errors and all):

hey hate to ruin your bubble about the whole toliet thing. and trust me on this i was bothered by it too and did a lot of reasearch to find out what the deal is with this toliet thing. and the truth is that in the cloris effect that makes the whril in toliets only really has an oppsoite effect on large systems like huricanes or typhoons. they swril a different direction on the south end of the globe then in the north. but alas the toliets don't change. in fact toliets don't always flush the same way. it depends on a lot of small factors and such but yeah toliets just flush how they flush..with no help from the cloris force. and it doesn't matter where you put them on the planet they still flush in a sprial. but did you know this? that everest is not the biggest moutian if you look at distance from the center of the earth? since the earth is kinda eg shaped with the widdest parts at the equator a moutain closer to the equator is going to be farther away from the center of the earth. so there is this tall mountain in the andies that is like almost at 0 degrees longitute and its like an extra three miles taller than everest from the center of the earth.

2/8

Greetings!

Gloria Gaynor was right. She did survive. Disco didn't though.

I finally broke out of my masculine shell a bit to find out more about the mundane aspects of being a woman. Having no moisturizer to put on my face the other day, Heather gave me Oil of Olay to use. And i'll be damned if it doesn't work just like it says: It made me look all youthful, removing fine lines and wrinkles and making my skin touchably soft. Howabout that. I've also determined, after interviewing many women on the subject, that i'd be a size 6 in dresses, i'd be a 30 in women's pants, (29 if i wanted to show off my ass), and a large in women's shirts, mainly because i'm tall (not because i have large breasts).

Do you want to see the new international spacestation? You can, it's that 3rd brightest object in the sky, and here's when you can see it.

Yet another religious miracle: statues and walls exude rose-smelling oil and people flock to the house hoping for better jobs and cures for their aches and pains. Oh yeah, some of them might pray too.

I once heard of a girl (a real fluffy-headed girl, mind you) who laughed bubbly, then said she preferred getting her news from Jay Leno because it was funnier, and then laughed bubbly again. That's almost as bad as getting your news from The Onion. Oops, someone did.

The stupidity of some still occasionally does not fail to amaze. Thanks to James for this one.

**

When one thinks of fakeness, a substance that may often come to mind is plastic. When i think of large-scale public social situations, i think of fake people. Harry called these people "fake plastic people", especially when at the $3 all-u-can-drink (both a challenge and a threat), or at the all-greek parties way back in the day.

It seems my brand of honesty and straightforwardness didn't appeal to or even fit in these sorts of situations. Nor did my PBR-lugging, jeans and t-shirt with The Far Side comic of "Custer's Last View" (5 smiling indians staring at him) wearing ass. Not surprisingly, this approach has kept me out of a lot of trouble (and saved me a lot of money on clothes), as far as all those relationship circles and political, between-friends squabbles (that happen when fake people are running around being all fake to each other) are concerned.

Life in plastic

It's fantastic!

Paula helped me develop a technique to avoid these situations entirely, really. We called it "Gettin' Real." Anytime anyone you cared about was getting fake on you, you went and got real on their ass. Or you did it to avoid someone being hurt. For example, there's a guy at work who dated a friend of mine (briefly), and treated her like shit. She asked me beforehand what i thought of the guy. I told her he was an alcoholic, a womanizer, and an asshole. She dated him anyway. He was all those things. Another girl wants to date him, and asked my friend about him. She said he was a nice guy. Why'd she say that, i asked? She wasn't sure, she thought she just couldn't tell the truth.

Feathers turn to broken beads in pillars

We'll lie we'll lie
Don't tell the truth, we'll lie
Roll your eyes

Yet she remarks how great i am because of my honesty and down-to-earthness. What a world.

(lyrics by Radiohead "Fake Plastic Trees", Aqua "Barbie Girl", and Whiskeytown "Midway Park", respectively. And you can sue me for letting the Barbie Girl song get into your head)

1/29/01

Greetings!

A very disconnected LCB. enjoy.

**

I saw a woman on TLC the other day, who had a heart transplant, except that she didn't want her old heart removed because half of it worked just fine (the other half was slowly failing). So a doctor willing to do it stuffed another heart in there to help take over for the failing one. Anyway, the woman now lives with two hearts beating inside her chest. It's a real bitch to take an accurate pulse, that's a fact. Not to mention all the everyday symbolism attached to the heart - "Well honey, that's just how i feel in my hearts."

Fuctup.

Elves are mythical creatures not started with the Santa myth, but rather in german pagan folklore, especially in southern germany near the black forest. they never really needed sleep. rather, they would go into "reverie", which was a semi-sleep where they were still aware, but were mentally resting. i always thought i went into the same kind of reverie, especially since, being something of an insomniac, that kind of thing used to be a common occurrence. once i went on a pilgrimage - you know, a real religious pilgrimage. my grandmother organized it, being a very religious yet politically connected woman herself, and had two busloads of people headed to New York.

In New York, at a place called Bayside there was a seer named Veronica Leuken. Veronica claimed that at one point to have seen Mary, Jesus's Mom, appear with St. Theresa (a very devoted Mary fan in her time) and tell her to keep in touch, for future visions of, of course, impending doom for mankind. As it turns out, these visions stopped being random things that happened while Veronica was cleaning her apartment, (a very devoted Catholic woman in her own right, god love 'er) and started becoming public things that more and more devoted catholics wanted to be a part of. And so more Catholics did.

Word spread (quickly as it may do amongst people with very boring lives devoted to Jesus and Mary and little else, including their children and birth control), and soon people were flocking to a basilica put up by Pope Pius the XIII (?) in New York. It turns out, as interesting and humorous as it may be, that this basilica lay on the grounds of the old New York World's Fair from god-knows-when, so all these very tall and old, rotting and rusting fair spectacles are laying in the background of this rather humble basilica, which is little more than a few stone tablets to kneel on and a statue of Mary. Also, a rock-thrower worth his salt could hit Shea Stadium (home of the hapless NY Mets) with a lucky bounce, so this isn't exactly a secluded place. But thousands of people flocked to this small basilica every time a "visit" was to occur, in hopes that miracles would be performed, or something miraculous would be seen.

Devotions were given, prayers were offered up, lives were changed. "Jesus", according to the seer, would float above the treetops, and Mary would bless the crowd. Rosaries would turn from cheap iron to gold, people with cancer would be healed completely. All medically verified, many pieces of jewelry verified (or so it was said. no one of faith would dare question, but don't let me lead you away from the point). mysterious lights would flash in leaves of trees - i saw this myself - and people with powerful stories and injuries would come with last resorts to the front lines of the event. Rose petals were given away, blessed by Mary, to be worn around the neck by those deemed needy of such effects. Cameras were flashing everywhere, in hopes that miraculous photos would reveal prophecy, or better, secrets about a personal future that God had positively ordained for them. And they did, so it seemed. An impotent aunt with her camera had the outlines a baby in a picture, and a grandmother saw her dead husband walking a stairway through the clouds, only a few years after he had died on those very same grounds. I saw it all, i did. Another aunt nearly fainted after Polaroid pictures taken while walking across a bridge revealed hundreds of mysterious lights in the sky, all seeming to spell everything that could be imagined in a picture. Count the lights, look at the curves in the tracers, and use your imagination.

"God works in mysterious ways", or so was the common catholic wisdom. no need to question. And thus no one did. They simply stayed there, and prayed the rosary over and over again (as Mary through the seer asked all of us to do). And if you've ever participated in a large group participation experience, it has its own particular power to it, whether you like to admit it or not. Add in everything else, and it is entrancing, almost hypnotic. Let us now also consider that it is very difficult to sleep on a bus. A Greyhound bus, that did not stop and had Catholic women jabbering conspiracy and theological nonsense till the wee hours of the morning. So we arrived with little sleep, and even that sleep was of quite poor quality. Thus, one could say that the state we were in by the time all of this scene had its full effect was "reverie" - magical pagan elves would know how we felt. There were lots of things that happened that trip - - i got closer to my mother, and my grandmother and aunts, but for the first time i saw the world through the eyes of a skeptic.

There's other stuff about this i could go into and never have (i don't tell this story very often, and even then, never like this), but few want to hear about the guy who thought he was an apostle nor the time i was blessed by Satan himself, if he indeed does exist. It's a story for another time when i am comfortable enough with Existence itself. All this is said simply to remind that things in the world are not always as they seem, miracles do occur whether we argue over their semantics or not, and life is one long trip full of strange occurrences we sometimes can never pack the baggage for. And if you got something out of this somewhere throughout its telling, then that was intentional as well.
(Note: The pictures still exist. Many of the healings were independently verified. One of the leaders of the organization who organized these events was later sued for stealing money from the organization. The seer is now deceased, only months after a end-of-the-world prediction from "Mary" failed to come true on a specific day. However, many of the predictions made by the seer could easily be interpreted as coming true, including the NY Twin-Towers bombing. Also, dozens of independent photographers experienced and could never explain the profundity of bizarre photographs taken on the site).

Excuse me, what's illegal here? Why punish the coolest woman alive? Posing nude with guns should not be a crime. It should be rewarded. With trophies. And loud whooping and hollering.

Neat Harper's Weekly Index wrap-up of stuff from last year and such till now.

We Like Broccoli. Hee hee.

And you know, he isn't a bad role model. Master's degree, doesn't do drugs, promotes going to college. Maybe that whole having sex with thousands of women thing might be a bad model for kids though, perhaps.

I told at least some of you to go see "Requiem for a Dream." Well, now, i ask you wait in anticipation of this film, which is sure to be (at least) just as controversial and hard-hitting. Gotta love Sundance and the movie industry's attitude toward documentaries.

"Crazy" by Patsy Cline is the most common song ever to be played on a Jukebox. And i can remember listening to it in a dark room in a crappy restaurant around one in the morning in Covington, Kentucky, the sound being provided by an ancient jukebox playing the original 45' singles of the songs, and the only light being provided by a disco ball and a small, dimly lit stage full of dancing and instrument-playing Barbie dolls.

"So why do you always negotiate a contract while standing naked under a nazi flag?"

"Because i've always thought that when negotiating that you should know something the other person doesn't know. And i thought, there's no way in the world the other guy could know that i'm standing in my basement naked with a donkey hat on, under a flag with a swastika on it."

- Penn of Penn and Teller

1/25/01

Greetings!

Drinking affects us all in different ways, i suppose, but i believe at some point there is a common effect among all of us. In some particular moment, especially toward the end of a session of quaffing quantities of booze, we have a moment of self-reflection. Eyelids close a bit, but not all the way, and we ponder existence. The Blessed Virgin Mary pondered a lot. At least that's what the Bible said. She never really spoke much. She "pondered all these things in her heart." One is always left, when reading the New Testament, wondering just what Mary really thought. Mother of god, in her mind. Her son's out there performing miracles and revealing great wisdom, while at the same time she was in her early twenties then mid-forties having to deal with her son basically being a rebel leader, a Mon Mothma of sorts. When reading, you know when she's distraught, that's not hard to see; you know when she's simply pondering the right thing to do or say, but that's like any human mother, not knowing what to think or do that is proper in the bizarre situations she is put in, but that is any human mother's position. No life is normal. Mother or child. What would a devout jewish mother think of her child turning water into wine? We she _really_ be comfortable with him hanging out with lepers, prostitutes, and tax collectors? What about his hippie-esque lifestyle? We don't know, she didn't say hardly anything. And just like that, some of the most interesting insight into parenting is lost to the annals of time. So don't be afraid to say what you think, especially if you have pondered it in your heart. I'm sure what she thought was interesting.

Why link this? Because it compares us men to Nokia cell phones. That's the only reason. I feel, so, unimportant. :)

Need an S&M clown who can DJ as well as provide conflict resolution services? LOOK NO FURTHER! He can make you laugh while he spanks you, play you some booty-shakin' beats, and work out your problems with your inner child! Although, he may just bring out and/or intensify that fear of clowns most everyone has had since _It_.

Okay, this is the most outstanding and humorous use of physics i have seen in a long time, if ever. The Klein Bottle. Very, very funny. And a real product.

I _like_ physics humor. No need to remind me i'm a big freakin' geek, i already know. The second link explains the physics behind the Klein Bottle concept. But the engineers in the crowd hardly need to hear that.

The last few months have seen pitiful few references to monkeys, a creature god put on the earth to entertain humankind indefinitely. Thus, a whole page of great monkey links is in order, so that you may love me again. (Please let me know if any of these monkey links are awesome, so that i may cherish them and love them).

*quickie*

I saw the Tom Hanks' Biography on A&E the other day, and the people at Biography and A&E believe Tom Hanks' success relies on his ability to portray an "Everyman." Not that i'm disagreeing. The "everyman" concept is an old one, something that many successful actors and writers have been able to nail and have achieved great success with that ability. It comes from the old medieval touring stage acts, which would always be these simple one-act plays where every character in the story was an archetype of sorts: One a benevolent god, one a sinister devil, a Puck-esque Trickster of sorts, etc. And the one hero and main character, The Everyman. Someone the common folk paying a few pennies apiece to see could identify with. Certainly, the actors at court (or for a modern parallel, on Broadway Stage) were perhaps more talented than the town-to-village medieval touring play (modern parallel, the movie theatre), maybe even by several degrees. But most everyone seeks entertainment, and most everyone seeks to identify with other people or things. And broadway productions ain't cheap, and are often times a bit more complicated that the simple Everyman struggle.
I like Broadway shows. Even non-broadway plays and musicals are pretty cool. They all have parallels to real life, as do a great many movies. Both often do have Everymen in them. Everymen that occasionally i'd like to emulate. I want to be an Everyman. I have met few real people who are everymen. I'd bet it has its downsides, but on the other hand, you'd be popular and would have done nothing to whore yourself out to do it. Which would be great.

1/17/01

Greetings All!

In "The Myth of Sisyphus", Albert Camus talks about a man who, according to greek tradition, is condemned to roll a large rock up a steep hill. Camus, being who Camus is, is perplexed by this greatly. Camus finds a metaphor for life in it. I was confronted with this situation 7 years ago. It really bothered me. Is there something to it? I mean, it's just a guy whose life just turned out the way it did and he had little choice in his fate. That was it, that was that. He had every reason in the world to be pissed about it. To hate everyone, irregardless of what they had to do with it. To hate life, period. But, he didn't. He pushed the rock. Up the hill, and back down the hill it would roll. And back up he would push it. No complaining, no trash-talking, he just did what was expected of him for eternity. As far as we all know, Sisyphus is still somewhere pushing a large rock up a steep hill. But once one gets past all the "Why not?" questions, one gets to the, "Why so?" questions, which were always the ones that perplexed me and kept me up at night. Why doesn't he give up? According to the greek tradition, he can't, for one reason or another. So he just keeps going. Why doesn't he bitch and moan and complain and just go apathetic about the whole situation? I could not answer that. At first. But then, maybe, just maybe..... he found a sense of purpose in pushing the rock up the hill. While engaging every ounce of his strength in pushing this large boulder, his whole burden of the remainder of his eternity, he knew that this was all _he was_ to do. The rock itself gave him purpose. The struggle itself was his glory, if only just to him. He won. The gods never knew, and they never understood.

And i'm even thinner. I will very much behave myself... "Yes sir.... no, sir, I (please God!) wasn't breaking the law. They'd treat me like a girl in there, oh no, please!" Mr. Law-Abider, that's me!

One can and will feel the healing power of the Lord, even at Citgo. I highly doubt Jesus would want anyone laying on the ground at a Citgo though, nor would he send them to Brownsville, Texas for ANYTHING. I highly doubt also that Jesus would grant teenagers the power to lay hands and "heal" each other, though he definitely has granted to power to lay hands and do other things important to teenagers. If laying hands on someone to make them feel different is a "power" of sorts, then i guess a large portion of my friends both male and female are teeming with power, and we just didn't know it. Gives a whole new meaning to that Bon Jovi song. I am Pure Evil for making a Bon Jovi reference, so i must be a false prophet. Oh well. The pictures on this site are precious.

If there is a word beyond the word, beyond the word, beyond the word kinky ("kinky" - next level - _Next Level_), then it would be describing this.

*Long*

This may offend you greatly, move you greatly, disgust you greatly, touch you greatly. However, i could not stop reading it, and could not help feeling all those ways. I know nothing of its authenticity except that to me, it seems very real, and is accurate from what i know of non-fictionally related accounts. Any further comment would make this less worth reading. I look forward to hearing what anyone thinks of it.

And if anyone likes David Mamet like i like David Mamet, they will very much appreciate this. If you don't like David Mamet, you should start. It's healthy.

*****************************************

I've only listened to this 20 times tonight....

_The Battle and The War_

When i am buried

don't visit my grave

god cannot save me

from the sins i've erased

pay your respects to that old liquor store

where i won the battle,

and i lost the war.

you mine for silver

and i pan for gold

you keep your city

and old miner's soul

you tell the truth

and i lie and i barter

and i drink and i cry and i pass out at night....

*

i've always cheated

though i've never stolen

i've wanted things

that you ain't never thought of

pay your respects to that gambling store

where i won the battle,

but i lost the war.

they always told me

when death came

my sins would be

cast out, forgotten

laid to rest with my body

pay your respects

to that old church old store

where i won the battle

but i lost the war...

- Whiskeytown

Oh Bjork, Bjork,

were brought by the stork

or were you created

from butter and cork?

I love you so much that i act like a dork

oh Bjork, oh Bjork, oh Bjork!

- from "BjorkSong" on Napster

1/08/01

Greetings!

I was thinking a few minutes after the new year turned that somewhere, in some random corner of the world, that there was a guy, just a few minutes ago, taking a leak. Maybe he timed it poorly, maybe saw his opportunity and really needed to take it, maybe he just didn't care. But he missed it. Standing there with his hand on his wee-wee while the rest of the world exploded into joy like it was 2001. Because it was. And true enough, it's not a Big Deal. Not everyone's life exists in some sort of universal reality we all share in. But just as sparks occasionally linger and randomly flying bullets hit unintended targets, a missed opportunity is a missed opportunity to share in something - good or bad or meaningful or meaningless - but Something. And just like in a good movie, we never know how important those little moments may be.

Maybe that's why they rarely show anyone in the bathroom.

This speaks for itself. Any more comment would make it less funny.

Can't find that calendar you REALLY need to help you get through this brand new year? Well here's one you really can't miss. This one goes out _especially_ to my male friends looking for available women.....

I'd just like to say (and there are people who can vouch for this) that i have said i would do this, if it mattered. So it's not like this guy is some big friggin' hero. Okay, maybe he is to me. Big fucking deal. Maybe if i fucking cuss an assload shit of a fucking lot, i will fucking get over the motherfucking shit-ass embarrassment of having motherfuckingly admitted it, ass bitches.

Invisible galaxies exist. OoOoOoOo. Dark Matter. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Valet parking
the Dodge Caravan
w/ the paint peeling off
how lucky we
all are

Christmas 2000

Greetings All!

It seems to me that Christmas is presented as a holiday for upper-middle class white people, despite the message and spirit of the season. But Christmas is so heartily different for everyone. Forget the upper-middle class depictions of Christmas in commercials, forget the news stations reporting from the area's most popular and middle-scale malls. Head up to River Roads Mall in North St. Louis County, where so much theft has occurred that only a handful of shops there out of the once near 50 are still open. The ancient Woolworth's becomes a haven for mothers looking for a halfway interesting toy for their children. Or head to your local Walmart, where bits and pieces of Christmas are scattered all over like the refuse of some tragic sleigh accident, and people who look like they haven't changed clothes, eaten, or slept within the past few days stand in long lines to purchase fake logs for their christmas decorations. Or the suburban mall, where hundreds of men pass by Victoria's Secret, dreaming little dreams, on their way to Spencer's to get a Flori-duh mug for grandma in Pensacola. Or the young couple dressed all in red and black shopping the windows downtown amongst the skyscrapers, lugging armloads of gifts, and stopping every once in a while for a short kiss in the falling snow. I have seen them all. Christmas is real. The reality of the whole world itself takes all kinds i suppose, that's what i've been told. Christmas is just another great part of that.

Funny, short little rant on corporate Christmas gift-giving, and the Inevitable Popcorn Can.

Christmas most definitely DOES go the ghetto. Snoop offers proof. Here's a link to more info on the album as well as a 45-sec blurb from Snoop's track on this Death Row Records Christmas album:

And it wouldn't be the end of the year without the year in pictures. MSNBC does a neat-o job.

Christmas advertisements from the past! Funny for their hindsight value, and kinda puts present-day in perspective i suppose.

And to cap off this Christmas season's links, a judge's Christmas poem to a prisoner who sued over disappointment with the Penthouse issue containing Paula Jones. Very good.

***********************************

A little boy wakes up one Christmas morning, right around 7am. Sunlight streams in through the translucent window, framing the unlit tree with a ghostly backlighting usually only seen in horror films.

It means something different this time though.

He squats gingerly by the tree, investigating every present, categorizing every gift by size and shape and what order to open them all in. He is sure they are all for him. Scratching his butt, he notes the footies on his fading red sleeper outfit mustn't touch any of the gifts - that might wake the dog, and he doesn't want to get in trouble. Sandy will start barking as soon as she hears a sound. The creaking in the hallway floor when he came down here was bad enough.

He wonders if he has been a good boy this year. Does he deserve all these gifts? He wonders if mom will make french toast for breakfast, like she always does on Christmas. He sits down and looks over the gifts again, one by one. He looks down at his long skinny legs encapsulated in the sleeper, and takes a long look at the tree. After hatching and quickly abandoning a plan to look behind the tree, he resigns to sit there as close to the tree as he can and wait for Christmas. An audible sigh is breathed as he relaxes his back, laying his head down gently on the plush gold carpet. He takes one last look at his presents, and smiles from ear to ear, before accidentally falling asleep in the sunlight glow around the tree.

Thanks.

Merry Christmas everyone.

12/20

Greetings All!

We truly do as a society worship money. We cannot get away from it. What have we to offer but material possessions of one form or another? Surely, there is time. But we have none to give. There is effort, but there is no time in which to give it. There is love too, but no church or religion can run and get by without material things, as much as Jesus might have wanted it to. So, it _does_ fall back to money. We have it to give. It is easily taken. It makes religion work. So, if religion is so economical, in a sense, then who is its true god? From whom do all earthly blessings flow? There is but one answer.

The world economy rises and falls with simple, muttered words from his lips. Pundits, the prophets of the religion of economy, say he _must_ lower interest rates, it simply must be done. Other pundits/prophets proclaim that whatever Greenspan does, it must be right. So truly, he is a god. Let all other economic theory be heresy. Get down on your knees, speak in tongues, and praise the lord:

His Name Is Allen Fucking Greenspan.

(His altar in our apartment was finally completed this week, and thus my religious writing has begun again in earnest, after many years of taking a break!)

Your indoctrination into the Church of Scientology begins here, with benign, fun video cartoons!

Always wanted to ride in the Dukes of Hazzard car? Why don't you just buy it? Waylon Jennings has put it up for auction....

Talk about not paying attention to your children - not noticing a 26-year old has been living in your daughter's closet AND MORE for almost a month, is, well, just plain pathetic. The parental line at the bottom is great.

In a survey conducted in one of my classes this semester, every kid was asked their favorite TV show. A _majority_ said The Simpsons. I almost cried i was so happy. Thus, the 50 Greatest Simpsons' Moments ever.

I have always had trouble with the Out Of Order distinction for things that are broke. (You may think you know where this is going, so stop mumbling to yourself. It isn't going there. I hate Seinfeld). Here's what ticks me off: How did this phrasing get thought of? Was there something way back when that simply ran out of a sense of order? Should we put signs on Salvador Dali paintings too then? Is it simply a more "polite" way of saying, "Broke" or "Fucked Up"? The latter of those would be great to see on a Coke machine or something. Like it might work, but you gotta mess with it, so take your chances. That's basically the same process we're saying with "Out of Order" i suppose. "Out of Order" implies it does not function whatsoever owing to some piece-part not playing its part _at all_ in the natural order of the machine's function. "Fucked Up" might mean it might work some of the time, or may produce unexpected results - multiple sodas, the wrong soda, electric shock + soda, etc. You get the idea. Other sign distinctions could also follow: "Unruly" - you have to kick, punch, shake, or otherwise do something every red-headed step-child might deserve to get your soda out. "Frustrating" - you'll get your soda, but only after it eats your money perhaps once or twice, you unplug and plug it back in, cry in frustration, rock it gently back and forth, etc. "Demanding" - where some sort of bizarre physical exertion is required to get a soda out, like having to reach your hand way up inside to try and grab a stuck soda, or you have to finesse the way you put your coins into the slot, etc. Anyway, not all "Out of Order" machines are truly non-functional, that's a fact. But if it ain't working at all, then, by-damn, i say it's "Broke", and should be labeled so. If it were all "Out of Order", then technically, i believe it would stop existing in any recognizable form.
Thus, the Coke machine simply disappears with an audible *pop* from in front of the Wal-Mart upon going, "Out of Order".

12/13

Greetings!

We need a Jim Morrison Day. A day when everyone has the damn day off. We can wake up in the morning and have ourselves a beer. We can all go to a roadhouse, and get into a fight and have Patrick Swayze break it up. Our fire can be lit. Do some drugs and have no repercussions for it. Meet wild people and break a lot of stuff and write poetry and songs that border on lucidity but are brilliant yet no one really gets them but us. Live life at a whiskey bar. Eroticism. Hang out in the desert and answer deep questions from those lost in the mayhem of rock 'n' roll. A day pretty much lost in time and memory. July 3rd. For no good reason but for every reason in the world, at the same time. How deep yet how shallow.

Matthew J, how do we miss events like this? Breasts? Ham? It's funny how i miss the connection yet so easily get it, at the same time. And you know the firefighters were there. What a crock.

And you think your sex life is bad. Live in Bangor, Maine. No pun intended. Ok, maybe just a little.

PLIERS?

And there i thought it was legal to carry around 12 lizards in your crotch. In Vegas. Is nothing sacred?

Ladies, you gotta love Vinnie. Makes my hall of heroes anyway.

i often wonder if there's people out there who think while they are sober like i do after 3-4 beers. not an arrogance thing or anything like that, just the way things are. with the way my mind works, i have about ten things going on mentally when sober, and that number slowly goes down with each additional alcoholic beverage. but around the 3rd-4th beer, i'm personally starting to feel relaxed, getting maybe a bit of a buzz going, more focus on what's going on but less concern for it (unless it's serious). multi-tasking becomes difficult. writing is easier. dancing is considerably easier. feeling emotion is easier. arguing is harder. and stupid. And i get god-like at playing dome and air hockey. I've often thought i wanted to live life there, at the 3rd-4th beer. Reality bites. Never saw the movie.

water was coming out of the faucet sideways. i had to stare at it for awhile. It wasn't fully obeying gravity even.

i drank way too much last night. Hee hee. well okay, last week.

12/6

Is there no justice in the world?

The McChickenHead Sandwich is a deliciously breaded head of a chicken, cooked to perfection and served just the way you like it! Try it with our famous fries and a Coke!

I think my career as a McDonald's [tm] commercial writer is (now) in serious doubt.

There are a lot of babies born in late August and September each year. Especially baby reindeer. But not ornamental lawn reindeer babies - THOSE are rare. But no one says you can't try and breed 'em. In full view of the public.

Mutants walk among us. OK, so this is old news. But they have a superpower - they can see better than the rest of us. OK, they have photoreceptors for 4 colors instead of 3. But this can be used to save the world, create a better future for the all-important children! No, not really. Besides proving a couple of semi-important human bodily-related scientific principles, it's really only useful for determining what's maroon and what's rust-colored.

The key to life itself on earth??? Or a fuctup experiment. Either way, no one's gonna pay much attention to it, even if it may possibly explain the origin of life on earth. Funny the things we pay attention to. Science education and interest nowadays sux.

And finally, proof that frat boys go on from college with their marketing and business degrees to further embarass themselves, as well as their companies (this particular one already being, umm, morally challenged?).

Seeing as it's near Holiday Time, it's a point where we should really consider what the holidays mean to us. For example, what does Channukah (the yiddish spelling) mean to me? I mean, i've been accused of being Jewish. I've been accused of being a member of just about every religion, except whatever Kwanzaa's related to, and that's just a matter of time. And in thinking about it, i realized, why don't Christians celebrate Channukah? There's no reason they couldn't - it's as much part of their tradition as it is the jewish tradition. I've had all aspects of this argument in my head, so i'm pretty sure i could defend it - Christians should celebrate Hannukah too! And it makes perfect economic sense at the moment - we have a robust economy that can handle us buying gifts and partying for basically 3 straight weeks. And the real sticklers, the Fundamentalist christians, would probably agree to celebrate it as well, once it was explained to them that this was yet another way to screw over Jewish people (they control all our money anyway, zionist conspiracies, blah blah blah). They'd probably be more enthusiastic than most jews about Hannukah. Anyway, something to think about.

And i am, just kidding. No offense to any jewish people anywhere. I love your God of death and destruction. We could use him nowadays.

And I know it's early, but,

HAPPY HANNUKAH!

* Actually, Henry Kissinger also shares my birthday, which i've known for a long time, and he's considerably more famous. However, my feelings about Kissinger are on a completely different level from aforementioned Iron Eagle/crappy network min-series drama queen.

11/29

Greetings!

Thanksgiving. What to be thankful for. Thankful for rainbows and puppies and blowjobs. For good friends, good beer, and happy coincidences. And unhappy ones - they add spice. Thankful for spice. Thanks for less/more boredom. Thanks for being too busy - makes one appreciate it when one is less busy. Thanks I won't be seeing the inside of any more classrooms for awhile. Thanks for more life - keeps mine interesting. Thanks for death - it trims the fat. Thanks for the last thing many people ever know before dying - the kiss of a loved one. We really are a great brand of being sometimes. Thanks for existence. Not having lived would have been, well, unmemorable. Life can become one long narrow tunnel with walls of shit if we never stop to smell the daffodils and note what the hell is so great, interesting, different, beautiful, etc., even if sometimes it isn't the most pleasant. Stubbing one's toe may suck, but it reminds one that one has a toe to stub, and if they really think about it, can be glad for that. Life is full of too many details not to stop and evaluate the mundane sometimes. It really is just a string of details. Some heavier than others, but details nonetheless. Thanks for details. Thanks for it all, and whatever meaning has come out of it. Wonder-full.

God i love Michael Page of Fade-to-Black magazine. What an absolutely funny, dick of a guy. You might remember his past work: his report on the Puppets of Pop vs. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and his report on Louis Farrakhan's career as a calypso singer. Here he has children vote for president using the Florida ballot. Priceless.

The first link is to a site selling bubble wrap specially designed as clothing. All the pictures they have depict it as the ideal wedding dress you ladies or your ladies might wear on that super-special day! The second link is perhaps something you shouldn't open at work, but is basically a site selling nude suits: clothing you can wear that makes you look like you naked, without actually being so. Whoever said the Internet was an avenue for nuts, well... i'll let that joke drop there. Hanging out with computer guys has made puns considerably funnier, despite the inherent lack of humor in a pun.

Very Very Cool interactive Java interactive animation site. If you're not sitting in front of a java-enabled computer, go find one and use it. This is very interesting and fun art you can sit and play with for a long time. It creates itself based on the way you move and click your mouse, and there's a whole list of different kinds. It may very well be the art medium of the not-too-distant future.

The science of connecting people: a sociologist of sorts developed an algorithm to apply to any given population of people to see how well any one person was "connected", i.e., degrees of seperation, Kevin-Bacon game-esque. He applied it to modern scientists as an initial test, but also did it for actors in Hollywood. Kevin Bacon didn't win.

New age of cars: Hydrogen burning engines. Environmentally safe, a helluva lot more efficient, and something they've been talking about for years. Except now, Iceland is getting its shit together and doing something about it all. Maybe we'll see it in our lifetimes in the U.S. If we're lucky.... Anyway, great article about the stuff. Damn the New Scientist magazine rocks.

What a heck of a difference a font makes. Sure, there are a lot of frivolous and just downright silly fonts out there, and all kinds of formatting options for your documents that can be done and are occasionally useful and so forth. But when you look at advertisements, what a heck of a difference a font makes. For example, if McDonald's used something besides skinny, italicized, cursive script followed by a cheesy, hollow exclamation point, their message might come across a completely different way. Try this big, black, block lettering at the bottom of the TV commercial:

WE LOVE TO SEE YOU SMILE.

It's almost scary; it begs the question, "Well WHY do you love to see me smile? Are you stalking me? What do you WANT with me? Leave me ALONE!" Somehow i think this font type might not sell more burgers. Here's another example, this time from another big, evil corporate giant:

One gets the feeling that like a deity, Walmart will always be there, in a very overbearing way. Soon, there will be no other stores. Just Walmart. And you will like it, or you will be purged.

11/21

Greetings!

Saw a double rainbow the other day - one rainbow inside the other. Will probably never see such a thing again. Unexplainable. Awesome. Filled me with absolute wonder.

I saw a show on MTV - "Cribs", where they profile celebreties' homes - MTV celebs, but celebs nonetheless. Snoop Dogg's house was on there. It turns out that, for the most part, Snoop is a pretty normal guy with a pretty normal house. Elegant but relatively modest living room, dining room, bedrooms. Pantry filled with junk food, fridge filled with soda and juice (and bit of expensive bubbly, but he's rich, cut him some slack), kids' rooms strewn with toys, dogs with normal names that he plays around like any dog owner would. Perhaps i expected it to be a bit more risque. Evidence of drugs, a sprawling estate away from everything else, dogs playing poker around kids that were talking that trash, Snoop lurking in the background like some sort of Machiavellian gangsta godfather. Nope. In a suburb, with neighbors who are occasionally annoyed by tha playa lifestyle, with a big garage for his small fleet of classic cars.

And a basketball court. Where Snoop goes to think.

Beautiful.

Ever wanted to be IN a video game? I know Jay has, at least. Now you can, thanks to a new technology that probably won't catch on!

Not a contest one wants to win. Looking like your dog. That's pretty funny stuff.

Good election humor. Much better than Ben Anderson screaming, for an hour and half, "I've got an election!", followed by peals of uncontrollable laughter. For an hour and a half. Anyway, the Ballot with Butterfly Wings, Palm Beach Story, and souvenirs sections are pretty darn amusing.

"One always looks neat, in a hat made from meat." -Mark Twain
It's true, these people look pretty neat. I'm waiting for the full meat ensemble though. BBQ rib panties. Jesus, why did i think of that.

However, the LCB must remain true to form in keeping up with the latest in monkeys, meat, clowns, and other blustery bloviating nonesuch. It's Monkey: Am I Hot Or Not!

Bloviating: gaseously spewing forth speech to the masses, like hot gas, ash, and lava from a volcano. President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft used this term to describe how he spoke. He bloviated. One could reason to believe that if this term had been used in Ancient Rome, the guy who used it would be called Blovius.

I need to get some sleep.

As people who have emotions, and in a world where perceptions change from person to person, we develop highly subjective terminology to deal with an increasingly complex world. Like that last sentence, in and of itself. One such term i've been dealing with lately is the word "cute." Cuteness. What's "cute?" Is it that cute to me, or cute to you? Does it imply attraction? Is it sexually related? What chord does it strike in the human brain to toll "cuteness?" Where and why do we learn such a subjective thing? Where is the line crossed between beauty, prettyness, and cuteness? Is there a line? Does it matter? If i say a 3-year old is cute vs. a 16 year-old vs. a 20-year old, how does the word change? It does. When one utters such words, depending on the audience, opinions about the utterer may change, even if the utterer means the same thing at all levels. I guess at some point we decide all these things for ourselves, and live with the fact that we can say the right things at the right times to keep ourselves out of unintended trouble. It doesn't seem to always works out that way though. I guess it explains why so many men are so quiet when talking about their feelings. They don't want anyone to be confused. :)

Trust me, the last bit is funny. On many levels. Heh.

11/14

Greetings!

A lot of girls say i give the best hugs. I've always thought this was patronizing BS that they all say to everyone, but it's becoming one of those things you hear enough and consequently start to believe it thanks to whatever subconscious thing makes one do that. So i put thought into it, amongst my constant thoughts about where and if there's an edge to the universe and the consequences of that conclusion on the next month and a half of my life, and if and when a god-like force is present in spontaneous combustion of people. My conclusion about the most former were that i give great hugs because a hug to me is not something to give lightly, and it's not symbolic - it's a manifestation in and of itself.

Of course, i'm also so skinny that people can get their arms all the way around me, which for some reason improves the quality of a hug just by itself. Heh.

Love 'em or hate 'em, he's a funny dancer any day of the week. Mucho thanks to St. Louis Ben for this one.

If you pray, your filet-o-fish meal WILL be half-price. All you need to do is believe.

Richard M. Nixon. Bowling. Great.

Al Gore won the porn vote. You can't dispute the facts.
George W. Bush is a big hit with single mothers too.

Otherwise, an interesting, common-sense, mostly unbiased approach to interpreting the election results.

It exists. I would like to point out that i could make a bad/insulting joke here, but did not. That should be a credit to my character.

Interesting, highly conservative analysis of the election. Makes a few leaps and flights of fancy, but the map (red-and-blue, upper right-hand corner) on the page is worth the link alone. Thanks to peter for this one.

Maybe it's just me (but i doubt it), but i wish i could live life constantly at around that 4-5th beer. Every idea seems brilliant, every criticism completely justified, every forethought to the next day truly inspired. Life seems to be a bowl of cherries one must merely pick the stems from before consuming in a very Brothers-Baldwin-esque-no-talent-hack kind of way. The fourth/fifth beer syndrome suffers from several fatal flaws however. Often following this is the sixth beer, when one begins believing they are the offspring of Alexander the Great. Or preceding it is the 3rd-4th beer, where one still believes they are sober yet farts the stank of the sour cream and onion chips they were eating all evening. And the farter believes talking about it is funny. WHICH IT IS.

11/10

Greetings!

It's laundry night, which means it's time to play the laundry song, as sung by Whiskeytown, to the tune of and is basically a parody of Neil Young's "Helpless":

There's a town in north Ontario
There's a laundramat there i should see
So maybe then you're gonna have to deal with me
maybe you can make me stinky

I need to do my
laundry, laundry, laundry
For a little while some brung away
laundry, laundry, laundry
Maybe i'll do mine someday

There's a town in north Ontario
There's a laundramat there i could use
But i'll never prolly go to north ontario
so i throw my socks and my t-shirts away after use

I need to do my
laundry, laundry, laundry
for a little while some brung away (can you hear me now?!)
laundry, laundry, laundry
Maybe i could do mine someday

laundry, laundry, laundry.....

(i love that song; not sure why)

Want a Saddam Hussein look-alike for your next circumcision party? Now it can be done, thanks to the folks at Funtastic.com. How can you not love them, if not with your soul, at least with your feet.

Ever wanted, in the middle of sex, just to blurt out something overly pretensious that sounds like it comes from an expensive upper-crust British porno? Me neither, but i know that same person as you that does (you know: that girl, and it always had to do with your mom). Anyway, in case you wanted to start taking it up yourself, just to REALLY throw your partner off, here you go: The Victorian Sex Cry Generator.

This guy rocks. A fellow masculinist, definitely. Getting revenge that everyone will see, and that every guy who's been cheated on will very much appreciate.....

God i love Dan Rather. I watched CBS all night, and loved every single one of these as they were uttered. It's the historian in me methinks - Abraham Lincoln said shit like this all the time during the Civil War...."The hen is the smartest of all animals, because she only cackles after the egg is laid." Classic. "If frogs had side pockets......"

It is very interesting to note the difference between the professional side of people and the real, everyday side of people. I've always thought there should be little difference, except for the fact that there was a time to be quiet and polite, and a time not to be. But of course, there's a ton of other stipulations that go along with all that so-called professionalism and such. What is more interesting then is to see when, where, and how the everyday side of people creeps into their professionalism. Dan Rather is one that is interesting to note in this regard. He's something of a Renaissance Man, something i've always really wanted to be. Orator, journalist, pundit, activist, editor, author, and all-around interesting guy that reflects the times. Truthfully, i don't know a heinous amount about him, but i bet he's a pretty multi-talented guy - what a renaissance man is all about. Knowledgeable in science, literature, philosophy, current events, painting, economics, music, politics, history, etc. A Da Vinci type of guy. If i could stay in college forever i probably would. Gain every degree i could gain. Have all kinds of different jobs doing all kinds of different things in all kinds of different places with all kinds of different people. Now not everything would be within my grasp (my rise to power within NAMBLA or the NAACP will never take place, for example), but there's enough interesting stuff out there, it'd be bound to be quite weird. First male president of NOW might be down the road aways though.

11/6

Greetings!

THERE ARE SOME who might say that only I would get lost in my own neighborhood. And they are right. Last night i got lost in my own neighborhood. Yes, he who has occasionally forgotten the most basic facts about himself got utterly lost walking the 3 blocks back from the post office. To be truthful, it was dark, foggy, and i'd never walked through the nooks and crannies of the sprawling apartment district of southeastern Chesterfield, MO, before, and i wasn't trying very hard to get home in a hurry. Still, it was fairly amusing. Gives me a whole new respect for those people who know shortcuts in the most ass-backwards places in big cities.

"The COLONET JR-4 combines new advanced and innovative technologies for easy and effective Colon Cleansing in the privacy and cleanliness of your home." Thank God; where the Hell else would you do it beside your own home? At WORK? Somebody else's home?

Children's programming: Found this by accident. Highly offensive. Highly funny. "Drown the man in the boat." Hee hee. Don't read this at work or school.

Time to get start getting you thinking about Christmas, and all the fuctup shit that comes out about the origin of Christmas. This is by far one of the best i've ever seen - It all has to do with the psychadelic mushroom Amanita Muscaria. Really, it does. Ok, you're right, this is just fun BS.

"Scientists in South Africa believe they may have discovered the stimulus for Shakespeare's creative genius - cannabis." That still doesn't explain _Love's Labors Lost_ at all, or why _The Merchant of Venice_ is so relatively poorly regarded. I won't even go into the sonnets - FOR SHAME!

New underwater pyriamids found off coast of Japan - may be oldest man-made structures in the world, pre-dating the oldest pyriamid by 3,000 years. Very cool.

So we did some good Christian women's reading today, as well as keeping up on the latest things drugs are doing lately. However, on the eve of the election, I will not wax political. Why not? Waste of time. If anyone's changing your mind this late in the game, you probably shouldn't be voting. If you haven't made up your mind yet, as an excellent political pundit i've heard of said, "You're either an idiot or are completely ignorant of politics [paraphrased]." And that means 13% of the American voting public fall into that category. You know, it was Ben Franklin's idea to establish the electoral college, because he thought the people weren't smart enough to directly elect those who govern them - especially the president. I guess the Founding Fathers win yet another round, 211 years after the fact. How can they be so right all the time, and still be dead? I guess the jury's still out on that, not that they'd ever decide anything right about it anyway. I guess i did wax political. Oh well. I did get lost in my own neighborhood last night.

10/31

Greetings!

I've been searching for an original version of the song "Plastic Jesus", which i've heard covered a half-dozen times but always with different lyrics. It seems that, in its being a folk song of sorts, it is subject to all kinds of variation, and it now has all kinds of verses, all reflecting similar themes to some ancient original. I myself at first thought it was pretty screwy for a folk song like that to get such a variety of variations thrown in to its historiography - everyone from Paul Newman on the "Cool Hand Luke" soundtrack to the Flaming Lips has fuqd with it - but in a historical context, that is all perfectly normal. Even the most seemingly factually grounded events and people change over time, and in turn their stories are often put into contexts relevant to whatever present they are being examined in. The same goes for self-examination of your own life. Sometimes it doesn't make any sense until you put it into the right context. Sometimes stupid actions later seem completely justified when you change your perspective. Sometimes life's stories are seemingly completed, only to later add 10 more verses or even an infinitely evolving story that is constantly interesting and rewarding. Same goes for Plastic Jesus. There's universal themes, don't forget. But it's open to interpretation, and consequently change. So, go write your own version.

Site with THE most *intimate* details on 80's hair band members. Former groupies got together to give Internetland this _important_ information. I don't recommend you visit this site, but merely wanted to point out that it exists.

Damn. And i still remember the Cold War, when this all was just a pipe dream.

Screw Nader. Vote Vader.

I'm one catchy bitch, i tell you that.

Rodeo monkey. Nothing more needs to be said.

Ladies, It CAN do ANYTHING. Somehow i doubt this turns you on though.

What a glorious day to be alive. Halloween, i'm sick and can hardly speak, and i'm getting my final evaluation today with my worst class. Scariest Halloween EVER. Normally, one does not chug NyQuil before heading to bed; one also does not normally plan a lecture when he can't speak. Ironic that i went to a Halloween party last weekend as a gut-shot teacher. Someone called today offering me $120 to test a cough medicine. They asked me if i was sick. I asked them if i had to get out of bed to take the survey. I ended up having a very pleasant conversation with a lonely survey caller, and then went to Schnucks and pondered aloud how it must suck to work in the "Drugs" section of the place, with sick people like myself wandering around spreading disease in my wake. I didn't even realize i was saying it out loud. Japanese people, when they're sick, wear masks wherever they go so they don't spread disease. I might be able to get away with that on Halloween. It'd really freak my freshmen out, i think. Especially if i was wearing my roommate's "Bubba" teeth underneath. I have no idea what my evaluator might think. Probably that i'm deranged. Takes one to know one. He rambles on and on about stuff, and then i return the favor and ramble on and on about stuff like only i can, and then, like receiving the gauntlet thrown, he tries to outramble me. He's no match. It can't be done.

And for those of you reading this for the first or third or xth time, welcome to the jungle baby:

Rocktober Is Over.

I have no idea what i meant by that, but it sounded cool.

10/23

Greetings All!

Jesus would not like crack whores
Jesus would like workin' that ass
Jesus would not like nuclear war....

- uncompleted song, written as my friend jay and i were walking home drunk from somewhere, i forget where.

(Besides getting drunk, Jay was a very good boy Megan, I promise).

My weekend in Kirksville, MO went by like a blur, and went by all too quickly. I met some really awesome people, stayed up real late, drank shitty beer for very long times, etc. There are some people who live their lives vicariously through the lives of other people, because some people just have better lives than others, and some people are just too lazy to have exciting or interesting lives. Perhaps substitute "some" for "many", or even "most." I don't know. Not that anyone would like to live their life vicariously through mine, but it was fun and weird enough to make a mini-series about this weekend. Deep sadness, exuberant joy, dirt and filth, a funny bloody scene, legal involvement, great character names, several stories with missing pieces that have to be filled in by the external listener/reader, a homoerotic sports scene, sex, lies, picturesque scenes with high drama where you don't know what's gonna happen next, perfectly placed comic sequences, and a great ending. In addition to having a mini-series for a weekend, i also learned that KFC is one of the most American places to eat in the world. I shall leave all these bits and pieces laying about, without any explanation, as i believe them better left for piecing together by the imagination of the reader.

Some people have no control over what their hands do sometimes. I think i will begin using this as an excuse for drinking that 2nd pitcher.

Okay, a chimp hand/arm puppet would be cool. I'm not sure why, but i think it would be indirectly related to either scaring people or picking up girls. After reading about the product, be sure to check out the testimonials. Apparently, a chimp puppet makes a good Christian evangelism tool. A naked guy with diahrea probably does too, but you don't see anyone selling puppets of him, do you? What a fuctup world. The second link is what a baby will do with a puppet chimp - stare into its horrifying face for their entire infancy. The third link is a church run by Chippy the Church Chimp, spreading his lies, masturbational techniques, and feces-throwing abilities to good Christian children everywhere. There's even a video you can buy. Yay!

I want to hear a story about this. I wanted to make one myself, but i couldn't think of anything or any one pair that would be funny or even perhaps appropriate enough. If someone does, let me know. Maybe i'll just find two random people in st. louis and set them up. Or maybe even pull a Holden Caulfield and set up a hooker and a jigalo.

Wanna never eat again? Join this semi-Christian strarvation cult. I can remember not eating for days in college; i saw some fuctup shit and had some pretty strange thoughts, like starting my own cult of gun-toting PBR drinkers. It might have had more to do with drinking old PBR though than starvation. Anyway, Wiley Brooks is still a fucktard.

Fucking awesome. A computer that sings classic rock songs. Go to a computer anywhere that has high-speed access and Realplayer, because this is SO good.

Originally, this was a reply to an email someone sent me. It turned into a rant, as i had thought about it a great deal awhile ago. Anyway:

> This sounds like a great idea. Let's start a business!

Heard about it on NPR; actually, i think it's a bad idea. For me anyway. It always has sounded to me like a really crappy way to meet people; more for anti-socialites than anything. I mean, geez, if you need this then you're not gonna know what to do when you have a date with someone, because you ain't getting out there to begin with. Or you won't have time for it. Maybe it's tied to this whole technology age/no one has any time for anything lifestyle that seems to be so big these days. I'm so anti-that. No cell phone, no late hours, no fast-paced life for me. I'm too lazy or too tired for it. "And the bar scene wasn't working..." Then stop going to crappy bars. Go to smaller bars, regularly. Or stop going to bars. Go to coffee shops, poetry readings, concerts, political/philosophical/religious meetings, fake an alcoholism problem, parks, horseback riding, any number of odds and ends cultural groups, get involved in a charity organization, start a club, take a college class or two and do any number of things associated with college life, go to every weird party you're at least semi-invited to and try to meet everybody, go to festivals of all kinds, talk to your friends, cousins, co-workers, and sisters/brothers for crying out loud and someone may know someone that might want to go out (hell, even _i_ know a bunch). People love match-making. It can be disastrous, but it can also be fun and perhaps even rewarding on some level. I mean, obviously people have other problems than just getting out there (i get out there, for example, but remain hung up on the same girl for months), but it all boils down to a matter of personal effort and creative thinking. And confidence. A good friend taught me that. Recall the analogy of life sometimes being like stepping out into oncoming traffic: True confidence is stepping out there and KNOWING you're not gonna get hit. And even if you do, bouncing right back and not letting it phase you. Because most of the traffic won't hit you. It will avoid you and speed right by, or perhaps it will brake or even stop and admire your gall to be standing there in traffic in the first place. It's what you have to do. It's not easy, but it's what you have to do.

Okay, something for the married/near-married people on the list, to be fair:

"And one day we will die, and our ashes will fly
from the aeroplane over the sea.
but for now we are young
let us lay in the sun
and count every beautiful thing we can see...
love to be
in the arms of all i'm keeping here
let me........

now how i remember you
how i pushed my fingers through your mouth
to make those muscles move
and made your voice so smooth and sweet
but now we keep where we don't know
all secrets sleep and winter glows
when one you loved so long ago
now we don't even know it

what a beautiful face
i have found in this place
that is circling all round the sun
and when we meet on a cloud
i'll be laughing out loud
i'll be laughing with everyone i see
can't believe
how strange it is to be
anything at all.

-- Neutral Milk Hotel "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"

10/9

Greetings!

So i hope everyone had a good Columbus Day/Canadian Thanksgiving/Yom Kippur Monday. My roommate and I did our traditional shot of the expensive whiskey to honor the event, seeing as i've been labeled Jewish by some of my friends, I have Canadian friends and students, and just like Columbus i'm a Eurotrash male. I do a lot of reading on historical discoverers like Columbus, and nothing about any of them has ever impressed me. So you discovered something geographical. Big fucking deal. Anything else? Abraham Lincoln, in addition to being a helluva president, also patented a better lock-and-dam system. And helped introduce automatic weapons into the army. Columbus enslaved and slaughtered millions, re-discovered a continent, and was an extremely arrogant bastard. And we give him a holiday. Just what he probably would have wanted. Yet Lincoln and Washington, two far greater men, have to share a holiday. Whatthefuck? We should make Columbus Day into Americans Day, where we all go out and pat each other on the back and tell ourselves what a damn fine job we're doing just being us. Who's with me?

Probably not our Canadian friends, that's who.

Bringing species back from the dead - interesting.

Matt suggested this site, and it's damn worth it. Especially if you're a movie buff. Even more if you're absolutely crazy about movies and trivia. They have everything - _everything_ about every movie ever made. Anywhere. Crazy shit i tell you, crazy shit.

"Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus and female sexual arousal." Found this off a science site, not a porn site. Just bizarre shit. Us Humans are soft and squishy on the inside.

I always write my own stuff for this newsletter, but this little anecdote was so well-written and funny, it deserves its own inclusion. It's about one of the plots schemed up by various facets of the U.S. government & military to get rid of Castro. Thanks to HistoryHouse.com for this, to whom all credit is due:

John Wayne would have been proud."

10/4

Greetings!

I've never been a huge fan of my first name. Chris. Christopher. Christ-Bearer. Named after the former Christian saint Christopher who according to legend carried a child across a raging stream who just so happened to be Jesus. Except he was desainted in 1979, because he never really existed. I want a Hollywood name. I'd bet Spike Lee's real first name isn't spike. Or "Wolf" for Wolf Blitzer. Or "Hype" for Hype Williams. "Hype" is a pretty cool name though. Hype Dulatt just sounds silly though. Must be one syllable. Hmm. A lot of the good ones are taken. I suppose i could just go look up old G.I. Joe action figure names and get a good one. Consider it done.

Just doing my part, though I can't decide whether this is right or just wrong. Guess i don't know enough to make a great decision. On the other hand, it's just good, lovey-dovey cheese. Spreadable cheese. Cheese in a can? Stinky cheese? Moldy cheese?

I can't put my finger on it.

Monkeys have been quiet in the news for awhile, but now they're back and doing what they do best: VIOLENCE. (and masturbation, but mainly violence). They are the new weapon of gangs in France, where apparently even their violence is silly. But why monkeys? "They bite, and their favored method of attack is to hurl themselves at people's heads." That's why.

Need a conversation? How about some poetry?
"Bill sings to Sarah. Sarah sings to Bill. Perhaps they
will do other dangerous things together. They may eat lamb or stroke
each other. They may chant of their difficulties and their
happiness. They have love but they also have typewriters."

A computer program wrote that. Neat.

Silly Presidents saying wacky things.

I've been reading some articles and other stuff about people stuck at the lowest rung of the economic ladder, for all kinds of various reasons. One of them is mental deficiency. Saw a janitor today at the high school i'm teaching at. He's been working there for years - at least a decade - and he doesn't say very much. He bears the physical characteristics of someone who may have had developmental problems sometime way back. It got me to thinking: What goes on in his head? That's something i think about for everyone, really, but in this case it's a bit different. If he thought of something brilliant, would anyone listen to him? Would he even know to communicate it? Maybe he wouldn't even understand his own idea, and thus couldn't communicate it. Like an amazing computer with no operator. The whole savant thing, except in a more qualitative rather than quantitative way. Something to look for in the future i suppose.

9/25

Greetings!

I've occasionally thought that a good career for me or really for anyone who sits and thinks of random shit all day would be to a join a good idea corporation of some sort. Your job is to just sit there and think of good ideas and sell them to the highest bidder. Like mirrors, on all the walls of interrogation rooms. The criminal is forced to look at himself, and maybe that will force introspection, or at least it might be harder for them to lie if they have to look at themselves in the mirror. Of course, i think the first thing i would suggest would be the revival of ass-pants - those pants where there's a hole cut out for each cheek. Why did these never become popular? If women can wear swimsuits that show the bottoms of their breasts, and if some guy developed an ass-razor (another great idea!), there is no reason this could not be a new and culturally fulfilling fashion trend. Except for that age-old concept of basic human decency, and that it might rob Prince of his schtick, which would be a crime, because his name is Prince, and he is funky.

Televisions turn on and off by themselves every night; messages of death threats and answers to frightened questions appear on the television screen. The FBI investigates....

Wish to send a message to a particular star system? The LCB remains committed to promoting and exaggerating the importance of communication with God and aliens from other star systems, and this link follows quickly in that line. What if we are never visited by wookies? This would be a tragedy.

It has been noted how cool the Geochron is already in the LCB, not just in structure and purpose, but it's also cool to say, especially with a Sean Connery voice. Anyway, this is a graphical "geochronesque" map/picture/graphical demonstration of sunlight around the world and time and such, and is pretty neat to play with. Not to mention it's accurate to the minute.

I thought often as a child that everyone but me was a robot. Their exterior was just like mine, but beneath an inch or two of the hair and skin was a bunch of machinery and computers. Even my parents for awhile. Some psychologists say this is a fairly common way for children to think. But sometimes when i get tired i start to believe it again - "human nature could not create THAT guy!? He can't be real." I usually manage to restrain myself from poking such a person with a stick, but i occasionally blunder into an overly honest verbal assault and lose myself and them in the confusion, leaving me as bewildered as before, if not more. Apologies rain. Even more confusing, it seems some people are more real than others. I also wondered as a kid why we couldn't just be honest to everyone about everything, blatantly. I thought we'd solve a lot of problems and miscommunication this way. I guess that's why i always hung out with the smart-asses in K-12. It's insulting to be honest most of the time, and and when you are you sound smart-ass, cynical, or sarcastic. Whatever whatever, bullshit bullshit. Apathy is born of such stuff.

my dreamgirl don't exist
at the age of five she slit her wrists
she didn't know that i'd be hangin' around
so her parents buried her in the ground.
till this day i can still hear the sound
of a life in outer space.

my dreamgirl don't exist
it's just you and i and this TV
and this illness seems to feel so strange
like a henchman that's about to hang
the moon up like a ball and chain
and set his hands ablaze

and the wait is waiting off
filled the world so real and strong

my dreamgirl don't exist
she's just a photograph in a history book
and i believe she had a voice and name
three children on the coast of maine
their life was in a hurricane
of love and real embrace

my dreamgirl don't exist
at the age of five she slit her wrists
she didn't know that i'd be hangin' around
so one day she took a stroll to town
and walked in front of a Greyhound bound
for New York central state

and the wait is waiting off
and the wait is waiting off
filled the world so real and strong
she knows, and now she knows
she'll never be afraid......

- Neutral Milk Hotel "My Dreamgirl"

9/18

Greetings!

I wanted to do a all-automobile related LCB some time, but i simply lack the links to do it. That being said, i wanted to engage a couple of subjects that float in and out of consciousness in my mind from time to time. For example, what about roadhead? First off, is it one word or two? No dictionary listing exists. That needs to be corrected. Furthermore, no scientific study (or any kind of study or survey, whatever) has been done on how often road head really occurs. Or where the idea evolved, if it didn't evolve spontaneously with the birth of the automobile and the acceptance by men of gratuitous oral sex while driving. Not to mention improvements made to shock absorbers on cars. Are there any women who RECEIVE roadhead (of sorts) while driving? HOW? Do those guys receive medals? Consequently, we have no idea about anything concerning road head, except that it happens, to men, and it is good, if not a bit dangerous. My brother nearly got into a car accident as a result. But that's not the story mom heard.

"While there are dozens of other sites on the web devoted to Stephen Hawking's scientific achievements, I am unaware of a single site (aside from this one) devoted to his career as a lyrical terrorist." I can verify this, it is true (check out his MP3's!). This site was so funny i fell out of my chair, which doesn't happen very much. Except when i've been drinking. And then still not very much. Truthfully, i don't remember.

A reincarnation of Socrates, a la democratic ideals. Interesting. Inspirational. Ideal.

One of my favorite on-line magazines, FadetoBlack.com, underwent a study to determine which teen band lowers our standards for music the most. The results are not alarming at all, but thoroughly amusing. There is something to be said for poise when contacting and communicating with the operators of teen pop artists' websites. What's also funny is they compared them all the Pink Floyd's _Dark Side of the Moon_.

It has been evidenced to me among men that the rules for Shotgun while in the process of entering a vehicle are often quite complex, and vary from driver to driver, car to car, and situation to situation. The only concrete rule across all situations and occurrences is that the driver has the final say on who actually gets it. He is the final judge of all "callings" of Shotgun, as well as for all the particular rules and their subtleties for any particular event. Not wishing to throw a monkeywrench into a perfectly operating social construct, i would merely like to give more background information about the "Shotgun" idea to drivers who are having a tough time deciding on their own particular rules. Riding "Shotgun" was originally a concept developed by stagecoach companies. Typically, a stagecoach would carry passengers plus 3 drivers from the company. One would sleep, one would drive the coach, and one would sit there next to the driver with a shotgun. His job was to keep a look out for injuns. And if he saw them, shoot them. I originally presented this concept to an acquaintance of mind at a nearby bar, but he was so stoned and drunk that he could not even manage an expression of recognition. I think he might have blinked, but i'm not sure. I might have blinked. Now i'm confused. I also thought of this extensively while listening to obscure indie-pop and many Leadbelly songs. No inspiration, just more confusion. In conclusion, the only things i personally came up with is that: all future shotgun riders in my car will be proficient with the shotgun. And they'd better have a good eye for injuns.

- An important side note: 1 out of every 100 cowboys was estimated to have been struck by lightning. I can't help but find that funny, even though it probably isn't.

- Another important side note: longhorn cattle occasionally developed St. Elmo's Fire between their horns while traveling the lone prairie, building up lots of static electricity. Perhaps if you wore horns and walked around building up static electricity, you could do this too, and amaze all of your friend(s).

9/12

Greetings!

Really, there's no super-special occasion for doing a "Best-of-the-LinksToCureBoredom" issue - hell, i just recently added graphics to the website, and half the other supposedly nifty features don't even work and i could give half a damn about. Had a counter on there for awhile - after awhile said fuqit. Whatever. The only reasons i even thought of doing this at all was that i recently found one of the best things i've ever told y'all about laying around on one of my computers. Someone even claimed offense to it. Wow. And because i've been wanting to do this for awhile - because some of this shit is really funny, and brightens your day at least a little, and maybe this will make you want to pass these issues along to your friends and heads of dot-com companies and maybe land me some job where i can drink whiskey all day and search the net for funny shit for people to read. But if i brighten your day, that's really all that matters. So without further adieu, the best of the best of shit on the net:

A mockery of airplane safety diagrams. Some random fellow out there did this, and i'd give him credit if i could remember where i got it from and how he did it. Anyway, this is one of the funniest things i've ever seen, and if they had this on the plane, perhaps only good-humored people would fly on airplanes. And that's probably how it should be.

Again, i don't remember where i got this from. Somebody thought it was a saturday night live bit, but i don't know. It goes well with the previous link, as this one's also about flying: Delta Airlines, where "we loves us some flyin', and it be showin' like a motherfucker!"

I've linked to a couple things off of blindwino.com before, including lots of great Hunter S. Thompson-esque material, as well as Ask Satan, which is both intelligent, witty, AND tasteless, all at the same time. Everything on this entire site is worth looking at, and will cure boredom for hours. It's one of the most amusing sights out there, without a doubt. Don't know if you'd wanna read it at work though, might get you in trouble.

This is that site a guy made by putting up a picture of a biker-chick in a confederate flag bikini and seeing what kind of responses he got to her solicitations for men. Utterly Classic.

One of the old, original links of the LCB must be conjured up: what it's like to pour concrete straight up one's ass. Why? I don't know, but I can guess. How? Best not to ask. Funny? Of course. It is proof positive that some people will put anything up their ass, which the LCB has to devoted itself full-time to proving. Candles, concrete, vegetables, animals, Satan - apparently an ass has all kinds of potential for things being crammed up it.

So maybe it's not the best of the shit on the net. The net is full of complete crap, from one end to the other, really, so it's hard to say or even identify what's the best. Or the worst. Or the funniest even. Opinions are subjective. Life is subjective, thankfully. But laughs are things we all can enjoy, even if they come in peculiar, off-beat ways that otherwise seem completely silly and irrelevant to our daily existence. For example, when i came home this evening, slightly inebriated after grading papers while watching a football game and doing mind teasers all evening, my roommate was passed out listening to a TV show done entirely in Japanese with the TV turned off and just the stereo on, through which the sound for that random channel came through. You run through the immediate questions in your head: "Why? What's happening? How the hell did that happen? etc...? But there's no reason to search for the particular reason - it's just silly, it's just dumb, it's just the way things happen sometimes, and life in and of itself can just be plain ludicrous, and you just have to laugh at it sometimes, rather than try and figure out it's silliness and chaoticness. So I didn't search for any reasons why, and i just wrote this - and thus all the links to the LCB come about. _"Who cares why?"_ - sometimes? Apathy can be funny. We can't know or understand everything. It's a losing battle. We are weird animals, to be damn sure. If anyone ever figures out our last, sacred, and mysterious psychological foible, may we die as an entire species no longer capable of (humorous?) evolution. I could not stand living in such a world.

I love you all,

Chris (and Carla, when she's not on the rag)

9/7

Greetings!

I think it'd be pretty awesome to own your own submarine. Bill Gates probably doesn't even own his own sub. It's probably in the "Guide How to Make Yourself a Distinctive Elitest Asshole for Under $80 Million." Still, I'd do it. And then I'd start my empire from my underground bunker in Antarctica. Cool.

Neat on-line game with really cool animation. Find the worm!

"If we could slow down the age-related changes in sleep quality, would that delay some of the many hormonal consequences of growing older?" Whoah. Get on your swim suits, time to jump in the fountain of youth.

Here's an interesting disorder: From what i understand, with this one you believe there are bad things about your physical body that don't exist, like your skin is all pimpled and scarred and whatnot. And it drives you to be anti-social and nuts because of the shame. On some rare people, it has driven them to surgeons to try and get certain body parts removed. They just don't feel like their legs belong on their body - and that makes them look ugly - and similar bizarre incidents of the mind. At some hospitals in Scotland in particular, this is an ethical problem. Of course, there is nothing faster than a greased Scotsman. Sorry, another Simpson joke no one will probably get. I'm not even sure why i made it.

Well, if we're gonna talk about God, then we gotta talk about The Devil. Satan. The Old Deluder. The Prince of Darkness. Beelzebub. Now we've talked about the Big Bad Guy from time to time, but really, how bad is he? He really only shows up in the Bible a handful of times, whereas God and Jesus are over the New and Old Testaments. Satan is almost a non-issue: he tempts Jesus once in only one of the gospels, and he slithers around in Genesis a bit, as well as messing around in Revelations a bit. Other than that, he's more of a folklore character than anything. He somehow gets associated with fun - gambling, drinking and whoring, running from the law, fiddling, etc. or at least he used to be. So, where would such a character be found in the world today. Undoubtedly, America, since it's the new battle ground for good and evil (any movie will tell you that). Probably some place that's fun, but nearby to places where he can cause nationwide trouble. Thus, Las Vegas. He can make short trips up to Utah to raise hell, but can also make the L.A. nightlife from time to time, as well as manifest himself occasionally in Silicon Valley when needed. All the while enjoying prostitution, gambling, drinking and whoring, and a real estate market that is out of this world. And he's close to Area 51, which is more-than-likely just an entrance to hell, and thus it's all not that inconvenient.

8/25

Greetings!

I never really understood Jackson Pollack until just this week. Random splattering of colored paint on a canvas seemed to me to be just bizarre abstract art, perhaps inspired by him knocking over a paint can. Or maybe he was getting really frustrated and just started throwing paint around the studio and called it art. But like looking at all great art, i was forgetting one key thing: remember historical context. He was doing his stuff in the fifties - the plain, black-and-white, Ozzie-&-Harriet, Levittown-suburb-of-all-the-same style-and-color-house fifties. Suddenly his art made sense.

Life's little discoveries sometimes make it all worthwhile. I suppose that's why lots of children are so happy all the time.

Some people can do some pretty amazing things with their minds. Yes, Othello and Chess and Backgammon are impressive, but the winner of the Mental Olympiad's Memory Skills World Championship has a truly awesome mind. To note, it took me 4-5 times (i can't remember how many) flipping over to that page to get the last sentence appropriately done. 2,079 binary numbers memorized in half an hour is utterly amazing. But then again, according to some Bible scholars, if it hadn't been for Adam and Eve's Original Sin, we would be able to read tens of pages a minute and use up to 100% of our brain at any given time. Maybe all these people are children of Satan.

"Rods" are small cylindrically shaped UFOs believed to be living things flying around at high speeds in places all around the world whose corpses have never been discovered nor have they never been seen not in flight. They make cameo appearances in Braveheart and a number of TV specials. They're also believed to be flying bugs whose images naturally streak on cameras. Or they might be bacteria recently discovered to be living and reproducing in clouds. You make the call.

Finally, a real crusader for real people! What an American!

This is just cool-looking - video of lightning striking a plane. Apparently, this happens all the time, and planes continue normal flight with very little, if any, damage. But still, damn.

I cannot say how much a strap-on helicopter that went 90 mph or so would rock. There are not words in the English language to describe such a level of rock-ed-ness. See, i just had to make one up.

I heard on NPR other day of some professor somewhere who claims the six degrees of seperation as a clear scientific phenomenon of sorts. As a challenge, someone chose a random merchant in a bazaar in Pakistan and a CEO of a Silicon Valley corporation. Turns out that the professor did it - a friend (1) of his brother's (2) lived in California, who had a girlfriend (3) whose sister (4) was married to a guy (5) who worked for the company the CEO was the head of (6). Although not quite a person-to-person match, and it probably doesn't work all the time, it's pretty telling of how close we are to so many people on the planet. Indeed, if you do the stats, it's pretty nuts: Let's say you know/have met 50 unique people (50 people who do not know each other within 1 degree of seperation). Let's also say this applies for everyone (an average). So, 50x50x50x50x50x50, or 15,625,000,000 people between any 2 people on earth. Now, obviously not all these people don't know each other, but on the other hand, most people know most of their first degrees of seperation all in one locale (within a state or two). Thus, relating to another person in the same locale is probably doable in at most 3 or 4. Anyway, i think it's neat to think about - the whole butterfly flapping its wings in the rainforests of Brazil bringing changes to Wall Street sorta thing, how everything's related in an unseen and usually unimportant way - but there's always a chance it can matter, and sometimes it does.