Happy birthday to Nancy Luedke, who turns 22 today.

I think it’s sort of amazing to use external things, like weather, to describe internal things, like emotions. I was driving through some thick fog tonight, and fog is often used as a metaphor for mental or spiritual blindness. It’s a perfect place for epiphany, because the fog dulls and blankets the senses from everything else, all your distractions, and you’re left only with your own mind, your own heart. Fog was a big thing among Romantic authors, like Wuthering Heights. I read this great line in Harper’s, some guy talking about if he ever actually were to meet the characters of some of the Romantic novels he’d read, he’d politely cross to the other side of the street, but if he met Catherine or Heathcliff (from Wuthering Heights), not only would he run for it, but set fire to the city he’d met them in and hope for the best. Who says nerds aren’t funny. I think I purged myself of lunch when a friend of mine told me her favorite book of all time was Wuthering Heights.

I don’t have a favorite book, because how do you even go about choosing a favorite something like that? You can do favorites with little things like toothpaste, sodas, or cars, but not with movies, music, or children. And books. I’ll have to say one of the best books I’ve read is John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. I haven’t read any Irving since, but it made AP English bearable. The screenplay for the movie Simon Birch was based off it. It’s about destiny and faith, and two friends. Sounds like the hokey plot of some dozens of Christianese schlock, but it’s well-written, funny, and has memorable lines that stick with you. The best one being, “YOUR MOTHER HAS THE BEST BREASTS OF ALL THE MOTHERS.” And it’s said in the most wholesome, innocent way possible, if you can believe it.

The Official Korean Guy Homepage: REAL ULTIMATE POWER, not to be mistaken with the Official Ninja Webpage.

Who2.com is the best guide for researching famous people I've run into.

Sometimes, you can't help but peer into the abyss. People forget that before being the leader of the Fascist world, Hitler styled himself as an artist. You can drive yourself crazy thinking you see early indications of his later megalomania in his "works."

Antarctic ice levels have actually increased over the past 20 years. You can tell the tree-huggers to cram it full of walnuts, ugly.

Win a Trip to Universal Studios
"One lucky grand prize winner will get to go back in black for two days and two nights in California and go for the ultimate spin at Universal Studios: Hollywood ... hosted by UGO's Gary Coleman."

I always talk about doing this, but this guy actually did wipe his butt with it.

Wil Wheaton has the best celebrity weblog? Are you kidding?

A columnist goes over the military backgrounds of our nation's prominent warmongers; namely, very little.

Yesterday, I felt like a ghost. A ghost because I have no future, I leave no imprint, and because I'm a non-entity. I am currently just taking up space. All I’m good for is the money I owe to people and for eating food and making crap. So I have all the bad things about being a ghost (non-entity, no tangible effects) without the good things about it (like being invisible, freaking people out). A friend of mine countered with “you do have a future, you just don’t know what it is yet.” I suppose that’s true. But I felt pretty empty. I imagine ghosts feel empty and stretched thin and tired, after having roamed the world for a long time. There is no joy in a new day, because it’s a new day with no hope. Just another notch in an interminable existence.

Anyway. I got over it. I often have things I need to get off my chest, and once it's out, it's ok. I can comfortably swing between being pretty somber and pretty goofy.

W.H. Auden once said that a good poet likes "hanging around words
listening to what they say..." A friend emailed that to me this morning, and it's been rolling around in my mind ever since.

"Soul Train" Untracked?
Sorry Soultrain, the kid got it right; Ashanti DOES suck. No need to cuss at him though.

Cremation Remains Turned to Diamonds
Beats the heck out of being turned into a frisbee.

Preparations are already underway for the 23rd Annual Mooning of Amtrak. Don't miss it!

My brother's new desktop came in the mail today. Now I just have to figure out how to network our current PCs to this new one. Which should only take a half a day and about 25 more dollars to solve.

I saw Signs last night. Pretty good. Better than I expected. M. Night Shyamalan continues to make some of the best suspense stuff since Hitchcock, complete with the Hitchcockean habit of showing up in his own movies.

Play some soccer with Pixel Kicks. 56k should probably take a pass.

Saw the White Sox get slapped around by the Twins again last night. Watching future McDonald's employee Gary Glover give up 3 home runs while the lady who sang the anthem was still walking off the field forced me to think of how life is for say, Tampa Devil Ray fans. When your team sucks, there is almost nothing redeemable about the experience, except for the one or two good players and the quality of the company. Which was good, my brother and the twins, Greg and Laura, coming along with me to watch the Sox do their best Cub impression, complete with the requisite home run by the rightfielder. Scratched "baseball game" from the list of things to do with Ed before he goes to college.

Discover the meaning of life, but have your motives handy for examination. For those of you in search of less metphysically taxing fare, you can discover the meanings of band names instead.

The Greedy Bunch - You Bought, They Sold
Meet the 25 companies with the greediest executives from January 1999 through May 2002.

A friend of mine showed me the feature on Mapquest where you can see actual aerial photos of the locations you're trying to map. Here's someone who put that sort of accessible technology to use, scoping out US intelligence centers. Beware the black-helicopters-in-the-sky, get-my-rahfle-Ma militiaman talk.

Too bad I'm not British.
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August 20, 2002 - Wireless Flash
Toothless, One-Eyed Men Sought For Disney Movie

HOLLYWOOD (Wireless Flash) -- If you're a male who's missing some teeth or an eye, you may have a good chance of being cast in the upcoming Disney film "Pirates of the Caribbean."
According to a casting call listed in "Back Stage West," producers desperately need males 18-80 years old, British-looking character types, with no teeth and missing an eye to play pirates.

Casting directors could not be immediately reached for further comment, but the ad also says producers need sailors ages 18-30 who are "serial killer types."

The film stars Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush and begins shooting in October.
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THE MOST POWERFUL FIRETRUCK IN THE WORLD
On par with how the kid who could make the farting noise with his armpit was initially popular back in grade school.

What happens when you shoot up an elephant with enough LSD for 3000 people?

Kiss James Ho's winter goodbye in front of the PS2.

A New Dance Video Every Day!

My brother leaves this coming Sunday for school, so we needed to get some last minute shopping done for some of his living supplies this weekend. The key thing to note here is that he'd already bought a mini-hamper for his laundry. So we went to Walmart to pick up a few things: a phone, flipflops, and a laundry basket. Hey, didn't you already get a hamper, I asked my brother. He's like, yes, but then what do you carry your clean clothes in? I'm like what?

Apparently, he wants to use the hamper bag to carry his dirty clothes, then use the laundry for clean clothes only. He doesn't want to use the same container to carry dirty clothes down, and then clean clothes up. He's a pretty clean kid, so how dirty can they be to begin with? I told him that was one of the stupidest things I've ever heard, and he got pretty pissed off. At least he sort of understood where I was coming from, but he was gonna do it his way. Pretty strong opinion for someone who's never done a load of laundry in his life. Am I the only who thinks this is lunacy? I never knew he was this high-maintenance about his cleanliness. I sort of evilly wish that he ends up with a slob for a roommate, but I know in reality that it would break him. Sigh.

I don't necessarily buy into the Iraqi War Lie, but it did remind me of that movie Wag the Dog. Kind of along the lines of allegations that US wargames were rigged.

The Simpsons is the best show ever to be on television (shut up, it is. No you're wrong, IT IS), and somebody's put together a list of the top 30 episodes.

AOL IM dating for you losers. This is good news in that the shallow end of the gene pool will now keep to themselves. The bad news is that the shallow end of the gene pool might also reproduce. At least they can shop here for the bling when it comes time. The URL pretty much says it all. If I were naming a jewelry store, I'd at least briefly toy with the idea to call it that.