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Unbelievable sheets of rain today. Mother Nature is trying out her new army boots. It would be much easier to tolerate this if the temperature was in the 60s. Last night I went for my first yoga class in about 4 years. It was very hard and very great. I was soaked with sweat by the time we went into the cool-down meditation part at the end. I felt all limber and healthy, and I still do. Duane went out drinking with his coworkers, since his company winks out of existence as of today. He'll be partying again tonight, no doubt, but then again, so will I, since I'm meeting up with ex-coworkers from NBC. Should be great; I miss those folks. Could you tell a real Chihuly from a fake Chihuly? (Thanks Doogie) The Old Farmer's Almanac has some wild stuff in it: How To Predict the Weather Using a Pig Spleen, Three Ways to Hypnotize a Chicken, and The Truth About Wooly Bears. Perhaps more helpfully, it has a weather estimation for June 2001 in Alaska. This is so wonderful - Exploding Dog creates cartoons based on titles that readers send in. Another cartoon, although extremely low-tech and self-consciously surreal: Friend Bear. Animated evolutions of alphabets. Just go and try it out. A Phish phan gives his advice to police who are looking to bust drug offenders. Very effective, I am sure. Did you see this? Randy Johnson killed a bird with his curveball. Kinda nasty. Quicktime needed. Reveal your true dark name. Please refer to me as Irate Samurai from now on. The New Yorker site is featuring all their covers that deal with baseball. If Jesus were really here, do you think he'd rob a garbage truck? Check out these fantastic photos by Earthroamer, specifically Denali. Only 35 days until we leave! (Thanks sweetie) The International Chindogu Society compiles pictures of weird tools that you will probably never need. I really like the Flotation Bag for Water Reading. Check out the guy's suit! Why would anyone be wearing a suit if you needed to read the newspaper in the ocean? Another great weekend saw the acquisition of our car-top carrier, and an awesome dinner party at Nuno's. Coq au vin, just amazing. Where was Rey? He missed the AK cake! Thanks to the Eramos for the rainbow delight. I probably won't be able to post too much here this week. Half my department is out of town and I am already very busy, at 11am on Monday morning. Imagine that! Actual work! So, my apologies in advance if you arrive here and there is nothing new to see. Ok. I have decided. I want to be the next reality-TV show. My life presented to you, 24 hours a day. Tune in at 6:00 am, you can watch my alarm go off at 7 minute intervals until I get out of the bed. Tune in at 8:30 am, watch me on the subway, reading a magazine. Tune in at 10:30 am, watch me surf the web, or maybe even doing some work. Most likely not. In fact, you won't have to worry too much if you miss stuff during the 9 to 5 shift, because nothing is really going on. I sit at the computer and do my own research for the trip, for my health, for this site, etc. It works out because most viewers are at work too, so they won't have to worry that they missed too much. In the evening, it's a different story. Tune in at 7:30, watch me help my husband make dinner. Tune in at 9:30, watch me talking on the phone or trying to write about dirt. Tune in at 10:30, watch me watching television. Imagine if I flip the channels and see myself on the tube. I can shudder and quip, "Oooh, that's weird," and then continue flipping until I get to the Learning Channel. Tune in at 11:30 and watch me floss my teeth. The overnights are pretty static, just sleeping with the occaisional 4:19 am trip to the bathroom. Of course, there will be some variations. Some nights I go shopping before I come home. Some nights my husband and I have sex. Some nights we have dinner out. Some nights I see friends. And of course, weekends are a special bonus, because they are always different. Viewers will be glued to the set. Watch us at Campmor! See us at Nuno's house! Check out the driving to visit family! Music! Dancing! Then, starting May 1, I have my own 3-month period of sweeps. Riveting! The future looks bright for FavaBeanTV. Dispatch from LumpyOatmeal: Is it time to get your jazz bands round a three card trick? Or is it rather time to park the pink bus in the furry garage? This moose thought it was. Whoa, Morty!! Happy As Young As You Feel Day. Please celebrate by skipping happily. Or, don't. So when did being in college become "just one step on the continual stairway of advancement"? These students seem way too motivated to me. I'm glad I didn't go to Princeton. Give me slack or give me death! Salon will soon start charging readers for ad-free content. If you don't pay, you will suffer the consequences. Want to see some pictures of club kids on drugs? These sites are pretty cruel and therefore most excellent: The Retarded Ravers of America and The Retarded Candy Raver Random Image Viewer. I forgot to tell you yesterday - Happy Spring! The Institute of Good Cheer has provided us with Interior Desecrators, a very long and very funny trip through the horrors of 1970s interior design. My favorites were rooms where the furniture matches the walls. I went through the whole thing yesterday. I am getting in trouble for giggling too much, mostly from looking at sites like these, reading emails from Anthony, or Lumpin. If you want to try to recreate some of the images from the site mentioned above in your own home, I reccommend Wallcoverings Online. For a dose of polite cheer, try Pretty Aunt Nancy's Page of Delight. Would anyone ever, ever want Coca Cola on tap in the home? Yuck. A new reality-TV program in the Netherlands will feature fat people trying to get skinny for your viewing pleasure. Take the brilliance of South Park and add the boredom of The Phantom Menace and you get PARK WARS: The Little Menace. Go watch this. Quicktime needed. For more short movies on demand, check out Robofilms. My favorite was Adrenaline. Red alert! Count Bakula to the bridge! And, your idea to ponder for the day: take a strip of land, declare it unpassable for political reasons, then watch as nature reclaims it. This is what is happening in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. Now it's the habitat for 2,200 species of creatures, including 100 rare or new plants, animals, and microorganisms. Dispatch from my Uncle Rick, just so funny:
So we went to Syracuse this weekend to see the elder Nortons. Mom taught me how to sew, which was really neat - I made a giant sleep-sack for the trip out of old sheets. We also scored a small fridge for the car, eliminating the need for a cooler and the constant pursuit of ice. It plugs into the cigarette lighter, and it's called a Koolatron(TM)! It is so great. On the way home, we pulled off Route 80 at the Delaware Water Gap to find some food. As we sat waiting for a light at the intersection, we got bumped by the car behind us. The teenager driving the car must have been just rolling forward without looking. We jumped out, and I was ready to start yelling, but there wasn't even a scratch on the Jeep's bumper. His car, however, kind of folded up, and the hood wasn't looking right. So we said to him, Tough Luck, and drove off, giggling. All Hail the Mighty Jeep! Actor friend Artie (or Arturo, as he is known in the acting world) is performing here. It looks lovely. (Thanks APE) So I've been actually busy at work for the past few days, and I haven't been able to find as many good links to put up. I hate when work gets in the way of leisure. Last night I went out with people from my old job at Forbes.com. Two of my favorite people there are quitting, and it was their going-away bash. It was really funny to see everyone from that place again. There were actually a few people who didn't know I had quit. Just like old times. Another pictionary-type game, actually much better - ISketch. Here's a neat thing - a list of places that have librarians online to answer your questions in real time. I would love to do that, except I would have to work in a place that actually had books. This is really sad. This is very cool. Note the Jerkcity and Life is Hell options. Ok, if you didn't try the Piano Graphique before, I strongly urge you to now. They have also just installed the Beatles' Love Me Do piano. It's really really cool. Bad Haiku can be very good, actually. Dispatch from Duane's cousin Brendan: So I go to the post office today to send in my passport, and the actor who plays Hesch on the Sopranos was standing in front of me. Everyone else on line was looking at each other, nodding to each other, as if to say, "Yup, that's him." Now, Duane and I unsubscribed to HBO during the second season of the show, so I hadn't seen it for a while, until we went over to Nuno's to watch the premier this season. A few days later, Duane saw the guy who plays Artie on the F train. I tell me sister this story, and she tells me that her friend Robin saw Furio at the Dunkin Donuts. Anyone else have a Soprano sighting? How about a Monica sighting? There's a new hotel in NYC that has its rooms numbers based on the Dewey Decimal System. It's called the Library Hotel. Criticize or compliment someone anonymously by using Just a Tip. My favorite is your bush is too large. If you had any doubt that the singer from Metallica is the voice in the Hell Song from South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, then look here. Speaking of Trey and Matt, Cannibal! The Musical is live on stage! Also, here's Bat Boy, The Musical. What a weekend. I am exhausted this morning, but in a good way. Lynda Barry was so cool. She signed my book and Rebecca's that I had on loan. She chews Copenhagen tobacco. You know the beat poet poodle Fred Milton? That's his pen name. His real name is Ed Martin. She looks and moves just the way you would expect her to. She advised us to look our worst in photographs, so that when people meet you in person they think you look much nicer. She illustrated this by holding her head way back and displaying her double chin. She also gave us candy to help us remember back to way back when. She seemed to really enjoy telling us about how she does her thing. She brought in originals, both from the comics (print and Salon) and the original painting-writing from Cruddy. She drew a Marlys for us, just to show us how it's done. I took pictures of her doing this. She told me at the end that I was her touchstone for the class, and she would look at me to gauge how the class was feeling about what she was saying. She gave me a great hug, and I have homework to do for the next 10 days about DIRT. I hope to do it for more than that. Karl Denson kicked serious ass. So did Olu Dara. Your lips are juicy! I felt bad that we left kind of early, but I got really tired and I think the food from the Ass Cottage helped. I felt very bad for Benny. The Piano Graphique is a beautiful piece of slack! Go there when you can spend half an hour playing. Remember to use both the keyboard and the mouse while grooving. What was the Number One song on the day you were born? Mine was "It's Too Late" by Carole King. Well, it's too late baby, yeah, it's too late, though we really did try to make it. Something inside has died and I can't hide and I just can't fake it. Oh no no. (Thanks Donna) It's been about 10 years since I've eaten a Girl Scout cookie. There aren't too many visible Girl Scouts in Brooklyn. Luckily for me, I can find my local chapter and then satisfy my cookie cravings by stopping by their offices. The peanut-butter Tagalongs are my favorite, but I'll also take Shortbread. More creative error messages: a manic depressive and a nice crappy photo. The Ween Tour Diary had me crying with laughter yesterday. Did you know that Ween is playing at a little Jersey Shore sports bar on March 23rd? Who wants to go? I could be convinced to drive the hour and a half to get there.... Where my brain goes sometimes....no idea. This morning I started thinking about obscure songs from the 1980s, one hit wonders that we really damn good at the time. Penthouse and Pavement by Heaven 17, The Politics of Dancing by a band called Reflex, and We Close our Eyes by Go West. These songs are all very similar, synth-pop. I still know all the words. Are you up to the challenge of turning off your television for a week? We all know about the Internet Movie Database, but here's something that is a great companion: the Movie Review Query Engine. Pop in your movie title, and it will point you to reviews all over the web. These cars and trucks have balls. Photos from the University of Washington's Engineering Library show how the stacks were affected by the earthquake. Frightening. My sister calls us every Tuesday night to remind us to watch the Naked Chef. I have a crush on him now. Last night he made this focaccia that looked amazing. Yet another reason not to eat fast food. I've been outed! FavaBean is gay! The top-secret personal transportation device, Ginger, will be hydrogen-powered. So when are they going to make hydrogen-powered cars? Phish Net has been redesigned, finally. So Dr. Weil was interviewed on 60 Minutes last week, and he told the world that LSD cured his allergy. Yesterday, Salon had an article on Rotten.com, the online clearinghouse for everything disgusting. I thought I should put it up here, even though I couldn't look at most of the photos myself. Talk about a niche subculture: fans of the Monkees who are devout Christians. Hey hey, we're praying for your soul! Fat is only ugly until you put a nipple on it! (???) Happy 30th birthday to my husband! Thanks to Doc and Libby for throwing an amazing Oh Mac! You are a real man after all! Barbie is boring. GI Joe is for punks. Give me Reservoir Dogs Action Figures! Do you think the cop doll comes with a removable ear? Click here for a free $20 bill. This does not appear to be a joke, either. While you're at it, check out the rest of the Craig's List. It's pretty neat. I put up the tent ad there too. We had a lovely meal at Katz's Deli with Joshua last night - pastrami, matzo ball soup, the works. A trip to Toys in Babeland topped off a great night. George Harrison showcases his new, remixed album and his love for Terry Gilliam at his site All Things Must Pass. Make your own CD cases out of paper. Actually useful! Were you the lucky bidder for these? Hello March! Our trip begins in 60 days. There's this kid who made a bet not to talk for a year, and he's doing it. I like his little essay about committing to do something and not wavering. A Seattle librarian traded places with a Vegas showgirl for a week. I wonder how the showgirl did at the King County Library? According to the New Yorker (by the way, it's now online!), french fries are the leading cause of heart disease. Not because they're greasy, but because of the kind of grease they are fried in. Last night I dreamed that Bjork was our babysitter. No idea. She was very nice, though, even cooking something on our stove. |
