Today is my niece Marit's 2nd birthday. We're having a big wing-ding over at my brother's place tonight. Her name means "lady" in Norwegian.

Bruce the goose thinks an 80 Hp Mercury outboard is his mother. In other wacky waterfowl news, AFLAC Rep Pays Bills for Duck.

Angelina Jolie want her blood back. NOW! Mmm-hmmm...

Michael Bolton has a brother? Who sings? Stop the madness...

And finally, according to the ancient Chinese art of "phone shui": Your phone is a reflection of your mind," counsels Paul Darby, an expert in feng shui. "Everything, especially your phone, connects us to our surroundings and each other." Well then, I guess my mind is as utterly lost as my phone is. I had to go buy a new cell phone today because I lost my other one. I got the Samsung A460, which, according to phone shui experts means I'm a carefree spirit unbounded by the constraints of the physical world (or in other words, I like phones so small that I'll probably lose it faster than the last one).

Kind of scatter-brained this morning, and not fully into the swing of things just yet. Anyway, just a few things...

Have you checked on the new TV line-up (courtesy of The Onion)?

Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavors that have been sent up to that big waffle cone in the sky... Speaking of which, here's a diet I just might have to try.

Bizarre McSweeney's bit called Class of '76.

More stuff coming later. I just need a few coffees and to be able to make it through Monday in one piece...

Optical illusion Friday...

Okay, stare at the little dot in the middle of the picture. Now, move your head closer to the screen... and now back again...

Keep doing this about 100 times until your co-workers think you're Rain Man...

Remember the Honeycomb Hideout?

Find out where (which digits) your name is encoded in Pi.

The British are funny. They blame Benny Hill for the rise in teen pregnancies.

My favorite link of the day. AC/DC: The Board Meeting.

I don't agree with this list at ALL, but here's some guy's list of 100 albums you should remove from your collection immediately. For the record, this ALMOST reads like a list that I would recommend ADDING to your collection. Ripping on The Clash, The 'Mats, and even Miles Davis... Shameful.

The top 11 office superheroes.

And finally. Somebody has done it. All of the great stand-up comedy questions answered.

I want this. Caffeine soap!

Hey, this is cool. If you go to Google.com and search for Sexy Brians, guess who jumps to the top of the list? And this is the WHOLE INTERNET we're talking about... Cool!

Anyway, I just finished burning a new CD. Just like John Cusack's character in High Fidelity, it gives me a tremendous amount of joy to put together a compilation like this. I even worked in Leo Sayer and Christopher Cross, which, together with some classic punk and Bob Dylan, makes it a fun, quirky, and exotic blend. Anyway, if anyone wants a copy, let me know... I can burn more...

1. Rough Boys -- Pete Townsend
2. Cannonball -- The Breeders
3. Nick the Stripper -- The Birthday Party (Nick Cave)
4. Round and Round -- Los Lobos
5. Love is the Law -- The Suburbs
6. You Make Me Feel Like Dancing -- Leo Sayer
7. Lay Lady Lay -- Bob Dylan
8. Chinese Rocks -- Johnny Thunders
9. I Will Dare -- The Replacements
10. Love Plus One -- Haircut One Hundred
11. Rattle My Bones -- The Suburbs
12. Viva Las Vegas -- Dread Zeppelin
13. Psychopharmacology -- Grandpaboy (P. Westerberg)
14. Who Do Voodoo -- Johnny Thunders
15. Sailing -- Christopher Cross
16. Debaser -- The Pixies
17. Sweet Jane -- The Velvet Underground
18. A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall -- Boby Dylan
19. Frankenstein -- New York Dolls
20. I Like F---ing -- Bikini Kill
21. Get Free -- The Vines

I went up to the local grocery store yesterday, and for some reason, it seems that at least half of the time I go there's some little group willing to bag my groceries for a small donation. Girl scouts, soccer leagues, Bloods, Crips, you name it. Normally, if they're small enough and cute enough I'll gladly pay an extra couple of bucks to let the Chipmunk Brigade smash my perishables under the canned goods. But not this day.

On this day it was some church group called Oak Hills Lutheran Church Group (which sounds suspiciously suburban to me). As I checked out, some Melvin with a dog collar and ugly plaid pants asks if I want my groceries bagged. My reply, "Absolutely not!" Number one, I'm fully capable of bagging the 7 items I've purchased through the express lane, and number two, I'm certainly not about to give my money to some punk and his goth girlfriend so they can go camping in Colorado with their coolers of Mountain Dew and Doritos. Plus, do you really think I want his filthy little paws on food I will eventually eat? No. Of course not.

When I was his age (uh oh, here comes the grumpy old man story) I was flipping burgers in a Hardee's for $3.35/hr. to pay for stuff. What's the deal with kids these days?... (obligatory mumbling ensues...)

But, I AM going through my pre-Fair warm-up rituals, and this year is going to be better than the last. First, I just got a new digital camera that I tested out today (yes, yes, I already have one, but this one is very small and lightweight for those quick "shoot from the hip" photos). It's really light and is scarcely larger than my palm, so it'll work PERFECTLY, especially in conjunction with my larger camera that has a 10x optical zoom. Second, I got some new software (actually, I'm just trialing it right now to see how it works), that automatically makes gallery pictures/slide shows for the web.

Here's some pictures I took today up at Como Park. I didn't edit the pictures, so this is pretty much how the new camera works. This will also save me gobs of time once I get into "production mode" for the State Fair. Also, if you click on the first thumbnail, just hit the "next" button (or click the main picture) to advance in a slide show mode. Cool, huh?...

Anyway, that's all for today. As you can see by the ticker, the State Fair starts in just about a month. Tick-tock... Tick-tock...

A Flock of Seagulls -- then and now.

Here's an interesting article written by a 'futurist' who helped shape some of the technology ideas in Minority Report. I just saw this movie last weekend and it was pretty good. While I'm normally not a fan of science fiction (in fact, I still haven't seen Lord of the Rings or Star Wars Episode 1), but this one was a respectable in my book because the central idea or plot didn't focus around some mutant space aliens from Zorgon Twelve, but rather it was a philosophical exploration of a person's free will and their ability to choose. Philip K. Dick, the author who wrote the original short story and wrote the novels behind other Sci-Fi movies Blade Runner (one of my all time favorites) and Total Recall (entertaining Ah-nold movie, but not much more), was primarily concerned with these metaphysical ideas. Anyway, I wouldn't put it quite as high as Blade Runner, but it is a good summer movie.

Speaking of movies, I also rented Ghost World the other night. It's on my highly-recommended list, but it's definitely not as... um... accessible as the Tom Cruise movie. The director, Terry Zwigoff, also did the documentary of Robert Crumb called Crumb. It's an extremely fascinating profile of a very weird and contradictory character.

New Arcata Eye police report.

And lastly, since it's Friday, how about a game of Nun Bowling?

Well, once again, it has been brought to my attention that I am a bona fide idiot. My squawking and clucking yesterday turns out to be entirely explainable. I'm getting a new driveway put in in a couple of weeks, and that includes ripping out the old driveway with big machines that go RrrrRRrrr. I guess Gopher State has to locate all of the lines prior to any digging, just to be on the safe side. Still, spray painting my lawn which is clearly a ways away from the driveway seems a bit extreme, but there you go.

So, mea culpa. For the record, I still don't like Xcel or Cat Stevens, though. I'm not letting them off the hook.

Now, some fun stuff.

Are you ready for the State Fair? Here's some pictures (from another freak) of last year's fair.

You know what sounds really fun to me (seriously)? THIS.

Enjoy yesterday's bad literature? Well, here's more. The winner of the Imitation Hemingway contest.

You know what really pisses me off? I'll tell you.



It starts by coming home on a hot Wednesday afternoon and pulling up the driveway with a slack-jawed expression and thinking "what in tarnation happened here?" You look at your front lawn, and your sidewalk, and the curb--all vandalized. Is it the kids again? Did they chalk some stupid PASIFIRE markings again like the band of primitive, cave-dwelling neanderthals that they are?

No, it seems as though a different band of primitive, cave-dwelling neanderthals (aka Xcel Energy) came and drew a bunch of yellow lines right down the center of my lawn, and then put in nice friendly yellow flags that say "NSP -- HAND DIG" on them. And then, they made some blue lines, and some orange lines, and feeling the artistic expression somewhat incomplete, they capped it off by scribbling some Helter Skelter red marking in the corner of the lawn. It looks like an animal was sacrificed and cryptic devil messages were painted in blood, homage to Maalox, pagan god of underground gas lines.



Anyway, I looked around and sure enough, these half-wit morons didn't leave a note or anything. So I went inside and checked my machine. No messages either. So I finally called Xcel Energy and talked to some in-bred troglodyte who's intellectual capacity rivaled that of Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade. While we never discussed the like/dislike of "french fried per-taters", he did seem very confused at the fact that I didn't have an order number. I tried (in vain) to explain that I DIDN'T MAKE AN ORDER, and ergo, no ORDER NUMBER!

Absolutely no help whatsoever, so he told me to call the City of St. Paul, which I did. Same genius-like response. Then THEY told me to call Gopher State One (I don't know what that is either, but I'm probably not going to get a satisfactory answer from Sling Blade) and after spending 15 minutes on hold listening to Cat Stevens, they don't know what's going on either. Peace train? At this point I'm thinking, how 'bout some Crazy Train?!!

Anyway, that's where I'm at. I hate Xcel. I hat Cat Stevens. I hate Gophers. But I sure do like them french fried per-taters...

It's literary Wednesday. First, the results are in for this year's 2002 Bulwer-Lytton fiction writing contest. Who was Bulwer-Lytton? He's the guy that penned the infamous opening line It was a dark and stormy night... It's hard to come up with a better opening line than that.

More excellent writing...

McSweeney's give us More Cases From the Files of Traig & McGrath, Shut-In Detectives.

And if that little detective story weren't enough, there's always... The Hardy Boy's Mystery of the Ghost Writer.

TADA! So, I decided to give my site a little facelift. I just hope it doesn't turn out like Michael Jackson.

Anyway, to get to the "old" stuff, you can click here... This will be the new look, at least until I get bored and change it again...