Well, when you're a small, midwestern Canadian city who has lost your prime source of entertainment (in the form of a once-proud NHL franchise), your winters are brutal, and you have such a problem with mosquitoes that you have a city-sponsored bugline, there's not much left to promote tourism. What better idea than to make Homer Simpson an honorary citizen? D'oh!

This is just so wrong on so many levels:

1. Insurance? Against your husband leaving you?
2. For becoming ugly?
3. As judged by a panel of builders?

I wonder what she did with the money ...

What every office needs (especially mine) is a good, solid, offensive office linebacker.

Got a sick kid? Wonder what'll cheer them up? Try a soft toy...

Last week, I had the luck to get "invited" to work the NDIA show in Baltimore. More specifically, I represented my company by trying to explain biometrics, RF tags, and wireless technology to government bureaucrats and blue shirts (rank and file of the Coast Guard) for 10+ hours straight. It wasn't all bad, though.

After having discussed mobile apps with one blue shirt in particular, he invited me to come over to his booth to play with the toys he was showing off. About an hour later, I was looking through the sight of a shotgun, having a chain gun targeted on my chest, and taking a look at this. Afterwards, they handed me a pretty neat giveaway.

And, only a few booths away from where I was working, was this beautiful thing. It was just sitting there, all alone, begging for some attention. I looked for a price sheet or an order form, but I couldn't find one.

They speak English in South Africa, right? To quote Inigo Mantoya - "You use this word a lot. I do not think it-a means what you think it-a means".

I'm sure it's not 'cool' to admit it, but I have followed Amazon's product recommendations on music several times ("People who bought this bauble you just looked at also purchased the following gewgaws ...") and the results have usually (though not always) been rewarding.

As a result, I have travelled from Tortoise and Hooverphonic to Blue States and Boards of Canada and beyond.

So, as I have taken this journey into the ambient/trip-hop/IDM/illbient "post-rock" netherworld, I have noticed something: the names of the bands, the albums and the songs all have a curious sameness about them in their infinite abstract "weirdness" and variety. Consider this selection of track names from the Tortoise album TNT:

I Set My Face to the Hillside
A Simple Way to Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work
In Sarah, Mencken, Christ, and Beethoven There Were Women and Men
Almost Always Is Nearly Enough

or these album names:

Born into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward
He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms
Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada
Music Has the Right to Children
Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven

or these band names:

Godspeed You Black Emperor!
The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band
Do Make Say Think
Explosions in the Sky

Don't get me wrong, I love this stuff. But, jeez, could we get some track/album/band names that aren't so, aah, pretentious? That so visibly strive to be "different" and "memorable" that they end up merging into a forgettable sameness?

Maybe like The ABC Song?

IROQ!

Animals, computers, and excrement. Sounds like the makings of a great story to me.

Turns out that monkeys would probably never write a play, let alone a copy of one of Shakespeare's works. Although, they seem to have made their own version of "Urinetown".

Don't dismiss monkeys just yet. A small, tree-climbing, monkey-like animal known as a Luwak does have some interesting uses for its own poop. And people seem to like it.

Got this in email:

"This gave me a chuckle so I thought I would share.

Apparently this kid videotaped himself practicing his Star Wars fighting skills on a school camera and left the tape when he was done. Now the video that he left behind is spreading over the net.

Somebody also did a video with special effects and lightsaber noises that is also pretty fun."

Y0 - w3 ridin d@ PH@T Bu5 to 5k00L!

Further proof of racial profiling. Are you going to try and tell me the police would have stopped the guy if he weren't "an ethnic Albanian from the Serb province of Kosovo". For shame!

Exhuming McCarthy

"Let us not assasinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

Plane hijacked by terrorists? You're about to crash into a national landmark? Don't want to look, or get an annoying crick in your neck? Try one of these.

Also, while I'm here, more wacky shit from Japan. Strangely, these don't appear on J-List. Yet.

With Mother's day coming don't you think you should pick up the phone and thank your Mom for not abusing you the way these poor slobs were? Don't forget to tell her you love her. We'll wait....

And what could be a better Father's Day gift than one of these?

MAKE.MONEY.FAST!!! (by suing telemarketers)

Is "Inul" Indonesian for "Elvis"?

What's next? The rest of the 50's and 60's? Indonesian Beatles? Tropicalhardwoodstock? Megawati Sukarnoputra's Presidential motorcade arriving in Dealy Plaza, making the slow turn at the triple overpass in front of the Texas School Book Depository?

I'm going to stop now before this turns into a bad Billy Joel song ...

Honda Accord...by Rube Goldberg

You know how most theaters insist that you silence your cell phone before the start of a show? I wouldn't recommend it at this play .

This chap (the one fondling the nymph's ass of brass) is my old school mate Tim Walkup, in Singapore's "Bot"anical Gardens.

He's on his way round the world in the Clipper 2002 race.

Having completed the "third leg" (fnarr fnarr) of the race, they're on leg 4. Leg 6, the final 7,100 mile segment of the odyssey will bring them to New York, where I hope to meet up with Tim, an Original Reprobate from Back In The Day, for the first time in twenty years, some time around the end of August.