Wow. Reality television people in lurve. What could be more romantic? "Hey, baby, I won a million dollars." "Hey, baby, me too." Sigh, there are like forty reasons I think this is funny.

Well, from the picture, I would certainly buy the part about multiple facelifts.

It never ceases to amaze me how parents can fail to understand that butting in and interfering in everything their kids try to do does not do the kids any favors. I'm 100 percent with the coaches on this one -- the minute the coaches accede to this kind of nonsense, they're held hostage forever. The parents ought to be ashamed.

ESPN.com has been running some really cool stuff recently, as you know if you notice how I link to something of theirs practically every day. Today, Kristen Fischer's Kobe Bryant piece is very much worth reading, even though there certainly is no shortage of available punditry on the issue.

Another entry in the classic category, Really Good Ways To Go Directly To Hell.

Okay, Ben Affleck, whom I used to want to marry. If you want to answer criticism that your new movie sucks by talking about the fact that it makes you feel all schmoopy inside, that's fine. But that is, you must admit, no reason for any other person other than you to take any interest in it.

Blah, blah, blah. I sure am packed with sympathy for people who only make $80,000 a week for often appearing in about three scenes. Especially since there are only seven or so scenes that ever appear on The West Wing, and once you've got them down, you can pretty much relax. If they want all the money they deserve, I'd like to see them give back the Emmys they don't deserve.

I'm pretty much the only person in the weblog universe who thinks Lileks, aside from the Gallery of Regrettable Food -- which Wendy did better anyway -- is kind of an unfunny hack. If you want to know why, check out the unbelievably unfunny, incredibly outdated Jolie joke down at the bottom. Guy just freakin' wears me out.

It's morbid, it's disturbing . . . it's like HSX with more cringing. Wigs me out.

Aw, light bulb cooking. I never had an Easy-Bake Oven, but one of my friends did. It was one of those things that always seemed like it would be really fun, but then after you poured the mix in the pan and added water, there was always this letdown, because . . . I mean, that's really all there is. It's you, the powder, and the light bulb. And then it's you and the lame-ass brownies. I never realized I was bitter until now.

That same friend had the soundtrack to Grease, though, and that was a lot more fun. But come to think of it, by fourth grade, she was kind of a jerk.

I read the book that the Palm/Handspring people wrote about their experiences, and I have to say that it doesn't entirely shock me that they're going back to Palm. Truly, none of those people struck me as business geniuses as much as they were good with gadgets. Furthermore, I had a Handspring as my first PDA, but I have a Clie now, and I think the Clie is where all the action is at this point. I'll be interested to see whether they can pull it together and get back in the game.

If it's true that Rocco is hiring, I wouldn't be surprised. I've seen the show, and he seems to be a truly bad boss. All that cheering, and yet he's turned staff management over to that obnoxious French dude? Yuck.

I'm going to New York in about a month -- I'm starting to think I have to get to Yankee Stadium before I die. But honestly, what if I forget myself and start booing? Oh, right. I'll get the crap beaten out of me.

It has Ian Ziering. It has jokes about soulless Wade Boggs. It has a rundown of the greatest Real World moments. And it's on ESPN.com. Enjoy. I certainly did.

So we're giving out scholarships like the lottery now? That doesn't sound like a good idea. Couldn't you have directed the same money toward some kind of need-based or merit-based program? I mean, I get that it's supposed to be cute, but it seems to me that in such tight times, there's not really money for cute.

Why would I watch something that's made up of things that make me close my eyes when I see them on the news? Not to sound like a snob, an old lady, or Steve Allen, but . . . ew.

Wendy hates me.

She has a point, of course, as she usually does. Nevertheless, I am unlikely to rename either Snowmobile Boy (too late now) or Pool Boy (too appropriate). Besides, "Pool Man" would make me think of Tim "the Tool Man" Taylor. What to do, what to do. I wonder if it matters that neither of them is a boyfriend type. Or that I'm technically mocking them. Or that I don't even know what a "pony party" is. Probably not.

You know, after all my frothing at the mouth last week, I have to give the Googleholes guy a lot of credit for being pretty good and open-minded about answering critics on his own weblog, where he looks a lot better than he did at Slate. I think he and the people who were most critical (like, um, me) did eventually come to a better understanding of what ticked people off about that article to begin with. I remain unconvinced that it was MSN-based corporate hoohah, I just don't agree with him about the significance of his findings. But as I said, he's been pretty good about listening to critics.

God, it's neither! Neither, neither, neither! Not moral failing! Not evil corporate plot! Neither! Neither, neither!

Man. Everyone needs to shut the hell up unless they know what they're talking about.

My friend Snowmobile Boy (he hunts) and I had a lengthy and interesting conversation about the review being discussed here. You can read the original here. I'm not surprised they took a lot of heat for it. She had a point to make in the review, but she cut the legs out from under it with some pretty stereotypical cheap shots, it seemed to me. It's too bad, because it could have been an interesting article, and it came off sneering.

I think the only question remaining is which of the following three things is the most obvious evidence that Cameron Diaz has lost her mind: (1) that hat; (2) that lipstick; or (3) dating Justin Timberlake. I think it's a toss-up.

I'm absolutely shocked that it didn't work out for Liza Minnelli and her husband. It almost makes me think marrying a crazy control freak isn't as good an idea as I've always imagined. Oh, the disillusionment.

Blah, blah, blah, isn't it terrible about how you can be famous without talent all of a sudden. This never happened back in the day of Zsa Zsa Gabor. Ah, yes. The Charo era, when fame was a perfect meritocracy.

I realize it can't possibly be the case, but it feels to me like there's a new Spy Kids movie released about every three weeks. One of these days, I'm going to have to see one of them.

You know, there are columnists I like, but increasingly few. Why a guy like Joe Soucheray, who in my opinion never says anything interesting, ever, EVER, has a newspaper column, is . . . very mysterious to me. This is a good example -- though far from the only one -- of the fact that everything he writes is actually less thoughtful than whatever you would come up with yourself if you sat down and took a moment to reflect. It really doesn't have anything to do with whether he's right or wrong, but it's just that his thinking is always so simplistic and one-dimensional that I'd rather hear the same opinion expressed by literally a randomly selected person wandering by the Pioneer Press building than by this jerk.

Yes, I do feel better now, thank you.

I am completely confused. I am increasingly unhip, I realize, but . . . I have absolutely no idea what to make of this, except . . . you know, something like, "Whaaa?"

Something about the Vanessa Marcil tidbit cracked me up. I think it's the guy who said that he was shocked, you know, not so much as a person, but as a 90210 fan. At least it wasn't Tiffani.

NO! NO! NO, NO, NO! NOOOOOOOOOOO!

As usual, the Most Awesome Thing Kim Saw On TV Last Week is . . . well, awesome.

God. You know, I'm not a sue-the-restaurant fanatic, but I also cannot buy the grilled chicken sandwich defense. In the course of losing about a hundred pounds over the last couple of years (wheeee!), I have had enough grilled chicken sandwiches to choke several horses, and if I never have another one as long as I live, it will be too soon.

Please, do not use the grilled chicken sandwich as a universal shield. The grilled chicken sandwich is, like, the subject of my nightmares now. The grilled chicken sandwich must be stopped.

I tend to think part-time summer camp isn't such a hot idea. I mean, some of the explanations sound okay, but when it's "I can't have my kid at camp because of 9/11," I'm not sure I see the relevance. On the other hand, I didn't love being away at camp when I was a kid. But I think that was because of the bugs.

Get yourself over to Velcrometer and check out the Coulter post. Tres faboo.

Man, poor Kansas. Just when you think they don't need to be picked on any more.

I will admit that I will probably be interested to hear what Simon's book says. Because I almost always agree with him. ("Horrible," he says, and I'm always thinking . . . "Word.") On the other hand, I can't imagine he's going to say much of what he really thinks as long as he's still working for Fox. What I really want to read is Simon Unfiltered.

You know what? For years, I thought they should let Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame, too. I saw it as a ridiculous pissing contest between stubborn guys, and it seemed to me that if you could be in the Hall of Fame despite being a racist, a violent drunk, or whatever else, Pete Rose was no worse.

But he lost me. Because I sat down with the wisest baseball fan I know, and I sort of made this point -- "It's just guys being stubborn." And he said, "No, it's not at all." And he pointed out that as Dershowitz says, this is not just a rule, this is the rule. And it's a rule you absolutely, positively have to have. "I only bet on my own team" doesn't work. You could wind up using your best pitcher today in a game you bet on instead of tomorrow in a game your team actually needs more. You can't be betting on games you're involved in. And you can't be betting on games you're not involved in, either. When you're a manager, you do not bet on baseball games, period. And as soon as this was said to me rationally and calmly, I got it, and I agreed with it, and that's where I am today.

Could it be forgiven if he had ever shown any remorse? Maybe. Maybe not. But the fact that he still lies about it (11 of 12 members of the ESPN "jury" that voted to let him in the Hall thought he was lying and did bet on baseball, according to the article) and the fact that he shows no remorse (which is part and parcel of the lying) makes it impossible. More to the point, the fact that he still lies about it reinforces to me that no matter how much of an all-out competitor he was, he doesn't have respect for the game. I'm not talking about respect for the commissioner's office, which often doesn't deserve any respect, after all. I'm talking about respect for the game itself, as demonstrated by an ability to understand why you are not so important that you can do whatever you want.

It breaks my heart, believe me -- I grew up near Philadelphia, and was there in 1980. The baseball moment that probably made a larger impression on me than any other was the pop-up in foul territory over by the seats that Bob Boone went for and caught with Rose standing right next to him -- only to have it bounce out of his glove and head for the ground, at which point Pete reached under Boone's glove and snagged it. It was un-be-liev-a-ble.

But if I were on this jury, I'd have gone the other way. It's okay that he's a jerk, which he is. If they were keeping him out because he's a jerk, I'd be on his side. It's just not okay that he doesn't get that some rules apply to everybody, regardless of stats.

Blah, blah, blah, once again, it's a lot of shows I don't care about at the Emmys. I like hardly anything on network TV anymore, I realized the other day, and the HBO grimfests don't do it for me either. The West Wing nominated for best drama and not Alias? Give me a fuckin' break. That's how you know your awards are a joke.

Another jerk. God. I mean, I'd be happy to take the house over if he is ever washed off the planet, but . . . zoiks. Looks to me like a guy who needs a poke in the eye with a sharpened pencil.

I understand what Maureen Dowd is trying to say with this all-knowing analysis of Katharine Hepburn's life, but doesn't it seem a little strange to advance feminism by being quite this judgmental about other women's lives? I mean, as I said, I see what she's trying to say. But I'm not sure that when Katharine Hepburn said she squelched qualities that Tracy didn't like, she was saluting herself or claiming that this was what women should do. In fact, the way that passage is written (though I haven't read the book), it sounds regretful to me.

Moreover, Dowd is imposing her own vision of what a woman's life should be with the careless mention of "enduring being the childless Other Woman." Please. I have read the Hepburn stuff in which she said that she chose not to have children and had no regrets, because didn't feel she could be a good parent and do what she wanted to do with acting. Implying that all childless women are "enduring" it implies that they could not make the choice for themselves.

And "gave up her career for years to nurse him"? That makes you a doormat? She should have told him, "Sorry, my sweet, you're on your own -- they want me for a movie"? She was humiliated by his affair with Gene Tierney? Well, he already had A WIFE, so she had apparently made her peace with a lot of things that I think Maureen Dowd clearly would not.

I am also rather flummoxed by the reference to whether we "see many Tess Hardings [read: strong, independent, intelligent women] in life or on screen." On screen? Maybe not, although she's being horrifically unfair to Alias by lumping Sydney in with Charlie's Angels. But in life? Well . . . yes, lady. I do see them. I see them, I work with them, I know them, I'm friends with them, and -- hey! I am them! And I don't really see the need for them, or for me, to follow any one blueprint any more than any other.

I have said it a million times, and I'll probably say it a million more, but to me, feminism does not consist of being This Way or being That Way, and it certainly isn't defined by being adequately "threatening" to men. It's defined by being whatever Way you damn well please, and by being more than one Way at a time.

Between the site redesign that makes the entire front page look like a mass of tiny text and this little diatribe, Slate is having a really crummy week. (This article I read because it's at the top of the page with a big graphic -- that's all I'm reading at Slate right now, because I'm not wading through the aforementioned sea of tiny text.)

"Googleholes," my foot.

1. "All shopping, all the time." This is resolvable with the willingness to add ONE WORD to your search. Every single thing he cited I was able to fix with a two-word, rather than one-word, search. What kind of a moron would do research on tulips by typing the word "flowers" into a search engine? Would you do the same thing in a library by going to the "flowers" section and flipping through all the books located there? No. You would not. When I typed in "tulips research," I got -- you guessed it -- RESEARCH ABOUT TULIPS.

As for finding reviews of products, if you type in the word "reviews" after the product name, you get -- yes, you guessed it again -- product reviews.

This isn't a problem with Google, this is a problem with this guy trying to conserve keystrokes because he's apparently typing with his toes.

2. "Skewed Synonyms." Again, crap. Give it a hint! Give it another word! Moreover, again, what kind of research would properly be conducted by doing a search on the word "apple"? That is just asinine. If you want to know about the nutritional value of apples, try "apple nutrition." If you want to know about apple trees, try "apple trees." If you want to know about Fiona Apple, TRY "FIONA APPLE," for God's sake. It doesn't require "googlewashing" to somehow brainwash Google into misreading your unforgivably vague search term when you've sabotaged the result.

3. "Book Learning." Okay, so . . . let me get this straight. If you search an index of online information, you find that it leads you to . . . online information. Google is unable to index things that aren't on the web.

And this is a hole? In Google? No. If The New York Times can't get its stuff located in Google because it doesn't archive it online, that's a decision being made at The New York Times. It would be exactly the same as a publication choosing not to use page numbers. Basically, you could foil The Reader's Guide To Periodical Literature or whatever indexing mechanism you like if you refused to use page numbers, but that would hardly reveal a flaw in the indexing system.

Certainly, anyone who is actually going for a complete literature review needs to do more than type a couple of words into Google, for exactly this reason. And I think they do. But no method of searching for information, including the methods taught to me in the school library when I was in fifth grade and it was all about the card catalog, the aforementioned Reader's Guide, and the Ask A Librarian method, ever revealed every possible relevant source of information.

This entire piece comes off to me like sniping and sour grapes, not to mention an effort to -- just as the title implies -- dig for things to bitch about in a resource that works remarkably well and has made it enormously easier for intelligent people who are willing to take thirty seconds to ask the right question to find information.

Look, you can wonder all day about the reliability of information found online, and you can wonder all day about the risks involved in the evolving expectation that everything you will ever need to know can be found out casually in under five minutes. Google seems to me to be open to criticism for some of its ad practices (though I think they disclose paid placements more conspicuously and straightforwardly than anyone), and I frankly think it's creepy to think of any one entity getting as powerful as they are becoming, because it's just . . . not a good idea.

But to me, despite all this, the "Google doesn't really get you what you're looking for" argument is a non-starter.

The most interesting part of the violent videogame debate, of course, is the difference between the way courts treat violence and the way they treat sexual content. I'm not really taking a position on the videogame law at all; I'm just noting the difference.

By the way, one of the most entertaining things I have ever read -- and I'm thinking I might have linked to it long ago, but that's no reason not to link to it again -- is the original 1930 Hays Code that governed movies at one time. My favorite parts:

1. The ban on "excessive and lustful kissing."

2. Ministers are not allowed to be comic characters.

3. Along with "brutality and possible gruesomeness" and "cruelty to children or animals," one of the Repellent Subjects is "surgical operations."

4. "Impure love must not be presented as attractive and beautiful."

5. "Certain places are so closely and thoroughly associated with sexual life or with sexual sin that their use must be carefully limited." This is apparently a reference to the strict limits on showing people's bedrooms.

6. Lewd dancing includes "excessive body movements while the feet are stationary." That just cracks me up every time. "UUUUNH! Lemme hear you say 'UUUUNH!'" Heh.

Ah, censorship.

They should combine the kitty translator with the part about how the lab that invented it "helps solve crime." Then you could have kitty detectives running around investigating and reporting back to the police station with all kinds of fascinating information.

Actually, my favorite use of this device would be to allow Hobey and Little Joe an opportunity for rebuttal.

Watching the referrer logs, I feel like I should offer up something for those of you who kicked over here from Jack Bogdanski's blog, so here's my favorite tidbit. I will still, from time to time, when someone begins discussing some major inconsistency in law or complaining about how it treats two people in similar situations differently, indignantly say, "And what about Ted, and the memo in his inbox? He's not seeing a dime till Elvis." And then everybody looks at me like I'm nuts. And I wave my hand and go, "Um, nevermind. Nothing. No, really. Nothing." (Is it Ted? It might not be Ted. It might be, like, Dave or something. But I always say "Ted.")

Man, David E. Kelley and Aaron Sorkin and all of the other self-important uberdramatists of television need to step the hell up and recognize that they would not be losing their audience to Joe Millionaire if they were making a better product. While unconventional shows are showing a lot of strength, traditional lawyer/cop/ensemble dramas on network television have gone to pot, as far as I'm concerned, as has the sitcom genre, and that has a lot to do with the strength of reality shows. People are watching Survivor in part because they've really had enough pomposity in the form of an endless string of middle-aged guys making shows where all the women are strong and interesting until they get the crap beaten out of them or are otherwise driven to show their true, and substantially weaker, selves.

As much as I adored Sports Night -- and I adored it -- I have never forgiven Sorkin for Jeremy's description of how irresistible Dana was for being so competent at work and such a complete buffoon in every other part of her life. Yeah, irresistible. Ass.

We rule.

Wow, now this guy is a real charmer. I have known some manipulative bastards in my life, but that is really pushing the envelope. (Link via Metafilter, and specifically Gael.) That guy needs a serious thrashing.

I was incredibly horrified when I first heard the explanation of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy -- basically for the reason cited in the article about "reinforcing every stereotype," blah blah blah. But after reading several reviews that were positive, I did watch it last night, and I will admit that I laughed out loud quite a lot. I'm still kind of conflicted about it, because I still think it does reinforce stereotypes, but I also thought it was so funny that it made it hard to dislike it. When Carson went through Butch's closet going, "The Gap in '84, The Gap in '85, The Gap in '86 . . . oh, and what a great year for oatmeal," I just about died. I may be a bad person.

"Honey? I think I got some bad tequila. I just thought I saw a horse wearin' a diaper."

Ralph Wiley's piece on baseball and race at ESPN.com is extraordinarily thoughtful and interesting. It isn't so important that you agree with everything in it, but I think it stands as a terrific example of what I wish journalism and commentary were like more of the time. It's thought-provoking, demonizes no one, and reaches conclusions that follow logically from facts. It's also, by analogy, potentially one of the best contributions I've seen to the discussion of affirmative action, actually. Great piece.

Phony web site scams are indeed becoming more and more common. I work with a fair amount of consumer stuff in my day job, so I'm pretty paranoid and suspect almost everything of being fraudulent, but I still could have seen myself possibly going for the Best Buy one once I saw what it said. Let's be careful out there.

Shut. Up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shutupshutupshutup. SHUT UP. SHUUUUUT UUUUUUP!

Hey, isn't this sort of how The Pelican Brief started?

Wow. It's a site redesign so bad that it actually may cause me to stop going there. I'm not a huge fan anyway, but anyone who thinks it's a good idea to just throw thirty-five unorganized articles onto your home page in two identical plain-text columns . . . there are thirteen-year-olds blogging about Justin Timberlake who know enough about layout not to do that. Are you supposed to read down one column and then roll back up to the top to read the other column? Are you supposed to scoot back and forth? Idiots.

Okay, the last three of these suggestions for saving baseball may be workable, but several of the rest are crap.

Shorten the season? If people put up with hockey in June, they can put up with baseball in October.

Contract four teams? Bite me, big-city dweller. You want to solve the financial problems by making live major league baseball the exclusive property of cities that happen to have rich assholes living in them? Easy to say when it won't affect you.

Ten-man lineups? To "solve the DH debate once and for all"? No, nitwit. The "DH debate" is over whether a guy should be playing pro ball who's freaking afraid to hit or who can't catch. It's the worst of both worlds -- one guy who won't hit and one guy who won't play defense. Forget it.

Lower ticket prices? Again, this is Yankee myopia. (Don't believe me? Look here, and then here.) It may come as a shock, but Twins tickets are not that expensive. The parking, food, and other stuff is where you lose all your money. Ticket prices, my foot. As long as guys who make noise in the paper are paying this little attention to what's actually going on in places like the Twin Cities where teams are actually struggling, they're going to be of no help.

A longer All-Star break? Yeah, that ought to do it. I can see the brighter future coming over the horizon as we speak.

Change the All-Star format? By pitting the guys born here against the guys not born here? What a horrible, crude, offensive suggestion. Yeah, let's take a game that can make Nomar and Pedro teammates and make sure it also points out that deep down, because they aren't from the same country, they will always be adversaries.

What a dim-bulb set of suggestions. Baseball needs a lot of things, but not most of these.

Okay, first of all, Jesse Ventura did not win the governor's race on the Internet. He won it at the state fair. And on television. Second . . . there's a fine line here. I'm a big fan of grass-roots political organizing from whatever angle you find yourself inclined to approach things, but something about the Howard Dean people gives me the uneasy feeling that the political future belongs to the people who flame each other on Metafilter all day. And that doesn't fill me with optimism.

You've got to love the quote at the end of the second paragraph of this little gem about The Practice. I don't suppose it occurred to them that people want to watch certain shows that don't suck.

Okay, here's the thing. If the entire point of travel souvenirs is to evoke personal memories of your own vacation and we all admit that other than that, they don't have much value, what exactly is the point of a museum exhibit? Not to pick on Wisconsin or anything, but . . . pick pick pick.

Anything William H. Macy does is cool with me. Want to make bowls? Make bowls! Want to build your own workshop Build it! After all, when you're only in thirty or forty movies a year, you have a lot of time to kill.

Get your bag of popcorn, folks. It's going to be bruising.

I know. Like you'd be reading this if you didn't already read Tomato Nation. But anyway, I particularly enjoyed this week's offering, especially the part at the end about the Elmer's Glue. Because the glue and other blue moons are AT MY FEET RIGHT NOW AS I AM TYPING.

Okay, so this is the formula for improving your odds of dating in the future.

1. Get self placed on what is still television's least-dignified reality show, because at least Joe Millionaire knew it was kidding.

2. Overreact to presence of ex as if ex were very scary monster.

3. Throw furniture.

4. Get self ousted from reality show.

5. Discuss genital warts.

Way to go, dude.

If you ever need about 250 pounds of cheese, and you really want to know right where it came from? I recommend this.

My favorite thing about this guy who tried to bribe the cop with Dunkin Donuts coupons is the way that the tank top he's wearing in his mug shot is Dunkin Donuts pink. Ew. But, you know, hee hee.

One of the things in the world that brings me the greatest amusement and head-scratching is the fact that at one time, people were sad that Kilborn left The Daily Show. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha . . . no, seriously. Cloning Jon Stewart so I can marry him is one of my goals as a world-famous bioscience genius. You know, or it would be, if I were one.

Okay, I realize this may make me hopelessly unhip, and I certainly get the hostility toward Gigantor MegaMedia Inc. or whoever. BUT. I do find it remarkable that people who would never, ever steal from a store just because they thought the prices were too high will nevertheless steal from authors and musicians and people of that nature. It seems insane to me.

I think the actors need to learn to get along a little better. I'm sure Half-Pint is doing the best she can.

I just cannot make myself want to see a pirate movie with Johnny Depp. I don't care what they say. In other news, Pool Boy saw The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on Friday and reported that it sucked from pretty much top to bottom, so perhaps I'd be better off with Depp.

You know, the last time I played this game as myself (the secret added feature -- play as yourself and see who it thinks you are), I came up as That Girl, and this time I came up as freaking Ally McBeal. What did I do wrong?

If I hadn't gotten so fed up with the Angels, Blair Hornstine's father would have made a bloody good Mortal Enemy of the Week. Seriously, that's about as close as you can come to being able to legitimately say you ruined your kid's life. What an ass. I mean, it's hard not to relish the nerdenfreude for a moment or two, but she's not even in college yet. Kid probably never had a chance.

Best of luck to you, Freddy. You seem like a good kid. Don't get weird on me.

Boy, I think Bloomberg certainly put his foot in it. Certainly, you can trace more incidents to beer drinking at the beach than to drinking wine at the Philharmonic, but the vast majority of beer drinkers do not cause disruption, and I certainly have seen wine drinkers who do. If you're going to have the law, have it. Or offer variances -- that's also fine. But this does seem to have the stink of classist crap running right through it.

There's a Who's Dancing Naked on Grant's Tomb? joke here somewhere, but I can't quite make it work.

Columns like this piece about people who stop going online altogether drive me nuts. She takes something that's inherently interesting and manages to say nothing interesting about it. The mind boggles.

Turtling. Turtling, turtling, turtling. You should just say that word over and over and over again, until you realize that it's an extremely funny word. Turtling. Turtling, turtling. Turtling.

You know, when I was in law school, my friends and I bid something like $350 to go sing karaoke with the world's most amusing tax professor. I think we got a much better deal than this crazy person.

My recollection is that someone told me that Jerry Springer's Cincinnati sex scandal was uncovered because he paid a prostitute with a check. Now, if that's true, then he's honestly too stupid to hold office, for reasons not even related to the rest of his miserable life.

Well, I'm certainly glad it didn't turn out to be a giant octopus.

One of the best things I've gotten out of being a subscriber to eMusic was discovering Jesse Harris. I like Norah Jones, but I really didn't get the emotional vibe of "Don't Know Why" until I heard his version. You gotta hear this guy. Gotta.

I'm not sure why this kind of misbehavior is the result of camera phones and not just little cameras. Strange.

I think that "Simon took a half swing at the Italian sausage character" is the funniest phrase I have read in months and months. It just goes to show that you can't make up the stuff people will do.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The Clay people need medical attention. I am not joking. Medical. Attention.

See, I don't even think it matters that much whether her method is completely original. I think the fact that a high school student would intuit any method of solving equations other than the one she was taught is very impressive. Also, in evaluating the anonymous "this is the same way I was always taught to do it" claim, it's always helpful to recall that nowhere is jealousy more rampant than in academia. (Link via Metafilter.)

Far be it from me to defend Jennifer Lopez, but suggesting that she was too trashy for the cover of Vogue really does not wash with me. It seems to me that if "the pictures just didn't work," you would redo them if you really wanted her on the cover. It makes me think, yet again, that they just grew to hate her. As it appears everyone who works with her eventually does.

This is an excellent article about exactly what the Twins' problem is. It's puzzling and frustrating, and although picking on them for their handling of Santana is a little bit facile at this point, it remains true. He's also right about Rivas and Guzman, although there is a lot of local affection for Guzman, and I suspect that's part of why he's still around. He was kind of the leading edge of them not sucking quite so hard, and that wasn't all that long ago, so I don't think they've been ready to bail on him.

At any rate, they're not really making very much progress at this point, which is kind of sad.

Well, this will be a fun thing for the paranoid people. It seems unlikely to me that the situation is quite as dire as some of these people believe, but it certain bears watching. I was just saying to someone the other day that I think marketers greatly overestimate how much people want the "convenience" of things like being reminded by a computer chip when you're running out of orange juice. I think most people (including myself) find that kind of thing creepy.

Okay, yesterday afternoon on All Things Considered on NPR, I heard a story about this guy who's been collecting reports of plastic bathtub ducks that were lost from a cargo ship in 1992, and it was so infectiously interesting that I absolutely had to go find a story about it to link to. Totally fascinating. Also? Impressive ducks.

Oy. Yeah, you can't do that. I don't know if the allegations are true, but if they are? No. It seems to me that student privacy rights are going to be a major evolving issue in the next little while here. We'll have to see how it goes.

I find it fascinating that anyone anywhere is discussing whether lottery tickets are a good investment.

I love this piece about kids and summer. I realize I was a special case because my parents were teachers and had summers off, but my family once hitched a pop-up trailer to the back of the car and drove around the country for six weeks. SIX WEEKS. Looked at stuff, sang in the car, saw birds and moose and bears and elk and about three thousand chipmunks . . . it was a lot better than "leadership camp," whatever that is.

And I have to wonder whether my sister and I, had we had the kinds of punishing schedules a lot of kids have now, would have ever invented "Super Sally," the world's most excellent superhero game in which the key phase was raking paths through the leaves in our yard that served as roads between Super Sally's house and, say, the police station where she was always going off to fight crime. Raking paths was pretty much the most important part of Super Sally.

I also wonder, I guess, whether heavily scheduled kids get to do as much with their siblings as they used to. If one is doing French camp and the other is doing soccer camp, are they spending a lot of time together? Because I still like my sister probably better than anybody else, and it's largely because of Super Sally, sharing the back seat of the car during a zillion long drives, piling everything we owned onto one of our beds to play "We're Going to Cincinnati" (don't ask), and a thousand other things we did that had essentially no meaning.

Perhaps I'm dense, but it occurs to me while reading this screed against gay marriage that I would not really want my marriage saved if the guy were only remaining married to me because strong social stigmas prevented him from dumping me to marry a guy. I'm just saying. I mean, I realize that these folks are up against it in finding ways to argue that same-sex marriage is a threat to heterosexual marriages, but that's not really my version of a happy life.

If you can't be polite to a 13-year-old, and you can't keep your father from harassing her -- no matter who's right -- then maybe you don't need to be involved in professional sports. It's just a suggestion.

I wanted to post this before somebody else finds it . . . I swear, I never heard of this guy in my life. I Googled the expression "outrage fatigue" to see how commonly used it was, and this is what came up. Recent, too. I used it in a private conversation months ago, too, and have an old draft of the essay dated January 10, 2003, with the same title. Cree-py. No such thing as an original idea.

You have to scroll down to the bottom to see it, but I'm totally thinking of that Van Halen video, and the phrase, Right Now, People Are Arguing Over The Shriners.

Don't fuck with Duluth, man. That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying anything, I'm just . . . you know, saying.

You know, I was just thinking that it isn't nearly annoying enough when some guy's phone rings with "The Mexican Hat Dance." I was really wishing you could make your cell phone sound like screeching parrots.

Oh, for God's sake. The idea of keeping your cell phone number having a one-time fee I could maybe buy, MAYBE. But an ongoing fee for the rest of your life? The hell with that. How ridiculous.

Hee hee. Minnesota is planning for its state quarter, and we're just full of ideas! The gallery starts here, with what is actually one of my favorites.

This just in: Martina Navratilova is made of space-age polymers and is incapable of aging.

That article is also notable because of the use of the word "coincidentally" in the second paragraph, where almost every journalist in America would incorrectly use the word "ironically."

This just in: Justin Timberlake is kind of a dick.

Every once in a while, you see a story go by that threatens to define a new level of triviality -- that is so incredibly stupid and vacuous that you wonder if you have lost substance as a human being by reading it. Whether Brad Pitt thinks he has ugly feet seems to me to fall into that category.

The thing that kind of amuses me about the idea of defending the SPAM name (see? I'm referring to the meat product in capital letters, just like Hormel wants me to!) is that it's hard for me to believe that it's possible at this point to damage or enhance the image of SPAM (the meat product). It seems to me that at this point, positions on SPAM (the meat product) have pretty much become hardened. Either you are a person who would consider eating it, or you are a person who would not. Is it possible for its reputation to be damaged? Or for people to become confused and wonder if someone is running a company devoted to arresting actual SPAM (the meat product)?

Okay, just the fact that there's something called the Sim Shadow Government is enough to make me shudder.

The hell?

News about Sharon Stone fills me with ennui. Seriously, who could possibly care? Has she made anything anyone cared about since Casino? That was, like, EIGHT YEARS ago. (Okay, I cared about The Mighty, but not because of her.) I think she's a good experiment in how long one can remain relevant after the last time one did anything of note.

Looking for a girl? Tiffany is available!

Sometimes I really think it is the beginning of the apocalypse.

I have extremely complex feelings about this. It's worth reading the article, but . . . hmm. There's going to be a journal entry in the next few weeks in which I will have plenty to say about this (hint: see the picture of me on the etc. page? well, this is an older picture, so . . . I mean, I realize it's a headshot, so . . . yeah, we'll let it go till the full entry), but for now, suffice it to say that the "six mints" thing is not helpful.

This is a sad, very scary story. It's one of those things that reminds you that there's often a price for doing the right thing; that's why not everyone does it.

On a completely unrelated note, if your browser pops up the window with the audio and video content, it's worth perusing. Not only because some of it is interesting, but because it gives you a hint of what might be to come as far as adapting news delivery online.

This Boston Globe article got me thinking about how much academia is essentially like Hollywood. People who aren't that much better at their jobs than other people stumble into prominence that then feeds itself, at which point they are gradually paid more and more to do less and less. Not to mention the fawning, the idolatry, the gross overestimation of one's own importance, and the utter loss of perspective.

Wow, someone has reengineered the Wiffle ball. It's hard to believe the Wiffle ball was really something that needed reengineering, but I guess that all toys that can't be transformed into video games have to find ways to survive.

I greatly enjoyed this Slate piece on celebrity dating. Particularly the Jeannette Walls dating hierarchy, and the way rock stars are at the bottom. "Rock stars, after all, will date anyone. Rock stars date porn stars." Also, a great analysis of the way J.Lo traded up. Maybe.

Yeah, I'd say the meter on Ann Coulter has just about run. I suspect that efforts like this will become more common until she finally becomes as invisible as she is irrelevant. Incidentally, lest you think Spinsanity is a lefty rag, they did quite a job on Michael Moore for committing many of the same offenses.

One of the quirky, weird things by which I am completely fascinated is athletes who lose their marbles and can't do anything anymore. (Hello, Mackey Sasser.) This study seems to be going in the direction of trying to figure it all out. Perhaps they can still help Chuck Knoblauch. Although his is more about being a big creep. But anyway.

One of the few things I know will always, always make me laugh is Kim's insertion of The Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week into the Real World recaps. I always, always laugh. This week, a movie I have never watched but have often flipped past called Who Is Julia? gets the treatment.

Ah, the legislative process. What's this you say? Microsoft? Anti-consumer? I am shocked. SHOCKED.

You have to wonder what these kids would be capable of if their energies were directed to something more productive. Honestly, one working the wheel and one working the pedals? Impressive!

If you don't read Page 2 over at ESPN, you're really missing out. That's where that thing ESPN used to have -- that mildly rebellious, slightly snarky edge that originally made SportsCenter so much fun -- lives on. They miss the mark a certain percentage of the time, but you must go and vote in the Most Overrated Person Alive bracket. Go, American Idol finalists!

Brawls like this always make me say "meh," but the truth of the matter is that the Twins are having such a lackluster year that I wouldn't put it past them to have conspired to get in a big fight just to get everybody's blood pumping. They're scrappers.

It's not that I want to admire people who excel at competitive hot dog eating, it's just that I kind of wonder at them. Did you even know there was an International Society of Competitive Eating? I like the part where he might be part of a government conspiracy, though.

This story about the return of drive-in movies is interesting. If you like it, you might try a book I just finished called Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks: Chasing the American Dream in Postwar Consumer Culture. It was kind of fascinating.

You know, I'm incredibly glad no one was hurt, but I have to admit that some part of me thinks that we missed out on what could have been quite a remarkable instance of actual irony had a Supreme Court justice actually been bonked on the head by part of the stage at a Constitution Center dedication.