Pastor proposes mammoth-sized Lincoln statue
Some folks in Lincoln, Illinois (the only town named after Lincoln during his lifetime) want to build a 305-foot-tall statue depicting Abe Lincoln christening the town with watermelon juice.

Here's a Powerpoint presentation explaining the giant Lincoln proposal.

I know we've all had the experience of waking up from our gigantic Lincoln dreams to a disappointing world--a world without a giant Lincoln. But someday we may wake up to a world where that the dream has come true, and an enormous Abraham Lincoln is standing high above the Illinois countryside, waiting for us to drive down I-55 and into his loving arms.

P.S. Abe Lincoln Watermelonmobile

The Year of the S'more marches boldly forward
What are your tallies for the first month? According to my s'more chart, I averaged .42 s'mores a day in January. I would have attained higher numbers if I hadn't overdone it on New Year's Eve--with six s'mores!! It took me over a week to get back in my game. s'more count addendum
Since posting the above, I caught up a little bit this afternoon with 2 s'mores. If I can manage at least half of one s'more tomorrow, I'll be at a respectable .5/day.

Bobby Badfingers
Someday, when there are no more guns, tough guys will demonstrate their mettle through their fast finger snapping skills. And Bobby Badfingers will rule the West.

Until that day, you can watch video clips of the bad man's bad fingers in action from the safety of your computer.

t-shirt idea
I was just thinking that it would be kind of fun to make a t-shirt that says, on the front, "America is complicated." And on the back, "I sort of love it but I also sort of hate it."

Other versions could say anything else, instead of "America," even just a blank. "______ is complicated: I sort of love it but I also sort of hate it."

I think that would be good to have a t-shirt that almost says something but that really doesn't say anything at all. Probably it would still make some people angry though.

more Passions
I tried catching more weirdness on "Passions" the other day but it was just a normal, boring soap opera the whole time.

So yeah, never mind about "Passions." I guess it's only rarely surreal and I just lucked out in getting a few minutes of screaming orangutan + burning child.

some movie
Oh, but I did see the end of an amazing action movie on TV last night where the hero takes out the bad guys who are barreling down the runway, about to fly off in a jet, by hopping aboard a firetruck with the bomb. (The red LED numbers on the bomb are counting down, of course.)

Our hero races the firetruck past the plane, gets to the end of the runway, and has enough extra time before the plane gets there to raise the firetruck's cherry picker with himself in it. As the bad guys' jet flies overhead, he tosses the bomb into the just-then-closing landing gear doors.

Bad guys: ha ha ha ha-- wait, what was that--

Boom!

Also, I'm not sure where the bad guys were from; they had accents, as all bad guys do. But each of theirs was from a different place. I think one guy was Russian and another was from the Middle East and the third guy might've been Swedish. So that was heartwarming to see how a multinational bad guy cooperative venture can actually work.

Also, by the way, if you get hit in the back of the head with a vodka bottle, I think it would hurt an awful lot, but I'm not convinced that it will automatically always knock you out for the rest of the day.

I'm not willing to test this, myself, so if you have experience that proves otherwise, let me know. That is, tell me how many times you've been knocked unconscious by a bottle-blow to the cranium and for how long you were out afterwards.

Al Franken responds to Bush's State of the Union
Al Franken is hilarious.

If you are an American reading this right now, please vote in the next election. And if you are not an American, please consider illegally voting in the next American election.

Especially you, Canadians and Mexicans! You are invited to hop over the border and pull that lever.

I keep finding myself in conversations with people (non-Republicans) who are convinced that Bush will win in November--even though polls indicate that this next election is by no means a done deal. In fact, more people disapprove of Bush's performance than any president in at least a quarter of a century.

And hearing that someone thinks that the Democrats have already lost; it's like hearing someone admit that, "the powers-that-be have succeeded in crushing my spirit," like a post-lobotomy Randall Patrick McMurphy. Or maybe Winston after Room 101. Or perhaps the not-quite-as-mad-as-Hell Howard Beale after receiving the corporate cosmology low-down from Arthur Jensen (played brilliantly by my man, Ned Beatty).

So it seems like the big thing that will help Bush win is if the people who hate what the Republicans are doing to the country and the world, just give up and don't even bother to vote. (I guess I'm stating the obvious here.)

And feeling like giving up is understandable, considering how participating in recent elections has left us all with such a terrible taste in our mouths--a taste that combines the bitter flavor of powerlessness with the acrid tang of disenfranchisement.

Or wait, maybe it's a more specific flavor, like the taste of Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to force his tongue into a female co-star's mouth combined with the asphalt whiff of a National Park being paved.

Or is it the flavor of a preemptive, unilateral war deceitfully started, mixed with the gassy stink of tax breaks for millionaires.

Anyway, my point is that Al Franken is funny. And also, vote. And if you're not registered, register, then vote. Mexicans, Canadians, you have your instructions.

P.S. For more, better politics, check out And Then.... The author has been attending rallies and debates in-person, and also watching televised politics, and then writing tons of stuff about it. I've been following it for several weeks and it's very lively. It can wet your left-of-center politics whistle if you're finding that that particular whistle is otherwise not being wetted.

Passions
If you have access to NBC and a lifestyle that enables you to flop down in front of it for a few minutes in the afternoon, I recommend spending a moment or two with NBC's "Passions."

The show seems to be openly mocking soap operas, but in a way that's so straight-faced that it's hard to know if it's on purpose or not.

The acting and melodrama are pretty much standard issue soap opera--but in order to appeal to a younger audience, the show breaks from conventions by incorporating things like magic and zombies and a living doll (that is, up until August of 2002 when Josh Ryan Evans, the actor who played Timmy died).

I actually don't care about any of that, except in that it contributes to making "Passions" extra insane. If television could regularly deliver the inexplicable oddness that I get from a few minutes with "Passions," I would watch television all day non-stop.

Today I sat down with a sandwich (a mustard sandwich!), and in the time that it took me to too-quickly eat that meal, here is what was happening: a small boy was on fire, another person was there (a man, I think? laughing like a maniac--or did I make that part up?), and in the corner an orangutan was hopping up and down.

I didn't even need to un-mute the TV set, because there's nothing they could say out loud that would improve upon what they were showing.

Passions!

huge list of Harmon Leon articles
Harmon Leon is an "infiltration journalist." And he's funny.

I made like a bumblebee and buzzed around the web, collecting all of the sweet Harmon Leon nectar that I could find. And then I took that nectar and made some honey for you and you, Mr. and Mrs. Beekeeper!

Zojirushi CM
Excellent elephantocentric rice cooker ad from Zojirushi.

And here's another Zojirushi ad where the elephant seems to be hitting on a hot water heater it met in the park.

You go, elephant. It probably won't work out, for lots of reasons, but it's worth a shot.

cat art by Stuart Atkins Louis Wain (1, 2, 3) isn't the only guy in town who can anthropomorphize our feline friends.

Stuart Atkins has some charming cats, some surreal cats, some old-fashioned cats, and others, including a Jesus cat being crucified--which I'll bet you've never thought of that before.

He deserves a prize just for the title, "'Out of the Moonlight' comes a cat riding a Zebra." And I'm also a big fan of what's happening in "Sorry."

report drug smuggling bookmark
Another new artifact. This one comes to us from a strange and terrifying culture, driven to bewilderment by its own anti-drug paranoia.

"Fett's Vette" by MC Chris
3.7Mb MP3 - second-to-last link on the page.

"My backpack's got jets
I'm boba the fett
I bounty hunt for jaba hut
To finance my vette..."

When he's not performing super-catchy novelty rap, MC Chris is a writer for Sealab 2021.

This song is several years old now but newish to me. Listening to it might make you wonder, "what other songs have been inspired by Boba Fett?"

And you would find the answer to that question at the Boba Fett Fan Club, where you can download a dozen more songs about Mr. Fett. But then you'll pretty quickly realize that the only good one is "Fett's Vette."

some more s'mores
Oh yeah, that's right. It's supposed to be "s'mores"--not "smores."

Thank you, everyone who pointed out my brazen disregard for spelling conventions. Peace!

Pantsmail 026
I just sent out a Pantsmail announcing the re-birth of the phoenix that is this webpage.

I also offered a rare glimpse into my adventures as a mystery-solving millionaire.

So if you're signed up for Pantsmail and didn't receive it (sometimes spamcatchers catch it and whatnot), then let me know and I'll send you a copy.

which gang
...trying to decide which gang to join. Currently I'm leaning towards The Jets because they have the best song.

napkin
New item in artifacts: this spectacular napkin--a delightful way to welcome His Royal Highness, Baby New Year 2004. Wipe the smore crumbs off his adorable slobbering baby mouth with a napkin that unabashedly celebrates good times.

MT
I'm trying to teach the web-publishing tool, Moveable Type, to appreciate the bulky, inefficient, RSS-incompatible, XML-indifferent manner in which I've built this site. So far MT is far from convinced that it's worth the effort.

Hey, don't you enjoy websites that engage in talk about their web-publishing tools?

I know. Me neither.

back
Hello! This website is back online again starting right now.

I was going to put up an exciting relaunch page, with fireworks and dancing ducks, but I just never got around to making it. And ultimately, I know that you're too smart to be fooled by phony manufactured excitement, whether it comes from the executive branch of our government or this website.

You want real content. You want words and links to hobo clowns and things that will keep you amused for a minute and a half while you're at work, waiting for that guy to call you back with the revised estimate.

So this website is here to give you just that. Just like this. POW!

And right now, please allow me to express my gratitude to you for visiting this web page after a year of nothing happening here. Thank you.

Year of the Smore
I was thinking that 2004 should be The Year of the Smore.

Then I had too many smores combined with too much champagne on New Year's Eve. (Not the greatest idea, it turns out.) And now I'm a little less excited about the idea.

But once that wears off, I'm going to rally for The Year of the Smore.