A gentleman came by my office today to tell me how much he enjoyed the play. He took the time to look me up, figure out where I worked, and thank me in person. I’m flabbergasted.

The horoscopes that I linked to last week, Free Will Astrology, is now being carried by Salon. I’m not a horoscope kind of guy, but I really enjoy reading Rob Brezsny’s writings.

Astronomers and others the world over are have been excited over the announcement of a planet found around Epsilon Eridani, a star close enough to us that the planet itself might be visible with the Hubbell telescope. The news is hardly suprising, however, since Epsilon Eridani is the home of a Starship Tour Operator and has eleven well-documented planets. The system even has a president, a Mr. Pierre Benton. This isn’t the first time that the star system has been in the news. Two years ago, a team in Hawaii announced they had imaged a dust ring and possible planets around the star. If you’d like to see the star for yourself (it’s a bright star, easily seen with the naked eye), use this picture to help you find it. Epsilon Eridani is the star labelled in the top center.

This is the final weekend for my play, and then you won’t have to hear about it anymore. Response has been wonderful. Of the four runs so far, three were sell-outs. Tonight may be, tomorrow is, and Sunday’s is looking mighty full. And as they leave afterwards, they tell me how much they enjoyed it. I’m mighty pleased. And in a few months, I get to do it all over again! Only this time, instead of a classic formula comedy, it’s a dark biting satire that’s sure to offend a portion of the audience. I can’t wait!

When you pirate MP3s, you’re downloading COMMUNISM

Science Made Stupid is an on-line text of natural history, from the universe to the descent of man. It’s a rather funny read. If you don;t care much for reading, you can just skip straight to the tables and charts at the end.

$370 will get you a kit to retrofit your old pedal powered bicycle into one of those newfangled electric bikes. Just the thing if you bike to work every day and have that big pesky hill in the way.

The Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection is a marvelous resource. It contains over 29,000 pieces of music focusing on popular American music from 1780 to 1960. Those works in the public domain are served up in their entirety, and the collection is completely searchable.

You might think that since the earth didn’t get destroyed during the great planetary alignment of May 5th, Richard Noone and the other 5/5/2000 people would go away. But then you’d be wrong.

This page is as it was before 5-5-2000. Looks like most earth change activity has not affected high population areas and we are all greatful. The pacific ring of fire has been active with earth quakes and volcanoes. June 4, 2000 7.9 quake hits Indonesia with many 5 and 6 after shocks. Another 6.1 hits Turkey 6/6/00. The earth changes cake is not completely baked. Stay tuned. Many of you ask we keep this page up for a while for research purposes. The book 5/5/2000 Ice: The Ultimate Disaster is now a classic and is still valid as scientists have seen the planetary alignment as a trigger point for continuing geological and weather disruptions. It is not over yet and we suggest you continue with your emergency preparations. Thanks for your continued support.

Thursday morning I was driving home after an all-nighter in the theater, preparing for that night’s preview performance. It was five in the morning when I left. It would be at least an hour before sunrise, and there was not a car on the road. I was feeling OK when I left, but as I got closer to my house (a 15 minute drive), I grew more and more weary. The last few miles were a challenge. It took all of my concentration to remain focused on the road and avoid hitting any of the deer that insisted on crossing the road right in front of me. I was at that stage where my mind was starting to play tricks on me, reminding me the my bed was just ahead. About two hundred yards from my house, around a sharp bend in the road, I saw something out of the corner of my eye that snapped me completely awake. Standing off the road about ten feet at the edge of my headlight beam was a man. His clothes were dirty. His shirt and face were covered in blood. He was wearing a white bike helmet that was smashed and bloody. He stood tall, staring at the road, not moving. He could have been straight out of a horror movie, and in fact, that’s what I thought he was. I pulled into my driveway just around the corner and wondered if I’d seen what I thought I saw. I got out of the car and listened – nothing. I looked back toward the corner and saw nothing. I went into my house, put some things down, and then went back outside to walk back to the corner to see if I had been imagining things or not. As I did so, the man came out of the darkness into the edge of the light thrown by my security lamp. “Can you help me?” he asked. I rushed him to my porch where I could better see. He was a mess. He gave me a card. “This has my name and phone number on it. Please call my wife and tell her to bring the pickup truck and a flashlight.” This I did. It took a few minutes to give his wife directions to my house. She lived nearby, but wasn’t familiar with the road names. I grabbed a few towels. One I got wet with warm water and I gave them to the man. He was in pain, but seemed to be loosening up. In the light I could see that he had several cuts on the face and back of the head. As he cleaned himself up some, it was clear that the cuts were serious enough to bleed heavily but not life threatening. His wife would take him to the emergency room (nearly 20 minutes away); there was no one else I had to call. While we waited for his wife to arrive, he told me what happened to him. He was riding his bike at 4:30 or so down the country roads, under a new moon, in complete darkness, without a headlight. Not suprisingly, he ran off the road and took a bad fall, smashing his head terribly. Things would have been very bad for him had he not been wearing the helmet. He lay there for a long time, thinking he had broken his back. He called and called for help, but since it was night in the country, no one could hear him. Finally, he regained feeling in his back, and was able to stand. That’s when I went by. He hadn’t regained he senses yet, and couldn’t move closer to the road where he’d be fully in my headlights or gesture or do anything but stare. Now, on my porch, he felt much better. “I think I might live after all,” he said. His wife pulled up, got out of the truck, took one look at him, and said, “This is becoming a habit.” That startled me as much as anything else had so far. She got him in the cab and drove off to find the bike and take him to the hospital. I cleaned myself off and hosed off the very red porch. And then I went to bed. A few hours later, I was woken by a loud banging on my door. I rose to answer it and found a sheriff’s deputy. “This morning a man had a bike wreck near here and someone helped him. Do you know…?” “That was me,” I told him. The deputy then told me that the man was his father, and that he was going to be OK, and that he had had about 60 stiches to repair the damage. He thanked me for my help and gave me his card. “Call me if you ever need anything,” he said. I told him he was welcome, that it was the least I could do, that I was glad I happened to go by right then. And that’s how I began my day.