This weekend I hung a hammock between two perfectly placed trees in my side yard. This hammock was a gift from my cast & crew of Waiting for Godot (thank you all!), and I put it to good use by reading all of Ursula Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness. It was the first time in a long while that I devoted the time to reading a book from cover to cover in practically one sitting, and this book was worth the time. Le Guin knows how to write a compelling story.

Eat Yer’ Face is cannibal fun for everyone. The $19.95 Eat Yer Face Gelatin Mold Kit allows you to make an exact copy of your face (or other body part) cast in delicious gelatin. Or maybe you’re more in the market for Chocolate Perfume -- the only perfume that makes you smell good enough to eat.

Appendectomy, schmappendectomy! I gotta get to the prom!

If spoofs on Star Trek is your cup of tea, head right on over to SAPRINGER CENTRAL for gems such as SeinTrek (“Four”: Lt. Kramer talks Ensign Costanza into a golf game on the holodeck; meanwhile, 2 out of 3 loses another boyfriend on a landing party.), The Treksons ("Roray riz a rood ray to rie! " – Rorf), and Stone Trek (complete with a wonderful Quicktime opening sequence). Some have pictures, some have sounds, some have only quotes, but most are good for a laugh.

If you haven’t noticed, Ethel the Blog has been in peak form of late. So much so, in fact, that it stands out far above the rest. All of them. In my opinion, of course. In the last few days alone, Steven’s written pages and pages of top-notch material.

Napster of Puppets: Using the same techniques Metallica used to force a gazillion people off Napster, the Brunching Shuttlecocks are awarding $100, a T-shirt, and candy to a random person hosting their Björk Song.

RIP, Tito Puente. He was the best band teacher Lisa Simpson ever had.

From Poor Clio (a newish & very well done weblog) comes the CornCam from Iowa Farmer Today. Watch the corn grow! Thanks to this, I can re-live my tenth grade geography class. It was tought by Mr. “Action” Jackson (retired as of last week) – a tall redhead with a low monotone voice. He spoke in cliches, and his catch phrases were very predictable. So predictable, in fact, that to keep me and my friend Ryan awake, I created an “Action Jackson Baseball” game. <Warning: Nerd alert!!!> I spent several weeks analyzing his catch phrases, coming up with the statistical probability that each would be uttered. I then matched them up with plays from baseball that had close statistical matches (Say, batters hit a single 7.3% of the time; Mr. Jackson said “You betcha” 7.1% of the time. Therefor, “You betcha” equaled a single.) based on numbers from a sports almanac. Once done, Ryan and I, sitting in different rows, could play baseball games against each other by carefully listening and documenting the utterance of the catch phrases. Oh, what fun! Well, it was something to do, anyway. It’s strange, now that I think about it, that I then taught Junior High geography for a while. But, I digressed somehow. The CornCam. I distinctly remember (though my mind may be exaggerating a bit) a slide show that Action Jackson gave us titled “My Vacation to Iowa”. I think it was a multi-day presentation. It went something like this: “_< click> Here you see another typical Iowa corn field. You’ll notice my lovely wife standing next to the boulder. That boulder was transported here by glaciers thousands of years ago. Here you see a typical Iowa corn field. If you’ll look closely at the dirt I’m holding in my hand, you’ll see that it’s very black. Iowa dirt is very fertile. This is an Iowa corn field. The large boulder there at the side of the road was transported here by … _” Ahhh… high school! Oh – Mr. Jackson: If by some wonder of the modern age you are actually reading this… it’s been thirteen years now since I had that class. I’m sure my memory is playing tricks on me. I’m sure you were a great teacher.

Lee Iacocca is peddling an electric bicycle that I’d love to own. (Sorry. The wording was hard to resist.) I saw some at my Saturn dealer last time I was in. I’m going back Friday for a service visit. Of course, I have no money for an e-bike… but maybe they’ll let me have one for free to ride around Athens on and drum up business for them. Yeah! I’ll ask them.

“That dirty little coward that shot Mister Howard has laid poor Jesse in his grave. " Or, maybe not. The body of J. Frank Dalton, who died in 1951 claiming to be Jesse James, is being exhumed for testing to see if it really was. Did he fake his death in 1882 and live to be 104? We’ll know in three months or so. One of the James’ Gang’s hideouts was Meramac Caverns, just a few miles down the interstate from my Missouri hometown. If you take the tour, they’ll show you “Loot Rock,” where they divvied up the gold. You know, the caverns has advertising painted on every other barn from Utah to Ohio, but I can’t find a single official website. Hrmph.