I was told last night that not everyone knows about the wonderful Mr. Wakeup. So, for posterity (and my 50 readers), I record it here. Mr. Wakeup will call your telephone or pager whenever you want it to with a recorded message, computer-read text, your horoscope, or jokes. For free. Along with Mr. Wakeup, there’s also Ms. Reminder, Mr. Notify, Ms. FollowUp, Mr. Dollar, and Dr. Dose. Wake yourself up! Annoy your friends! All for free!

I can’t vouch for everything on the MP3.com “radio station” Bleeding Edge Spoken Word, but for some inexplicable reason, Das Haus der Steigenden Sonne (scroll down) made me laugh out loud. From the artists’ site (filled to the gills with all sorts of raunchy stuff – beware): “We always wanted to do a vocal duet with Adolph Hitler, and it wasn’t easy due to conflicting schedules. Well, here it be. Our rendition of an old Southern classic… "

Dear visitor from CacheFlow,

If you’re a person reading this, please [drop me a line](mailto:ewagoner@athens.net?subject=Whaddya want). If you’re a cacheing spider or bot of some sort, your behaviour is right odd. Either way, enjoy your stay.

James Gleick, prolific author on technology and sociology, author of the proposal to break up Microsoft I wish the DoJ had used, now writes about Microsoft’s responsibilities for the recent ILoveYou email worm. It’s very anti-Microsoft, yet it was published in Slate, which Microsoft owns. Cheers to Mr. Gleick, jeers to Microsoft, and cheers to, um, Microsoft. Just for the record, I use Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 beta (though I have the latest Netscape on my computer and use it to cross-check my HTML, both personal and business) and Microsoft Outlook Express. My work computer has Windows 98 and MS Office 97. I’m not rabidly anti-Microsoft myself, but I agree that they have a lot to answer for and that their products aren’t the best out there. But, for reasons similar to why I don’t use BetaMAX video, I’m stuck using many Microsoft products.

More Missouri flood coverage. One of the victims, Wilbern Banderman, died just around the corner from my parents’ house. The bridge he was crossing, described in the story as “a low-water bridge” is really just a concrete ford across a small, lazy stream. When we’d have out-of-state visitors in town, they’d always use that bridge as an example of how rural our area was. For those of you wondering, my parents’ property is at the confluence of three creeks, but is on the safe high side. The “flood plain” across the water is a neighbors’ hay field. Ordinarily, the creeks are fun trickles. Minnows, crawdads, lazy pools just right for getting your toes wet. Hopping frogs. Tadpoles. Water skeeters. After a good thunderstorm, though, the water’d kill you in a moment. I can’t imagine what it looks like after 14-18 inches of rain.

Shipped free with my internet appliance was a nifty CD opener that makes quick work of the plastic seals on a CD case. My officemate Paul says that with the sheer number of individually wrapped blank CDs he goes through, that little took alone is worth the $100 I’ll end up paying for this computer.

YoungMamas is a web portal aimed at … young mamas. It looks like there’s a lot of information here, but for all I can tell, it may all just be a funnel into the “Young Mama Mall” where you can buy all sorts of things. Double entendre alert: there’s a YoungMamas webring, where you can submit your personal page and “watch your site get some action”.

Here’s my first post from my new VirginConnect internet appliance. The jury’s still out. Due to (I think) an older version of JAVA in this browser, I’m typing blind. Can’t see a word of what I’m typing. It’ll make it hard for me to write from home, which was one of the reasons for mesigning up for this thing. We’ll see what I can do…testing…

Fourteen inches of rain. That’s what fell on my parents’ house and the surrounding areas Saturday night. A few miles away in any direction, there were only regular thunderstorms. There were two deaths, both in my old neighborhood. I thought I’d seen severe storms there – hail, tornadoes, even lightning striking a tent I was in, knocking me senseless – but this is amazing. It looks like the water’s quickly receeding, but it’s leaving an incredible amount of damage behind.

Alexander Woollcott – A Few Links

The big play I’m directing this summer is Kaufman & Hart’s wonderful comedy The Man who Came to Dinner. The main character, Sheridan Whiteside, is very closely based on Kaufman & Hart’s friend Alexander Woollcott. Woollcott was famous for his writing, radio appearances, and wit during the 1920s, 30s, and early 40s. He was a main member of the Algonquin Round Table. Here’s [a nice article about his intensely emotional relationship with Harpo Marx. Here’s a caricature of him that he took to using on his personal letterhead. Here’s but a few of his many quotations. How about some photos of and from his famous New York apartment, Wit’s End? An unflattering review of the collection of short films (and their subjects) Robert Benchley and the Knights of the Algonquin. And some corollaries: Dorthy Parker in the Twenties and Harpo Marx and Some Brothers. Harpo is also lampooned in The Man who Came to Dinner as the illiterate skirt-chasing jokester Banjo.