Offering another example of a dot com company falling over backwards to provide free services for users, namezero.com provides free registration of domain names (com, org, and/or net). The catch? Well, there’s at least two. First, the domain is actually registered under the name of the namezero folks, though you “retain the right, title and interest in and to the Namezero Domain name “. Second, the created page is really just a frameset with the top 90% pointing at your own content stored elsewhere and the bottom 10% a namezero navigation bar. For an example, you can look at this weblog at www.kestrelsnest.com. If you don’t mind that bar at the bottom of your pages, this might be a neat service. It has web-based and POP email (eric@kestrelsnest.com should get to me, though I haven’t tried to set that up yet) and easy to set up subdomains (again, a frameset with pointers. godot.kestrelsnest.com will take you to my Weblog for Godot , for example.). I’ve yet to find what their revenue source is. I imagine they’re planning on banner ads on the nav bar or something.

Hopped up on man gel: Time Magazine has a cover story about the upcoming availability of a testosterone gel, and the effects it may have on men and society. “‘What happens when men have higher levels than normal?’ asks James M. Dabbs, a psychology professor at Georgia State University. ‘They are just unmanageable.’ "

Opening night for Waiting for Godot. Three hours from now, it’ll start.

Steven Baum at Ethel the Blog is my new hero. He uncovered a company that sells CDs jam-packed with old-time radio shows, such as 220 episodes of the wonderful Goon Show on two CDs for only $35. Fantastic! In college, I produced (with much help from my friends) a live weekly radio drama show. Over four years we did Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , my own adaptation of The Hobbit , the BBC’s Lord of the Rings , Firesign Theater , and The Goon Show. All of them were great fun, but I really enjoyed being a Goon. I took Peter Seller’s parts and had a blast. I found a few scripts via interlibrary loan, and a British professor in the Math Department had his family send tapes from England for us to listen to. And now, for $35, I can have them all. I’m overjoyed! Thanks, Steven.

People with too much spare time who use that time to amuse me are wonderful people. Here’s photos from an Action Figure Block Party. Who knew Admiral Akbar was such a lush? Thanks to Pith & Vinegar for pointing this out.

I’ll be slack in updating this week, as my mind is singularly focused on my production of Waiting For Godot opening this weekend. That and work, which pays me so that I can enjoy doing the things that I like to do. So, watch your favorite weblog update notification service for update announcements. Of course, looking at me referrer logs, most of you already do that.

The horror! The horror!

I fired up the sourdough pancake fueled lawnmower this morning for my weekly jaunt around the yard. My preference is for a natural looking space, but I’ll grudgingly admit that most grasses look better when cut every once in a while. My grasses are mixed throughout with wildflowers, so part of me is pained every time I push the mower about. The first delicate flowers of spring, dots of pink and purple, have finally been done in by a pair of freezing nights sandwiching a week of seventy degree days. The clover and dandelions have flourished and add nice bits of color. In the weeks past, the clover have shown a definite lack of smarts by standing tall and looking about when they heard the click-clack of the mower near. They were rewarded with a quick chop from the Lord High Executioner. The dandelions had the sense to duck and were for the most part spared. This week was different. The dandelions had grown complacent. A whole new generation was fat and lush off the spoils collected from their fallen clover brethren. Even the elders, their bald heads waving in the breeze, seemed to have forgotten the survival skills that had served them well just the week before. The clover grouped together under taller thick growths of leaves and hunkered down. When the mower came by, it was a dandelion disaster. The only survivors were those few that cowered beneath the mats of flowering grasses. Bumble bees circled overhead, sensing that they had only a few hours to harvest what they could from the dandelion heads that lay scattered about the yard. Life is hard when you’re a yard flower.

As I write this, I’m waiting for the Lord of the Rings movie preview to finish downloading. I’ve got the goosebumps!

The Brunching Shuttlecocks reveal that many weblogs (this one included) are really composed by fuzzy logic ‘bots relying heavily on the function oblique (skim (_SOURCE_)) 5.

Given that more and more people are tuning to the web as their primary source of information, it’s good to know that there’s a page devoted entirely to jamming a pair of scissors repeatedly into your crotch. Thanks to Kim and Jen for emailing this to me.