Today’s not my lucky day. I’ll try again tomorrow. But, I did get my laptop back from the shop today, so it wasn’t all lost.

!00% Cheese Taco, a true story by Craig Mitchell. Craig says that another chapter of “She Hates My Futon” will be out in a week or so. If you haven’t ever been by My Boot, go have a look-see.

Well, blow me down! Not only has another weblog sprung up in Athens – chip’s log -- but there a big communal weblog/journal to boot – Year2000Logs. Both were set up by Chip Woods, who is also the publisher of AthensTown, “a weekly online magazine about Athens and the people who live here.” It looks like it’s been here a while, but this is the first I’ve heard of it.

Frontline on PBS this week is titled Apocalypse! The evolution of apocalyptic belief and how it shaped the western world. Of course, the show was very interesting, and as always, they’ve done a bang-up job with their website. While you’re there, be sure to take the antichrist quiz!

Last night was another night where my plans to clean the apartment were tossed aside in favor of fine cinema. The Independant Film Channel (alone worth the extra price for my digital cable service) showed Sirens , and it sucked me in. If you don’t mind a ton of nudity (the film features an artist whose paintings of nude people offends the church, represented by Hugh Grant as a fine vicar), I highly recommend this film. The beauty is outstanding… not just the flesh, but the australian landscape and the artistic imagery also was a treat to the eyes. The dialogue was well written, and the story of the vicar’s wife’s awakening (played by Tara Fitzgerald) held everything together quite well.

Walmart would like to close down a nine-year-old store here in Athens and build a new supercenter just down the road on land that’s presently zoned for residential buildings. Of course, there’s a big fight to stop the move. Walmart’s latest attempt to “reason” with Athens residents is currently featured at the SprawlBusters site.

Two wonderful sites courtesy of Bovine Inverus: detailed instructions on how to build your own Boba Fett suit and an essay on auctions where people spend money to win a smaller amount of money and how it relates to our everyday life. That second one is probably the best thing I’ve seen on the web in a while.

Nearly eleven years ago, I left home for college. Most all of my possessions were boxed up and shipped by UPS to my college address. Out of the eight boxes, I received three. It seemed clear that they were stolen somewhere along the way, as inside each box was plenty of material to identify me and how to find me should they just have gotten misplaced. I was pretty upset about the whole thing at the time, as most of what was lost was irreplaceable. Signed high school yearbooks, an awful lot of writing, an entire fantasy world I had created and pored hours into. As the years went by, I realized that it wasn’t entirely a bad thing, as it forced me to start over, reinvent myself, and move on, and the me that emerged was a good deal better than what I had before. It doesn’t even sound right to me that my entire life should be defined by what was in a few small boxes, but at the time, that’s how it was. I write this because one of the things in the boxes, perhaps the only thing with real monetary value, was my class ring. The ring was returned to my parents yesterday, and is now on its way back to me. Its eleven year history is still being discovered, but apparently it never made it out of the county my parents live in. It’d be neat to find the rest of the stuff too, like opening up a time capsule, but I don’t hold out much hope it’ll all turn up.

In Madison, we stopped into The Puzzle Box, a small toy store filled mostly with “thinking-person’s toys”. Two companies caught my eye, The Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild and Found Objects. The Philosopher’s Guild has a number of quirky items, including “Brainy Beanies” and “Fruedian Slippers”, my two favorites. Found Objects sells art and zen related games, displays, and things to play with. My favorite is the “Dada Box” game, where you try to make sentences out of words randomly drawn from a bag. The words are magnetic, much like the Magnetic Poetry series, but cheaper and more versitile.

Of course, there was a pile of work waiting for me back at the office. I’ll sprinkle Madison tidbits in with regular weblog entries over the next few days.
Just down the block from my friend Marjorie’s place is the Crystal Corner bar, where apparently many blues legends have played. Where, I couldn’t tell you, as the place was very small. Average neighborhood-bar-sized, really. But they had well-kept pool tables and cider on tap, and is a nice place to unwind. I was there for a bit on New Year’s Eve afternoon, and while playing pool, I was treated to fun games of pool with Marjorie, the Simpsons on one TV, some football game on a second, and a discussion between two wizened bar patrons about the Chinese calendar, the Gregorian calendar, the origin of year zero, and the whole arbitrary nature of the millennium. That’s a bar worth going to.