This morning, I discovered (amongst all the other spam I receive) a message in my Inbox promising to “ADD INCHES TO YOUR PENIS!!!” The very next message offered a way to “LOSE INCHES WHILE YOU SLEEP!!!” Now I’m all confused.
John Allsopp wrote to me today: “Now you really can say ‘my middle name is Cascading Style Sheets.'” I guess so. Thanks, Amazon!
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but The Onion is one funny group of people. They took last week off, but they’re back with a venegance, covering the 9/11 events in their own special way. Funny they are, yes, but one can tell they’re more than a bit angry (and rightly so!) this week. If you’re squeamish, you might want to skip the article about surprised hijackers. Just a fair warning.
Well, I’ve learned something today. What I learned was this: when your ham-and-provolone-on-white-bread sandwich suddenly begins to taste like a banana, it’s time to throw it out. Now I share this lesson with you. No, don’t thank me—that’s just the kind of guy I am. I basically can’t help myself. (Neither can anyone else, I suspect.)
I’m starting to get back into the swing of article-writing, with two new articles in front of editors as I type this, and another two or three pieces brewing on my hard drive at home. Whether or not those simmering pools of language ever see the light of day is another question, of course; sometimes a piece which starts out full of tasty promise ends up being the fallen soufflé of writing, if you follow me. All the ingedients seem correct, and the cooking process is roughly the same as all the other dishes I make, but nevertheless I occasionally end up with something that, if writing results may be equated with food taste, closely approximates a cigarette-and-coffee omelette. Or worse.
At any rate, I keep getting Election 2000 stuff in my mailbox, but recently it’s swung from being solidly anti-Democrat to become sort of a turgid bipartisan mix of shrill laughter masking pessimism, vitriol, and bleak resignation. It’s kind of like hearing the body politic whistling past the graveyard, and the tune is just as fractured as you might expect. So if you’ve come across any particularly funny election-related humor in e-mail, do me a favor—delete it, will you? You’ll feel much better.
Big news a-comin’—stay tuned. In the meantime, enjoy the humor of CNN.com, a new page on the site.
Some of you may have seen the CWRU Y2K parody page during the 33 hours it was the actual university home page; if not, go check it out. Here’s the amazing part—apparently we executed the parody so skillfully that it was mistaken by some people for an actual Y2K glitch! Among them: Wired News and the Washington Post. For more information, feel free to read the official press release from CWRU.