Man bitten by rattle snake in Mall-wart.

How many of the other candidates even read the NY Review of Books? General Clark writes for it: Iraq: What Went Wrong

UPDATE:
Hmmm. Now, I just see this: he believes in time travel.

The government agency Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is so dispirited about how fat and lazy Americans are, it has loosened its recommendations as to what constitutes exercise in pace with Americans loosening their belts. AP reports:

For those daunted by even moderate exercise, the CDC has a list of even less intense activities it says would be at least a step in the right direction, including making photocopies, playing video games, coloring, sitting in a whirlpool bath, floating and "purposeless wandering."

The agency says an hour of such light activity is equal to 30 minutes of moderate activity, but light activity wasn't included in the latest survey. Light activity includes almost every activity that involves motion and some that don't: playing table tennis, miniature golf, darts or pool, shooting a pistol, yachting, fishing while seated, even light office work that includes movement of "little more than hands and fingers."

I especially like "purposeless wandering." That would make a great hobby on a Nerve personal or a Friendster profile. Also works as a post-ironic band name.

Speaking of Genes, we're pleased to see that our friend Gene is featured as the "personal of the day" on Nerve and its affiliates (including Gawker, shown here -- his picture is in the lower right of the screen shot). I'm sure this will do wonders for his dating, and his profile does indeed paint an appealing picture (I can attest, ladies, he's handsome, charming, well-traveled and possesses other marriageable features that my wife thinks are too personal to blog about; no, not that), but I have to wonder about his choices for "music that puts me in the mood." Kraftwerk?? On what planet is Kraftwerk sexy?

Needless to say, this is Japanese. Very sexy, eh? What is with those people? Thanks to Andras for the link.

Reminds me of my favorite limerick:

There once was a man named Gene
Who invented a fucking machine
Both concave and convex
It could serve either sex
But, oh, what a bastard to clear!

(With apologies in advance to my mom, who recently emailed me: "I read your blog yesterday and have decided that you really are entering middle age. All that sex and suck stuff! It speaks either of delayed adolescence or the frustrations of middle age." I vote for delayed adolescence.)

Miki pointed this out. Funny stuff. What is it about George Bush action figures?

I'm always raving about how gorgeous Hungarian women are (and not just because I married one). Best of all, they don't just tease: Reuters reports, Hungarians are the horniest breed on earth. Probably better publicity for them than the usual, being most suicidal.

I saw only pieces of the Emmys tonight on TV, and during the news heard that they gave a rich remembrance for John Ritter, so I went to check out Emmys.com and quickly concluded it severely sucks (in the intransitive sense; doutless there is plenty of transitive sucking involved in the Emmys, too, but I don't really have a problem with that).

So far as I can tell, the site doesn't feature even a single video clip. Laaaaaame.

For some stupid reason, last April I was "inspired" for no earthly good reason to compile a list of slang synonyms for that glorious essence of womanhood. At the time, a few people pointed out other similar, longer lists of the same, but I thought it was probably best to leave well enough alone. Now, Mark comes across a list so impressive -- at 798 entries -- that I'm obliged to submit to you here The Pussy List.

I realize this is highly unlikely, but I think I saw the Dalai Lama changing trains from the #1 IRT subway to the N/R line at Times Square Saturday night, as I was also doing (though I didn't notice him showing up later at the Gogol Bordello concert to where I was headed).

Yes, you'd think the Dalai Lama might have a limo or something, but who knows, Mayor Bloomberg takes the subway everday, so we're told.

At the time, I didn't think it was the Dalai Lama, I thought it was one of the actors from this Sony commercial, which I had just seen. After getting a pretty good look at him (and the two other Tibetan monks he was walking with), I decided it wasn't the guy from the commercial and forgot about it. But then I saw on the news tonight that the Dalai Lama was addressing a huge crowd in Central Park today, and seeing his picture on the news, I am fairly sure that's the guy I saw in the subway.

Or not. Could have just been a bunch of other Tibetan monks in town for the speech. They do seem to go for the same look in terms of outfit, hairstyle and glasses. I know I should be cultured enough to know the Dalai Lama when I see him, but my mind was on Gogol Bordello, so you'll have to forgive me.

Who knew? Elizabeth is not actually Bözsi's first name, it's Mary. (Via Gothamist)

You joined Ryze, you joined Meetup, you joined Friendster. Now you will join Upcoming. It promises to be actually useful, but time will tell.

I woke up this morning with a memory of when I was maybe 10 years old and playing Little League baseball, and my best friend, Kevin, hit a home run. He was on the other team, so as he was rounding third, I shouted in an envious but good-natured way, "You suck!"

My father then pulled me over by the elbow and said, "Don't say that! That means that he sucks penises." You can imagine my horror at trying to get my 10-year-old mind around that one.

Dad was of a much different generation, 10-20 years older than everyone else's dads. Maybe that was the literal origin of the usage, but I'm relieved to see this morning that Dictionary.com indeed recognizes the intransitive sense of "suck," in which one exists simply in a general state of suckiness, with no implication of sucking any direct object in particular.

Adi and I have been Radiohead fans since "Creep" was a hit on Euro MTV and no hipsters working at the used record shops on St. Marx place had heard of the band (when we came back from Budapest for a visit, cf. 1992) and tried to buy a copy. Turns out, however, that the music is not meant for young minds, as this experiment as to the reactions of 10-year-olds exposed to the band demonstrates. At left if 9-year-old Jeffrey's interpretation of their music, including the signs "Free Suicides" and "Road to Hell."

Yikes. Photos from the International Space Station of this week's hurricane.

Nerve comes out with a list of especially unsexy things. For example: "Drinks with 'sexy' names. Bar patrons who order a 'screaming orgasm,' 'sex on the beach,' 'blow job,' or 'long slow screw against the wall' are 77% less likely to get laid than the ones drinking beer. Wonder why." Via Gawker.

No wonder kids hate science.

And here I thought that I'd written the best press release in recent memory, but then I read this.

This Reuters piece about Yoko Ono's recreation of her 1964 "Cut" piece -- where she invites audience members to cut off all of her clothes for peace -- neglects to mention that the reason she was left in her underwear this time, as opposed to stark naked 39 years earlier, is that apparently none of the Parisian audience members actually wished to see the 70-year-old grandmother completely stakers.

Kevin just wrote asking about a bike ride this weekend, to which I responded:

We were on our way to a dinner party tonight and I stepped off the curb to look for the bus and put my foot in a pothole, whereby I fell sideways and threw a bottle of wine 10 feet in the air (and somehow cut my hand on one of the subsequent shards) and badly twisted my ankle in the process, so I don't think I'll be up for a ride this weekend after all.

:-(

And I've already got my ticket for Gogol Bordello tomorrow night. Well, I'll just take the cane I bought last year when I badly twisted the other ankle jogging over pine cones.

Many days I wonder where the day went. I feel like I'm tied to the computer all and seemingly productive, but then I look at my to-do list, and there are gaping omissions. Today, for example. Reflecting on what I got done today, I thought, well, I had to write a bunch of emails. So I counted. I sent 42 emails today. Some of those were looong, too.

Then I wondered how typical that was. I am a packrat with email, saving everything incoming (filtered into some 300+ mailboxes, mostly by sender) and all outgoing. So I totaled up all those I sent in the past 365 days: 12,065. Works out to 33 per day, including weekends.

That's not normal, is it?

Joi Ito (whose name seems like an anagram itself), writes:

Aoccdrnig to rsceearh at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Test it for yourself.

See how cool the fireworks in the photo below looks? Well, the fireworks, in honor of Central Park's 150-year anniversary, by the same "fireworks artist" as shown blow, sucked. Big time. Capital "S." In the rain, no less.

The Hungarian cocktail party, on the other hand, while boring, was enjoyable, as Hungarian ladies tend to be foxy and flirtatious, and this was no exception.

• 6:30-10pm: Drinks at the uptown Time Cafe, sponsored by the Hungarian consulate

• 7:45: (NYT reports) "The fireworks display, titled "Light Cycle," is to start at 7:45 from five points in [Central Park, as part of its 150 anniversary celebration] between the Heckscher ball fields near 64th Street and the North Meadow at 98th Street, producing luminous pillars, a 1,000-foot halo over the Reservoir and a cascade of flares. The entire performance, months in preparation, should last about five minutes."

My brother Sean is older, wiser and more successful than I am. As such, he could afford this amazing trip to Papua New Guinea. I'm jealous as hell. He's also a talented photographer, on land and under sea. Take a look at the photo gallery.

Proof.

UPDATE:
Okay, the joke here is that this site, ArtofResistance.org, contained a mosaic portrait of George W. Bush made entirely of small anuses (or is it ani?). Now, the site is no longer online.

Hmmm. That's an odd coincidence.

(Ildi, please buy me a ticket. Adi is still iffy. Try to talk some sense in to her.)

Nature is scary. Remember when I reported this? Well, now: this.

All I can say is I'm glad I live in Manhattan, where there are no trees.

Kim Jong Il's blog.

Via Maccers (via Gawker)

Yesterday's future, today!

The Feds, apparently having nothing better to do, have sentenced actor Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong pothead cult movie fame) to nine months in prison and a $20,000 for selling bongs on the Internet. Don't you feel safer? And by the way, since when are bongs illegal?

Except that they're published in mainstream media sources:

• Philadelphia Daily News: Why Don't We Have Answers to These 9/11 Questions
• MSN Slate: What You Think You Know About Sept. 11...But Don't
• Time Magazine: Confessions of a Terrorist
• NOW, With Bill Moyers: September 11 - Then and Now
• The Observer: Four 9/11 Moms Battle Bush

Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2002-2003

A few names come to mind, but I'd better not...

Or rather his girlfriend, Regina Lasko, is. Congrats to the old codger.

By now you have doubtless heard the story of the NY shipping clerk who shipped himself in a crate to Dallas to see his parents. Any other Velvet Underground fans out there remember the song "The Gift" (lyrics | mp3 7.8mb) from their seminal album White Light/White Heat?

My friend Dana, who works in publishing, points out this Reuters story:

Book lovers want to bring a note of optimism to the September 11 anniversary by leaving some of their favourite books in public places for passers-by to pick up.

Organisers say 50,000 people have so far pledged to take part in a giant book give-away from Florence in Italy to Santiago in Chile, something they see as a more positive way to mark the grim date than a minute's silence.

"The idea is to transform a black day into a day of giving and sharing," said Paris-based poet and publisher Emmanuel Lequeux, who dreamt up the idea last month along with a Belgian, an Italian and an American.

"People can pick any book that moved them or changed their world view, add a dedication, a drawing or even their e-mail, and then leave it on a park bench or in a train.

. . . 

The "Poetic Attack" Web site [which I can't find - R] tells surfers in eight languages to "Free a book" from their shelves -- "because a book is a symbol of liberty, sharing and tolerance".

UPDATE:
Stepbrother Jay writes: "Dudesicle, Check out Bookcrossing.com per your recent post. They've been spreading peace and love through leaving books everywhere pre 9/11 . And they do it everyday. Word."

Ah, those enlightened Europeans.

Second Runner Up:

First Runner Up:

Man of the Year:

Sent by Mark

Funny, funny stuff. This is why it's sad that I work alone.

It's even better larger. Click here.

Interesting arm-chair psychoanalysis of Bush in the Guardian.

This is very cool. A piece on NPR today describes how a German bunch scholars of experimental composer John Cage have taken his piece "As Slow As Possible," which is normally meant to be played over the course of half an hour, and have extended it to be a "sound monument" to be played for more than six hundred years. It's already been ongoing for two years. The point I liked most is one of the scholars saying that, while many cities feature "eternal flames" to look back at the past, this sound monument looks towards the future, for dozens of generations.