Separated at birth?

Is it my imagination, or or is Mel Gibson looking more like a crazed Saddam Hussein every day?

Clown Girl on Amazon.com

My sister's book is now available on Amazon.com. It's not yet released (scheduled for next spring) but you can pre-order it and Amazon will send it to you when it's out.

You'll still have to ask Monica to autograph it for you, since Amazon won't do that.

Portland Tribune article of TMCM

Here's what the Portland Tribune has to say about Too Much Coffee Man - the Opera.

Such lines include:

“Inspiration abounds, love in my soul,

I haven’t been so excited since my doctor found that mole.”

And

“Coffee is the one true love, the one that will not leave/

Except by force, natural discourse or a nauseous heave/

But for stains, insomnia and stomach pains, it is perfect to please/

Kind of like a library card, but without the yearly fees.”

Too Much Coffee Man - The Opera

I saw Shannon Wheeler at Wordstock last spring and asked him about this. He said he was really excited about it. I listened to a preview of the music on a CD player he had at his table. The segment I heard was a slow part, so I can't say I have much of an opinion about the music. Maybe the sets and the plot will be interesting.

He also had a copy of the libretto, and the part I looked at seemed a bit repetitive. Of course, maybe that's what I think about opera...

Based on the comic book by Shannon Wheeler
Music by Daniel Steven Crafts
Lyrics by Damian Willcox & Shannon Wheeler

4 Performances Only!

September 22, 23, 29, 30 at 8:00pm
Brunish Hall
1111 SW Broadway
Portland, OR
Limited Seating!

Rock, Paper, Scissors Grande

Speaking of Rock, Paper, Scissors, here's one game with high stakes.

Takashi Hashiyama, president of Maspro Denkoh Corporation, an electronics company based outside of Nagoya, Japan, could not decide whether Christie's or Sotheby's should sell the company's art collection, which is worth more than $20 million, at next week's auctions in New York.

he resorted to an ancient method of decision-making that has been time-tested on playgrounds around the world: rock breaks scissors, scissors cuts paper, paper smothers rock.

I like the strategy from Chisties' experts ... the international director of Christie's Impressionist and modern art department twin 11 year-old girls.

"Everybody knows you always start with scissors," she added. "Rock is way too obvious, and scissors beats paper." Flora piped in. "Since they were beginners, scissors was definitely the safest," she said, adding that if the other side were also to choose scissors and another round was required, the correct play would be to stick to scissors - because, as Alice explained, "Everybody expects you to choose rock."

Image Puzzle

This puzzle is pretty cool. I didn't get much past level 8.
Don't ask me for hints...

The text is always written in a clear form, it's just disguised in some way. There are no riddles or such things. The text is always located within the image file. It's never a reference to a place outside this website!
This puzzle is case sensitive

Hot Snacks!

1. Pirate's Booty
2. Little Debbie Boston Creme Rolls
3. Clamato Tortilla Chips
4. Mini Pringles
5. Walkers Sensations Oven Roasted Chicken with Lemon & Thyme
6. Lay's Ketchup Chips
7. Red Vines Original Red Twists
8. Walkers Sensations Thai Sweet Chilli
9. Archer Farms Black Pepper & Sea Salt Potato Chips
10. Rice Krispies Treats with Icy Glacier Gems
11. Deep River Snacks Rosemary & Olive Oil Kettle Cooked Potato Chips
12. Sabritas Papas Fritas Adobadas
13. Archer Farms Maple Barbecue Potato Chips
14. Crown Jewels Delicious Mint Chocolate Truffles
15. Matutano Cheetos Pandilla/Fantasmas Sabor a Queso/Queijo

Speaking of new food, I had the 'Tato Skins Steak & Potato flavored chips out of the vending machine at work. I checked the ingredients. These should be renamed to "worcestershire" flavored chips. Taquitos' commentary is pretty accurate except the chips don't taste very good.

Almost 3000

Bush "honored" the people who died in 9/11 by saluting the "the nearly 3,000 people who were killed on September 11, 2001."

If you look it up, there were actually 2,749 people killed that day, so there are 251 ghosts that never were.

On the other hand, you could also say there have been nearly 3000 soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began there. But, in fact, there have only been 2666 US soldiers killed in Iraq.

That's leaving out the 45,000 iraqis that have been killed so far.

How to reduce the murder rate?

Answer: redefine the problem.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The U.S. military did not count people killed by bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks when it reported a dramatic drop in the number of murders in the Baghdad area last month, the U.S. command said Monday.

The decision to include only victims of drive-by shootings and those killed by torture and execution, usually at the hands of death squads, allowed U.S. officials to argue that a security crackdown that began in the capital August 7 had more than halved the city's murder rate.

But the types of slayings, including suicide bombings, that the U.S. excluded from the category of "murder" were not made explicit at the time. That led to confusion after Iraqi Health Ministry figures showed that 1,536 people died violently in and around Baghdad in August, nearly the same number as in July.

Ong-Bak

Director Prachya Pinkaew
has a new film out called Protector, or Tom yum goong.
I've heard that his previous film, Ong-bak was a "surprise hit". I've got it on hold at my library.

SmartFilter

For some reason, SmartFilter won't let me see who was born on my birthday.
What's the simplest way to get around SmartFilter?

You cannot access the following Web address:

http://www.born-today.com/Today/11-09.htm

The site you requested is blocked under the following categories: Provocative Attire

roentgenizdat

This almost makes me nostalgic for the Cold War.
Where is the next source of banned information? The Arab world, or the US?

Owing to the lack of recordings of Western music available in the USSR, people had to rely on records coming through Eastern Europe, where controls on records were less strict, or on the tiny influx of records from beyond the iron curtain. Such restrictions meant the number of recordings would remain small and precious. But enterprising young people with technical skills learned to duplicate records with a converted phonograph that would "press" a record using a very unusual material for the purpose; discarded x-ray plates. This material was both plentiful and cheap, and millions of duplications of Western and Soviet groups were made and distributed by an underground roentgenizdat, or x-ray press, which is akin to the samizdat that was the notorious tradition of self-publication among banned writers in the USSR.