Huge apologies for the extended delay, everyone. I think I mentioned that I was having problems with my host, Portland. (Note: If you’re thinking of hosting a site there, don’t.) After numerous outages and problems, I decided to pony up for a real ISP. So I sent off a request to Portland to transfer my domain and then headed off to Scotland for the weekend. When I got back last Monday, I discovered that Portland had cancelled my account, thus rendering me unable to update the site any further. On top of that, they didn’t get to my transfer request for over a week. In summation, Portland sucks ass. Big time. My new host should hopefully be much more stable and there won’t be any bandwidth restrictions or long download times.

Dream Log: I dreamt that it was night and I was down by the floating open-air harbor market in Hammersmith. (Note: in reality Hammersmith contains no such thing). I was pushing a shopping cart that contained a few items and a bunch of bananas when I was stopped by two men who demanded that I hand over my wallet. I opened it to show that it contained only Australian money – which was useless to them – but they wanted it anyway. Suddenly Mike Piazza appeared out of nowhere and whacked them both with a baseball bat, thus rescuing me and my bananas. Seriously.
 
Could this dream have something to do with my anxiety over securing Piazza for my Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball team? Perhaps, perhaps… although Freud would probably have a field day with all the phallic imagery.

Nancy Stouffer, the woman suing J.K. Rowling over alleged “Larry Potter” copyright infringement sounds like a real nutcase. I hope Rowling and Scholastic don’t give her a dime.

Ironminds has a hilarious article about the benefits of becoming Amish. As somebody who also grew up in the “Amish Belt,” I can attest that this writer’s observations are spot on. Well, except I’m pretty sure that the Amish do use buttons on their clothing. Buttons, but no zippers. And as I spent some considerable time in my youth at a beach frequented by the Amish, I definitely agree that more stylish swimming apparel is needed. *shudder* Polyester shorts aren’t even comfortable to look at, much less swim in, I imagine.

What? Puff Daddy now wants to be called P. Diddy?? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I never thought that anything could be a step down from “Puff Daddy,” but he’s proven me wrong. Is this some weird attempt to copy J. Lo?

Quote of the Day:   “Only one minute to caffeinated happiness, baby!”
– Snookums to me this morning, as I sat at the kitchen table in a still-asleep stupor while he gleefully fiddled with his espresso machine

Jakob writes about an internet-enabled hot pot. Seriously.

I think somebody at The Onion lives in Northern Indiana. This article is just too “local” to be believed. University Park Mall? Yeah, that was my college mall. (And yes, they have a Marshall Field’s.) Glenbrook Mall in Fort Wayne? That’s where my sister shops.

I have to say I disagree with Max about the new “black version” of “Gone With the Wind” that’s about to be published. Don’t get me wrong, I love the original book too. But don’t you think that this story (told from the viewpoint of Gerald O’Hara’s mulatto love-child with Mammy) sounds incredibly interesting? Beyond my curiosity, I also like the idea of this woman re-interpreting a supposedly “sacred” text and expanding it to include herself. (Mental cross-reference: that artist who pissed off Guiliani by portraying herself as a nude, black, female Christ.) And besides, it’s not like this is a new concept. Jean Rhys retold “Jane Eyre” from the point of the madwoman in the attic in her novel “Wide Sargasso Sea” and earned critical acclaim. Why should this case be any different? Is it because “Gone With the Wind” is still a cash cow to be milked? I’m just thinkin’ here…

This is a really cool web application that maps the distribution of your surname across the United States. Not surprisingly, Kentucky is the jackpot as far as “Howards” are concerned.