Has the Web gotten boring? In some ways I think it has, and I do think that the “profit” argument has a lot to do with it. Back in 1994, people were building crazy sites and offering them up to the world just for the fun of it. Nowadays no one wants to lift a finger unless they can make some quick cash. Maybe we webloggers are the last hope of fun on the Net. We create things and offer them up just in the hope that other people find them amusing. (And yeah, the ego boost is nice.) We’re it, kids.

“I used to have a red leather tie. I used to wear it in my ‘Deliberately-Dressing-Like-a-Dickhead’ phase.” – The Snook

Sometimes my boyfriend makes me laugh.

Okay, this is gonna sound stupid, but can anybody e-mail me a recipe for Rice Krispie Treats? I’ve got a hankering for them but I’m not sure how to make them. I went to the store for a box of the cereal, but to my surprise I discovered that here it’s called “Rice Bubbles”. The only recipe on the box was for “Chocolate Crinkles”, which is apparently the preferred puffed rice treat of choice here in Australia. (Snook says they’re nasty. They consist of cereal, cocoa, coconut, sugar, and fat. Actually, though, that doesn’t sound that far off Rice Krispie Treats. He says, “They’re the kind of thing little kids eat lots of and end up all sticky and covered in chocolate and then they chuck because they ate eleven of them.”) Anyway, I don’t want some random recipe off the Internet; I want the official Kellogg’s Rice Krispie Treat formula. If anybody’s got a box at home, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d pass it along.

My mailman hates you guys.
Wow, the birthday love keeps flowing. Getting presents through the mail is the best, because they’re so unexpected. Thanks to my mom and Joe for the quilting supplies, and to my dad and Cindy for the “George W. Bush Family Paper Doll” book. (Seriously, that one made me shoot Coke out my nose with laughter.) Big thanks also to Mama Snook for the clock, Max for the Susan Cooper books, Kristen for the A Room With a View DVD, and Brigita for the Bruce Campbell Gift Package Extraordinaire. You guys rock.

I was reading an article about the congressional trial challenging the Children’s Internet Protection Act when I came across the following statement:

CIPA, signed into law in 2000 by President Bill Clinton, was the third attempt by Congress to restrict access to the Internet and its estimated 11 million World Wide Web sites, about 1 percent of which experts say contain some sort of sexually explicit material.

One percent??? Does that sound low to anyone else? I mean, sure, if you’re talking hard-core porn images, but what about erotic fanfiction, smutty personal journals, and chatrooms? Don’t get me wrong; I’m not arguing in support of the CIPA. I think it’s idiotic. I’m just pointing out that whoever wrote this article hasn’t done any research since 1997. Google‘s indexed over two billion pages already! Very sloppy reporting…

Dreamlog: This waas the ultimate nerd dream. I dreamed that somehow Rodd and I were at the LucasFilm offices during pre-production for Star Wars. We got to see all the concepts as they were being developed. I remember a guy coming in and telling us that they’d just finalized the design for Darth Vader. Some of the other characters looked totally wrong though (C-3PO had really long legs, for instance). I had the brilliant idea that we could just tell these guys what the movie was supposed to look like, and that would save them lots of time. But upon discussing this idea with Rodd, we realized that this would create a time travel paradox. Since we were in the past but with knowledge of the future, if we told George Lucas what C-3PO was supposed to look like, then that’s why he looked like what we thought he did in the first place. And that meant that the version we had seen in the future wasn’t necessarily the one that they would’ve created on their own had we not interfered. Get it? So then we had the brilliant idea that for each character, we’d make up a list of options, one of which would be the version we knew from the future, and the rest all wrong. And that would still save them time, but it would also allow them to retain a decision in the matter. Then I woke up. Like I said, it was a really nerdy dream.

Well, that project I mentioned I was working on is almost finished. It’s a revamp of the alumnae website for my college dorm. I had sudden inspiration on Friday and scrapped everything I had done previously. What you see there took me four days, start to finish. I’m pretty proud.

Well, I scored fifth place in Matt‘s pool, and, uh, somewhat worse in Kel’s. The cursed irony is, if I had stuck with my annual strategy of just going with Ebert’s picks, I would’ve won! And Bosnia or no, I will maintain that Amelie got robbed big-time. Big-time.

And by the way – is anyone else fainting with anticipation and excitement for Spider-Man? No? Just me? Okay then.

Jim Broadbent? Jim Broadbent??? There go my chances in both of my Oscar pools. I mean, hey, I like the guy and all (he was great in Bullets Over Broadway), but who in the hell predicted that?

Fifteen bloody kilometers. We did it. Just over two hours. Man, I’m tired. Thanks to everybody for their support, and especially to anon, brigita, Frances, and our parents for the donations. (If anybody else wants to contribute, there’s still time…) I took pictures along the way, but I didn’t want to lug my digital camera so we just used an instant one. I’ll post the pics as soon as I can get them developed.