News You Can Bruise for 2002 May 7

Seth David Schoen presents Heliogabalus: The Time-Constrained Neil Gaiman Comic. Covers much the same ground as the Life I linked to yesterday, only in comic book format, with odd digressions that connect smoothly back to the narrative (actually, now that I think about it, the Life has odd digressions that don't connect smoothly back to the narrative, thanks to the interpolations of later scribes), and lettered so small you can barely read it (or maybe that's just my monitor).

That same page says that American Gods is now out in paperback. "If you've avoided American Gods because of the high price of hardcovers, grab yourself the paperback now." Why, that's exactly why I was avoiding American Gods! I always feel bad buying books in hardcover. I bought The Years of Rice and Salt in hardcover; I used my gift certificate but I still feel bad about it.

Hm, "Not buying some information you are interested in, in favor of waiting for it to be available in a lower-cost medium" sounds like a New Copyright Crime. After all, it's a slippery slope towards wanting to download it off the Internet for free.

PS: Page 13 of the comic has a cool drawing of a crocodile.

Something something happened that I don't know about; I'm getting a zillion (1 metric zillion == 14) search requests for "song from the big sombrero", "big sombrero song", and variants. They could be referring to this movie, but I don't know why. It started suddenly at 3:30 in the morning and continues unabated.

From the Land Of The Philosophical Thought Experiments (formerly the United Kingdom, soon to be SethAndLeonardSitcomistan) comes Battleground God, the online quiz that probes your position vis-a-vis theism for inconsistencies (Sumana, who pointed me to it, humorously misremembered the title as "Battlefield God"). I love these philosophers.co.uk quizzes (a previous one) because they allow me to wallow in the internal consistency of my various philosophical stances. One day I'll get my comeuppance, I know. And when that happens, I'll... have to modify some of my philosophical stances.

This just might be the web diary of Pete Peterson II.

From a discussion between Kevin and I about spam we've both received: "We'll never be safe so long as the earth and sun conspire to bring us SPRING, the unholy season of hellish violence and lust!"

My mother, a bit defensively, writes:

You have TOO been to the exploratorium. Probably several times. Your Uncle Leonard and I took you one specific time that I remember. I think Robert was with us too. Then we went at least one time with Dad.

I say 'a bit defensively' since, although I don't remember ever going to the Exploratorium before, I certainly never claimed that I hadn't been before.

Seth pointed out a bug in NewsBruiser's handling of leap years. I have no real excuse, but I can try to make up a funny fake excuse: I was too cheap to pay for isitleapyearornot.com's Isitleapyearornot Premium service.

False Advertising: A Case Study (second in a series)

100% Yarn Dyed Cotton: wrapper of ultra-cheap boxer shorts

65% Polyester, 35% Cotton: tag of ultra-cheap boxer shorts

Sugar may not be the best placebo here.