News You Can Bruise for 2002 August 23

I got spam that said A whale of a vacation and I thought "Yup!", thinking it was referring to the Leonard/Sumana Whale Watch, until I realized it was spam. That's playing dirty! You can't use whales in spam!

I'm leaving work early and heading down to Bakersfield to visit Susanna and my mother. A parting thought: "-stan" is the addendum of choice when making up silly names for countries, but there are only 6 actual "-stan" countries.

Random musical notes (ah ah ah, as Nandini says) from my drive down:

• Is it just me, or are Heart-Shaped Box and All Apologies the two worst songs on In Utero? Why on earth did they choose those as the singles? (I know, I know, because they sounded like singles.) Maybe they're not actually bad but I just got sick of hearing them on the radio throughout my high school years.
• What's up with Elvis Costello's songs? I can't put my finger on it. It's like they're all in some weird time signature, but they're not.