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I recently read through Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy: “The Golden Compass”, “The Subtle Knife”, and “The Amber Spyglass”. People seem to call them the “not-the-Harry-Potter” books, which is almost fair. Instead of a Tom Brown’s School Days with magic, the Dark Materials books are from another well-defined genre, in which the hero seeks…

The devil finds work for busy hands Kieran Downes is out with the flu today, and I’m covering for his work, in addition to my own — tweaking some airline emails, completing changes to a newspaper sitelet. So naturally, Jeremy and I had to find time to try out our new temporary tattoo paper. I…

Iggy Pop also demanded a whole head of broccoli My eBay auction for the “Terrorist-Proof Sleeping Bag” ended yesterday, adding $15.50 to my motorcycle fund (see the thermometer on the right.) The winning bidder had a “.co.uk” address. Some standard Google stalking revealed that the buyer is a producer for V Graham Norton, a saucy…

Nascent Project: Click on Che Guevara on the right. Do you know anything about where to get a used LCD projector? How about how large an FM transmitter you need to cover a 100-foot radius?

What’s left after booze, guns, and body parts? Me! I stayed up waaaay too late last night, writing an eBay auction page for the Remploy military-surplus “bag, casualty, chemical protective” that I bought as a Christmas present at Archie McPhee in the fall (but then couldn’t think of anyone to give it to.) I listed…

As you can see in the column to the right, I’m about 11% of the way to my goal of a 1970’s BMW Boxster. My resolution is to have something up on eBay constantly, so that I’ll slowly but surely PayPal my way to a new (old) bike. This week’s auction: a Terrorist-Proof sleeping bag!

The Secret Bhodisattvas of Consumer Production Ask any urban resident to sing the car alarm song, and they’ll all do the same thing: Bew-bew-bew-bew-bew-bew-bew-bew woop-woop-woop-woop-woop-woop-woop-woop doo-dee–doo-dee–doo-dee–doo-dee- wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo errt-errt-errt-errt-errt-errt-errt-errt (Chorus, repeat) I wonder who developed the sound chip, which seems to have been used by every car alarm manufacturer across every model line. It’ either a…

My uncle Laird is a hella good banjo player.

Cal-a-DON-yuh! What makes your big head so hard? I had a hacking cough on Thursday, which — ugh! — blossomed into the flu on Friday and over the weekend. I stayed home from work, hit the NyQuil bottle, et cetera. Kate shoveled snow, fetched cereal and replacement tissues, produced chicken noodle soup. Now, she’s on…

It’s the Quiet Car, not the Luddite Car The first car of each Amtrak train, these days, is set aside to be the “quiet car”: no cellphones, no loud talking, no electronic devices without headsets. It’s a great rule, mostly because the ethics of cellphone use aren’t very nuanced yet. For example, I personally feel…