Is this anyone else's favorite Jeopardy! category? Sure, Potent Potables is stiff (ha!) competition, and...er, wait, Rhyme Time is my favorite category!

A: An over-eater of sheep-meat.
Q: What is a mutton glutton?

A: He takes minutes at the pow-wow.
Q: What is the tribe scribe?

Yeah, you can't beat that shit. Whatever occult/magick/bloodpact action the writers are using to interface with the spirit of Ogden Nash is working - keep it up, guys! Can't you just see Nash and Ted Geisel in the afterlife, throwing down in freestyle rap battles? Sorry for the lack of updates. Maybe I should choose an arbitrary entry title every day I have nothing else to say and just rap on it for a while. After all, I'm the Nadia Comaneci of rambling.

Anyway, a few things of note:

Thing of Note 1: If you weren't already aware, This American Life is radio at its finest. Only recently did I discover that Dan Savage (of Savage Love fame) did a piece for the show on Republican Conventions in 1996. To hear it, go to the TAL site, choose "All Episodes", scroll down to 1996 and choose "Republican Convention" (8/16), click the RealAudio icon (yes, this is one of the few times when having RealPlayer is worthwhile - choose the "Download the Free RealOne Player" link on the right rather than being fooled into downloading the non-free product!), once the stream is up and running, skip to the 15 minute mark. That's about where the good times start. Simultaneously hilarious and horrifying.

Thing of Note 2: These ads scare the hell of out me.


Would you eat anything that psychotic bear was shilling for? I think he's a distant cousin of Vibli, the Crack Rabbit from Vib Ribbon.

Thing of Note 3: Any time I'm in the vicinity of an arcade in Japan, I stop by to enjoy the insanity. The current craze seems to be card-collecting arcade games. That is, you purchase and trade physical cards, just as in Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering. When you want to play, you head to your local arcade, feed your selected cards to the machine, and whoop it up. Today I saw a huge crowd surrounding the recently-released The Key of Avalon. It looks insane. It's a damn good thing my Japanese still sucks, otherwise I'd spend a fortune on the game. Our local arcade has a soccer-based card-collecting game, and I'm sure there are other flavors as well. Expect a full arcade report at some point.

Thing of Note 4: Last night, I watched my first Australian Football League game with some Aussie pals. It's a fantastic sport. A steady stream of play, simple rules, just the right amount of scoring (no basketball-grade overkill or soccer-style one-goal affairs), and a healthy dose of mayhem as well. Alas, my friends' Sydney Swans were defeated by the vile Brisbane Lions in the semifinal. I'm guessing they won't be able to bear to watch the Swans-free Grand Final next week, so I'll have to wait until next year to see some more games.

Teacher Guy needs sleep! Now!

we live in a society full of rules. rules that must be enforced. why do you think i took you to all those police academy movies? i didn't hear anyone laughing.

Do they still have the dog-walking game with the treadmill?

Well, I was always impressed with the titles used on the Red Meat (http://www.redmeat.com/) comics. A number of my favorites are at http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/meatlocker/bugeyedearl.html