It pains me to hear this. Friends don't let friends drink lite beer. This isn't beer. It's a hologram of beer. It's water in a beer costume. It's the anti-beer. It should be called Reeb. Yes, Reeb. Reeb Rellim, Reeb Srooc, Reeb Nobbir Eulb Tsbap.

Those are beer names backward, but I think I just summoned up a Sumerian devil. Hold on, let me call security -- press 1 if you're being assaulted, press 2 to create a diversion while you steal some office supplies -- ah. Press 3 for ancient hellspawn. There.

But the real star is that high priest of fight choreography, Yuen Wo-Ping, who literally launched Jackie Chan and Jet Li. He gave "The Matrix" its moves, and now he serves up a martial arts "Matrix." His characters all but eat their surrounding space, in three dimensions, majestically. To them, walls and roofs and treetops are the merest of speed bumps, to be hurdled with insolent ease. Yet what's most impressive about Chow's Li is that he moves with the centered, unhurried grace of a master, making his combat look effortless as well as airborne…"

A treat tonight: Battlefield Earth! In Widescreen Craparama! Yes, it's an old-style clambake at Lileks Manor tonight, as I jack myself up with antihistamines and settle back for some big-budget career-ending swill.

Actually, I'm so light-headed from blowing my nose every minute I'll probably enjoy it.

Okay, I admit to an initial reaction of "awww" on the sight of a miniature pony (in sneakers, no less) in lieu of guidedog. As long as animal cruelty is not involved, what an amazing development. And, yes, they are cute as all get out.

…The Holy Land Experience, a Christian theme park, is unlike anything Orlando has ever seen. When it opens February 5, visitors will be able to enter a replica of Jesus' tomb, climb the stairs of a faux Herod's Temple and travel down a re-creation of the Via Dolorosa, the street that Jesus walked before he was crucified.

bluestocking \BLOO-stock-ing\ (noun)
: a woman having intellectual or literary interests

Times have changed since English critic William Hazlitt wrote in 1822, "I have an utter aversion to bluestockings. I do not care a fig for any woman that knows even what 'an author' means."

In mid-18th century England a group of ladies decided to replace evenings of card playing and idle chatter with "conversation parties," inviting illustrious men of letters to discuss literary and intellectual topics with them. One regular guest was scholar-botanist Benjamin Stillingfleet. His hostesses willingly overlooked his cheap blue worsted stockings (a type disdained by the elite) in order to have the benefit of his lively conversation. Those who considered it inappropriate for women to aspire to learning derisively called the group the "Blue Stocking Society." The women who were the original bluestockings rose above the attempted put-down and adopted the epithet as a name for members of their society.

Guests quietly enter private rooms with whirlpool baths mixed precisely with one-eighth cup of Hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder and a one-third cup of instant nonfat dry milk. Down the hall, another guest is coated in rich dark mud mixed with cocoa essence in a room with burning chocolate-scented candles…

The chocolate treatments attract the most attention, however. For $265, visitors can indulge in the three-hour Chocolate Escape -- a Whipped Cocoa Bath, Cocoa Butter Scrub, Chocolate Fondue Wrap and a choice of massage or facial. A single 25-minute cocoa bath, the most requested item, costs $45.

Pastry Chef Christophe Feyt has unveiled a new Chocolate Bar menu that showcases this Master Pastry Chef's signature style, characterized as geometric, realistic, complex and elegant. Among the menu items are: dark rum banana dacquois; "exotic sensation" (a combination of bittersweet chocolate mousse and mango mousse); "le Roussillon" (a milk chocolate cake infused with apricots); chocolate crème caramel; white chocolate strawberry cheesecake; chocolate crepes; and the hotel's trademark dessert, chocolate croissant pudding.

Premiering as a recurring character on the USA Network hit show, The Huntress, Michael plays Detective Mark Farrell. This is USA's top-rated original series, starring Annette O'Toole, based on the true story of a mother and daughter pair of bounty hunters.

If only Tron had been a silent film, offered with no subtitles, without the real-world opening scenes, it would be regarded as a masterpiece of stark surreal beauty. I'm serious. I watched it with the sound way down (didn't want to wake Gnat, who'd dozed off in my lap) and the lights low. It's quite beautiful. I also wonder if David Warner was the best film villain of his time (late 70s - mid 80s), since no one else captures his particular blend of weary, self-aware, malevolence. Time After Time; Time Bandits; Tron; he was literate evil incarnate.

2. William Shatner is a _____________ to me.
a. Role Model
b. Father figure
c. Paunchy: has been recovering poorly from a series of ill advised cosmetic surgeries
d. That question is so totally inadequate it just shows how little you understand Him.

I wouldn't have thought about the show at all, except that TiVo kindly recorded about nine hours of BSG for me on Christmas Eve. (Sounds like flavor-enhancing chemical, or a cow hormome, or a Quake weapon: BSG.) I watched some shows while wrapping presents,and pronounced it to be Krep! Unalloyed drivel! Derivative hackneyed shitework - with a few diadems studded in the steaming heap of offal, sure, but few indeed. I understand that some people found this show as children, and were wide-eyed in amazement at its niftyness. Had I grown up with these Trumblesque ships and shiny scary vocoder-voiced robots, I'd have a soft spot for it in my heart, too. But I would not, as an adult, be defending it as a high point of human civilization. It STINKS. I watched a large chunk of a two-parter, where our heroes - Richard Hatch, who looked like every stoner dude I knew in college, and Whatsisname who played, God help us, Starbuck (the Han Solo clone) - had to blow up the guns of Navarone, or the show's dramatic equivalent. This planet, you see, had one big gun which they used to defend themselves. Did the fleet wait until the gun was carried out of the line of sight by celestial mechanics, then waltz across the front lawn at their leisure? Of course not. They plowed through, slowly, getting their finite supply of ships picked off while Lorne Greene frowned in his classic Massively Frowning fashion…

Geeks were enthralled earlier this year when they discovered Anne Marie, a Slashdot-reading, Thoreau-loving genuine hot mama who configured her own Linux servers and charged $5,800 a day for her company. So when a poster named "Anne Marie" began making hay in the Slashdot forums and bulletin boards at Kuro5hin, many assumed that the "educated escort," as she calls herself, was among them. And many were surprised when this "Anne Marie" flung into the fray, posting controversial comments on the boards.

But the "real" Anne Marie is finally speaking up (we think). In an open letter posted Monday at Kuro5hin, Anne Marie writes that she and the earlier poster are not the same; and she's not pleased about the mix-up. "Anyone can use any name s/he pleases," she writes, "but as the frequency of Anne Marie's posts increased so did the e-mails that I received from angry slashdotters convinced I was her." Peeved Slashdotters were derailing her business, she says, by sending prank e-mails and pretending to be real customers.

Is it identity theft? Or simply a case of sheer coincidence? Anne Marie, after all, isn't an unusual name; nor is this kind of moniker mix-up a freak occurence, as the Net only offers so many log-in names. But just think: a Linux-loving literary escort being imitated online by an anonymous feminist geek? It's an only-on-the-Net kind of notion. -- Janelle Brown [3:45 p.m. PST, Jan. 8, 2001]

"[…]What is it about people who are drawn to one political extreme and then flip to the other? Chavez started out as a member of the Young People's Socialist League and now is on the conservative extreme of the Republican Party. You notice that many of the neo-conservatives have similar backgrounds -- there seems to be some personality affinity for true believership.[…]

Chavez, an anti-feminist who has been married for 34 years, does not call herself Mrs. Gertsen. She is, however, opposed to all affirmative action programs, is a vociferous opponent of anti-discrimination measures and has urged the reversal of several civil rights policies.

But of course the reason she was named to the Cabinet is precisely because her father was New Mexico Spanish. This is why Hispanics call her "the Latina Clarence Thomas," meaning someone who has benefited from affirmative action but is opposed to it.

If she were just a newspaper columnist, that wouldn't make much difference (columnists can advocate any fool notion and often do), but the labor secretary administers affirmative action programs for all federal contractors -- about 20 million workers.

Chavez has also campaigned against the minimum wage, with that chipper denial of the facts on this issue that marks the "movement conservative" -- all of whom hold that increasing the minimum wage leads inevitably to inflation, despite the obvious fact that it doesn't…"

"The plot begins simply enough. Charlie's Angels are hired to rescue a kidnapped engineer from a mean old mega-powerful businessman. Naturally, it becomes a great deal more complicated than that, but nowhere along the convoluted way, do the filmmakers lose sight of what's important. Pretty women in sexy outfits kicking ass.

The pretty women in sexy outfits kicking ass are Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu. The play, Dylan, Alex and Natalie, though I'm not exactly sure which is which, nor does it matter. Each of them has moments of goofy brilliance, each of them performs incredible stunts, each of them kicks ass.

The villains also kick some serious ass. Especially eternally creepy freak Crispin Glover, who has a number of really cool fight sequences with the ladies, and manages to remind absolutely nobody of George McFly.…"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Palm Pilot application No. 413: sending it for coffee.

Ambitious owners of the personal organizer can now move beyond such passe uses such as making phone calls, ordering movie tickets, or snapping photos. Their Palm can now be turned into a robot.

With a $300 kit available over the Web, everyday people can turn their Palm Pilots into the brains of a small, six-sided robot with three red wheels, equipped with infrared sensors and rechargeable batteries.

The device, developed at Carnegie Mellon University and licensed to a Boulder, Colo.-based robotics company called Acroname, has few, if any, practical uses today. But it could help inspire a new passion for robotics among the general public, its seller said.

"I think this is primarily a teaching and instructional tool," said Steve Richards, the founder of Acroname. "It's a way to get involved in robotics with a very accessible tool."

He has already sold a few hundred of the robots, and expects to sell more than 1,000 this year.

Research universities and government laboratories have long been experimenting with robots for defense applications, such as disarming mines, attacking enemies on the battlefield, and taking pictures of enemy terrain.

But by allowing millions of individuals with personal organizers to experiment with a robot in their own homes, robots could find more uses in people's daily lives. Putting together the $299 robot, officially named the Palm Pilot Robot Kit, requires only a screwdriver. Once it's built, the Palm is slipped in and the robot is ready to go.

A "barebones" kit is available for $40 less, but requires such actions as gluing connectors and wiring a cable.

The robot is compatible with most versions of the Palm, made by Palm Inc. except the Palm V. A kit for the Handspring Visor from Handspring Inc. is in the works.

Once created, users can download special software for the Palm that controls the robot's movement. With one program, the robot moves in the same direction as the user writes on the Palm's screen.

Acroname also sells other robot products including a $99 Lego "discovery" kit and a $580 "rug warrior" robot.