[…] In my college days I lived on peanut-butter and honey sandwiches; I bought off-brand PB like "Jaf" or "Skappy," or, when money was really tight, a Soviet brand called "Pyotr Pan." My apartment was freezing during the winter, which meant that the honey had the consistency of granite, and when you plunged a knife into the peanut butter it stayed there like Excalibur in the stone. After a few minutes of stirring, I could get a dollop of honey or PB out of the jar, but it invariably shredded the bread. Ripped it right out. Left only the crust, like the frame of a house gutted by a typhoon. So every sandwich ended up as a wad of bread, honey and peanut butter -- edible, yes, but it lacked the stratified delight and rectangular precision I'd come to expect in my sandwich dining.

Pre-cut peanut butter solves this problem. I approve.

I also want pre-cut jelly slices with a small, grape-flavored gelatinous rim to keep the jelly in its place. I will, however, buy neither, because I'd walk into the kitchen one day and find Toddler™ feeding the last of 20 PB slices to the dog, and he would spend the rest of the day walking around doing that odd I'm-talking-but-no-words-are-coming-out thing dogs do when eating peanut butter.

Peanut butter: Nature's Mute Button.

Gregory Maguire - Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
Chris gave this to me for my birthday, and I'm finally getting around to reading it. Maguire is also the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, and this one is similar in tone (as you might expect). He's set the story in Holland, and added extraordinary depth to these fairy-tale characters. I've been quite taken with this one.

David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day
I loaned this one to Matt, and picked it up again when he returned it a few weeks ago. It's worth the price just for the essay on nouvelle cuisine, "Today's Special". (Excerpts available from Amazon.com)

Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
I can't say too much about this one, as I've only read the first few chapters. I plan on diving back into it as soon as I finish Ugly Stepsister, though, because I like the writing style and the story is interesting. I'll give more of a review later. Read this book if you love comic books, or even if you don't. (Excerpts available from Amazon.com)

J. R. R. Tolkien - The Two Towers
I borrowed this one from the library, in preparation for seeing The Lord of the Rings on the big screen. I thought the momentum that carried me through The Fellowship of the Ring would sustain me through Towers, but I was wrong. I renewed it multiple times (still not managing to make it through the last quarter) and gave up before the library fines became insurmountable. Sean loaned us an unabridged Books-on-CD version of both Fellowship and Towers, and we've been listening to those during the commute. They'll be nice for the annual pilgrimage to Ohio. (Excerpts available from Amazon.com)

John Brunner - Stand on Zanzibar
I started this one in November(?) sometime, but it's still sitting on the dresser. Lots of characters and story lines and threads, and it's aged reasonably well considering it was written in 1967. It's good airplane reading, as I find it easy to get immersed.

Even when I was 10 years old, Superman seemed silly to me. Supposedly, he was the only survivor of planet Krypton, but as the years went on he accumulated an extended Superfamily that rivaled the Saudi royal clan for sheer volume. Supermonkey, SuperSeaMonkey, SuperElephant, SuperUncle, SuperDustMite, all with the same silly costume and useless cape. And let us not forget Krypto the SuperDog, "Dog of Steel."

Really. Superman's father, Jor-El, stuck the family dog in a test rocket. Gee, thanks, Dad. The rocket didn't return because it was struck by a meteor and went zooming off into space -- and I'm sure Krypton parents used that line on kids all the time after the dog wandered into the road during rush hour. He's in space now, where he's happy. The capsule wandered for many years, traveled millions of miles, and landed in young Clark Kent's backyard.

You calculate the odds.

Steve Hart is absolutely on the money in his comments on "Star Wars" (cf. my own review of the first movie, originally called "Star Wares" and retitled "3.2.1 Rip Off" in the UK's New Statesman). Leigh Brackett was a good friend of mine, and her account of the job matches Hart's. My experience of working with Kershner about three years later also echoes Hart's view. Kershner was a nightmare to work with, and all his ideas were derivative. I eventually wound up giving him an unfilmable script in an effort to extricate myself from the project (cf. my memoir "Letters From Hollywood"). Leigh was a great, original screenwriter. She told Hawks that he might as well use her script for "Rio Bravo" and just change the names for "El Dorado," since he was asking her to write exactly the same script over again. He told her to shut up and take the money. I was delighted to read Hart's excellent piece and am glad there is at least one other voice saying very similar things to what I've been saying since 1977. I would add that Lucas and Spielberg between them hijacked adult science fiction and put it, as Tolkien put fantasy, straight back into being identified as a juvenile form. Literary science fiction has still not entirely recovered from their out-of-context borrowings.

-- Michael Moorcock

As you must have heard from many others by now, one main and direct "subculture" influence on Lucas' "Star Wars" saga was the work of visionary comic book creator Jack Kirby. In the early '70s, burned out from his tenure as main artist and idea man at Marvel Comics (where he co-created "Fantastic Four," "Thor," "The X-Men," "Silver Surfer" and many others), Kirby launched an ambitious science fiction epic that he called "The Fourth World." Without boring you with the details, "The Fourth World" contained many of the key ingredients of the "Star Wars" story in suspiciously similar terms. Kirby's bad guy was Darkseid (pronounced "dark side"), a powerful, brooding giant cloaked in black, master of the evil empire of Apokalyps; the hero, Orion, turns out to be Darkseid's son, raised on another planet by the benevolent Highfather and the Jedi-like "New Gods." There's even a mystical field of energy that binds everything together, called "the Source" by Kirby and "the Force" by Lucas.

Comic fans have debated for years whether "Star Wars" was a direct ripoff of "The Fourth World," or if they were both based on similar sources in pulp SF. Lucas has, I believe, admitted he was familiar with Kirby's epic. That's not hard to believe, since it was pretty big news in the comics/SF world around 1971-2. Anyway, in an article that mentions Leigh Brackett and E.E. "Doc" Smith, it would not have been out of place to give props to Kirby as well.

-- Rob Salkowitz

Another "Star Wars" movie, "Episode Two: Attack of the Clones," is about to hit the cineplexes. As with all cosmological phenomena, certain strange and even frightening things are likely to happen as the event horizon draws near.

Hardcore fans will prepare for opening night by polishing their toy light sabers and getting their Darth Vader costumes taken out an inch or so. Fast-food joints and toy stores will fill up with merchandise bearing the faces of alien creatures. And some gullible middlebrow -- most likely Bill Moyers -- will once again recite the pseudo-religious doctrine that attributes the phenomenal success of the series to producer-director George Lucas' skill at tapping underground streams of ancient legends, using Joseph Campbell's work in comparative mythology as his dowsing rod.

Lucas himself was mum about any Campbell influence when the original Star Wars opened -- "The word for this movie is fun," he told Time in 1977 -- but he began name-dropping the retired Sarah Lawrence academic (who died in 1987) as the movie became a pop culture milestone. Feature writers took him at his word, unwilling to believe that a mere science-fiction flick could be so popular unless some deeper meaning was at work. Campbell, happy to have his work associated with the most successful film series of all time, returned the favor by praising Lucas' use of mythological motifs, though he had trouble keeping straight exactly which motifs were being used. The relationship built until the men have become as closely linked in the public mind as Chang and Eng.

In keeping with Carmack's commitment to the principle that the source code for software programs should be made available to the general public, the code for "Doom" was released in late 1997. (Unix guru Eric S. Raymond even cites the game in his influential essay "The Magic Cauldron" as a case study proving the power of open source.)

From then on, modders had full access to "Doom's" innards, enabling them to grow even more ambitious with their efforts. The open-source tradition associated with id was a boon to mod development, says Iikka Keranen, a Finnish modder who now designs levels for Valve. "This way," he says, "mod makers aren't limited to one set of tools but can constantly improve them, [to] add new features or fix bugs." From "Doom" on, id would release the source to all its games. […]

By this time, however, the limitations of the "Doom" engine were becoming evident to modders. They'd find liberation in id's "Quake" (1996). The new franchise not only added a surreal, medieval edge to the FPS genre but also gave gamers a new sense of perspective.

"'Quake' was like breathing air for the first time," says independent developer Rich Carlson, "albeit the air of a dark, musty, demon-infested crypt ... The ability to build a level, or a model, in a truly three-dimensional way was very liberating."

Virgo: (Aug. 23 - Sept. 22)
When they announce the pregnancy of the Washington Zoo's panda next week, just sit back and smile knowingly.

Libra: (Sept. 23 - Oct. 23)
Your first impression will be that you were so drunk you married the bearded lady, but moments later, you'll realize you made a mistake about the gender.

Aquarius: (Jan. 20 - Feb. 18)
You've joked about being a snacking machine, but you had no idea that you were specifically constructed by the Nabisco Corporation for its own dark product-consumption purposes.

Kenyan runners reasserted their dominance of distance running today in the 106th Boston Marathon. Kenyan Margaret Okayo set a women's course record of 2:20:43 to win the women's race, while Kenyan Rodgers Rop fended off fellow Kenyan Christopher Cheboiboch at the finish line to win the men's race in 2:09:02. In the wheelchair races, defending champion Ernst Van Dyk won the men's race and Edith Hunkeler won the women's.

Bill Biggart. He lost his life doing his job 9/11, shooting to the end. Killed in the second collapse, when his body was dug out of the rubble four days later, so were his cameras, and his last 300 images were revealed.

Here's your Pulitzer winning photo. Is it the "best" taken that day? I don't know, to my knowledge it's the only photo of the Marriot between tower collapses. But more importantly, it's Bill Biggart's last.

And he should get the honor for it.

My DVD collection bears the scars of late-night one-click impulse sessions. (Tron. Say no more.) And it's running up against the collection of Simpsons figurines, which is vast but hardly comprehensive. I'm glad I have Hans Moleman, but I don't need Herb Powell. Dr. Nick? Of course. Moe? Of course. Pinpal Moe? No. Worker and Parasite? Please! I'm begging them, make Worker and Parasite figurines.

During the weeks after 9/11, when we all expected Smallpox or some other merry disaster to roll across the land, I used to sit downstairs watching the news, and wondering if I'd have to pack everyone in the car and flee for Fargo - and these figurines would just sit on the shelf staring sightlessly into the dark.

Trust is hard to win and easy to squander. Though Microsoft remains the software industry's 800-pound gorilla, it cannot achieve its goals alone. And on several different fronts today, Microsoft has lost valuable credibility. The collapse of Hailstorm suggests the toll five years of antitrust conflict have taken on Microsoft's ability to work with other companies; too many potential partners simply distrust the intentions of Gates, Ballmer and company. Meanwhile, the Gates-driven push for "trustworthy computing" indicates just how furious Microsoft's corporate clients became over the past year as they watched important business systems brought to their knees because Microsoft's code was insufficiently mischief-proof.

The question now is, can Microsoft effectively tighten up its products -- and win back corporate America's trust -- by throwing enough "man-years" at security reviews? To the folks at Microsoft, the answer is, of course! They feel they have the smartest gang of coders in the world, and if they put their heads to it, they can do anything. Their problem, according to this thinking, was just that they'd been too busy serving up exciting new features to their customers -- too focused on innovation -- to worry about security. Now that they're properly worried, they'll do the job right.

Edgemere Diner to change hands -- again

[On March 30th, the] Worcester Telegram & Gazette announced that the town of Shrewsbury has accepted the bid of Barbara Dillon Sundeen to assume operation of the Edgemere Diner . Sundeen's bid was only $13/month higher than Stephan Chios's, who has operated the near-pristine Fodero diner for the past four years.

Though we wish Ms. Sundeen good luck with this new endeavor, we strongly feel that the town's policy of offering these highly limited leases endangers the viability of a rare national treasure. As such, we consider this policy dumb-headed and irresponsible. […]

The new printer was jammed, again.

Richard M. Stallman, a staff software programmer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab), discovered the malfunction the hard way. An hour after sending off a 50-page file to the office laser printer, Stallman, 27, broke off a productive work session to retrieve his documents. Upon arrival, he found only four pages in the printer's tray. To make matters even more frustrating, the four pages belonged to another user, meaning that Stallman's print job and the unfinished portion of somebody else's print job were still trapped somewhere within the electrical plumbing of the lab's computer network.

Waiting for machines is an occupational hazard when you're a software programmer, so Stallman took his frustration with a grain of salt. Still, the difference between waiting for a machine and waiting on a machine is a sizable one. It wasn't the first time he'd been forced to stand over the printer, watching pages print out one by one. As a person who spent the bulk of his days and nights improving the efficiency of machines and the software programs that controlled them, Stallman felt a natural urge to open up the machine, look at the guts, and seek out the root of the problem.

Aries: (March 21-April 19)
You will soon be judged by a jury of your peers, although finding 12 equally drunk bus drivers will not be easy.

Sagittarius: (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)
Your theory regarding government mind-control devices is right, except for the part about the tinfoil helmets being an effective way to stop them.

Pisces: (Feb. 19-March 20)
You establish a destructive pattern of behavior this week when you discover how much fun it is to destroy things.

My New York father called me (from Florida, of course) on the day of the first Seder to remind me that I'd better do something quick. "The whole purpose of this day is to remember slavery and our deliverance and the law and people becoming a people and the promise of return to our Holy Land, and you couldn't even remember the date?"

I won't even tell you what my mother said.

It was too late to get myself invited anywhere, and my Jewish friends were all out of town being good Jews with their families, so with less than eight hours before sundown, I posted an ad on the Craigslist Missed Connections page (the kind of place where urban kids usually go to reconnect with that cute guy they saw checking out the cold cuts at Safeway) begging for help…

60. Washing Off the Stench of Death, Part 1: Philip Morris (MO) proposes changing its name to Altria, presumably to escape the taint of its tobacco-producing past. It does not, however, stop producing tobacco, which does not stop causing cancer.

61. Washing Off the Stench of Death, Part 2: Making matters even more awkward, the name Altria turns out to be already taken by Altria Healthcare, a firm based in Birmingham, Ala., that is not especially pleased to be linked to a noted producer of poor health.

62. Proudly Announcing the New, Slightly Less Pungent Stench of Death: And in other tobacco news, the Advance and Omni brands of cigarettes unveil new slogans: "All of the taste… Less of the toxins" and "Reduced carcinogens. Premium taste," respectively.

63. Bottling the Stench of Death and Calling It Perfume: Philip Morris also attempts to counter antismoking measures in the Czech Republic by commissioning an economic analysis of the "indirect positive effects" of early deaths -- savings on health care, pensions, welfare, and housing for the elderly. The company later apologizes.

64. Fox News 3, CNN 2: During his sojourn in Afghanistan, Geraldo Rivera decries the deplorable living conditions in the town of Taloqan. Standing in front of a crowd of barefoot children, Rivera looks solemnly into the camera and states, "Look at the children. They haven't seen television or anything their whole lives."

65. Eleven years after McDonald's announces that it has started cooking its fries in "100 percent vegetable oil" -- and one month after a Seattle lawyer files suit on behalf of Hindus and vegetarians who interpreted that to mean that the fries are meat-free -- the fast-food chain concedes that the "natural flavoring" in its fries is, in fact, beef fat.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

-- Mark Twain(?)

It looks like the rumpus room for a Bond Villain, frankly - all that severe modern design, remorseless ceiling lighting and modern furniture.