furtive explorations

I can't actually explain how much his stuff meant to me. I can, like many goofy people my age, quote entire passages of it. We are so used to it as cannon that we quote it as parables, using short quotes from relevant bits to refer to entire human conditions and our thoughts on those matters. The world is now a slightly less happy place, even for those of us who have digital watches...

Digital Village, H2G2 (at bbc), Yahoo News 1, Yahoo News 2, BBC News.

Technology sucks, we just flipped over to Exchange 2000 at work and now I can't IMAP my mail. =(

Only one witness, Clifford Stone, a retired Army sergeant, professed to having directly seen an alien. He'd seen bodies at the site of crashed alien saucers; some aliens were still alive. Asked if he could describe their appearance, he said, "I could, but it would probably take a whole lot of time." There are 57 documented alien species, he said, including three types of grays. Many look just like human beings, he said. Some can touch an object in a dark room and tell its color, he said. *sigh* Look Ma! Restraint! I'm not commenting on this!

More importantly, you'll read bits like this:

Young Amish men and women are drinking, then getting into buggies to drive home. Sometimes, the teens pass out leaving their horses to find the way home. So, unless the horse is drunk I guess it isn't drunk driving?

Amish youth - those between the age of 16 and their early 20s - are not yet members of the church. That "loophole" frees them to pursue worldly activities that normally would be off-limits. Thus setting the stage for some of the most incredible binge drinking ever!

Hear riveting police reports like: "Buggy all over the road ... headed toward [State Rt.] 168 1 mph."

Deputy Dhayer remembers an incident last year when a drunken Amish man resisted arrest, fighting officers on a sheet of ice. "After that fight, we lost tolerance," says Deputy Dhayer. "Now if they’re drunk, they go to jail." And all we get on FOX are cars crashing into each other? Where are the drunken Amish/Police fights on ice? Hello? FOX producers? Your market is calling!

And alcohol isn’t the only fling some Amish youth have with the modern world. Some smoke, cut their hair, and wear English clothes. Some experiment with drugs. They attend sporting events, concerts, and movies, and visit amusement parks. And young men deck out their buggies with elaborate stereo systems, cranking up the volume as they "cruise" the countryside on Sunday afternoons. Poor horses, having to haul around batteries and speakers and stacks of crappy pop music. Where is PeTA in all this? Won't somebody save the poor horses?

The buggy’s interior is upholstered in royal blue velour. A triangular swatch of the same material is attached to the dash. Silver key chains with colorful emblems - Guns and Roses, Cleveland Browns, and a miniature baseball bat - hang from battery-operated light switches.

Five stereo speakers - including a 12-inch sub-woofer - line the inside of the covered buggy.

On the seat is a selection of old cassette tapes: "The Outfield," "Vixen," and "Hooters."

"This thing will rock, I’m telling you," one of the boys says. "We were pretty loud at one point. Was that what the call was for?" Awww Yeeeeaaaaah. We gonna rock the barn tonite!

Officers can only enter a party on private property for a noise complaint or if there is good reason to believe minors are drinking. And police say it is more difficult to find a reason to stop a horse-drawn buggy than a motor vehicle. "Boy, do you have any idea how fast you got that horse up to?"

An Amish teenager with a mop of curly dark hair stares out the window of the police car with large, frightened eyes. Rain is falling in torrents and the car’s flashing lights beat an eerie, staccato pattern across his abandoned buggy. You start out a book like that, you'd sell a million of them. WTF is this buried near the end of the article?

If mankind builds a "skyhook" in the next century, the most likely location is the moon. A cheap way to get high-mass material off the moon means cheap mining and transport of raw or semi-processed ores. And a lot fewer people get killed when a cable longer than the earth is round comes crashing down on the relatively empty moon.

Also, head on over to Blue Canary and dig through the archives. Just starting but showing promise. And speaking of just starting etc, etc check in on Pffft and re-read it from the start. Enough of the story is in now to get an idea where they are heading and the art is starting to "congeal" a bit into a solid style. They have the comic set up in multiple page chunks so hitting "newest" still requires you to move forward a couple of times with "next" once you get there. Multiple scrumptious pages! Also, the ship name "V4-T1C-AN" simply R0><0RZ!

BTW, I'm sorry to report that Sheepnet.com and Sheepnet.org are both taken. Just about every other variation is still available if you'd like. Check out the .org one... really...

"If they eventually get the lead out of everything and all the other hazards out of everything, this could be an important step," said Steven Taylor of the advocacy group Military Toxics Project based in Lewiston, Me. There is a getting the lead out joke there but I can't find it...

You can't find it because the real joke is right there in black and white (er, well, blue and black on this page): "If they eventually get ... all the other hazards out of everything, this could be an important step...." The guy is talking about the military! The only way to get all the "hazards" out of the military is to disband it - which may very well be what he truly wants.