Michael Chabon's rant about the imposition of predetermined boundaries and contours, of a formulary of play&mdash;and why Sid in <I>Toy Story</I> wasn't necessarily a Norman Bates in the making.

Headline of the year.

<I>The Independent</I> interviews Jared Diamond, author of <I>Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed</I>. The good news? We may not be doomed. The bad news: Yet, that is.

The link is to <I>The Guardian Unlimited</I>'s podcast of Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens debating blasphemy. You might think you don't have time to listen to a 78 minute argument? Well, think again&mdash;<I>this</I> you've got to hear.

On June 14, 2004, I made a silly, little mistake.

<B><I>The River in Reverse</B></I><BR>
Verve Forecast

As a follow-up to my last entry, I was sitting in my favorite watering hole over the weekend, listening to my favorite jukebox&#15118 tunes for 5 bucks&#150when a couple sitting at the bar next to me struck up a music conversation about what was playing: Elvis Costello, The Shins, King Sunny Ade, Lefty Frizzell, James Brown, Arctic Monkeys, you name it. At one point, talking about the cover art of an album I can’t remember now I said, being the absent-minded old man of the bunch, 'Have you ever seen that record?'