If you haven’t been reading The Lavender Kitchen regularly, you’re missing out. Melissa’s post on “how I became an Atheist” is worth the price of admission alone. But don’t stop there. Good stuff, Maynard.

An anchor on MSNBC was interviewing a People Magazine reporter the other day about Mariah Carey’s breakdown or whatever it was she had recently. This in itself is a sort of vortex of pop culture. But what was interesting about it was after listening to the People reporter talk about Mariah’s tough touring schedule, how her latest album didn’t do as well as expected, and her problems with Latin heartthrob boyfriend Luis Miguel, the anchor said something to the effect of:

There are a lot of people out there listening to us who work very hard every day for minimum wage, and I think they’re going to find it pretty amazing that we’re sitting here talking about how Mariah Carey has problems because she’s too famous, too beautiful and too rich.

Hear hear. It was refreshing to hear someone say the obvious in connection to celebrity “reporting.” Now, if they start saying these sorts of things on Entertainment Tonight, maybe there’s hope for the civilization yet.

Since I’m a little low on inspiration for blog posts this morning, I thought I would do an experiment. I’m working on a new site design for The Biodiversity Project, a non-profit here in Madison. The link is to their current site, which apparently was put together using FrontPage and FrontPage clip art (ugh). This morning, after days of coming up with stuff I didn’t like, I finally hit on a design that I like a lot.

So since I’m so numb after the “damned with faint praise” Blog You! review, I thought I would give you, my esteemed readers, a chance to critique the proposed design. Do your worst.

Ever just get tired of your own company? Look in the mirror, it’s you. Wake up, it’s you again. You just can’t get away from you. As they say, wherever you go, there you are. It can get tiresome sometimes.

Stolen from Plastic, this site should send a shiver of horror through all my fellow Coca-Cola addicts, especially the ones (like me) who are trying to kick the habit. In a burst of head-exploding PR “genius,” they are calling this H2NO. Other pages further detail their sinister plan to convert all citizens, like so many pod people, into soda-swilling minions. Not that it’ll take much.

UPDATE: Coke took the offending pages down sometime last night, so these links don’t work. Which is a shame, because they were funny and horrifying in equal measure.

Well, without my realizing it, words mean things was reviewed by the guys at Blog You! during the recent Blog-a-Thon. (If you want to see the reviews, search for “words mean things” on this very long page.) I was reviewed at 4:30 a.m., which is information you can take or leave. Tom gave me two Sutherlands, and Ed gave me 2.5.

Quotes:
ED: “Words Mean Things is a simple blog from a simple man. And I mean that in the best of all possible ways.”
also ED: “Blust rolls off the tip of your tongue, conjuring up a brand of chewing gum.”
TOM: “Weblogger Adam James Blust is from 1965. One can only wonder how he will percieve today’s culture from the time from which he came.”
ED again: “There is nothing that particularly grabs me, but there is nothing that particularly offends me.”

All in all, a tepid reception from the Blog You! guys. But at least it’s not a savage beating.

You sort of like me! You really sort of like me!

Taking my cue from Mike, a sign I saw recently outside a local Arby’s:

OUR MOZZ STICKS ARE BETTER

Now, first, I guess I have to allow them to print “MOZZ” to represent mozzarella. But then the trouble begins. Better than what? A poke in the eye with a sharp stick? A glass of hot tar? And if their meaning is “better than other fast food mozzarella sticks,” then, way to raise the bar! Even worse if they mean “better than they were before,” because you begin to think, how bad were they then? Words mean things.

So that we’re-not-a-couple couple, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, are trying to start a web multimedia company, LivePlanet. They want to do things like the planned reality series “The Runner,” where people compete on “missions” while “agents” try to “capture” them, partially through hints traded on the internet. Woo hoo. Way to reinvent entertainment. That’s just what we need, guys, another “new” type of reality show. Rats, haunted houses, bikinis, voyeurism, boot camp, fake murders, and now this. Ugh.

As Dave Winer and anyone who writes or reads weblogs knows, the future of both entertainment and the internet is text. It’s the words, stupid. Words don’t need plug-ins, or T1 lines, or 3-D graphics cards. And words can take us places that nothing else can. Let’s show’em what we can do.

Again, it’s so hot my head is spinning. You know that feeling when you’re just hot and irritable and bored and everyone around you just annoys the hell out of you? Welcome to my world. I just want to find a nice ice cave and settle in for the summer.

Who would you cast as you in the movie based on your life? When I was in high school, and Ordinary People was coming out (yes, that’s how old I am), I thought Timothy Hutton would be a good choice. Now, I get a lot of Philip Seymour Hoffman suggestions from people. Ah, how the mighty have fallen. I sometimes also think that George Clooney and Julianna Margulies would be good to play my parents. I know, you’re thinking, how could Clooney and Margulies spawn Hoffman? It’s just one of those mysteries. Go with it.