Yesterday I received an e-mail from a woman in Blackpool, England asking if I might be able to procure for her one of those plastic billiard ball toys that answer yes or no questions – I’m afraid to even say the actual name of the toy should the toy company decide to swing its legal cudgel my way. But the name is similar to my website name, so I understand her confusion. The power of the internet reveals itself in mysterious ways, if you ask me.

My earlier disparaging comments about “Big Brother” notwithstanding, I admit that I love “Survivor.” Now that a few weeks have gone by, we talk about the cast members like we do characters in a soap opera – a soap opera where they eat rats and race each other on obstacle courses. Will Richard’s alliance with Susan and Kelly continue? Will Gervase ever catch any fish?

The show is everything I hate about popular culture in the year 2000, and yet I can’t look away.

I have a rich inner life. It’s my outer life that needs an infusion of cash.

Well, it took just over two years for the dystopian “future” of “The Truman Show” to come true, as the clueless, craven crew of “Big Brother” traipsed into their booby-trapped home last night. I remember, way back in June 1998, looking at Truman’s “ring cam” and how his world was defined by the cameras that surrounded him and the people who watched his every move on television, and thinking, well, at least we’re not there yet.

We’re there. And we should take a long look around.

I guess “The Running Man” is next. Look out.

Just watched Clockwatchers again. What an amazing film. In addition to being a fascinating depiction of what can be the soul-draining process of “work,” people’s reactions to it are almost as interesting as the movie itself. There’s a lot more going on there than just an “Office Space”-style comedy about temping.

Watch it and see for yourself.

The web is a lot like a religion. It?s authored and administered by a few, enjoyed and used by many others. It uses arcane symbols and codes that are not understood by the vast majority of people involved in it. It can be tremendously beneficial, but if you don?t understand it, there?s a good chance that no one can convince you of its inherent value. Evangelists can only do so much ? there will always be people who don?t ?get it.?

World’s shortest joke:

Horse comes into a bar, and the bartender says, “Hey, why the long face?”

The latest public relations ploy among critics of the public school system is to refer to public schools as “government schools.” This is a very canny move among those who would dismantle the public schools, since while on the face of it the term is accurate (public schools are run by the government), it subtly flips the more positive term “public” to the much more negative “government.” “Government schools” makes me think of “government cheese,” not exactly a term Kraft will be using in its next multimillion-dollar ad campaign. Examples of this usage are all over the web.

The corollary term is also used in the above example – “free market schools” instead of “private schools.”

Words mean things.

“Well, time to get to work. If I don’t input those numbers…….it won’t make much difference.”

-Chandler Bing, Friends