I have never been to something so well organized in all my life. Wow!

I also got really crazy and had a corn dog and a bite of funnel cake. I felt like a nine-year old surrounded by diodes.

Oh, thank god, number 38. Thanks for saying that. As I scrolled through the comments, my horror just swelled -- I thought no one was going to name the phenomenon, and that we'd all just keep calling these women crazy.

I've experienced what was printed in the blotter, and it began when I left home for college at age 18. And that makes for, count 'em, eight solid years of constant night terrors. And until I heard about hypnogogia, I honestly thought I was being raped by Satan, just like Rosemary. (No one ever mentions that part, because it's awful and it's shameful and it's full of incredible guilt.)

Sleep paralysis is fairly common, and it isn't new. Sometimes the body falls asleep without politely waiting for the mind to cash out: for the somniac, the result is his being convinced that he is so totally conscious, but alas, unable to move his limbs or to speak. Terrifyingly, because his mind is half off and half on, and because his eyes may physically be open, paralysis can also involve visual and auditory hallucination -- they're usually otherworldly, just superimposed atop reality. The most salient quality -- this is the thing that pretty much defines most any sleep paralysis episode -- is the belief that a malicious entity is present or approaching, or that the attacker is, even more horrifically, sitting on your chest and pressing the air out of your lungs.

The idea of the incubus/succubus is totally derived from this phenomenon, and a lot of people actually end up wandering around churches asking for exorcisms, totally believing they're being possessed by Satan. Some people believe -- rightly, I think -- that claims of alien abduction or weird autopsies or whatever, can completely be attributed to the effects of a paralyzing episode. All of paralysis's bells and whistles seem so awesomely, terrifyingly real, it's damn near impossible to convince a sufferer that it was just a dream.

Case studies are always quick to draw a link between sleep paralysis and my very favorite neurological disorder, narcolepsy! It makes sense, though -- not only do the two frequently occur together, but they're also basically the same thing, insofar as the mind stays awake while the body falls asleep (see also crippling cataplexy!). Supposedly, frequent sleep paralysis bouts may signal that you're about to develop a full-blown panic disorder.

There's absolutely nothing more frightening than seemingly being unable to move or breathe, and if you don't know what's happening, you believe you're going crazy, or worse. I'm shocked at the number of jokes made at these women's expense. Frankly, I'm considering contacting the paper or whoever, because these women should not believe these events are abnormal or isolated.

Oh my crap, I keep refreshing this page to see more ASCII robots. (All of these are genius; congrats.)

I read nonstop this past month -- I took some time to stay with my elderly parents, and found myself reading in the early evenings, once they'd gone to bed.

But when I went to a bookstore to reload, almost everything I wanted to read was from the YA section. I felt a little strange about this, but I shrugged it off because I couldn't believe how long it had been since I'd read some Jerry Spinelli. All told, I read fifteen books or so.

Un Lun Dun and Hugo Cabret were fine, but the very best thing I read last month was Criss Cross. It won a Newbery Medal and is a brilliant work of literature that tens of librarians with Amazon accounts have faulted for its plot, in which "nothing happens!"

Re: dude above me - Yes, yes, yes! A former coworker lined his cubicle wall with said gashapon, and they are every bit as detailed and tiny and adorable as photos suggest. I would frequently drop by and ask him to remind me "which one's from Galaga, dude?" I think he wanted to strangle me.

You're just jealous of Wolverine.

What big claws he has! Did the Medicom Alien immediately remind everyone of a somatosensory homunculus?

P.S. More on roboPKD, via Boing Boing, three years ago. Again, it's the exposed computer brain that really gets me, even now.

The photos themselves are a little scratchy, as they were shot through a glass window. If you'd like to use them, you're welcome to simply edit or delete this comment.

Android Dick Waits for an Audience
Android Dick Talks to Man in Hat

Again, the idea here was, android Philip is uncanny and scarily corpselike, particularly when his machine-parts are so well concealed. And if I remember correctly, there are tiny little motors under the polymer skin, which very believably reproduce the muscle movements of facial expressions. It's actually very upsetting.

In the end, his creators decided to deliberately leave the wiring of his "brain" exposed, so that people watching him move and emote might feel a certain kind of relief when they see all the cables and the blinking lights.

Quick, someone explain to me what an O-ring is. I'm picturing something, and I think I must be wrong.

Oh, that reminds me. At Wired NextFest 2005, I could not stop taking photos of the inside of Android K. Dick's head. If you recall, the back of the head was deliberately left open, so that the circuitry would be exposed -- the twitchy automaton was thought to be so much less horrific that way.

Also, this month I finally read that kids' book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and the first half of the book is all about renovating an ancient automaton who wields a pen and sits at a little desk. I don't think I realized this was a common theme among automata? But now that I read this post, maybe it is?

The someday-author of Smart Mobs is, in 1989, wearing a fantastic hat.

Re: my above post - I just realized I didn't clarify before, but in quoting Derek I meant to underscore how familiar and archetypal SMB is. Its iconography is instantly recognizable, and the environments are a shortest shorthand onto which almost any visual vocabulary can be projected. Even Unreal Tournament.

Derek Yu -- maybe known best among game designers for last year's Aquaria -- recently wrote about SMB hacks and simplified iconography:

Last but not least, The Pixel Kingdom changes every sprite in the game into a single-colored rectangle. This, and Silhouette Mario, I think, really show off how iconic and well-understood the graphics in Mario are.

In conclusion: hacks can be delightful, and Super Mario Bros. 1 remains one of the most interesting conceptual playgrounds in video games (and probably elsewhere).

If I had a hundred billion jillion dollars, I would commission a skylight that reproduces the ceiling of my favorite place on Earth: the Music Box.

As Chicago Tribune architectural critic Paul Gapp wrote (Arts and Books July 31, 1983), "the architectural style is an eclectic melange of Italian, Spanish and Pardon-My-Fantasy put together with passion." ...The dark blue, cove lit ceiling with 'twinkling stars' and moving cloud formations suggests a night sky. ...Overall the effect is to make the patron feel that they are watching a film in an open air Palazzo.

I'm sorry, but for plenty of people in their 20s and 30s, that sound is absolutely teeth-gnashing. Any business that makes use of the anti-teen chirp will get what they deserve: fewer customers.

At Rhode Island School of Design, but I think I read the kids get to take a field trip to Brown, too. Heh.

I guess Holcomb is equal parts sculptor and luthier. I couldn't find any more of his work beyond the RISD .mac portfolios, but I did learn that, if you're between the ages of 9 and 12, you can take an origami/paper-folding design class with him this summer. That is freaking awesome.

It's an electric slide, so I assume it sounds like Southern Fried Anger. It would be weird if someone sat down at that thing to play it and it was suddenly, like, all Polynesian.

But seriously, I want to hear it, too.

Yes, please.

Then there’s Hustler, and a couple more that I take to be test chips. Another says Sword.

Ooh! Ooh! This is a stretch, but what if it were the fourth, final, never-finished Swordquest game, "Swordquest: Airworld"??

@Seg: Oftentimes in the Atari community, when a prototype is found, the owner may dump the ROM image and copy it to blank cartridges, as in the case of Combat Two, which was sold for a pittance at CGE 2001 (fun weekend project?). In a case like that, the owner of the prototype is acting more as a historian than as an entrepreneur. So although it's unlikely a definitive, centralized, singular 'museum' entity would form (yes, I skimmed your blog), there are so many goodhearted, autonomous individuals who do subscribe to your noble beliefs about 'preservation' and 'exhibition.'

Yeah, our own Frankenmac endeavor stalled when we got to the BIOS part. But Rob Griffiths' tack -- first installing Windows to make sure the machine actually works -- is so elegantly simple, I'm jealous I didn't think of it.

Well, now I feel totally inspired to tackle that hunk of junk again, see whether we can get it working properly. Thanks!

Worse — or better, depending on how I feel — you can only camp in designated areas in Harriman, so I'll have to move locations every day.

Oh, great. Isn't that like a salient plot point in Battle Royale?

Here's what gets me: untooned Homer was really upsetting. Untooned Mario was terrifying, too. Untooned Jessica Rabbit? She ought to have the same nightmarish quality as earlier exercises had, but -- and the above blockquote, direct from the artist, alludes to this phenomenon -- she just isn't as uncanny.

So I'm a little disturbed by the fact that she isn't disturbing at all. Why isn't she?

I would say that a big part of it is, she doesn't have those wide-open, terrifying eyes that Mario and Homer had. But I think #2 (Jeff) really hits the nail on the head: she's still hot. The proportions of Mario's cartoon face are, when rendered into 'reality', profoundly disturbing. Jessica Rabbit's features are equally un-human and unnatural, every bit as cartoonish and unlikely, but it's an unrealistic ratio of facial features that, somewhere between the eye and the brain, rings in as 'ideal.' (And miraculous modern science -- rhinoplasty, eye-lift, and collagen -- has finally made the feminine ideal possible.)

I guess this is actually a no-duh, since she was carefully constructed to be hot in the first place, but it seems so peculiar and, well, almost sinister, that she's still really good-lookin' "in the flesh." *Shudder.*

Shame on you! Roberta Williams is an icon!

It was a long while before they released a Razr for Verizon customers, as I recall. And thanks to Verizon's proprietary UI -- a well-documented paradigm of ugly clunk -- the Razr was made that much more horrific. But in that case, the Razr was crippled by, you know, the same awful nested menus that plague any Verizon user experience, regardless of whether or not the customer chose to HelloMoto. So I am wondering how much of a phone's shoddy design can be ascribed to the carrier itself.

(Disclosure: I've never owned a Razr, myself, but I was a Verizon customer right up until my iPhone purchase, which speaks volumes of the importance of GUI.)

Looks like a must-read. So urawaza translates almost directly into 'lifehack'? Heh.

I love how, especially with kitchen and cleaning and beauty 'hacks', there's always this weird underpinning of urban legend and oral history. There are just certain gnostic truths passed down as old wives' tales (wipe with newspaper for a streak-free window; chicken soup is mysteriously curative).

It is so bizarrely fulfilling to collect helpful tricks, and also, handy gizmos. There is no feeling so giddy as discovering something Really Useful. Why is that? Where does that come from?

@5 Purly: You're kidding! Ha! I wish I could do it, too. I first heard about organized latte art competitions while I was dating a barista (baristo? Oh, baristi). I guess he competed more than once, can't remember whether he ever won.

But he should have! He was able to make a really beautiful maple leaf in the froth -- hey, I just learned it is actually called a 'rosetta' -- or if it were the holidays, he'd make a nice little fir tree. I always admired his gracefulness and steady hands, a little jealous of his ability to pour and then sort of swish-swish, dragging the milk around into a little abstract picture. I also scored a lot of free coffee in this deal, always with a quick, elegant doodle on top. Sigh.

10 and 11 just reminded me: I still have to see that one Yul Brynner movie.

HA HA HA HA!

The real Bruce Springsteen was unavailable, as he was busy endorsing Barack Obama for president.

90 degrees? What? Maybe I just had super accuracy thanks to my laptop's touchpad.

@67 (Amberica20)

Yeah before we all start calling Dr. Salzhauer or leaving him negative reviews on doctor review sites, let's ask ourselves if we really hate Dr. S for writing a book that helps moms explain their elective plastic surgery, or if we hate moms for getting elective plastic surgery. Judging by a lot of the comments, it's the more the latter than the former.

Oh my god, thank you. What irked me -- all day long, in fact -- was the ongoing, absolutely incredible demonization of the titular "beautiful mommy." It's one thing to be annoyed by the garbage children are sold well before they can be held accountable as consumers; this outrage directed at women contemplating tummy tucks, however, is astonishing.

Thanks, Antinous, for pointing out that, after a major weight loss, "a whole lot of cardio!" isn't going to help a person get rid of excess skin. It's one thing to be angry at a culture that continues to insist on a silicone gel ideal; it's quite another to redirect all that rage at a woman who got a tummy tuck and breast lift or reduction.

A number of years ago, artist Sunny Buick curated a gallery show, at 111 Minna in San Francisco, called "Sci-Fi Western," in honor of all things Space Western. Anyway, the show's catalog (appropriately titled Sci-Fi Western) is definitely required reading-and-viewing for anyone who is interested in the totally organic confluence of B-movie disciplines.

@1 Initially, I was a member of that small and vocal stylus contingent: I actually started wearing my nails shorter to accommodate my iPhone. I might totally buy this.

Initially I was disturbed, particularly by the cover, but the part in blockquotes didn't really upset me. Simply put: I can understand why a child might be concerned and frightened if his mother came home in pain from a tummy tuck, or otherwise incredibly bruised and swollen, and why he might need it explained that his mother hasn't necessarily been, uh, beaten up.

Wait, what? When I was a freelancer, I turbotaxed part of my apartment (the, uh, you calculate the square footage of your workspace?), and I think it only went so far as emphasizing to the government that my gross income was Enough to Pay for Rent and Nothing Else. In the future, should I not be doing that?

During a recent flight, I was trying to get an airplane blanket out of the saran-wrap. The passenger next to me said she'd opened her blanket, and a bundle of pretzels and hair had fallen out. "20/20 Special Report" made me think of that.

Can I please just custom-order one to go off at 7am daily? Thanks.

P.S. I think what Mr Brownlee is getting at is, if this trimmer doesn't use electricity, chances are it also does the old catch-and-tug (see also). Nothing more painful.

A coworker once pulled me into Walgreens, trying to decide between this 'personal groomer' or that one. I wasn't much help. When we walked to his apartment he, not really in a teasing way, offered to let me use it next. I recoiled. Also, it didn't seem like it would fit in my nostril.

I mentioned it once at work, and he denied it.

God why oh why did I pick this username! It's very unnerving to be called out by full name. (Also, no intercap, thanks.)

Well. Even though you're making fun of me: when you're done with your soup you put the spoon on the saucer or plate beneath. Leaving the spoon in the bowl means you're still eating. I don't like getting soup on the handle of my spoon, but sometimes the spoon just falls in. Perhaps I am using very small spoons? I already said I'm neurotic.

I also use a ChicoBag. They sell them in a lot of corner stores in SF, which is where/how I picked mine up, and the thing is just slightly larger than the dimensions of an ordinary plastic bag (and certainly more reliable). I carry big Trader Joe bags when I actually set out to do real haven't-shopped-in-two-months grocery shopping, but the ChicoBag is perfect for the all-important toilet-paper-and-beer run.

I almost fell out of that ride when I was 7. That poster is amazing, though -- makes me feel like all ads should limit themselves to four colors or so.

I want this bowl because I am neurotic. I don't serve anything with a saucer, I don't like drippings on my table, I think leaving a spoon in the bowl looks uncouth. Also, it looks like it might work nicely with chopsticks, keep them from rolling off the lip of the bowl and all that.

Phew. Well, thank you for the reassurance. P.S. your handle is 'Torchwood,' oh my god!

Why are facsimiles of foodstuffs always so cute? This is amazing, and it also just made me really hungry.

I thought Bubba Ho-Tep was a little better on second viewing, and then worse again the third time. Am I alone in this?

P.S. The local NBC affiliate has really incredible footage (sorry if the link expires or anything) of the bridge, in which the banners "One World, One Dream" and "Free Tibet" are clear and visible. Bonus: bridge workers on a precarious lift retrieving some very ballsy protesters.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2224/2395931713_9b54e3b3e4.jpg?v=0

I grabbed the semi-live webcam image from Bay Area's CBS 5 site. Protesters are/were climbing to the top of Golden Gate Bridge to hang banners.

If you're in the Bay Area and this is something you feel strongly about, get out there and pound the pavement, kids.

Urban chicken coop? I should get one of these for the family in the apartment building next to mine. I mean, it's weird to wake up to the rooster crowing right here in a major metropolis, but if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?

Oh god. A friend of mine keeps one of those lightsabers at work and no one can keep his (or my) hands off it.

I am such a fan of Dave Hill's videos. He is so new media. HEY DAVE, DO ANOTHER EPISODE OF THREE SHEETS. That's my favorite show about drinking.

I'd also like to recommend Man Man and the Real Tuesday Weld, which make me think of the circus and flickering silent movies, respectively.

So I completely flipped out today when, while doing a google search for King Albino, I found videos of the Friends With You -designed King Albino hotel room, room #102, in Hotel Fox, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Actually on review, what everyone said.

I love Jerry.

Also, what #3 said.

I was stopping in to say "Attaboy!" very knowingly and hiply, but then I read comment #1.

This is one of my favorite magazines, too -- it's certainly the prettiest, which counts for a lot in art and design, but it's also just kind of a lot more interesting than, erm, some others.

Well, and then the ludicrous things they did to Tomorrowland. I'm sorry, fine, not ludicrous, OK, I love the Jules Verne steampunk future thing, too, I haven't actually seen it yet, et cetera, et cetera (in a marvelous twist of coincidence, my fear of automata was born at Disneyland between 20,000 Leagues and some ride in Tomorrowland I just spent an hour trying vainly to locate).

But the mid-century World's Fair vision of the future was breathlessly doe-eyed, and like any fan, I think it seems pure sacrilege to scrap it. No, yes, fine, I realize I'm a decade late to my ire. But there's value to that vision -- at any consumer fair like NextFest, you'll see that GE is still trying to sell you the Kitchen of Tomorrow, for instance -- and while I agree that things must evolve or die, you simply can't shortchange the connection between Disney and nostalgia. I mean, jeez, don't tweak it, just rip it out like Mr Toad and 20,000 Leagues and everything else that was awesome.

I think I'm a little off-topic.

I've long contemplated purchasing my parents an LG Verizon Migo (it has four programmable call buttons and an emergency button, and it seems totally droppable), but going that route seems a little bit, well, cruel, you know, to not give my parents a keypad.

My parents are the kind of people who, knowing the other has gone to Wal-Mart, will phone Wal-Mart and have the other paged. I've had it, I'm totally exhausted. If they think they're going to keep driving, they need cell phones with which to remain in touch with others (I resisted owning a mobile, too, and they pulled a "if you're going to drive..." on me when I went away to college, so fair's fair).

Anyway, yes. Thanks for the heads-up.

I don't think I understood why the Tiki Room ruled when I was 7. Older and wiser now.

By the time I was a ten-year old -- twenty years later -- we just had the Incredible Machine.

Across the Hum-Drum! Up the Bangle-Vator!

I went with a college friend to his parents' house to stay the night and meet his family, and he led me and my suitcase to his old childhood room. But it didn't look like a childhood room -- I noticed that it was, uh, decorated like a hotel?

Apparently, my friend had been filching things from hotel nightstands and bathrooms for years and years. He explained: His mom discovered his stash of hotel accoutrement and, one winter break in college, when my friend returned to his childhood room, he discovered his mom had 'converted' it to a 'hotel room'. Yeah, just to teach him a lesson, just to show him.

True story.

In one of my earliest memories, in some sort of precognitive act of defiance, I attempt to flee from my dad by hopping into some kind of motorized Big Wheel and driving off. I soon discover that my father runs faster than any Big Wheel, and he plucks me out of the vehicle by my armpits (the Big Wheel keeps going).

What I'm really asking is, how fast can a motorized monowheel go?

#34 Don't explain the joke! (It's just a sketch. A terrible one.)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=afNIRFCiKEo

Food photography is serious business.

I am trying to understand how, exactly, you make a robot boyfriend, because the process seems to involve combining no fewer than three separate 'personalities' (uh?) and also two separate penes, which are grafted together and then filled with electronics. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, so I can finish building this.)

I guess I'm actually struggling to understand the process because, in truth, the boyfriend-robot isn't analogous to the girlfriend-robot, neither in its construction or in its ultimate use, maybe because the analogue of the same software and electronics isn't as accessible or affordable to straight women. Zoltan explains that, should a woman decide to use the Nurse Nicci teledildonic software, for instance, she'd need to pretend her onscreen avatar is 'Nurse Nicci,' even though she herself is actually controlling the male avatar, which, hey, that's kind of meta and complicated. Also, I don't think he has any idea how the wired dildo communicates with the Nicci software, if at all. Zoltan continues,

Ok in order to have the full experience of a robot boyfriend first fall in love with ultra hal while the parts are ariving then when you are ready and the robot is fully assembled you can start the nurse niccie program and run the ultra hal program at the same time. In this way you can make love with hal.

I do not know how many women would actually use this. I always thought women would not be attracted to robots. However i also thought it would be very sexist to invent a robot girlfriend and not invent a robot boyfriend.

What really gets me, though, is that the roboyfriend is based on Ultra Hal, which I think means contracting a mean case of Adware.

@1 - By virtue of your comment's location in the lineup, and the earnestness and utter lack of malice in your question, my eyes fell on your comment first; I've been thinking about it for twenty minutes, lividly. Xeni's reply is succinct and great, but this is something worth talking about further.

Let's do some quick Gender Studies 101: It is so difficult for a woman, no matter how feminine, to flourish in a male-norm environment, in an occupation that is, for want of an easier word, patriarchal. From politics to stand-up comedy to writing, women basically need to 'wear pants', or otherwise conceal their sex, simply to be taken at face value. And to be genuinely funny, for instance, you have to play by certain male norms (for this reason, maybe, 'chick flicks' aren't really all that funny, because there's no male normative humor there). Some women are able to straddle male norm humor while continuing to play up their own femininity (Sarah Silverman; Amy Sedaris), but a lot of funny ladies 'ring butch,' if you will. They shouldn't, of course -- they're just doing a job well.

For women and men both, it's intimidating to see a woman who does her 'male' job justice. So people scramble to defuse the dissonance. In my tiny borough of the internet, people have called me a man outright. For a long time, a former coworker repeatedly insinuated that I am a lesbian (another great line was, "Play dumb; see how it works for you"). When women are so smart, so proficient that they color themselves as 'bitchy' or as 'castrating' -- and here, the metaphor is made manifest, because some men find themselves, if a woman is too witty or too literate, 'dickless' -- the one real comeback at a man's disposal is, invariably, a jab at the offending woman's own femininity. Calling her out on her sexual preference, or implying she was secretly born with a penis, or otherwise alluding to a woman's innate masculinity, is the shortest shorthand for saying 'you don't intimidate me; you're just a dude anyway.' Which itself is loaded with bigger issues like 'if you were really female, you'd work harder at feminizing yourself and making me feel a little more comfortable and manly, here.'

Above, someone remarked that all trans issues are touched by feminism issues, and I really hold that to be true. How does my little rant -- apart from being something I myself am sore about, mostly thanks to the internet being what it is -- figure into Ms. Addams' video? A lot of the questions cataloged among her What Not to Ask have everything to do with people belittling her by suggesting that she is, for all her efforts and her talents, still a man. Yes, this is how men belittle women. Hell, it's how women belittle women ("she wouldn't be so pretty without all that makeup" comes to mind).

And seeing as sex, sexuality, and gender are all sliding markers on a continuum, what Xeni originally typed holds true: Fuck anyone who thinks they're making an insult.

Until INN/TSN was hacked for DOSbox, I was basically sitting around for one of the 'revival' efforts to 'take.' I guess I was essentially waiting for the existence of something like Mytopia (I keep accidentally typing 'myopia'). It isn't going to get me onto Facebook, but hell, it's something.

Get ready, December! My Lego Snow Village is going to be so pimp.

So what is the ethos and spirit of the average Mac user? Singing in public even though you suck at it?

I did not even have to think about it: Yes.

I tried to do this with Fandango, holding an iPhone up at a movie theater box office, and the dude just rolled his eyes at me.

She sounds a little like April March!

Oooh! I so cannot wait to have money someday.

But I can already feel "Type or Die" within my grasp. That game is pretty much why I touch-type with near-perfect form, and also why I have incredible heart palpitations when I do.

@14 Yeah, that's the number one greatest switcheroo of all time.

Also intended for smokers who like to feel in control of their destinies:

http://www.snorestud.com/Classics/Men's/mensquitsmokingT.htm

There's a tiny glow-in-the-dark boob on the back of the men's shirt, and a tiny peen on the back of the ladies'.

I WAS able to look away, actually. And I did! I had to stop watching!

#9: ...that's what she said?

Sorry, late to the party. MeFi just hopped on this, only 20 days later, and I just saw the link to Cary's original post there.

@3 Ha! I'm not even correcting this because that is hilarious.

@4 I think at some point *I* said that, in an episode of Freeloader at 1UP. #5, 1UP freelancer Shawn Struck, is correct -- it is in fact only a bizarre coincidence.

@antinous What? Really? People here in California actually have houses?

(I guess, on the bright side, I no longer have any assets to seize.)

Finally! I can record that album right here in my paper-thin apartment.

Except that it would probably be less expensive for me to just, uh, move out.

Let me start by saying that, not only do I love Billy Mays with every thread of every fiber of my being, but every time his Mighty Putty infomercial flickers onto late-nite TV, I have to stop myself from running to the phone to immediately order. I asked everyone I knew to give me Mighty Putty for Xmas, and no one did. I have a weird, wooden Amish chair that needs some serious fixing.

@clothingoptional That did occur to me, too, if only because Eggers has also done more than his share to publish Lethem-y things. The teaching-kids thing is OK too.

'Brooklyn Superhero Supply' makes me think Jonathan Lethem-y things.

I'd enjoyed the Museum of Useful Things online, and am upset to hear that the real-life location has closed. :(

It's as Nelson said. The trouble is that the bear, an inanimate object, was named Mohammed. This was all thanks to a class vote, of course, in which students determined that the bear be named for the class's most popular child. Ms Gibbons could not have anticipated the stir this would cause, since, after all, Mohammed (and its variants) is now the most popular name in the UK, surpassing "John" at last. Since so many people are named Mohammed without being convicted of blasphemy, Ms Gibbons' assumption is sound.

And for a rather long time, no one was especially insulted or bothered. In fact, one of Ms Gibbons' coworkers was quoted in the news as speculating that another, ill-meaning teacher had phoned the police only to incite and rabblerouse, and this was all well after the bear was named.

It's also well worth reinforcing the fact that Ms Gibbons has had an incredible amount of support from parents and fellow teachers, all of whom have eagerly rallied to her defense. And in the Sudanese blogs, people have been so supportive of her, as well. In fact, outrage over her conviction is pretty universal. I bring this up because it underscores how completely abnormal this verdict is. It's visibly xenophobic, but the decision by no means reflects the popular opinion of the Sudanese. I'm frankly rather surprised at the comments that suggest she made a mistake in going to the Sudan.

Late to the party. Can anyone tell me whether, by "1.1.1," people mean "and also 1.1.2"?