Did you know the CIA bought the film rights to Orwell's Animal Farm?

Maybe Wheel will comment more fully, but here's my quick take. We went to ESCA last night, which is the all seafood restaurant in the Mario Batali empire (you know, the guy with the food show, the long red hair, and the funny shoes who brought us Po, Lupa, and Babao.) The menu had us absolutely dizzy. We literally wanted to order evey single thing (well, O.K., only MB and I wanted to order the sea urchin.) All Italian wine. A great Northern Italian white from the area (Tirol) we traveled through last year, and an amazing example of the elusive (red) Lagrain (sp?) grape which we searched for in Italy, but now it seems finally found the one we wanted right here in NYC. With the Quinterelli for dessert we were feeling no pain. Oh, the food? Great. The fried fish was amazing (vongole and the frito-misto (sp?),) maybe the best I've ever had. Pasta's (as you might expect at a Mario restaurant) were perfect, although the perriwinkle and chilie was not as amazing as we had hoped. The eel (appetizer) was also not a favorite (although surely not bad.) The beet and botarga salad was a winner, as was the big stuffed clam (anyone remember what that was called?) I'd say: order lots of appetizers. Expensive; sure. Weird location - 43rd and 9th; for sure. Good time; good bet.

some microsoft glitch has my request to go to slate sent to a site for windows NT option pack. wacky, huh?

"Welcome to Microsoft® Windows NT® 4.0 Option Pack Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack provides enhanced Web, application, and communication services for Windows NT Server 4.0. So if you're setting up a simple Web site on your corporate intranet, creating large sites for the Internet, or developing component-based applications, the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack provides a simple, flexible way to make your existing Windows NT Server 4.0 an even stronger Web and applications platform. We welcome your feedback! It's important that we incorporate your feedback into our software. Please send any comments or suggestions to iiswish@microsoft.com."

heres one for you, jim.

RU486, "...the controversial abortion pill..." is approved for use in the U.S.

is this a necessary ingredient for a dry martini?

Dave, "tapped out" and "blind ambition," 9/27, lead to same link.

Hey Wheel, want to check this out and tell me if it works? (I'm assuming they provide instructions on how to shape-shift back into human form. Hmmm, you might want to make sure first.)

anybody have a dentist in manhattan they would like to recommend?

American Museum of the Moving Image has a show of presidential campaign commercials, but it's a bit buggy on this machine. Maybe you should just skip to the exhibit of classic video arcade games.

Way to go Dave. (Trick or Treat entry) I guess that was the game I should have come to watch. Or maybe now that you've jumped to the super star level you will continue to play that way? Must be all those olympics you are watching.

male couples could conceive a child.

Expand your meaning, with the Exploding Dictionary.

anybody starving?? iceland treats include rams testicle's, sheeps eye's, blodmur (congeled sheeps blood held together with lard and wrapped in lambs stomach), seal, whale, and rotten shark meat which is consummed with brennivin (a strong schnapps made from potato and caraway)

Some one we know as Steve is lookin' for the origins of "Cloud Nine". Know best to us as a Temptations number, written by (?). A quick search turn up nothing aside from a George Harrison connection (album title ?). My guess would point towards Jazz speak and mary jane smoke ? Gotta be older. anyone ?

The unformated archives for this page are now working (hopefully.) Clicking on the archives (either here, or from the menu on the left) will take you to a page with a calendar covering the time range of every post on this page. You can then click on a month to see all the posts for that month, or on a specific day to see the posts for just that day.

Mon dieu! Dubbing les Simpsons into French.

I mentioned the day in the life of webloggers thing before. Seems like it's getting pretty popular. 130 people have been added to the list so far. They picked a shoot date and a post date. Actually, two shoot dates: Sunday and/or Monday Sept. 17/18. Pages are to be posted the following Sunday. The idea is to pick any 24 hour period between 12:00 am Sunday and 12:00 midnight Monday. I was thinking of trying to do a page. Possibly I could make my day (probably Sunday) into a trek around NYC, and along the way I could stop by some of your houses. Any interest?

... was to perform online surgery. The virtual slice. The anesthesia of procrastination by intoxication. I can't tell if its a version of inner peace or more evidence of that proscratinators disease which has me looking forward to my workday as a housepainter. It's a day structured so simply and the tasks can be performed, if we so choose, with the most meager of communication between boss and I. Its easy mostly, mentally, and physically even when its not easy it's easy.

But today sanding baseboard I got a splinter in the left FU finger, early, and that's no way to start a day. Months from now I will marvel at how long its been since I've had a nasty splinter, but lately, between Rocheblave and the paying job, I've had a couple too many slivers of wood forced deep into the flesh off my fingers.

In front of me in front of the monitor is a bottle of alcohol, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a cup of ice water for numbing, and what started out as an ice cold budweiser, also for numbing. Also at the ready is a pair of high quality tweezers (sharply pointed), a rusty razor blade, for slicing, and a lighter for burning germs off those implements whose cleanliness might be in question.

Pray for me people, I'm going in...

I haven't done a goldurn thing since my return from NY. I haven't even entered the Rocheblave house. I wonder if there is an online procrastinators support group? What am I asking, of course there is. Maybe I'll look in to that tomorrow not.

Shelton got kicked out of McDonough HS (John Mac) for hitting a security guard in an act of chivalry. He went to Juvie Jail and a drug dealing cousin came to rescue and signed him out, pissing off more importantly than me, Mandy, who is the guardian of record. Shelton was read the riot act by Mandy and is now in Jail 2646. I am trying, for my part, to be a gentler, kinder, more loving warden, and am letting him listen louder than I care for, more rap than I care for.

I read the Stephen King, Hearts of Atlantis, and thought only the King could get such a loosely edited work published, I love him though, but think he is still trying to get that novel rejected as a highschooler published, which he already has, but obviously not to his satisfaction. Its that Dark Towers theme haunting him.

Not to avoid more important work or trying to avoid the still persistent heat/humidity, I have picked up Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, one of those important works by one of those important writers who were writing/experimenting their asses off during the twenties. Some call it the most poorly written great novel of all time. I am finding it worth the effort. But all of this is besides the point, what I really logged on for was to...

Oops!
Unsupervised children destroy a Buddhist sand mandala. Mandals (which include Western alchemical emblems) are visual compressions of complex spiritual ideas. Today's highly compressed computer technology is now taking them the other way, as in this illusion of a three dimensionalized mandala, from Cornell's computer graphics site.

i heard screamingmedia was written up in the (a) recent wired mag... anyone see a copy?

for those whom like to travel

William M. Gaines wine collection is up at auction this saturday at Morrell & Co. and it is a totally "Mad" collection including old Tokaj back into the 1800's!!

i'd love to go back to amsterdam maybe for thanksgiving???