Okay, you're a puppy.

God doesn't give you paper-training, but he does grant you a little logic, so your guardian watches you carefully, and picks you up and places you on newspaper whenever you have that 'gonna make' look on your face.

After a while, you get the hang of it: Whiz anywhere, get scolded. Get placed somewhere and whiz: Get praised. This puppy existence ain't so tough: You pee where your master tells you to pee.

A few weeks later this silly geekus erectus thinks about his cute puppy, and glaces at his cute Sony Vaio. He grins and grabs his cute digital camera, deciding that a little cuteness is in order.

Oblivious to being cute, puppy thinks, 'Mmm.. I should start looking for that newspaper thing...'

With digicam in hand, master grabs puppy, opens Vaio, and places one atop the other. As master says "Stay" and takes aim, the puppy recalls the only trick he's learned so far, and does the same.

So you see, the puppy really isn't to blame.

The two last things I do each night are remove my contacts so I can sleep, then remove my context so I can dream.

Literally! (well, okay, metaphorical keys literally stolen.)

Today's 'International Pi Day,' (being 3/14) and is also Albert Einstein's birthday! What are the chances?

Actually, do they have Pi day in Europe? Isn't today 14/3 there?

So I've been too busy to blog, to busy to recap my mid-semester crisis, too busy to talk about the freezing snowstorms followed by 60 degree weather followed 24 hours later by biting 13degree nights, followed now by 50-degree spring thunderstorms with lightning like strobelights and thunder that feels like a 2.5 under your feet.

And I'm going to China. That's right. China! Don't look so surprised! It's been there on the calendar on your left for months now! Eight days from now I'll be in China (well, 9 days, technically 10 when you factor in the date line) and there I'll be for two weeks, and when that's over? Well I'm not home yet!

Rough itinerary to come, but let's just say that I'm not just keeping busy, I'm trying to shoo busy out of the room but it Just Won't Go.

Ahh, life is good.

Top ten items on House of Representatives' agenda after renaming French Toast to "Freedom Toast" in the House restuarants:

10. Eat Freedom for breakfast

9. Pass resolution to replace 'deja-vu' with 'woah, buh'

8. Require two-week quarantine for Americans returning from France

7. Blame Canada

6. Mandate that French classes instead teach students to speak English, but in a nasal 'Franch Ahccent'

5. Build bigger Eiffel Tower at the WTC site and call it the 'Freedom Tower'

4. 'Fetchez la vache'

3. Declare July 14th to be 'National Funny Nose Day'

2. Return the Statue of Liberty

1. Ban RU-486

Vanilla Coke, Powerbook, not a good combo. I think everything's working. Will report in later.

Following up on our discussion of John Brady Kiesling and John H. Brown's resignations from the diplomatic corps, I've received a copy of John Brown's resignation letter. While not as eloquently written as Mr. Kiesling's (which may be why the full copy didn't appear in the news outlets) it's still an interesting read.

The Dialect Survey Project has been the subject of a lot of conversation among my friends recently.

In a nutshell, you fill out a multiple-choice survey, asking how you pronounce certain words (coupon: 'coo-pahn' or 'cue-pahn'?), or which word you use (shopping cart vs basket vs buggy) and then you can see the results mapped visually across the United States.

There are a few very cool terms there I never knew (what do you call rain during sunshine?) and it's a great diversion. You're sure to find something new.

In the weeks since I first came across this site, I've been coming up with other regional lexical idiosyncrasies. for example, most of the country's kids say 'do-over' but growing up in Los Angeles, people at my schools called it a 'take-over' (not the hostile kind).

The survey is really long, but it lets you take it a little at a time, save and finish later.

Camposites, collages created from webcam pictures emailed to the artist, are some of the most surreal images I've ever seen.

I love how distortion of the images can cause a corresponding distortion of the emotion. For a quick overview, check out the gallery page [nsfw, contains nudity].