Foiled by a short attention span

Maggie had her mystery party on Saturday. It was awesome, yet it damn near killed me. She is very, um, detail oriented, and she can be somewhat demanding. After all was said and done, however, I heard so many superlative comments that it seemed strangely worth it. As I get pictures I'll add a night writeup -- after all, what's the point of a murder mystery party without describing the mystery? Let it be said for now that it was a night of intrigue, suspense, blackmail, heroin dealing, stolen property, contested pedigrees, and a key drunk person. Oh, and Master Bates.

So, I've been busy with the party and its aftermath and have been neglecting the blog. The other thing sucking my time away the last two nights has been that damned Napster. I never could get it to work before last night and now that I've figured it out I keep trying to think of more bizarre tunes to come up with. The winner so far is this funky German techno song by Lucy Lectric called "Weil ich Mädchen bin." Although a collective second goes to the wide variety of barbershop quartet music available. Now, I've not weighed in about my feelings in the whole Napster controversy, but I'm a big libertarian, so it should come as no surprise that I come down heavily on the side of sharing. And those punks in Metallica, who are self righteously pursuing legal action against Napster, got their start by a collection of freely traded demos and bootleg albums, but now want to prevent the same thing after they're popular and make lots of money? Puh-lease. I don't care for Courtney Love's music, but she sure seems smart as she tells us who is going to make the money from any Napster revenues, and it sure isn't the artists that record companies are hiding behind.

Updates, etc

More Simpsons Linkage: Christianity Today's homage to Saint Flanders. Crazy, yet somehow not surprising:

A 1999 survey conducted by Roper Starch Worldwide found that 91 percent of American children between the ages of 10 and 17 could identify members of the Simpson family; 84 percent of adults could identify them. In each case, this was a greater percentage of children and adults than could identify then–Vice President Al Gore.

About that license plate: I got it done at the Acme.com licensemaker. Plenty of funky stuff there, trust me. Via bOINGbOING, a cutting edge blog/zine.

Do yourself a favor and read the customer review of this Family Circus collection. Via the Star Tribune weblog, which just achieved the distinction of being the first weblog in Minnesota, if not the world, to get a regular print run in a "real" newspaper. Congrats, Gael! I've been worried about what she thinks of this site since I put the tongue in cheek moniker of "Minnesota's Third Best Blog" at the top. I've been thinking if any MNBLOGger calls me on it, I'll say it's under theirs and one of the other well known ones. But, unfortunately for that plan, Gael has three blogs (she also writes PCJM and the Alt-log), so I'm implicitly claiming that mine is better than one of hers, which is undoubtedly not true.