I noticed How to Write a Novel in 100 Days or Less when I was reading Higgy's page. I like some of the ideas and might even start working at it (though 2 hours a day is definitely not in my future). I'm thinking of adapting Hamlet. Seriously.

It's Jim's birthday. Why not visit his page or tell him happy?

You might want to go take the robot quiz (via Lia and John). I took it and got a totally unacceptable and embarassing answer which I will not be sharing with you.

Only one thing to do: pick different answers. This time I got a much better result:

Christine: Jeff says Serendipity is a perfect date movie and it features John Cusack (!) and Kate Beckinsale. Guess we better go see it.

John continues to be hilarious with a 3 Musketeers check-out line encounter and discourse and a wacky confrontation with a church-inviter (that boy picked the wrong house, but at least he'll have a story to tell his comrades-in-arms).

Yo! Wassup? I changed the sidebar. Did you notice? Position in the friends' column reflects a totally subjective mix of closeness and frequency of updates. 1142 dropped out because it's impenetrable (although apparently Neale was impersonating me over there the other day. Interesting.). The Daypop Top 40 now appears. And, of course, the major new meadenet product: twinlog. Enjoy!

Jim's a good friend. He has great kid reports and he continues the dialogue about what kinds of standards we should have in life, especially from a Christian point of view. Go read it.

Went to Barkley's Uptown Dive last night with Ryan, Megan, and Scott to hear Ben Kilgore. He did some nice Radiohead, Counting Crows, and U2 covers and some original stuff. He did a three song set with his brother, Blake, of their own stuff that was _amazing_. He had this song about sex and lust that was like slam poetry meets alternative (in the good sense). Is that song recorded? Gotta find out.

Your Da[il]ypop Top 40: The Hobbit Name Generator. My hobbit name is Mungo Broadbelt of Buckland. Right on.

Sound like Matt had a great meal. We have nothing like that in Tulsa.

I often post something to this effect, but if you care about the situation in Palestine/Israel, go read thewebtoday.

The farm bill I savaged yesterday got passed in the House today. Stink.

Whatever you do anyway, remember that these things are mysteries and that if they were such that we could understand them, they wouldn't be worth understanding. A God you can understand would be less than yourself. - Flannery O'Connor

John 13 wrote about two more funny encounters on the El. LOL. Read it if you want a laugh (some profanity. If that bugs you excessively, don't read it).

I really like the Daypop Top 40 (for one thing, it's a lot easier to read than blogdex). From today:

Middle East Geography and History Quiz (I got 9/10).

and the Metafilter Magnificent Obsession thread. Some of note: the language construction page (I have read this extensively before, in connection with Tolkien's languages) and the guy who made a 14 ft Stegosaurus out of Legos.

(Note on usage of 'legos': I know it's cooler, and maybe even right for the plural of 'lego' to be 'lego', like some kind of system. But we didn't know that growing up and I grew up saying 'legos' and I'm going to keep it, not least of all for nostalgia's sake.)

Our new project/online journal: twinlog: the life and times of Elizabeth and Wil.

Found in my referrer logs: rocket queen. 'a good blog,' she said. Thanks, rocket queen.

Our friend, Scott, has a rant about conservatives who set up liberal positions as straw men.

I will say this: I find rhetoric almost always completely unhelpful. It usually narrows things too much, over-simplifies. It is disrespectful. Not for me.

More dumb hijinks: I mentioned to Christine how I've been getting so many people from Google hunting for ObL cartoons. She said 'So did you take off that entry?'.

Dur! I don't know how much good it will do, but I will do it now.

I've been thinking about the problem of what President Bush calls 'nation building'. It's easy to snipe, but some of our military problems, human rights concerns, etc. surely stem from unstable nations. I'm not saying, eg, that we're responsible for the Taliban's rise in Afghanistan, but could we have helped to prevent it?

Steven's post about Sen. Biden's plan prompted me today (and you should read the discussion, too).

I have a complicated relationship with Farm Subsidies. I don't believe in uncritical subsidies. A lot of times they hide bad things. They make commodities seem falsely cheap. However, I was also the beneficiary of them growing up, and I do want to support family farms.

There's a big farm bill in Congress right now. It looks to me like this bill is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. Here's one:

The House rejected 238-187 an amendment that would have imposed strict $150,000-per-person limit on crop subsidies, which would have saved $1.3 billion over 10 years. ``A limit of $150,000 is not only reasonable, it's plain generous,'' said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn (AP via Yahoo).

I'm pro-farmers, but this looks like pro-rich farmers to me. We shouldn't be subsidizing them with tax dollars.

Here's a sample of total payments from 1996-2000 from my home county (Johnson) back in Iowa:

Fobian Brothers, Iowa City $454,694
Timber View Farms Ltd., Solon $398,414
James E. Sladek, Iowa City $377,725
Eldon R. Prybil, Iowa City $360,069
Sam J. Stahle, Solon $360,039
Marlin G. Brenneman, Iowa City $339,859
Dean Oakes, Iowa City $316,241
Keith Forbes, Iowa City $315,578
Berry Farms Ltd., Iowa City $307,086
GF Miller Farms Ltd., Solon $301,718

That's too much money - 75-100k$/yr.

The House Committee statement
USDA Statement by the Secretary of Agriculture

An NPR segment yesterday got me thinking about this.

One big farmer interviewed on the program says at their rate of return of less than 4% that they have reached 'almost third world situations.' He calls the situation 'a joke'. But his perspective is a joke. He farms 4500 acres and received 3.5 mil$ b/t 1996 and 2000.

His farm is one of 175,000 farms that make over 250,000$ in revenue each year. They account for 8% of the farms in America. They account for 70% of the total value of American agriculture. They receive 50% of government payments. Their average household income is 139,000$, 41,000 of which came from government payments.

Some people say this money ends up being used by these big farmers to buy out the small farmers subsidies are supposed to be supporting.

Some people say that we need to support American agriculture to stave off reliance on foreign markets like we have to do with oil. Some say if we don't support subsidies like this we'll have to pay higher prices at the store.

First of all, that's part of the idea. We subsidize gas so people pay less at the pump. It seems cheap, though it's made so with tax dollars, so people feel free to spend. If people had that tax money back in their wallet, and paid the real price at the pump, they might use less.

Same thing with food. We might make different choices. That would be a good thing. The market doesn't work right with subsidies.

We are overproducing and paying big farmers for it. I support small subsidies for small farmers and the right amount of production. We can do better here.

I don't believe this, but I decided to write my Representative and Senator about this. You can find yours by clicking on the links in the preceding sentence.

No need to log the article. The title says it all: "A Shattered Nation Longs To Care About Stupid Bulls--- Again". LOL (link via Daypop Top 40).

The Onion isn't my style. Too over the top. Sarcasm is out. But that's a funny headline.

Y'all really smart users are going to think that I was trying to draw people here with my post yesterday about you-know-who and cartoons. I would. But I wasn't. It was an accident. And because of it I got even more hits last night for that very thing giving me my largest hit day ever. Oops. Sorry. I won't do that again.

I was pretty fired up about norton poets online (via My Yahoo Daily Picks). Unfortunately, it's just a commercial site. From the list, I like ee cummings (Fire the person who capitalized him on the sidebar!) and Steven Dunn. I sat in on some poetry workshops with Dunn when he came to Wartburg.

When I was riding my bike the other day, I wondered how Matt's bike riding was going. Presto - Matt's new project - ride.

Everybody needs more poetry (stormloader via Robot Wisdom (Jorn's favorite poem ever)).

Of Mere Being, by Wallace Stevens


Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Johnny 13 has some really funny posts the past couple days, especially including the photo of HP Lovecraft's grave and the caption.

Welcome Google searchers.

Wholey mackerel. My two biggest hit days have been yesterday and today. Thanks Google.

I hope you all find what you're looking for here.

(Hint: I posted about 'ObL' and 'cartoons' separately. If you're looking for those things together, I'm not your man.)

[edited to produce fewer Google hits 10.4]

Andrew Sullivan has an interesting article on Clinton's negligence of national security and how he is in part responsible for the terrorist attacks (WARNING: VERY ANNOYING TEXT BOX). What do you think? I think he makes some good points.

We have had beautiful weather for the last couple weeks. The summer was a boiler, so it's much appreciated. I got out both saturday and sunday afternoon to ride the new-to-me bike that Ryan gave me (WARNING: RYAN HASN'T POSTED IN OVER 3 WEEKS). We have great trails here in Tulsa, especially River Trails, which is a park along the river. Lots of people are out to see. It was great. I ran into the Tulsa Ultimate guys and got a phone number, so hopefully I'll be playing with them in the near future.