randomWalks

The New York Times' wine tasters hold forth on Wheat Beer, the Antidote to Summer Heat. (Don’t miss the tasting report.)

Rest easy, old friend, your targets are covered.

Priests tend to inflict maximum damage on their devout victims because Catholicism teaches that priests are God's representatives on earth, worthy of complete obedience and trust. To children, it often seems as though God is abusing them, a violation that can forever destroy the refuge organized religion provides.

Pornographer’s Picks: “A subjective listing of excellent free and membership porn sites, as chosen by a pornographer, together with occasional musings on sex, the smut industry, or whatever else I feel like rambling about. Some of these links may make me money when you click on them, but the links will always be what they claim to be, and the best of what’s out there. Oh yeah! Clicking on any links provided will likely result in explicit sexual content, so consider yourself warned.”

What’s a “ricer”?

Half of the Pixies' Fort Apache demo tape was released as “Come On Pilgrim”. The other half is just out with the title “Pixies”.

It is absolutely clear that Islam stems from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Indeed, we should think in terms of the "Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition."

I’m not ashamed to say I’m a fan of John Ritter’s work. I am a little ashamed to tell you that John Ritter is co-starring with Katey Sagal in a sitcom for ABC this fall, “Some Show Whose Title Is Eight Words Long” or something. If that’s not enough, both ABC and WB have developed shows in which the main character is a thirtysomething man time-travelling back to high school in the 1980s. I’m not making this up!

I'm just blown away by the whole thing, still; that it happened, that we accomplished what we did, and that we survived, and survived as friends, and that it was as positive an experience as it was.

It's a way to get around without buying into the money economy, a way of consuming without waste, of living off the leftovers of American abundance in the same spirit as squatting unused land and subsisting on food that grocery stores and restaurants discard. Freight trains are like a communal garden that moves.

If you spot somebody you believe may be a TIPS informant, do two things:

• Mark the informant. In a subtle way, place the mark of the all-seeing eye (the eye-in-the-pyramid from the Great Seal, shown above) on their home, vehicle or person. Chalk is best, though it must be renewed. This is like Hobo Signs.
• Register them here.

“Why would anyone pay for this stuff?” - Doonesbury 7/21/2002

Internet radio stations are closing by the hundreds because they can't afford to pay expensive new royalties. But a compromise may be on the horizon.

Palestine Chronicle - ‘Murder in Gaza’ “contains images of the death and destruction created by the Israeli attack on the Gaza City, late Monday, July 22, where 12 Palestinians were killed and 140 wounded.” If you don’t think you want to see this, you don’t. Don’t click.

Go Eliot!

Now that OS X has a RealAudio client, I can bring you the best of NPR so far this month:

All Things Considered
• the struggling comic book industry
• Alan Lomax
• toothpicks and logos: history of design
• identity crisis
• HOPE (hackers on planet earth) convention
• catching casino crooks
• "seeds of peace" summer camp
• from a fashionable white enclave -- to victim of white flight -- to integrated professional community
• Yucca Mountain: time, and rain
• Hem: Rabbit Songs review
• Kenneth Koch interview excerpt
• the covers project is a web site devoted to finding strings of "cover" versions of popular songs - coversproject.com
• reconsidering 'people of color'
• The Hip Hop Generation by Bakari Kitwana

Morning Edition
• recycling toxic computer waste
• latino youth overrepresented in juvenile justice system
• Latin American Youth Center in DC
• muslim child custody case
• annual report on minorities in the media
• Juan Williams talks with Sudanese ex-slave
• Jägermeister
• marshmallow Fluff
• 1933 Kansas law prohibits Asians from inheriting land
• Lovely and Amazing movie review
• Lord Buckley biography

Game over, folks. The Classic Nick Homepage is the absolute best thing on the Internet.

Looking for Macworld info? Check out Xspot.

I would have loved to have seen Tom Cruise's character use that fancy glove-based interface to make a warm and charming virtual greeting for his pregnant wife, instead of posing with her with no technology in sight.

If it's true that commonly used pesticides compromise the immune system of a vertebrate organism, which is what these findings suggest, then we're looking at a much bigger problem than deformed frogs.

It's sort of like alchemy to turn horror into humor or to see the absurd side of tragedy.

When asked to explain any new insights he may have gained into his character, Tony Soprano, he shrugged and said, "We've just finished the season so it's very hard for me to answer that. I almost need to clear my head a little bit and then look back at it." In trying to explain the enormous appeal of the mob boss, he likened his character to Ralph Kramden of "The Honeymooners": "It's like this moron is just doing the best he can and he just keeps screwing up. But I think that is changing a little bit."

San Jose Mercury News: Gay hip-hop innovators refute common stereotypes by Davey D.

We could go on and on naming gay artists who have made an impact on hip-hop. Gays have always been down with hip-hop. The question is: Do we accept our gay brothers and sistas?

I always forget to read the Funny Paper column in the Baltimore City Paper.

Somewhere, six feet under the fruited plain, the corpse of Hank Ketcham stirs from its fitful dreams of Swiss mountain sunlight and rolls over in dismay. Its dead bony hand scrabbles restlessly at the earth, fumbling for a chilled martini.

Lobot Is Lando Calrissian’s #1 helper. Lobot runs plant operations in Cloud City for Lando. But one day, something happened. Now you should look at the story.