in which i use the word phantasmagoria

While DC's weather was being menopausal this week, I was catching up on the infinite phantasmagoria that is the Webrary. And mon Dieu is there some sick sh*t out there. Two words: midget porn. But that's neither here nor there. Well, I take that back. It's there, it's just thankfully not here. Anyway, I don't want to talk about midget porn anymore.

Anynotmidgetporn, there were several less disturbing items online this past week that won't give you nightmares. Instead, however, they will make you daydream and if not that, then at least procrastinate. But it's Friday, so that's what workdays are for, right?

And keeping true to form, today I'm going to regurgitate my Web selections by sounding off in Japanese, thanks to a little hip-hop song I've got on repeat right now. Domo arigato, Genki Japan! Here we go!

Ichi! One of my favorite local cycling blogs, Freewheeling Spirit, serves up some justice on an e-platter cast from the most logical of e-materials -- HTML code. Check out the JPGs he posted! Then print them out, fold them up and carry them around with you at all times so you can serve up a little justice of your own to any asshole who tries to regulate on you for biking within the law. Boo-yah! Or as they say in Japan, Boo-yah! Or maybe they don't say that. It's just a guess.

Ni! Why can't people just leave the gays alone? Or more apropos, leave straight men who play gay men in movies alone. I thought "Brokeback Mountain" had demystified the homosexual lip-lock. So did the Washington Post's Hank Stuever, who pontificated in an excellently written article about why people are so fixated on straight male actors acting as gay characters. Stuever writes, "There's a whiff of discomfort of the Seinfeldian, 'not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-it' variety. It's a post-ironic, post-homophobic homophobia, the kind seen most weeks in 'Saturday Night Live' sketches or in any Judd Apatow movie." Really, it's just kind of lame.

San! In other intellectual e-news, during my hiatus from life last week I read two very interesting New Yorker articles. One, by John Seabrook, ruminated on the mental condition known as psychopathy. Did you know politics is one of the professions that attracts the most psychopaths? Does that surprise you? No? Me neither. The other, by Malcolm Gladwell, gave me hope. He writes that genius sometimes needs time to develop. Could I be the Cézanne of writers bloggers? We'll find out when I'm 90.

Shi! In non-news, I bought myself an early Christmas present via a sweet sale on Cyber Monday -- a pair of patent leather military-inspired boots. I had them mailed to my place of work where I proceeded to try them on while eating a couple of cocoa-covered almonds, the remnants of which stuck ever-so-Fascistly on my upper lip, which led, of course, to me doing a little Hitler impersonation in the office. Hitler spoke only in Rammstein lyrics, right? And he pranced? Yes? Then my impression was spot on. Like Charlie Chaplin's.

Go! Finally, in honor of The Lonely Island crew finally breaking into the mainstream by jizzing in their pants (what is this, my third mention of this video this week???), I present to you a retrospective of their earlier work, which I fell in love with quite a while ago when writing an article in j-school (the most useless school on Earth) about LA's Channel 101 and NYC's Channel 102 (now also known as Channel 101).

Just 2 Guyz


Stork Patrol


Ka-Blamo!