Well, hi there, everybody, and sorry I wasn't able to get a new entry up yesterday; I ended up having a bunch of my time eaten up again by this reporter from the Chicago RedEye, regarding this article on pornography addiction they're writing right now, and which they keep telling me should be appearing any day now. (In fact, I discovered something a little disturbing about it all yesterday too - that's there a chance this might actually be the cover article, which would mean my surly face right on the front page, right above a giant headline that will undoubtedly say something like, "HOOKED ON PORN!" And I just don't know what to think of that; so we'll see, I guess, if this indeed turns out to be the case.) Anyway, I've got a ton of random notes that've been stacking up on my Treo over the last couple of weeks; so let's get right to it, shall we?

--So, regular readers of course know that my brother works for a bleeding-edge tech company in Manhattan; and this means, for example, that part of his job consists of trying out new mobile devices, to see how well or badly they communicate with their company's current system. Anyway, so a couple of weeks ago he finally got to try out a Palm Treo 700, running Windows Mobile; which got him all excited, of course, because he's a reader of this journal just like you, and has been seeing me crow about my own Treo for the last two years now. Anyway, for what it's worth, he really likes the new Treo running Windows, and says that it communicates perfectly with the system already in place at their company; but my main point of mentioning all this is that he took a photo with it as well, and sent it to me wirelessly, just to test things out. And I think it's just this hilarious, dorky photo, which is why I wanted to reprint it here (taken, I believe, on the metro train he uses to commute from Manhattan to his apartment in the Bronx). Anyway, so that's that!

--So speaking of small mentions.... The other day over at my del.icio.us account, I made just a tiny little mention of a new organization here in Chicago named I-GO, one of those "car-sharing" services that you're starting to see more and more in large urban locations. (In fact, the idea originally comes from Europe, where there are cities that have been doing this for decades now...which should really come as a surprise to no one.) Anyway, so I ended up hearing back from Melissa Haeffner, Sales and Marketing Associate for I-GO, asking if I would please maybe mention their group here at my main site as well, and perhaps explain a little more about how they actually work.

And I'm happy to do this, of course, because I'm actually a big fan of car-sharing programs, and think it's something a lot more urban citizens should be doing, instead of wasting all that money owning a car themselves. Basically, you start by paying $75 to become a member of the group, and $25 a year thereafter; and then the group itself actually owns a fleet of cars (50 in the case of I-GO, according to Haeffner), parked in various lots all over the city. Then when you actually need a car for a little while - say, if you're going to a furniture store on a Saturday afternoon and need to transport some crap back to your place - you can simply reserve and then pick up a car, at whatever lot is closest to you. You then pay $6 an hour while actually using the car, plus 50 cents per mile driven; and when you're done, you simply return the car back to the lot, ready for someone else in the group to use for a short period themselves.

Which, yeah, might not seem that extraordinary at first, but remember - you don't pay for gasoline, and you don't pay for insurance, and you don't pay for repairs either. And as car owners know, it's these three things that account for something like 90 percent of all costs associated with owning a car; and plus, of course, once you actually are done with the car, you simply return it and never worry about it again, or whether you're parked illegally, or whether your car's going to get towed, etc etc. What a great idea, I think, and something I wish more people in large urban areas would take advantage of; I mean, just imagine what a nicer place Chicago would be, if half the car-owners here got rid of their cars and joined a sharing service instead. Anyway, it's something I hope all of you will consider utilizing in the future, instead of owning one of those monstrous, gas-guzzling, terrorist-supporting machines yourself.

--Sad news recently from my old college buddy Wade Pottinger: Columbia, Missouri's infamous "Liquor Guns and Ammo" store has gone out of business. Anyone who's ever attended the University of Missouri, of course, knows immediately what I'm talking about; this was, in fact, an actual store in my collegetown, out on the edge of the city limits, that really was called "Liquor Guns and Ammo" and really did sell liquor, guns and ammo. Which to a snotty irony-loving undergrad, of course, is like handing a needle full of smack to a heroin addict, which is why the store was constantly a part of Columbia's public consciousness. (Hell, it even made it onto the t-shirts of our college radio station, one of the years I worked there.) Anyway, I hope all of you out there will tip a little of your 40 to the curb, as the kids say (and go shoot your hunting partner in a drunken accident as well), in remembrance of this fine, now-deceased institution. LGA, you will be missed.

--Just a weird random thought the other day, jotted down in haste: I am now the exact right age to be one of those weirdo cult-hero high-school English teachers. You know who I'm talking about - the one who wears a leather jacket to school, who gets a whole generation of depressed 14-year-old girls introduced to Sylvia Plath for the first time, who all the guys love because he'll let them say 'fuck' in class, who all the teachers are threatened by because he has the kids call him by his first name. Jesus - when the hell did I become that guy?

--Joke spotted at Valleywag the other day, which I thought was funny:

"Why are all the Web 2.0 sites done in pastel colors?"

"So when they all get bought by Yahoo, they'll match."

--So why do I so thoroughly love wading through thousands of random photos at Flickr each week, by hundreds of random photographers? Here's why:

Anytime I come across just a random, candid, completely amateur but still totally great photo like this at Flickr, I think about just what an amazing thing that service actually is, and why I'm such a huge obsessive fan of theirs. I absolutely cannot stress this enough, people - of just what an amazing, amazing tool Flickr is for all the photographers and photography lovers of the world, of how desperately I used to wish for a service like this to exist, back when I was a photography major myself in college. It's easy to take Flickr for granted, I think, and to assume that they've just always been around in the form they currently are: "Yeah, yeah, 100 million photos, blah blah blah, whatever." I think it's a shame, though, to take that kind of attitude, because it completely dismisses the tremendous power involved when millions of people come together simply so as to share stuff with each other. As far as I'm concerned, Flickr is the Web 2.0, and if you ever want to figure out what's so exciting about everything going on in the online world these days, you don't need to look any farther than them.

--Okay, still have just a whole bucket of crap to get done with here in Chicago before the day is over, so I better get going. I will, however, leave you with this quote by Franz Ferdinand, who I've been listening to over and over and over and over and over recently:

"Some say you're a troubled boy
just because you like to destroy
all the things that bring the idiots joy
Well, what's wrong with a little destruction?"

Jesus Christ, FF - why did it take me so damn long to discover you guys?