Yeah, see, it's the first of April. Just like Maddox, sometimes you have to set a few traps.

The first trick to any successful April Fool's prank is to know your target. Anyone who remembers that it is April 1 is automatically out. You have to focus on the people who just think it's a regular day. The second trick is to include a kernel of truth in your prank. Simply posting something like "My house burned down last night" won't result in many gullible people. Instead, say something less outrageous but more believable, like "thieves broke into my car". The third trick, of course, is playing along. Act surprised.

My two pranks from today include

• Convincing my office I was "too hungover" to come into work.
• Convincing my friends my website had been "hacked".

Of course, I didn't tell everyone in my office my excuse, just the few who would believe it. Likewise, I'm sure several people came to the site, said "hey, your stylesheet is broken" and simply ignored the huge header I inserted to fool people.

Regardless, the joke is now old, so I removed it. Part of the inspiration came when Dwight complained, yet again, about the slow loading time of the new background. Thus, in the off-season, I shrunk it slightly. The two-three people using safari to surf the site should notice a major difference, as the new graphic is almost 1/6 the size of the old one. It's still cool looking though.

Enjoy!

I need a new phone. Badly. And I've finally found the one I want. It's available in America...it just needs a carrier (hello, Ms. Zeta-Jones?) to pick it up.

It's very cool. The top-of-the-line model, the 6680, may not be released here. But I really just want a phone with a better camera, a flash, bluetooth and the latest Symbian OS. The 6682 has it all, unlike the also-cool but feature lacking vaporware 8800.

Now if it would just hurry up and appear!

So I'm watching Fox News in my office and they cut to the Italian news station with a "special announcement". What happens next is baffling: the Italian anchor starts talking, followed much later by an American woman attempting, poorly, to translate him. She keeps mumbling, saying "okay, um, okay, um, okay" and doesn't say anything about the pope. A minute later, the Fox News anchor (a man) cuts on, says "well, that's not how we intended to hear it, but we just heard the news, the pope has died".

A total screw-up. You'd think, with so much advance notice, that Fox would've had a professional interpreter on hand to translate the Italian into English smoothly. Or a friggin' five-second tape delay, for the pope's sake! I hope CNN was better.

As an Episcopalian, all this waiting for someone to die to pass the baton on seems slightly ghoulish. Priests should, in my mind, be able to marry, be able to be a woman (or gay), and should be able to resign. Why is a religion based on the idea of god sending a man to do his work so insistent that men act like gods in order to become priests? It's odd.

This idea is simply brilliant.

From the guys who brought you DropCropp.com comes a plan to name RFK field "Taxation Without Representation Field" for the inaugural season of the Nationals. That's bad ass.

Best of all, the "pledge" is just that: a pledge. You don't actually have to contribute money. I'm not, of course, suggesting that people go to the site and lie about how much they'd pony up. But let's just say you should be "generous" with your pledge, okay?

Can you imagine radio and television announcers having to explain, at the start of each home game, why the field is called "Taxation Without Representation"? It's the modern day Boston Tea Party, except stretched out over an entire season. It's a thumb in the eye to the President. It's capitalism married to activism. I love it!

So last night was the perfect spring evening: I left work, ran home (with a little help from a cab), swapped clothes and popped over to the nearby elementary school to play some extreme wiffleball with Jenna and friends. I got in a few good cracks, which made up for my atrocious pitching and fielding abilities. In the end, we all agreed the true l33t player was the 40-year woman skating down the block next to us. I'm sure several small children now have an advanced knowledge of dutch thanks to Jenna's natural talent of deflecting balls with curses.

Luckily, it was just warm enough to chill outside with drinks and food for a bit afterward before we retreated indoors to some tasty chinese food. Someone (who will remain nameless until they log into the newly fixed foreigners section) brought over a copy of Cronenberg's The Brood and we settled in for some crazy psychoplasmic fun. By far, the best part of the movie for me came when the police doctor, performing an autopsy on one of the brood monsters, dryly recited all the horrible mutations on the creature, only to build the suspense up for the "most shocking detail of all", namely, that the creatures had no bellybuttons.

Oh, the horror, the horror!

Later, of course, once the film got super-cronenbergy, this detail made no sense given how the brood was created. But maybe I just needed to suspend my disbelief more. The good news is that, post movie, Michael pointed out this pertinent debate about how many 5-year olds one could handle. I personally thought most of the major characters went down too easily, but having said that, there's no way I could take on 30 5-year olds. That's just too many.

Speaking of movies. I'm getting some people together tomorrow evening, post First Friday, to go see "Sin City". Interested? Buzz me. Tomorrow should be a great day for both art and cinema...

The foreigners section is broken. I'm working on it now...

Wow. Cechk out tihs acrtlie.

Azanimg, rghit? It wroks bset if you hvae lrage gorups of lteters put tgohteer. Wehn you see it tuohgh, it's tgouh to bilveee at frist. Wrods taht are sellepd colse to one aonhter and hvae the smae lsat leettr are mroe dcluffiit to dgusiisingth, lkie tgouh and tuhogh.

This story is just amazing. (Oh, and for the record, I'd just like to say I'll no longer preface any links with a "registration required" statement. If you're foolish enough to be surfing without bugmenot then you deserve what you get...) Let's roll the tape:

For those seeking tranquillity at Glastonbury Festival, a dance tent packed with clubbers is not an obvious sanctuary. But this will be the silent disco - 3000 festivalgoers are to be issued with headphones this year so they can turn up the volume without waking the neighbours.

The quietest party in town is a response to the problem of noise pollution at the festival, which has traditionally led the district council to issue a licence on the condition that the festival's main stages and tents shut down on the stroke of midnight.

This year, the council is to grant a late licence for the new dance area on the condition that thumping beats and pounding basslines are put to bed at 12. But, thanks to Glastonbury technicians, clubbers won't have to. For one night only, they will be given wireless headphones, so they don't trip up when dancing to whatever record the DJ plays.

"I like the idea of people dancing in total silence," said Emily Eavis, one of the festival organisers and daughter of the founder Michael Eavis. "Imagine if you were feeling a bit worse for wear and thought, 'This would be a nice quiet place to sit down'.

"You would be completely freaked out to see 3000 people dancing in silence. It's certainly quirky, but our big push this year is keeping the noise down because that's what the council is keen on."

3000 people dancing in silence. That'd be awesome to see. I wonder what it would sound like?

It reminds me of Monday night at Angles, when I saw someone

1. blow two dollars to "pre-empt" the songs I had chosen for the jukebox
2. start dancing, softly, to an awful song
3. get made fun of mercilessly by y.t and friends from a room away

Anyone, dancing by themselves, far enough away, is ripe for ridicule. This poor girl, of course, didn't help herself by just slightly swaying in time to the god-awful song she had spent money on. I normally think market based solutions (other than health care, water, internet access, etc.) are fine, but the idea of bidding to "top" other people's songs seems a little unfair. Hence, my desire to make fun of her.

Too many eggs...

Regardless, the brief but short debate over turbo versus superchargers can be easily answered here. Essentially, all turbochargers are superchargers, just with a specific means of powering themselves, namely, the energy in the exhaust, as Meat pointed out.

Of course, turbochargers are much more useful in aircraft than in cars, due to the high rotational speeds necessary in jet engines. In a car, turbochargers have two problems, namely, lag and spool-up time. A supercharger, by contrast, is already running at speed and doesn't have any lag because there's no time wasted compressing the air. It is, however, less efficient.

Yes, a nice intellectual exercise for those of us who had too much candy/eggs/ham/peeps/waffle fries last night.

So I'm probably going to get a car. And, as it turns out, I can do almost everything over e-mail. Making today the "pull the trigger" day, since there's a small (well, relatively small) deposit required to actually order the thing.

Thoughts?

I thought elftor was the most offensive website ever. I was wrong.

For the love of God, don't click on the link above.

I admit it, I"m biased. When someone applies to work at my kick-ass firm and uses the wrong form of the word "piqued", it bothers me. Especially if said person is listed as an "editor" of an undergraduate publication. Just to clarify:

• peaked: pointed or sickly
• piqued: to arouse or irritate

Saying that something "peaked" your interest is stupid, but especially so if you're supposed to be the editor of a collegiate publication. Doing it twice in one application is unforgiveable...

Of course, said person believes in Social Security privatization, and mentioned so in her application. I'm always confounded by people who mention political hot potatoes while applying for positions in institutions that deal with political issues. If I were to work at the World Bank, I wouldn't mention that I hate Wolfowitz. If I were to apply to work in a hospital I surely wouldn't mention that I enjoyed firebombing abortion clinics, right? So why do people who apply for jobs in Washington think it's fun and/or productive to wade into debates over Social Security or the budget deficit? Sheesh.

Want to blow up this website?

Man, that's fun! The dinosaur is also enjoyable...

I'm very busy. Hence, light posting. A website today asked me for my favorite quote...I couldn't think of just one, but these four by Andrew Jackson seem appropriate:

• "There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses."
• "There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it."
• "Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn."
• "One man with courage makes a majority."