This has to be the ultimate in truth in advertising.

By way of followup: this and this.

Ah, the heady days of early spring 2000! Yahoo was trading at $178, and Microsoft was over a c-note. P/E ratios for billion-dollar-market-cap firms involved division by zero. In short, the good old days. If, like me, you’ve had a “near-wealth experience,” you might shudder when you read CNet’s recap of the bubble’s rupture one year ago this week — last March 10, the NASDAQ reached its peak, 5,048.60.

No, I don’t know what it is today. No, don’t tell me.

Wasn’t this in some way inevitable?

Kevin Goldstein has compiled these stunningly erudite and informed comments about the Modern Library’s Top 20 novels of the 20th century (culled from reviews at Amazon.com, natch).

Clearly, it’s the common man who knows best. I don’t know what we need all this booklearnin’ for anyhow.

You know those sand-pendulum desk geegaws you can buy in office/gift shops? Apparently, this one created a pretty cool pattern during the Washington earthquake last week. Neato.

A photograph – unfortunately large – promoting upcoming film you might wish to check out.

Regardless of no-doubt certain suckage, the costumes are perfect.

There’s some stuff that I just plain couldn’t make up. Enjoy.

General Mills can now free you from the tyranny of pre-selected cereal components. Create your own at MyCereal.com. It remains to be seen if this is an actual moneymaker, even if it is General Mills. In the current plunging-NASDAQ environment, it’s pretty obvious that the notion of custom cereal via the Internet is more a dot-com punchline than a business plan.

You might think that I’m making fun of a certain group of people by calling attention to a page like “NASCAR Poems by Trish!.”

Well, you’d be absolutely right. But with lines like “Rusty Wallace, Mark Martin, and a guy they call DJ / Show the true meaning of FORD , when they race, / on every race Sunday / Jeremy Mayfield, Jeff Burton and don’t forget Awesome Bill / They race with all their hearts and souls and a very eager will,” how can you not?

Psychic-debunker James Randi – the guy behind the prove-your-psychic-powers-and-win-a-million-bucks price – explains how “cold readers” work on talk shows. Fascinating.

I don’t know what they do, but check out their guarantee.

Even though, if you’re like me, it’ll give you a really bad feeling. Greg Palast, an American working for the Observer of London, explains why there was zero coverage of Jeb Bush’s illegal purge of 64,000 mostly black voters in Florida in the months before the election. This evidence of a larger problem in the American press is chilling.

If those Matrix figures aren’t enough for you, try these. I really want the one of the Pope, complete with Holy Cross Kali Stick and Walther PPK and wearing the “blood red Vatican Assault Uniform.”

In case you’re interested, this site gives instructions for seeing the Space Station in various locations, including date/time and degree/direction data. Pretty cool.

Malcolm Gladwell has a piece in the current New Yorker discussing fat, french fries, and Ray Kroc’s role in defining the American fry. He also makes fascinating points about real vs. perceived fat content, what the deal is with Olestra, and how McDonald’s could tweak their formulas to great public health benefit. Well worth your time.

Find out with the Gay-O-Meter.

According to http://slashdot.orgSlashdot, this is the most retro home page ever.

Have you ever noticed how much some men resemble a certain country artist as they age? (Also this week’s winner of the longest-domain-name prize.)

Frightened of the New World Order, but unsure exactly how to register your displeasure? Need that special something for your Secret Pal in the militia? I’ve found just the thing.

My friend Mike said that, a long time ago. I suspect he’d enjoy, then, Helena Echlin’s Letter from Yale. You might, too, unless “The ode must traverse the problem of solipsism before it can approach participating in the unity which is no longer accessible.” makes sense to you. (In which case I urge counseling.)

ABC reports an, um, interesting theme park has opened in Gruta, Lithuania. Book your trip now!

Chris assures me that this is not in fact illegal, at least in Alabama.

There’s a firm out there selling personal luxury submarines. Unless this is a monstrous hoax, these guys are actually offering subs (though not built on spec — I don’t think they’ve got inventory) from small 2, 4, or 6 passenger boats to 20-, 36-, and 65-meter undersea yachts. The 65-meter Phoenix was designed for a client who didn’t buy; it awaits a buyer for a cool $78 million. For that, though, you get 5 state rooms and a boat capable of remaining submerged (down to 1,000 feet) for up to 3 weeks at a time. No word yet on the torpedo option.

Those pesky goons over at the The Spark are at it again. Gender Test uses your answers and the (in)accuracy of its ultimate guess to improve its data pool. Kind of neat. Also, it purports to show that one gender is slightly better than the other at recognizing whether or not clams are alive.

Er, right.

Eugene Mirman sings. Oh dear sweet Lord.

My right-winger friends love to talk about how biased the media is, which I guess explains the complete love-in over the whole Lewinski/impeachment deal a while back. Of course, it’s not that simple. As case in point, I direct you to a piece in Salon today about the very selective media coverage of the Clinton’s gift fiasco. There’s plenty of very interesting data that never made it to print, largely because a whiff of scandal sells papers. For instance:

• No, HIllary didn’t register anywhere.
• Contrary to most of reports, the $190,000 haul is actually the accumulation of several years’ worth of stuff, not the result of a loophole-exception gift frenzy.
• No, Senatorial gift guidelines don’t play into this at all.
• No, the didn’t take items belonging to the White House.

This feeding frenzy is good food for thought the next time someone babbles about “the liberal media.”

There’s just not much I can say that would improve on it: Charlotte’s Goat.

Betcha think this is a funny webmaster screwup, eh? Think again.

Why do my own ranting about the aggressive stupidity of most big-budget American Cinema when the SF Chronicle’s Jon Carroll will do it for me?

Or, at least, you know you know something. One of the things you now know is where AskJeeves gets its answers. Go on, show off a little. You know you want to.

You damned, dirty ape.

If you ever have a sense that someone in your life might be making tickmarks in a notebook concerning your alleged misbehavior, remember, you might be right.

Some jackass has managed to burn the hell out of himself attempting to mimic a stunt from MTV‘s Jackass, only without the elaborate safety precautions no doubt undertaken by the possibly eponymous host.

This fellow seems to be a bit confused about the traditional notion of “chasing a little tail.”

Not feeling fresh enough? Maybe you ought to shove a lit candle up your butt.

Ever feel the need to bathe in Jello? Yeah, me, too.

Remember all the awful things I’ve sent you to under this heading? I think we may have hit some sort of barrier with this one.

Unless said barrier is surpassed by this.

The Unemployed Philosophers Guild offers a number of compelling products, including Dorothy Parker martini glasses and a pillow printed with the Last Supper that plays “Hey Jude.”

No, really.

With the election and coronation of Bush II, ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’. And thank God — or at least the Supreme Court — for that.

I got yer pope, baby. Yeah, you know.

No, I’m not talking about me.

The Austin Chronicle’s Harvy Pekar has cut loose on Ken Burns’ Jazz documentary. While I am enjoying the film for the most part, Pekar makes some valid points that are worth discussing (including the by-now-oft-noted point that Burns essentially stops in 1960; the last 40 years are crammed into the final episode). Long, but worth a look.

Ol’ Tom points out that 1962’s most famous bikini is up for auction. When Ms Andress emerged from the sea in said item, Kennedy was president and “shaken, not stirred” wasn’t a cliche.

Someday, when one of your children asks this important yet awkward historical question, you can just send them here.

International playboy and raconteur Chris Mohney, the driving force behind that largely (okay, completely) forgotten online zines WordGun and Xora (neither of which even exist as dead sites anymore), has made himself a short movie, and he’s a-hawkin’ it on the Internet.

Check out Piper, starring Joey Norwood and Karsten Propper.

I’m not sure there’s anything I can say that can prepare you for these people.

The good folks at the Modern Humorist have had their way with another of our childhood icons, teen detective Enyclopedia Brown (God love ’em). I encourage you to take a look at Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Supreme Court Showdown.

Now, really, how early is too early?

The good people at The Spark have provided the Death Test. Accordingly, I expect to shuffle off this mortal coil on February 11, 2048, just shy of my 78th birthday. I’m reasonably confortable with this; it’s the 9% chance that the cause of death will be “electrolysis” that bothers me, not to mention the 5% chance of “wild animal mauling.”

In keeping with the theory that the most amusing things about the U.K. are the bits they got wrong (for example, ), I provide this glimpse via the Arizona Republic of the famed London Guardian’s Corrections and Amplifications section.

Or, at least, don’t use my microwave.

By now we’ve all seen the modern, nostalgia-driven, suite of action figures available. But there’s one problem: they’re all someone else.

How about an action figure of YOU? For about $250, these guys will render you in 1:6 scale, just in case you always wanted to see how you’d look in (the original) Steve Austin’s stylin’ red jumpsuit.