I dropped the Recent Leisure sidebar. Lovely in theory, but I’m two weeks behind updating it. Suffice it to say that I’ve come around to enjoying The Hulk, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle was tons of fun and not very intelligent, and Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry is incredibly mawkish in the light of day. His more recent work holds up nicely, though.

I try not to run out my weak Photoshop skills too often, but now and again I can’t resist. I’ve sent this into gbaMOD so I can buy it as a real skin, but rumor has it they’re running kind of slow so we’ll see.

Right there, in the big tan building at the center-left of the picture. If you were driving northwest along the road that cuts from the east side to the north side, you’d take a left after the semicircular driveway; then drive down one block. See, it’s the tan building on the left side of the street. Can’t miss it. (I’m pretty sure these wouldn’t actually work as directions if you didn’t know where I lived already. I hope, anyhow.)

Welcome to the 1st International Love Hotel Moblogging Conference. ( Snooze finds the coolest links.) You sort of missed it, because it was yesterday. A bunch of people independently sought out love hotels, took pictures, and blogged the whole thing. It reminds me of the Lessig Starbucks weekend (original), but with a single centralized blog. I wanted to do a central blog for the NBA draft, but I thought of the idea too late. I still want to do my nomoblog, too.

The BBC (and others) report that three of the six Guantanamo prisoners who are to face a military tribunal are citizens of US allies. Specifically, Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abbasi are British and David Hicks is Australian. Apparently, while we don’t try our own citizens in front of a military tribunal, we’re OK with trying Aussies and Brits in a closed court. There’s really no excuse for this. In particular, Australia has suffered Al Qaeda attacks — but Australian courts aren’t good enough to try Mr. Hicks? How insulting. ...

Vancouver won the 2010 Winter Olympics (original). While the main competitor was thought to be Salzburg, in Austria, that bid was eliminated on the first ballot. The final vote was between Vancouver and Pyongyang, and the Canadians won by a mere 3 votes. Fortunately for Canada, all but two of the Salzburg voters switched to Vancouver on the second ballot. Apparently, all the Europeans voted for Vancouver, because if the Olympics is in North America in 2010 it’s unlikely to be in North America again in 2012. That pushes New York further out of the running. London’s going to have to be the coalition of the willing representative, with Paris flying the standard of the opposition. (Madrid and Moscow are less likely candidates.)

I tossed this off in a friend’s comment section, but now I want to save it. Excelsior. It’s Las Vegas. 1960. The Rat Pack is headlining the Sands. And the Angel Pack is patrolling the skies… Jack Diamond: he’s a hard man, the hardest, skin like diamond and quips like knives. You couldn’t scratch him with a .45. (Note: parallel evolution (original).) Angie “Angel” Spencer: team leader, irreverent British heiress, with immense white overarching wings. She flies, and she knows when you’ve been naughty. ...

I was just browsing around the Apple iTunes Music Store, contemplating the new Liz Phair album. Despite the warnings of friends, yeah. I was all geared up for the experience of buying the thing and being hugely disappointed by a sellout. Then I noticed a Clean Lyrics badge on the album. Clicked it, and discovered that the album was an expurgated version. (Didja hear about the expurgated Liz Phair concert? “Hi, thanks for coming out! It’s gonna be a great night! I hope you enjoyed my show, and have a safe drive home!”) ...

Between this post (original) and this post (original), Howard Dean raised over a million dollars from Internet contributions. That’s 45 hours. His total fundraising income for the quarter is over seven million. It’s significant because Dean almost certainly outdid every other Democratic candidate this quarter, and he’s solidly in the top tier because of that. This is a major difference from insurgency candidacies such as McCain’s, Tsongas’, and Bradley’s. It’s interesting because the average contribution was $66.85. By my count that’s around 15,000 contributors. That’s both a lot of eyeballs looking at a political website and not very many eyeballs at all when compared to the number of votes Dean needs. Sort of the first trickle of a dam breaking, I suspect. I don’t see the Internet having an immense effect on this election cycle, but 2008 should be interesting.

Don Park’s philosophy of life is admirable, and not that far from mine. He calls it the Selfish Pig (original). Smart guy. I wish I was as capable of detaching appropriately as he is; life’s not really all that complex. Also: hi, John! I am sorry I was a flake last year; it was a bad year for me, but that’s no excuse.