Sometimes I want to do things like this to the actual Wikipedia, then I figure they already have enough hilarious errors and vandalism without my help.

Scan It: Operation Checkpoint - pretty much as effective as the TSA, especially when the scanner guy's talking with his buddies behind him. Not that I've ever seen that happen. Never.

Its birthday passes every year without fanfare, mostly because I can't remember exactly when it was... but this is a pretty big year, and it deserves to be recognized.

( So, happy 12th birthday to the organized version of my facial hair. )

The thing that amazes me about this article from the Ladies' Home Journal from 1900 is not that it makes some hilariously awful predictions about what life will be like in the US in 2001, but how disturbingly accurate a lot of it is.

The author nails it on:
-The US population (he says 350-500 million, and 300 million is close enough)
-Taller people
-Longer lifespans (OK, 50 years is a bit short, but the general concept is right on)
-Ready-cooked meals
-Transmission of photos around the world from anywhere in the world, and color photography in general
-A worldwide phone network, and the ability to call from anywhere to anywhere
-150-mph trains
-Central heat and air

There are a couple others that are close to the mark, but they're all worth a read - even the ridiculous ones like the elimination of C, Q and X from the alphabet.

For all the moronic articles out there that are exhorting us to take advantage of Leap Day, because it's precious and special and lovely and only comes every four years, I'd like to point out that it's Friday, and hell with that. I'll make it special when the Grand Poobah of Fairyland declares February 29 a holiday, or the world decides to let everybody relax because we're arbitrarily adjusting the calendar to make up for the fact that we can't really deal with 1/4th of a day otherwise.

Man, the Jeopardy! online contestant application test mostly kicked my ass. There were a couple stretches where I nailed five or six or seven in a row, but there were some bizarrely obscure questions that would just derail things. If the questions didn't keep coming and you got a few seconds to let your brain recover, it'd be less brutal. I'm not getting my hopes up, but I do feel pretty good about knowing where Vinson Massif is.

I saw this posted in a journalism community the other day:

"Any day now they're going to discover I'm winging it."

Man, that might be the most universal idea ever.

The Battle of Pelennor Fields... rendered in candy. Never has so much teeth-rotting goodness been so awesome.

Dear healthcare industry press release writers:

Die in a fire.

All the best,
-B

Scene 1, a church basement
Narrator: Hi, my name's Bryan, and I'm actually disappointed AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" is unavailable on iTunes.
Everyone: Hi, Bryan.
Haggard-looking dude chainsmoking off to the side: DC rocks!
Counselor: Duane, you're not helping.
Narrator: I know AC/DC is considered a gateway band into bad '80s metal, but listening to Great White? Winger? Ratt? That can't happen to me, man. No way.

Scene 2, a hospital (six months later)
Doctor: Well, I have good news and bad news.
Narrator: What the hell happened to me?
Doctor: Right. The good news is that we were able to save you, though I'm afraid your acid-wash jeans and bandana were a total loss.
Narrator: Wait, save me? And I hope that second part's the bad news.
Doctor: Not exactly. I don't think the media has gotten wind of it yet, but how often does someone nearly suffocate under a pile of Whitesnake and Poison albums? Or, for that matter, even get a pile of those CDs? Seriously, I thought they were classified as hazardous waste.
Narrator: I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about.

Scene 3, rehab (two months later)
Narrator: Hey, Lindsay! Good to see you back! Again.

Man, forget a farmer's tan, after spending a week under the midday sun in Syracuse, my legs are tanned so dark, it looks like my feet were transplanted off a corpse. From six inches above my knee to my ankle, it looks like I'm Italian, but otherwise, I'm whiter than Jim Gaffigan.

Even better, ( my neopoli-tan: )

There's nothing quite as disconcerting as driving up through the 295 work zone at 11:30 at night and suddenly finding yourself driving north in what were technically the southbound lanes.

It wasn't totally unexpected; I'd seen the DOT's crazy repaving plan, which involves shutting down half the highway at once to resurface all the lanes together. When "lane shift" turns into "bridge abutments on your right and two sets of tight-ass lanes," though, it tends to throw you, especially when it's nighttime and you're still wondering why they shut down four or five exits at once.

Why do I know off the top of my head that you should put knocked-out teeth in milk, but severed body parts or organs in ice?

For all "shopping cart"
replace with
"drudge stallion"

That is all.

Sometimes I think it would be awesome to invent a new person, give him a resume and a history, apply for a job, get an interview, then show up and claim things like "watching Sister Act 2 seven times in a row" as a job skill, insist they call my references at 2 a.m. and ask the company what its policy on pants is.

It's a good thing I can't conceive of doing this and keeping a straight face the entire time, because otherwise that probably means I'm unwell.

From the "Stuff That's Always Bugged Me" files - the Doylestown Bypass. If you've ever driven down 202 through Doylestown, you understand - the highway just suddenly stops. Apparently PennDOT was going to finish building an expressway through there, sat on the idea for decades (the first time I experienced the Bypass madness was... uh... 1995-ish, maybe '94), and is just now getting around to developing a new, slightly different plan for completing 202.

Spot the hilarious obituary typo!

To the organizers of World Kidney Day: Charlie the Unicorn wants a word with you.

I realized on my way home from a couple basketball championship games tonight that if I could've somehow found time to drive to Highland Park, I could've scored the Kosher Trifecta by going from Cherry Hill to Lakewood to HP. Alas, there are never enough hours in the day.

Winner, Luckiest Car Crash Survivor of All Time.

The mind boggles.

Hey, people who can type a couple characters and want to take a trip to Italy - Quiznos is giving away one of those. And hell, even if you don't win the grand prize, a Vespa or the complete Sopranos set are also fairly cool.

Today's secret word is "shithole."

Signs your love life is truly pathetic: the front page of Yahoo! is telling you to stop whining and get laid already.

I'm roughly one-and-a-half more days of forgetting to shave and a pair of fingerless gloves away from being a full-fledged hobo.

Seriously, I'm dying over here - but bowls of puppies can do that.

Call it my C&C Music Factory Moment - I allegedly have a Boston accent, further proving that my dad's constant denial of his Mass vocal roots is not only totally wrong, but got passed on a generation. Alternately, I belong out west somewhere, and Philly/the Northeast come in 5th and 6th, which I guess makes sense, when your dad grows up in Worcester and your mom's from the Netherlands.

I've photographed a bunch of extraordinarily old people lately - from 96 on up - and I'm just gonna throw this out there.

If I make it to be 103 years old and anyone has the balls to tell me to blow out even one candle on my cake, they're getting a flying cane to the head. And watch the hell out, because I'll be throwing it with my bionic arm.

Sometimes when I'm home in the morning, the land line will ring with some random person's name attached to the caller ID, and I let the machine grab it. Most of the time there's no message, but on Friday, we got one of our random religious callers. They don't ring very often, but every month or two, we get a call from someone wanting to share Bible verses with us. This time, the message was classic:

"Hey, my name is Pat, and I was just making a special effort to contact you to share a thought from the Bible (ed: sounds like "biber"). Today we're sharing the scripture Psalms 37, 9 and 11. So if you get a chance, please read it. And... we've been talking to many of our neighbors about putting trust in God, and I'm sure you believe in God. So perhaps I can call and talk to you another day. All right? Ciao! (laughter as she hangs up)."

With the "Ciao!" and the laughter, I don't know whether to take Pat seriously, but for what it's worth, she was trying to tell me the part about the meek inheriting the Earth. It's probably a good thing she didn't get me on the phone, because I probably would've thrown some Izzard at her:

"What do want? We want the Earth! When do we want it? Now, motherfucker!"

As up-in-arms as various whacko conservative groups get about television and movies, I'm amazed they don't freak out more over school plays and musicals.

Case in point: I shot the dress rehearsal for an all-kids production of "Oklahoma!" (technically, "Getting to Know Oklahoma!", since it's all sorts of chopped down), and actually half-paid attention to what was going on as I stared through my lens. In the first couple of scenes, there were:

-References to a girl being the town bicycle
-Suggestions of suicide being a good option for a loser
-A whole lot of gun fondling
-Buying your way to a wife
-Outrageously suspect Southern accents

Man, I love that they can get away with this stuff, all because they're singing. I'm guessing that if "NYPD Blue" had been in musical format, no one would've ever noticed Sipowicz's ass.

The only downside to staying in an underwater resort in Fiji is that you're only in the underwater part for two days out of a week-long stay.

But hey, you can learn how to pilot a submarine... so you got that going for you, which is nice.

The afternoon sun killed Jen (she was in bed before 10:30), and we missed out on snoophuntyhunt's party... but thanks to the miracle of IMing, ( the drunk bastards brought us there. )

First, for those of you in south Jersey, happy Damn It, My Car's Covered In A Quarter-Inch-Thick Layer of Green Dust Day!

On Tuesday, our sports editor and I were talking about motivation and how it's often difficult to stay motivated at a newspaper when the daily stuff grinds you down. We talked about how you end up looking ahead to bigger events - like the Penn Relays next week, or a possible sectional/state title run by one of our baseball teams or the two weekends of championship track and field that our local teams should dominate.

I pointed out I also have the advantage of monthly clip contests and a slew of yearly contests to keep me going, to keep pushing me even during a down week or month.

And then yesterday, the first clip contest results of the year came in, and I won two honorable mentions: one in sports and one in features. Clearly, I'm some kind of psychic.

No, but seriously, I'm really jazzed about the feature picture placing, because it was something I spent a good 20 minutes trying to shoot just right during what could easily be the worst assignment I've shot so far this year.

In other news, Editor Matt is now gone for a week, as his wife's busy having their second kid (son #2) right now. Let the chaos ensue!

Seriously, if Washington doesn't pick this design, they're going to miss out on having the coolest/freakiest state quarter in history. Come on, Washington - don't end up like South Carolina, or Connecticut, or Louisiana, or Pennsylvania, or, worst of all, Maryland. Be daring.