It's hot down here. I don't bother to look at the temperature because it would go to my head and I'd stay indoors all day. I know it's over 100°F because even as I ride at 45mph, the air warms my skin. The effect is like that of a convection oven. It's almost the opposite of wind-chill. Unfortunately the term "windburn" describes a phenomenon that is unrelated to heat. What can we call this then?

Sears was discounting 10% off almost everything in the store for Sears Card holders, so I went and got the vacuum cleaner I've had my eye on. I saved $50 and turned down the offer for a service contract. With tax, it was less expensive than any other place I'd looked, online or local.

This purchase has grown more urgent every day since my vacuum-owning roommates moved out. Recently I took care of a friend's dog for a few days, an adventure that left my apartment looking like what a dog would look like from the inside if you turned it inside-out and filled it with air and furniture.

The vacuum is a Dyson DC15, the yellow and grey model that rides on a ball for maximum maneuverability. It's one of those bagless vacuums that they say doesn't lose suction when it fills up. I ran this thing over every inch of carpet in my aparment, emptying the canister several times. To confess the truth, in my zeal to clean I failed to empty the canister before breaching the "full" mark each time; it didn't occur to me that it would fill up so fast. That's a good sign.

There were many good signs. Things came out of the carpet that I never knew existed. Once when I was emptying the canister, the holy grail fell out. There's a spot in the corner where the vacuum seems to work much harder; I'm pretty sure it'll eventually pull up the ark of the covenant. I heard something jingling around in the canister and when I turned off the motor, I heard God exclaim, "Hey, you found my keys!"

All kidding aside, I am ecstatic about this vacuum. I took special care of it after the hard work it did today. After I got its canister washed out and its seals wiped clean and all of the hair and carpet fiber pulled from its brush bar, I am too proud of this machine to shove it into a dark closet. I must nurture my new appliance. Together, my Dyson and I will conquer the world!

I am a MySpace user. Do not scorn me.

It is a new, guilty pleasure of mine. It all started when my sister told me she was getting messages from my old friends from high school. My ten-year reunion is this year and I haven't seen most of those people since graduation. Not being particularly upset with any of them, nor having any embarassing reason to avoid my high school cohort en masse, I signed up and started looking.

This isn't like Classmates.com, the site that spams you and teases you and won't let you contact your friends until you've paid their fee. MySpace makes it just as easy to find your classmates but the comparison ends there. You can be friends again without having to pay the middleman. I have recovered over a dozen old friends in as many days. This is good.

Not everything about MySpace is good. Sometimes strange people send me notes. Sometimes they request my friendship despite the complete absense of any supporting logic. Sometimes bands shamelessly self-promote in the same way. Sometimes, while I'm browsing my friends-of-friends, somebody will have crassly injected a music player into their profile so that my computer automatically plays their theme song as soon as the page loads in the browser; I usually mute all sound while browsing MySpace because of this autoplay nightmare.

The HTML markup is table-based and the CSS selectors are minimally useful. Injecting CSS into the page is allowed and not too difficult (as you might guess from the high incidence of inane profile themes) but the layout is held firm by the tables. They've dealt with their share of successful hacking attempts, too, so the CSS filtering and general security is in very good shape.

All in all, I'm glad to have joined MySpace. I don't spend time browsing strangers and looking for new friends. I don't use it as a primary source for information, entertainment, friendship or social experience. I don't even check my messages every day. But if you are already my friend and you would like to register that fact on MySpace, I'm there.

It used to be that every time I would watch a movie by Quentin Tarantino I’d find some new joke or hidden irony. Now the frequency has diminished but the effect is the same.

Tonight I played Pulp Fiction four times in a row. Of course, I was busy doing other things at the same time but the soundtrack is great so I let it ride.

During the fourth showing, as Vincent was screaming at Lance to get the adrenaline shot that would save Mia from her heroin overdose, I noticed two board game boxes that someone had placed on a table in view of the camera and broke out laughing. That Quentin is, you know, like, witty.

What are the board games?