Nifty gift from the folks in my inbox today: Digital images of me in baby and toddler formats. I offer the image to the right as proof that, contrary to the belief of one of my best friends, I did not have a beard back in those days. Look at me. Awww.

(Somebody tell the future Cal grad to take off that red jumper!)

The subway map you take with you every time you visit New York is no good anymore: As of yesterday, many lines were permanently rerouted to take advantage of additional tracks now running across the Manhattan Bridge for the first time in twenty years. One result: The very last Q-diamond train made its final run Saturday night, and it was quite a party. I so wish I could have been there.

[use gatsby/daisy as a user/pass pair for the NYT link if you need to]

Our eejit governor wants it to stop immediately, but the gay marriage train has been rolling for about a week now, right across the bay from me, in the city where I work and sometimes play. Two people I know have married their longtime partners thanks to Mayor Gavin Newsom. These are beautiful, loving people I'm talking about — people who treat others one hell of a lot better than plenty of straight people I've known. People who would probably make much better parents than plenty of parents I've known.

I mean, just look at these loving people. Counterarguments hold no water: "Equality" means marriage cannot be a reward for having been born heterosexual.

[Besides, the king of Cambodia thinks it's a great idea!]

I try not to say things like "President Boosh lies every time he opens his mouth," because I end up sounding terribly partisan and shrill, just like the asshats who used to say that Clinton put his hands on every woman he ever met. Watching Boosh on Meet the Press this past weekend, though, I felt damned fatigued as I tried to keep up with his outright mischaracterizations and half-truths and (yes) lies. Luckily, the Center for American Progress has catalogued them for me.

[I now return you to your Web browsing-related program activities.]

As I've said before, it's one of Newton's Laws: The Internet changes everything. Including, now, laundry. This is the neatest out-of-left-field use of the net I've heard of in a while.

[thanks to MC for the link]

There's a lovely little piece over at SFGate today (no, you won't find it in the printed Chronicle) about the folks who work the tollbooths at the Bay Bridge. I'm a FasTrak user now, so I don't hand bills over to these people anymore, but back when I did, there were faces I recognized, and I even had a couple of favorites who were always cheery and pleasant and remembered me and my Beetle. Now I just cruise through and listen for the FasTrak unit's double-beep. Easier. Quicker. But a moment of human interaction that was part of my daily routine is lost forever.

This is making the rounds (I saw it at Boing Boing) and it's easy to understand why. This is fun:

While sitting in your chair, lift your right foot slightly off the ground and move it in clockwise circles. Now draw the numeral "6" in the air with your right hand. Your foot will involuntarily reverse direction.

Monsanto, which makes a strong showing annually in the "Most Evil Corporation of the Year" competition, has been awarded a patent on the wheat that northern Indians grow to make chapati, the flat bread so common in that part of the world. Monsanto didn't engineer some new strain of wheat or anything like that. They simply identified the gene sequence inherent in wheat that Indian farmers had crossbred into perfection over the centuries. Now they own it. The world has gone mad. If this keeps up, greedy, balding white men are going to own the very air we breathe.

Some of our soldiers are using some of our money to create an Exorcist theme park in Iraq. I ain't kidding. You know, I've seen The Exorcist two or three times, and I don't recall the desert scenes at the beginning. I guess once Linda Blair starts projectile vomiting and doing naughty things with a crucifix, it kinda makes you forget what came before.