Photos from Barcelona and Lyon are up! Please go directly to the set so you can see them in some kind of order.

Dan: If you quiz me on Spanish I'll probably remember it. I just can't think of things to say.
Me: Okay, how do you say "wife"?
Dan: ...
Me: ...
Dan: "Pulpo" means octopus!

Last night I saw the episode of Ace of Cakes where they made a cake for LOST's 100th episode. Of course some of the actors showed up to eat it so you could see what they were like out of character (though still in costume). Josh Holloway does not have a Southern accent. Daniel Dae Kim, of course, speaks English. Michael Emerson... IS COMPLETELY CREEPY AND TERRIFYING. Seriously, you guys, THAT IS NOT ACTING. THAT IS HOW HE TALKS. I mean I'm sure he's a lovely person but that weird cadence and enunciation... either he couldn't figure out how to get out of character or he just talks like that. Terrifying.

I was kind of proud of both Cacie and me in this Twitter exchange.

My Scrabble game with Lynne -- look who showed up in the upper righthand corner!

Don't forget to send my cousin your Overrated List! Grammy's is the best so far:

1. Open-mindedness
2. Baseball
3. Mushrooms
4. A hot bath

That is just making me laugh endlessly.

ETA: Am currently rethinking mine. Marijuana and weight loss are keepers. Thinking of adding bacon. Other contenders: finding yourself, spirituality, Seinfeld, Joss Whedon (who, I have explained many times to my sister, is very great, just not OMG I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABIES AND THEN REABSORB THEM SO I CAN HAVE THEM AGAIN great). Would have liked to put Christopher Hitchens, just to be meta, but plenty of people think he's the tool that he is.

Laura: okay those rotties on CO are great
me: yes
they are my new god
Laura: what about fat satan?
me: they are the hounds of fat satan

From my cousin:

There's a recession on. Pirates are on the loose. Apparently it's a big deal that a woman in Scotland is both not very good looking and not too bad at singing.

These are tough times, and no one knows how to fix it. Obama even got a friggin puppy and that hasn't fixed it.

But I know how to fix it. I know just what the world needs. That's right: another blog! But you have to help.

The blog will be called Overrated List. It won't be a blog, really; it will just be a static compendium of people's Overrated Lists. All you have to do is email me your List and we can get started.

The concept is simple. (Chances are I've already talked your ear off about it once or twice.) An Overrated List consists of the four things (people, places, movies, bands, objects, concepts, anything) that you think are the most overrated in the universe. Here's what I say about it on the website:

According to a 2006 New Yorker profile, Christopher Hitchens once declared, apropos of nothing, “that the four most overrated things in life were champagne, lobsters, anal sex, and picnics.” Like all of Hitch’s opinions, this one offends everyone, for different reasons. Still, you can’t help but admit there’s something to it.

Now, thanks to the magic of the internet, we can all disseminate Overrated Lists of our own. The rules are simple. Each List contains exactly four (4) items. You only get one List, so take your time and make it good. While every List should be unique, try not to make yours too idiosyncratic (”the deli on my corner”; “stuff I am allergic to”). And keep in mind: overrated things are not just bad things -- global warming and impetigo and Cleveland, for instance, would not make the cut, because they were never rated highly in the first place. In fact, most overrated things are good -– just not that good, for crying out loud.

Please submit your List to overratedlist@gmail.com, along with your first name, age, and city of residence. If you want your name to appear as a link to another site, please include that as well.

Please think long and hard -- quit your job if you have to -- and then email me your Overrated List. Forward to your friends, obviously. If you have already settled on a List (Jessica, Will, Steve, Bess, etc.) please email me to confirm that the List I know and love/hate is the one you want recorded for posterity.

I finally finished mine tonight, after ruminating for a while:

1. Marijuana
2. Weight loss
3. Web 2.0
4. Patriarchy

"Spoken-word poetry" was on there for a while but got displaced by Web 2.0. I am pretty pleased with this list as I feel it's both accurate and a nice snapshot of my personality.

What about you?

I KNOW Kate said they weren't that great and I KNOW I looked just fine but man I really REALLY wish Peach Berserk had had this dress when I was looking for something to wear for the wedding.

Or that I could justify the cost for any other reason.

CURSE YOU, MONEYS

Laura: do you think rushdie was a pain in the ass while he was hiding?
me: it probably depends who he was hiding with
like imagine if he was being attended to by a john grisham fan
he'd be trying to have conversations and they'd be like JESUS SHUT UP YOU FANCY MAN
but yeah i bet he was way whiny
people never got his chipotle order right, etc
Laura: right, and then if he was being tended by a fan they'd ask stupid questions
"were mishal and mishal really the same people"
"did gibreel really grow horns"
me: "for fuck's sake just give me my burrito"
Laura: "or was that a METAPHOR"
me: "aw man there's no guac on this"
Laura: i'm dying of laughter at the idea of rushdie whining about chipotle
fancy man, indeed
me: he's hoity-toity about his barbacoa
Laura: "this is NOT free-range chicken"
"i told you to go to the cross-town chipotle, not the corner chipotle"
me: "i don't like how the air smells in there"
Laura: "now shut up, the view is on"

Later, after determining the relative dates of Rushdie coming out of hiding and Chipotle being founded:

Laura: our scenario is TOTALLY PLAUSIBLE
me: and therefore ALMOST CERTAINLY TRUE

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs: Do you have one more follow-up on this?
Reporter: No, I’m thinking about pirates.

Itinerary today:

Salvage store (bought a broken clock and a drawer we're going to use as a shelf) (this is the coolest store I have ever been in)

Papermoon (grilled havarti sandwich with tomato and basil)

Shoes and chocolate store (bought a scarf, some salt caramels, and some fancy chocolate bunnies for Nancy and Casey when they come for Easter)

AVAM (new exhibit: Art, Science, and Philosophy)

I'm a pretty good birthday planner, if I do say so myself. Now Dan is going to go pick up Yoann who wants to cook French food in our kitchen. I hope I don't end up too full to eat some cake.

Literal video for White Wedding -- started out feeling kind of enh about it, but by the end I was thinking it might be my favorite since Take On Me.

This is the best 25 things meme I have ever seen.

My friends, observe the future of hypertext fiction.

When I was doing digital studies, all we had for hypertexts was basically bullshit linear texts with your occasional fork or sidetrack. They were "hypertexts" mostly because you clicked on things to get to the next page. They usually weren't particularly good from a literary standpoint (in fact, I told my students not to expect them to be interesting texts, vs. interesting AS texts), and were certainly way too timid with the medium to make up for it. It took a LOT of theory slathered on top to make them worth talking about.

This is where I want to see internet fiction going: large-scale, potentially collaborative environments whose primary goal is NOT the telling of a single narrative. This is clearly a single, self-contained work, but at the same time it mimics our familiar experience of hypertext (i.e., the rest of the internet), instead of mimicking a codex book using hypertextual software.

I can't talk like a grad student anymore, but the point is, this is cool and is I think the future form of internet fiction. It's not the pinnacle by any means -- I don't see the point of many of the external links (to pages that aren't part of the project), the videos were maybe too ambitious at times, and they can't seem to keep track of whether Pieter is Dutch or Afrikaaner. It doesn't intend to be more than a humor piece, and I would love to see a similar project that was more like reading Then We Came To The End -- character-driven, with subtle and complex interactions spooled out slowly as you get deeper into the relationships. The characters here are mostly parodies, although Pieter makes me laugh reliably (and somehow feels more like a fleshed-out personality, despite still being over the top). But in terms of form, and also for some top-rate giggles, it is awesome. (And the chairs is all pigshit-weird.)

Has anyone else's holiday music experience been bonkers this year? The other day I was in Starbucks and they were playing tons of Christmas tunes, including two different versions of that fucking sleigh ride song in the hour I was there, but they also played Joni Mitchell's "River" (sorta standard holiday music because it has the word "Christmas" in it, but awfully maudlin) and Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" (which... really?). Even weirder was when I went to Borders yesterday and Randy Newman's "A Piece of the Pie" was slipped in among the Christmas songs. I'm not really complaining but I'm half expecting to hear "Chiron Beta Prime" at the drugstore or something.

I am pretty pissed I didn't have this idea first. I mean, hurling invective at fuzzy animals? That's like my main talent.

What's your fantasy job? Like, when you're at work and wishing you weren't, how do you wish you made your money instead? What do you daydream about doing if only you had the time/training/money/another lifetime to do it in?

Please send others over here or repost in your journal (and link me) -- I'm trying to get as many answers as possible.

Laura: oh man, mom and dick let me have her old joy of cooking from the 60s
which my dad rebound in his bookbinding days
it is awesome
me: oh, no way
is everything 30% butter?
Laura: it has recipes for, like, possum
and how to skin a squirrel

Laura: okay, i'm looking at the joy of cooking right now, and there is a chapter called "stuffings, dressings, farces or forcemeat"
me: WHAT THE FUCK
"farces or forcemeat"???
you should probably make that your gchat status

( A gala stuffing for boned chicken, squabs or galantines )