M.I.A.- Holiday Traffic. during the past week i spent a grand total of 4.2 kajillion hours in the car driving from Indiana (not cold) through Chicago (not cold) and Wisconsin (moderately cold) to Minnesota (which was enjoying some brass monkey weather while i was there). for an interesting piece on the origin of the phrase 'brass monkey weather' check out world wide words via quinion dot com. i'd link you straight to the stuff, but i'm feeling lazy. maybe it's because i'm due back at work in < 8 hrs and am somewhat ambivalent about that particular prospect. or perhaps not. in any case it's definitely not due to heavy holiday traffic or, frankly, any holiday traffic at all. i slowed down a mere 4.5 times on my transMidwest odyssey, at least 1.5 times of which were for the highway patrol and not for traffic. and all of this came after the thick thick gloom and/or doom pouring forth from papers and pundits of all stripes in the run up to the saga that was the T-Day Vacation. i am hesitant to say this out loud because gloating is so impolitic, but i'll say it anyway: holiday traffic, i owned you. better luck next time.

intolerable cruelty: a movie i saw over the holiday. may have been good. also may not have been any good. five minutes after walking out of the theater i had no recollection of anything that had gone on during the previous hour or two except that i remember laughing. but i don't really remember what i laughed at so i can't tell you with any authority whether or not it was funny. go see it and when you're done you can fill me in on if it's any good. there is allegedly a b.b. thornton sighting in this movie.

it's nice to see that the Argo's future captain is coming along nicely. he could use some practice sharing, but i give this baby an 8.5 out of 10 for congeniality & approachableness. appears to be well groomed. kudos to the face that launched a thousand ships on a job well done so far.

i heard a rumor in Chicago that the most humans ever eaten by one tiger is around 450. can i get some kind of confirmation on this from someone? i don't know what evidence you might produce, but i am intrigued to know anyhow.

in the interest of being my normally cheerful self tomorrow morning, i am going to leave off the (massive) holiday update / wrap-up / denoument(sp?) / outtro(i am not sure what this means but refuse to take it out) / postscript / eulogy i have planned. if i stay up to finish, i'll turn into a complete zombie tomorrow at approximately 7:40 AM. if i sleep now, i'll be a zombie that will not, despite moanings to the contrary, try to eat anyone's brains. braaaaaains. good night.