Big news soon.

That's all I'll say.

ex michaelio semper aliquid novi

Dogs can smell fear.

Sharks can smell blood.

Children can smell deadlines.

In all three of these cases, an attack mechanism is triggered. The unsuspecting victim, helpless to resist, is quickly set upon and destroyed.

In other words: once the kids leave me alone, SD will be ready.

SoBig.f occupied a good part of my day today. Thanks, virus makers!

But enough about me. How are you?

Behind on the Snappy Dresser relaunch, behind on the redesign for this here site, behind on my list of priorities at The Big Place I Work.

All because the chickens demand Lebensraum.

The wife convinced me yesterday that what was most needed on the estate grounds was more room for the chickens to run about. So I dragged some power tools out into the driveway, bought some cheap wood at the local lumberyard, and started the job of expanding their outdoor pen over 200%.

This sort of construction allows one to call upon deeply buried knowledge across many disciplines: physics ("How hard to I need to smack this mosquito to kill it?"), trignonometry ("at what angle is the circular saw least likely to cause a major arterial wound?", biology ("will a mosquito attempt to drink blood spewing from a major arterial wound?"), and so on. I wisely ignored all attempts at an analytic approach, however, and applied more useful collegiate knowledge by quickly opening a beer before starting.

Framing, cutting, drilling — I was like Jimmy Carter on a Habitat for Humanity project, except that I didn't give away any strategically important canals before I finished. And also, much like everything Carter was involved with, the project is incomplete. I still need to add some fencing to the frames, the gate needs a support crossbar and hinges. And I'm thinking about moving the barbecue next to the pen as an added incentive for good poultry behavior.

So the redesigns will finish tonight, and the birds will enjoy conditions far better than they deserve.

The voters have spoken. By a nearly 4-1 ratio, it has been decided that my new song should be about "the love between a man and a sandwich." I'm not sure how many of you sandwichophiles have been stuffing the ballot box, but let it not be said that I am a despotic beast who ignores the people's wishes. Come Monday or Tuesday, your hoagie-lovin' song shall be unveiled.

When the Teenage FBI is on the streets of Bar Harbor, you know that some serious stuff is going down on island. Usually they come around for my protection — after the incident earlier this summer, The Island doesn't like to take chances with its celebrities. But I didn't get a call from the bureau before their most recent appearance, so I'm guessing the A-List tourists have finally descended en masse, and the Agents are out scouting quality parking and outrageous deals on manually-powered transportation. Which means I'm undefended, ladies, so your quarry will remain vigilant against your wiles and charms.

Or maybe I'll just hunker down at Cold Comfort Farm until the leaves change color, and catch up on my projects and those of my dear compatriots. Greg has deigned us worthy enough for his Web presence, returning with an updated Devil's Dictionary for these trying modern times. Dan has dropped some serious cash on a new Moveable Type installation to bring you the scientifically awesome Beer-Movie Rating System — let's see that clown Ebert come up with such a useful system!

And while most of the major websites are taking their summer break, lolling about on some unwarranted vacation, I've been working night and day (literally: one night and one day) in preparation for Monday's Tuesday's return of Snappy Dresser. There's not a whole lot to do up here in the winter, so I find it worthwhile to ready my virtual canvas for the painting of all things trivial and polemic. There's a clean and simple new design to serve up the questionable content in which SD specializes. So please do me the good and honourable favour of visiting http://www.snappydresser.org on Monday Tuesday morning and sharing your tales of joy and disbelief at its return.

A horrifying story to report today: The Maine Chainsaw Massacre.

MOUNT DESERT—Police responded to a complaint about a party in a cottage off Main Street on Aug. 9. The caller told police that the partygoers were not being loud but that he heard what he thought to be a chainsaw started up every few minutes. Police met with some people who said there was no chainsaw. They believed the sound could have been coming from a mixer they were using to make frozen margaritas.

My God: I own a chainsaw and a mixer. What if I get them confused some day? O, the carnage!

A sign has appeared in my upstairs bathroom. It's a folded piece of 8.5" x 11" copier paper, on which my wife has scrawled the following:

Did you......

• ...lift both lids?
• ...wipe the seat?
• ...remember to flush?
• ...wash your hands?

I'm pretty sure this sign is meant for the boys.

But on second thought....I did live in a fraternity, y'know.

Some things don't need words to explain them. Below is one of those things.

John Edwards's campaign headquarters in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (click picture for larger image):

Thanks to Dan for the photo.

An imagined conversation:

"Did you get my email?"

"Yeah, I wiped my ass with it."

Link courtesy of Boing Boing

I really should create and market new headache remedies to assist us old fogeys in dealing with the abominable pablum on Top 40 radio. I've already put the cart before the horse by coming up with product names before starting the R&D:

Rage Against the Migraine
Christina Analgesia
Excedrinescence featuring Paul McCoy
Advil Lavigne

Attention Media Members: please feel free to use these awful headlines I've created in your obsessive coverage of Arnold Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial bid:

• The Two-Year-Terminator
  
• Jingle All The Way To The Governor's Mansion
  
• If We Elect Him, He Can't Make Terminator 4
  
• What's Harder To Spell: "Gubernatorial" Or "Schwarzenegger"?
  
• Now You Can Vote For A Big Austrian Guy
  
• Hey Let's Make Another Insipid Reference To "Total Recall" or "The Running Man" Because We're A Sucky Small-Town Paper
  

Congratulations are due to Fikrad, who displayed exemplary bravery and élan by subjecting herself to a blind date and riding it through to the inevitable outcome: an awkward hug in a parking lot.

Can a computer help a human being solve his inner mental torment? We've asked Solaris 8, a UNIX-based operating system developed by Sun Microsystems, to see if it can.

mpg@carmen: help me oh god help 
 ERROR: Key 'me' not found (he1) 
 ERROR: Key 'oh' not found (he1) 
 ERROR: Key 'god' not found (he1) 
  
 help: 
         help [arg] 
  
 (When all else fails execute "help stuck".) 

mpg@carmen: i can't work i can't work i can't work
Unmatched '.

mpg@carmen: if i can't get out of this rut i think i'll die
if: Expression Syntax.

mpg@carmen: what the hell am i supposed to do
can't open the (26)
can't open hell (26)
can't open am (26)
can't open i (26)
can't open supposed (26)
can't open to (26)
can't open do (26)

Captions are needed for the following photo, taken twenty minutes ago:

The item pictured at right is:

a) More dynamic and exciting than Ben Affleck in Gigli

b) My particular rock off the coast of Maine

c) Microscopic and crawling on you right now

d) What you're supposed to be neverminding while paying attention to the Sex Pistols

e) Other

As always, answers accepted in the comments.

I'll never understand why so many people think Maine is a bizarre backwards state, forever destined to the rear corners of American minds along with Wyoming, Idaho, and the like.

We have modern amenities such as broadband Internet access and hot water (agua caliente for our Spanish-speaking readers — ¡Saludos amigos!). There are places where one can play bocce under pretty trees while enjoying a crisp alcoholic beverage. Our instititutions of higher learning perform groundbreaking research involving putting blueberries into hamburgers. And the artistic and literary acheivements of many residents are...wait a second, putting blueberries into hamburgers?

Forget everything I've just said. This place is more backwards than Jim Marshall driving a car in reverse on Opposite Day.

The responsibilities of parenthood include handling unforeseen disasters with a hearty mix of humor and poise, as illustrated by the following letter I recently sent to a manufacturer of audio equipment:

Grado Labs
4614 Seventh Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11220

Dear Good Grado People:

I was fortunate to receive a set of your SR60 headphones for my birthday four years ago. They performed admirably at everything I threw at them: loud obnoxious music, soft obnoxious music, computer games, and a 30-watt guitar amplifier. But no matter how much pride you take in your engineering and manufacturing methods, it is my duty to inform you that your headphones experience severe failure when confronted by a four-year-old boy with garden shears.

As much as I would like to blame you for not encasing the headphones’ cables within some hyper-reinforced sleeve, I readily admit that all fault is my own — although I do reserve the right to blame the garden shears’ manufacturer for neglecting to include a smart-technology safeguard against cutting “Daddy’s Things." I suppose that with the vast selection of other items in the house to be severed, I should be quite pleased that a non-living object bore the brunt of my child’s wrath. I know the cats are.

I have enclosed the remains of my SR60s for your inspection and amusement. Perhaps your service department sees this sort of thing all the time, and can order up a “Scrape ‘n’ Tape� or a “Solder ‘n’ Sew,� if they use diner lingo as I hope they do. If, however, the hope for repair is as remote as I believe, I feel it only appropriate that the phones are returned to the fires in Brooklyn from which they were forged, and laid to rest with all due honors.

At the very least, I would like you to send your latest catalog along with a report on my SR60s. And if you are ever to develop a line of titanium-cabled phones, please keep me in mind.

Sincerely,

Michael Genrich

Posted by Michael Genrich at 07:41 PM

ROCK OFF COAST OF MAINE (MG) — Tensions remain high along the DMZ as a soldier from the People's Union of Chicken examines two Republic of Duck sentries leaving their guardhouse. Several skirmishes involving kitchen scraps and feed pellets have exploded over recent weeks.

What this world really needs is a bagel that's easily converted into a hand grenade, so that when you are in the middle of eating it on your drive to work and you are cut off by a cell-phone-gabbing lunatic, it's no trouble to sidle up next to him in the breakdown lane, lob your breakfast ordnance through the open window of his Ford Intrusion, and blissfully speed ahead as an explosion sends the guy to Bad Driving Tourist hell.

No one's invented this yet, though, so I had to settle for throwing my regular ol' bagel at the guy.

If anyone sees a large black Ford SUV with Ohio plates in the region, please stop the driver and ask "if he'd like more cream cheese with that."