I’m going to share some wonderful things with you now. I’ve saved them up, although my one reader has probably seen them all through my del.icio.us account.

I think Christopher Hitchens getting waterboarded is fairly noteworthy.

Zadie Smith writes about Kafka again. Funny story about this. I was reading the article, and the writer noted that Women are snares which lie in wait for men on all sides, in order to drag them into the merely finite is a “perfectly ordinary expression of misogyny, dispiriting in a mind that more often took the less-traveled path.” I was already annoyed with the article on a number of counts (it’s titled “F.Kafka, Everyman”) and I thought, I bet the author’s a woman. When I scrolled to the top and saw who it was, I thought, “well she makes some good points”. So, there. (( To get this, you have to understand that Zadie Smith and Kafka and the intersection of the two have been key influences throughout my 20s. ))

This article made the rounds on the aggregator blogs. There’s a passage that ends “She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain,” that made it like a story from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Some people have called bullshit on it, but who cares?

This video will also scare the hell out of you. Look at the debate in the comments about whether it’s basically a snuff film.

Have you seen Quest for Fire? My god, it’s a French-Canadian movie about cavemen trying to get their fire back. It has authentic made-up cavemen dialogue in several languages and no subtitles. So awesome.

I like to corner people and tell them about the bonobos. This video will change your life. The thesis at the beginning of the video sounds ridiculous, but let it sink in a little before you reject it.

This video about a weird subculture in Japan will also change your life. There’s a tremendous surprise about halfway through. This video isn’t exactly eye-opening, but it brings you up to speed on something you might not have wanted to know about.

The second video here has become a local meme for Amy and I, along with the lines from this (an old thing that we just discovered). Huh??? What???

Technology Crisis I and II are just about the best free music you’ll ever get. It’s music written for an imaginary video game.

Anyway, I have a lot of this stuff. I estimate about 40% of my brain is made out of this crap.