uh oh....

i don't like this, sam i am. apparently my irrational fears of the airport baggage handlers going through stuff may really be true. the police at jfk sent some fake luggage through, and they witnessed baggage handlers stealing laptops and cell phones! now, i'm not sure who doesn't travel with their cell phone on their person but STILL. and i'm traveling this weekend! all the more reason to pack light and carry on..... (which, in my almost-25-years, i have still not figured out how to do.)

you're awesome.

whether you're psyching yourself up for a raise, or just need a boost, this is for you.

what up me!

e: you're famous
me: i am???
e: you're one step ahead of the approval matrix

does this look familiar to you? looks like nymag thought it was cool too, and put it in their approval matrix for this week. yea, i'm awesome.

put that away.

does this make anyone else want to stab their eyes out? (if so, sorry for ruining your day. i can't help but share...)

mystery box.

great talk by JJ Abrams at TED about mystery boxes.... a very cool combo of technology, movies, magic, filmmaking, lost.

omg.

obama at the g8 summit this week in italy -

kind of love sarkozy's face also. hey prez - did you think the photographers took the day off??

at least i'm in the top 10%.

woke up this morning to an email from "tim", the founder of pandora. among other things, he notified me that due to costs of royalties, pandora will begin capping monthly usage at 40 hours. he says, "most listeners will never hit this cap, but it seems that you might." damn straight i will, tim! i listen to pandora all day every day at work! his "first option" seems ok - paying 99 cents for unlimited listening after you hit your 40 hour monthly mark. but i am not going to start getting a membership to pandora. the beauty of it is that it's free! at least tim says they'll show you a counter, so you can see if you're starting to get close to your 40 hours. i'll keep listening, since i love it so, but does this piss anyone else off? what will the economy affect next??

at the end of his email, tim says to "please feel free to email me back with your thoughts." maybe i will....

this breaks my heart.

...and made watching the entire memorial service worth it.

mj matrix.

thanks to z (and nymag) for this michael jackson approval matrix. my favorite is "you're a vegetable. you're a vegetable" in the highbrow/despicable quadrant. not sure what that means, but i know i love it!

let me refer you to me.

as i was visiting the ghosts of blog posts past, i came across a good one. even if you are already in a good mood, this will only help.

not heelarious.

if you saw the daily show last night, then you've already heard of the newest and most shocking product -

high heel shoes for babies.

that's right. a company called heelarious (ha ha... not.) has been selling heels for 0-6 months old babies. they are all designed to look like stiletto heels (aside from a few pairs that are cowboy boots), but the whole thing is made out of some mushy material so if your 0-6 month old kid were to try to walk anywhere, the heel would just sort of mush down and collapse. i'm already opposed to kids dressing as adults, but this is above and beyond. can anyone explain why this is necessary? why does this even exist? who would buy these for their kid?

and it continues.

first off, if you're wondering where you can turn for mj news (i know, i know... we've been bombarded with it for almost a full week now), tmz.com is the place to go. considering they were the first to post he was dead, i kind of trust them in this. but they have just been flying off the handle with a new mj story every 4 seconds. here are two good ones in the on-going saga of madness:

#1: i knew it was too nuts to be true. the jackson family is now saying there will be no public viewing of mj at neverland tomorrow. whew! when i heard about reporters going there to camp out for days to get a good spot for pics, and all of the crazies who would descend onto the property.... it was just too much. glad it's no longer happening (well, we'll see what happens between now and tomorrow), but sorry to all those folks who were psyched about it...

#2: some chick is claiming to be mj's wife. first off, her name is Nona Paris Lola Ankhesenamun Jackson. can you say crazy?! that's my first clue. then she says, "all my husband's properties, monies and assets must be transferred to me immediately" and "my husband's body must be returned to the coroner or the mortuary immediately." uh, i don't think so, lady. if you are at all still in doubt that she is beyond nuts, she claims, "though he died to this earth he lives with my father Satan the Devil Khalid Lucifer." yes, please return mj's kids to her. great idea....

crazy time.

um, what? apparently things are getting even farther removed from whatever you learned in biology.

now, tmz is reporting that both debbie rowe AND mj are not the biological parents (of mike jr and paris; blanket is another story). not only were they conceived in-vitro (with debbie serving only as a surrogate, not an egg donor), but apparently it wasn't even mj's sperm either! who do these kids come from?! with blanket - apparently there was also only a surrogate, and the surrogate didn't even know who the kid she was carrying was going to (mj came 3 days later to pick up the kid. or atleast his lackeys.)

additionally, mj never formally/officially adopted any of these kids. since there was no one else who could really otherwise claim them, maybe he didn't think it was necessary? therefore, these were just some random kids he made and had living with him? ack. poor kidlets. hopefully this mess gets sorted out, for their sake.

i thought i'd never see it again.

i really thought this only happened at brandeis. but today, the nytimes let me know that air new zealand just made a new in-flight safety video with all of their pilots, flight attendants, etc in body paint. it's kind of hilarious. i'm curious to know what the meeting was like when they came up with this idea...

thank you, e.

today, you are the king of linkage.