Not eligible for This Year's Fright-Quest and Not Eligible for Serious Political Banter, so I Daylogged it:

Ralph Nader, Al Gore, and George W. Bush went to a fitness spa for some fun.

After a stimulating, healthy lunch, all three decided to visit the men's room and they found a strange-looking gent sitting at the entrance.

He said: "Welcome to the gentlemen's room. Be sure to check out our newest feature, a mirror that, if you look into it and say something truthful, you will be rewarded with your wish.

But, be warned: If you say something false, you will be sucked into the mirror to live in a void of nothingness for all eternity!"

The three men quickly entered and stood before the mirror.

Nader stepped up and said, "I think I'm the most truthful of us three," and he suddenly found the keys to a brand new hybrid car in his hands.

Gore stepped up and said, "I think I'm the most ambitious of us three," and in an instant, he was surrounded by a pile of money to fund his next Presidential campaign.

Excited over the possibility of having a wish come true, Bush looked into the mirror and said, "I think..." and was promptly sucked into the mirror.

1. I CAN'T BELIEVE I REALLY VOTED FOR THE GUY ONCE

2. (Update 11/1/06) JUDGING FROM THE VOTING RESPONSE HERETO, THERE'RE MORE REPUBLICANS ON E2 THAN I THOUGHT

Street Scene

So I'm standing outside my office building at one am (that's around 5pm, me standard time) smoking a cigarette, and this woman comes up to me. It's worth noting, in her defense, that she was entirely trashed.

"There a bar in there?"

I turn around and look at the building, wondering how on earth it could be mistaken for a bar - huge glass windows, well lit, banks of elevators and a security guard, and a huge gilded sign that says "New York Law Journal" (one of the building's previous tenants) above the door. In our neighborhood, it stands out like Rockefeller Center does in midtown.

What do you say to that?

"I wish" was about as good as I could come up with at the time.

I have been here for five years.

These last couple of months have been an interesting time for me. I started university this September. I'm enjoying being here, although I've had some doubts about my course. I'm still glad I'm here.

One of the coolest moments of the first week was strolling through the stacks of the university library, seeing books all over the place that I knew of first or only from e2 - Brautigan (good), Persig (bad), Bukowski (everything in between). It made me realise how much the formative years of e2 are a product of a collegiate environment. I suppose it's a lot like the internet as a whole in that respect.

I've realised that e2 is very much a home to me. And not only in the sense that it's my homepage. There's a portion of me that comes from here as much as it comes from anywhere that I've lived. It's a weird thought, but I think it explains many of the reasons why I like it here and why I keep coming back. It's home.

What occurs to me is that this is going to make my midlife crisis really interesting. Of course, by then, people identifying places that don't physically exist as home will probably be boringly commonplace. There'll probably be a specialist for me. I struggle to imagine what the kids of the day will be up to. Let's just hope that have places as good as e2 to grow up.

I reckon Heisenberg is providing an invaluable service to e2 by finally bringing us the voices of the authors we've been reading for years. It's almost eerie. I don't mind admitting I got a shivery little feeling when I heard these words drawled in the latest podcast:

"This is dannye, in the southern United States.
As if you couldn't tell."