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Link of the Moment
Peterman pointed out Japander, with lots of videoclips of Western celebes doing Japanese commercials. The Schwarzenegger page is one of the most popular...both because of his political office, and also many of the ads are delightfully weird. (Some of the other celeb's do spots that are pretty pedestrian.) The one labled "A Classic" is great, showing off his mighty mighty biceps as he swings around some giant tea kettles. The Simpsons were worth a glance, but interesting to see how they don't bother to keep anyone in character because not many people have watched the show.

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Funny of the Moment

<stops using punching bag> Oh. [ahem] Hello. [ahem] So many rice crackers claim to be low-cal, but only Fujikawa Rice Crackers make your interiors go bananas! <to self> What did I do to deserve this? ..... Oh, right.

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On The Naming Of Things
I've realized that my previous naming of my car was a bit on the premature side. You really should see if you can get to know something at least a bit before coming up with the right name, and I'm realizing "Dogma"/"Dogmatic", despite the Scion cleverness, just isn't quite right.

So the history of possible names has been:

• "Dogma"/"Dogmatic" -- because of the Scion/Kevin Smith movie reference. Possibly influenced the color selection a bit.
• "Death Star" -- the interior has a kind of cool black-and-silver 70s-tech look, and I thought this name reflected it, and sort of fit the exterior as well...kind of a tough name for a car to pull off, and "death" and "highway driving" are two concepts best kept as far apart as possible.
• "Pug" -- Dogma/Dog reference, also a reference to the size of the thing. And can get changed to "Pugly", which fits what some people think of the car.
• "Mica"/"Nickel"/"8 bits" -- these were some ideas Peterman came up with, mostly involving the color and size and then devolving into old computer geekery.
• "Puck" -- derivative of "Pug", nicely captures the size and color as well as a reference to my lord.what.fools.these.mortals.be domain. My favorite as of last night.
• "Spruce Goose" -- I let R. drive it a bit the other night and she thought that the interior air vents were kind of reminiscent of the rotary coils on old plane engines, or something. I thought the name was a little too light in the loafers, even if people didn't think "Goose" was a weird "Top Gun" fan boy reference.
• "Sluggo" -- my favorite as of right now. Captures the squat nature of the car (which I also thought was a bit "fist like", so the name captures that) plus on a whim I bought this brass snail paperweight, which could be the car's mascot, the slug refernce. Plus, some people think the car is sluggish on the highway (though I think it's fine.)

What amazes me is that very few people I've talked to think it's odd to name your car, or to put thought into the right name. (Though with this post, I might be pushing the envelope.) Peterman noticed that there are a number of google hits for "name my car" and "name your car" has a couple hundred as well.

Let me know what you think! Here's the picture if it helps.

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Article of the Moment
Slate on an army report about how stretched our supply lines were. Also interesting was the part about the grindingly effective A10...the politics behind that plane are really too bad, because it performs brilliantly--it's essentially huge, robust artillery in the sky...the Army can't use it because it's fixed wing and that's the Air Force's balliwick, but it's too unglamorous for the Air Force to really get behind, too similar to what the army does... (Oh, right, here's the Slate piece on the A-10 where I probably got that opinion from...what a great website.)