Today, on Marfa's main street, tony art galleries and wine shops are driving away traditional cafes and shops, whose local owners can't afford the new sky-high rents. Everywhere you go the townsfolk, independent Texans to the core, lament the changes to their community. The term "ChiNazi" is used locally to describe anyone from out of town who arrives with artistic ambitions and a superior attitude. Observes one local cattle rancher, who asked to remain anonymous: "We're filling up with triple A's -- artists, assholes and attorneys."

One of the coolest people that I know has just restarted her blog, and it's still great.

New tides of immigration have so transformed New York City that classic ethnic foods and drinks are increasingly being prepared by people whose ethnicity does not necessarily match the menu's.

I haven't been posting shit for the past two weeks. Hey, I'm traveling, so give me a break. When I get back, toward the end of the week, I'll be posting about my last trip to Las Vegas and about the Pacific Northwest Museum Tour, which has so far been a blast.

Lawyers for the Defense Department are refusing to cooperate with a
federal judge's order to release secret photographs and videotapes
related to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

Hello, my people. In about eight hours, I'll be driving out to Las Vegas to work on my poker game and to check out the World Series of Poker again. I've found a couple of Starbucks that have T-Mobile HotSpots, so I'm going to try to post little updates of how my trip is going. I'm also going to try to post the weekly poem and story tomorrow, but I make no promises. It's a lot of work trying to produce five content streams. How many other one-person outfits can keep up with that kind of pace? Exactly. Also, I might be too worn out to actually put together coherent sentences and/or narratives anyway.

His ordeal, however, was still not quite over. American officials told him that his United States passport had been destroyed in the course of an effort to test its authenticity, his lawyers said, and that he might have to wait a week before a new one could be issued.

Although, it's a bit of a drag to almost make it into the top ten. I can use my eleventh-place finish, however, as motivation, to push me to train harder, to hit the metaphorical poetical weights, if you will, and bust into the top ten one day.

This bit cracked me up out of all proportion to its tiny little size.

Warning: the bit makes full use of the language, so if you're easily offended, you big baby, you should probably move on. There, that should pretty much guarantee that you'll click over.

Six billion of us and counting -- not to mention the countless other species with whom we share this precious planet -- and still we struggle with loneliness. Giant radiotelescopes point plaintively to the heavens, listening for reassuring evidence of extraterrestrial companionship from someone, anyone, green or otherwise.