Sweet Home Chicago -- Nat and I are back from the Midwest, land of SPAM, baseball in cornfields, and the amazing new sculpture pictured above, "Cloud Gate", universally referred to as "The Bean" by Chicagoans. It was a great trip, and 8 rolls of film went off to the lab this morning...but it did involve about, oh, 1200 miles of driving (!) so next time we've decided to just sit in one place for our vacation.

There's plenty afoot these days, the tail end of summer -- the RNC is tearing up NYC, for one thing, and with only 8 weeks left before election day it's time for us all to get the lead out and really start pushing for some change. I'm not totally back up to full blogging speed, though, so in the meantime, enjoy a few web oddities: There's still time to buy some Olympic socks! Read the Incredible Hulk's blog! Puzzle over these somewhat faux-feminist premium tampons! Behold, Matt Damon's uncle swims the English Channel! Until tomorrow...