I'm reading Rory Stewart's book The Places in Between about his walk across Afghanistan after the Taliban fell. I laughed out when I came across this entry from his stay in a small, remote village in the Ghor region.

A Bill Gates speech on American policy toward technology monopolies was being translated into Dari. The men listened intently. I wondered what these illiterate men without electricity thought of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows.

In reading it I must admit I'm jealous. In a different life I would have walked all over the world and been content.

Sometimes I think about all the time I spend reading this or writing that and wonder where did all that effort go. There must be some niche thing I'm pretty freaking good at by now.

If I only I knew what it is.

Stories like this one about hockey phenom Sidney Crosby get me teary eyed and nostalgic.

In successive games against Tampa Bay earlier this month, he scored while sliding on his side, controlling the puck while doing so, and from his knees.

I'm a sucker for movies like Miracle, The Natural, or Field of Dreams. In particular the moment in the movie where somebody transcends what people think is possible.

Youtube has some video on this. Watch Crosby pull the puck behind two defenders, dive between them, take control of the puck again and score. Then take a gander at another leaping goal that follows him into the boards. It's great to see any athlete put that much passion into the game.

There is a curious phenomenon running through the DVD market on Amazon these days. At the end of the long tail DVDs with meager popularity demand huge prices.

Matinee, that lovable coming of age story set during the Cuban Missile Crisis and chock full of movie palace nostalgia sells for between $50 and $110 these days.

But even it must bow before the pricing juggernaut that is Cinema Europe - The Other Hollywood a six hour documentary about silent film in Europe. It starts at $289 and only goes up. Of course even this is tiny before the titan of expensive DVDs the Criterion Edition of Salo. It starts around $400 and climbs into the $2500+ stratosphere.

I like to think that these prices reflect their cultural importance. Thus an Oscar nominated crowd pleaser, but culturally insignificant film, like Mannequin starts at $7. However I really don't think that's it. There's something about the passionate audience for these movies that drives up the price. I wonder if theatrical releases might see these kind of price fluctuations some day.

Almost twelve years ago I lost a drawing Kathy made. Times have come and gone since then where I've longed to look at it again and remember what it was like the first time I saw it.

The night I saw it for the first time was one of those moments that becomes a nexus point through which all memories before and after must flow. That night shines so bright in the memoryscape that other memories near it have faded. From that moment on our friendship was unhinged and a new wilder energy flowed through everything between us.

I've been schlepping decades of computer junk (RSX-11M+ manual anyone?) from city to city, and home to home. Tonight I began the effort of taking it all apart, sorting it and getting it ready for disposal. I can't believe I lucked upon an unlabeled floppy from March 27th, 1995 that had this image the whole time.

The iPhone looks great but why is Apple poisoning their brand by an association with Cingular? The Cingular CEO read his Cingular/AT&T ad from notecards during the keynote and was not enthused about being there and didn't appear to "get it." There is one more big innovation Apple could push with the iPhone.

Get the message out that American consumers don't have to buy phones from the major carriers. I recently bought an unlocked phone. While finding and buying the phone was a pain in the butt, moving my SIM card was easy. I would love to see Apple open up distribution channels for cell phones in America.

At the very least I hope they offer an unlocked version.

In an interview with the owner of the local comic book store Zeus Comics he offered the top five signs he knows a comic book reader is gay.

1. They touch my hand while exchanging cash.
2. Their pull-list consists solely of Aquaman and Green Lantern or conversely Strangers in Paradise and DC's 52.
3. They talk endless about their hero's outfit in City of Heroes.
4. They comment on the "bump" on the male action figures.
5. Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman.

That's me right there at number 2, just getting Strangers in Paradise and 52.

Now that I've added Garth Ennis' testosterone packed The Boys to my regular reads I'm charting new territory.

The Boys is a comic that in the first few issues has a female Christian conservative super hero, Starlight, being humiliated into performing oral sex on Homelander (Superman), Black Noir (Batman) and A-Train (Flash). As a credit to Ennis Starlight is also the most interesting character of The Seven (Justice League).

Finished The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan about the Great Dust Bowl and have come away humbled by the scope of the disaster and mankind's tenacity in the face of horrible conditions.

There are two parts that seem so cinematic I'd love to see them in a movie. The first is the great dust storm on Black Sunday. Something I hadn't realized before is these storms create static electricity. People would try to leave town only to have their cars short out. They could see the electricity sparking inside the car. If people touched each other they could be knocked to the ground by the static discharge. Blue electricity would sparkle off the barbed wire fences. Trees would be blackened by sparks of electricity. Of course, this is just the prelude to the big act when hundreds of tons of dust would blot out the sun and plunge the world into darkness. One dust storm dropped more tons of dirt in a day than all the dirt that was moved to create the Panama Canal.

The other scene would be with Big Hugh Bennett the soil expert that FDR would count on to find a way out of the disaster. Bennett plans a Senate hearing to plead his case that soil conservation is the only way to stop the dust storms and that they need to fund conservation programs. He comes in with charts, graphs and mountains of data but the ace up his sleeve is that he knows a giant dust storm has hit the Midwest and that this one is big enough to make it to D.C. If he times it right the storm will darken the windows of the room as he makes his case and leave D.C. covered in dust. Twice aides come in to update him on the status of the storm as he stretches for time. He pulls it off and finally Washington understands what is going on in the Plains.

Overall the book is a sober look at how unbridled capitalism and poor government planning can wreak unbelievable havoc. The end has a teaser that there may be another great story to tell about the depletion of the Ogallala aquifer by large corporate farms and poor water conservation policies. The Ogallala spreads out beneath eight states from South Dakota to Texas and is being emptied quicker than it is replenished.