Happy New Years, everyone! To celebrate I thought I'd share some great moments in December 31st past. Enjoy.

1599 - The British East India Company is chartered. Yay capitalism!
1695 - A window tax is imposed in England, causing many shopkeepers to brick up their windows to avoid the tax. Damn the man!
1862 - Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two. I'm sure there was a guy named Norm that lived right on the border and his life became horribly uncomfortable.
1904 - The first New Year's Eve celebration is held in Times Square, then known as Longacre Square, in New York, New York. A young Dick Clark hosts.
1944 - Hungary declares war on Germany. No one in Germany is hungry for days (get it?).
1983 - The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government. Take that, monopoly!
1999 - Boris Yeltsin resigns as President of Russia, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President. Yeltsin now has more time to work on his drinking.
2006 - The United Kingdom pays final installment of Second World War debt to the United States. We waste the money on Iraq.

The other night I'm talking to Christy and I keep hearing a voice in the background. "Who is that?" I ask. "Oh, that's Jane," she tells me. Her car's GPS unit.

As someone who drives about once a year I'm completely out of the loop with new car technologies, and I'm fascinated by this talking direction giver.

"There's other voices too. Jane is just the British woman." She tells me there's an American guy, who has a name like Gary or something, and then there are also other languages, like the Spanish speaking woman named Marta. The thought of all these different voices is absolutely superfluous and I love it.

I begin to think about an article I read a year or two ago, discussing how civilization has pretty much invented everything it needs (farming advances, indoor plumbing, the automobile), and now we're stuck inventing things that we might enjoy, but aren't really necessary (TiVo, clocks that project the time onto the ceiling, flavored straws).

If nothing else, I'm glad that they've taken the time to give names to the GPS voices, and they seem to be as stereotypical as possible. I say, "I bet for the French voice they gave the guy a name like Jacques." Then, this morning, I looked up this (scroll to the bottom of the page).

God bless you and and your stereotypical naming, TomTom GPS.

A few months ago I wrote this post about things I'd named my wireless network in the past.

Recently I've been noticing what other people in my building have been naming their wireless networks. The highlights?

- I'mInURHouse
- youreatowel
- Eebingtonshire
- Bucky
- Fifi
- BehindClosedDoors

And what is my wireless network named these days?

Drop It Like It's Wireless

My new favorite cooking instructions, in their entirety (found on the label of Amy's Organic Soups):

"Heat and serve. Please do not overcook."

Scene: I'm over at Micah's, and in a wave of brother/holiday bonding we decide to make tuna casserole for the first time. At one point Micah points out that I might not be doing something right.

"Oh, right," I say sarcastically, "Because I forgot that you were a master baker."

Micah makes googly eyes at me and says, "I forgot that you were a master bater."

I sigh. "And I forgot that you were twelve."

Recently my mother had her 5 year anniversary with her guy. He's great, and we all get along, and everything is fine and good it's just...well, it's the little differences.

First a coffee maker showed up in her kitchen a few years back. Then a microwave. These two appliances, individually, don't really amount to much. It's just that they'd never been there before. It was odd.

Then she started celebrating Christmas with him. Had Eisenberg become a Catholic name when I wasn't paying attention.

And I still shudder when this comes up.

Finally, the other day while out to lunch, Mom announces that she's given money to a candidate who I won't name.

"But Mom," I said, disbelief in my voice, "he's a Republican!"

Now I'm not saying her guy is an alien and he's replaced her with a pod. I'm just sayin'.

There are several cafes that I go to to get work done. The one I visit most often is the Argo Tea on Broadway, just on the edge of Boystown, Chicago's gay neighborhood.

Sitting, as I am at this very moment, I have a few out of Argo's windows and across the street, looking at a Thai restaurant and an American Apparel.

Back in the summer months I showed up here for tea as usual, and the American Apparel had a huge piece of plywood boarding up one of their windows. "Do you know what happened there?" I asked Byron. He laughed and informed me that a guy had broken a window and stolen one of the mannequins.

I rolled my eyes. "They broke in just to steal a mannequin?" Only in Boystown.

I'm at an unimportant crossroads: I'm thinking about joining Facebook.

At the dawn of the social networking age I had no idea what was going on. "It's this thing called Friendster," my friend Mican told me, "and you need to join." I'd always thought Mican was kind of weird and I had no idea what she was talking about. Keep in mind, this was back in 2002 when the stigma attached to knowing people online was still very much there - it was for nerds and pedophiles. But I joined, and the next thing I knew I had a handful of new friends.

So when MySpace came onto the scene back in 2005 I was all over it. I left comments! I posted pictures! I was out there!

But when Facebook showed up I was hesitant. I had joined and left networks before. I felt a bit jaded and hesitant, like a baby boomer who had purchased Ziggy Stardust first on vinyl, then cassette, then CD, and again through the iTunes store. By the time compact discs rolled around they were wondering how many times they were going to have to pay for the same album in their lifetime. Similarly, I was beginning to wonder how many times I was going to have the accept the same people as my friends.

I signed up for a Facebook account a while ago, but I've never really used it. I haven't filled out the profile or added pictures. At this point I have a pile of friend requests I haven't even looked at, and each day the pressure to join gets greater and greater.

I always thought that when I got older peer pressure would go away, but it turns out it just manifests itself in different ways.

As you may or may not know, I write book reviews for UR Magazine. They recently sent me a book to review for next month's issue. It's half espionage and half chic-lit. While working on my review I tell Byron about it.

"It's so unrealistic," I tell Byron, pained. "This guy brings a girl an orchid on their first date instead of flowers. And he pours Kahlua on her and licks it off. I mean, c'mon. Who are these people?"

Byron, in true gay man fashion, is confused. "Is that what girls want?" Byron asks. "Orchids and Kahlua?"

He walks away and I think about his question. If it is what women want then I have no hope.

The other day I imported all the bookmarks from Firefox and Safari on my old iBook. It turned out I had accumulated around 300 bookmarks over the past few years, and I figured I should weed through them and get rid of the junk. As I did, here were some of the highlights:

- Diner Talk - A collection of 50's diner slang terms like "Adam and Eve on a Raft" (Two poached eggs on toast), and "Tip Toe Through Wisconsin" (To sprinkle something with cheese).

- Apple OSX Tiger Developer Trading Cards - The nerd in me is drooling over these. Drooling!

- How to Care for Ficus Benjamina - I probably saved this bookmark back in '05 when I still had Mike the Fike, may he rest in peace.

- My Life as a Shiksa Jew - Do I even need to explain this?

- Librarians in Comics - A surprisingly thorough index of times when librarians pop up in comic books. Again: nerd drool.

- Slice - A NY-based pizza blog, and the main rival when Kate and I started our short-lived pizza blog, A Slice of (Life and) Pizza! (Sadly, this is not a joke. For Slice's take on our rivalry, click here.)

- Chandler Bing Paperdoll Template - Could this site BE any weirder?

- The Virtual Toliet Paper Museum - Clearly I was bored the day I bookmarked this.

- Furniture Porn - Bow chicka wah wah...creak!

My latest piece is up at Jargon today.

It's an article about what winter fashions say about you, and I drop bon mots like, "The big boots, the snow pants, the beaver fur hats with the earflaps - you, my friend, have chosen a look that has all the charm and sophistication of Elmer Fudd. But let's face it, when you're out in the middle of the woods you're not trying to charm those animals into dying. No, George Clooney is the only man who could do that."

Read the full article here, won't you?

Nik called me on the phone earlier.

Nik: You sound like you have a cold.
Me: I have a nose thing.
Nik: A nose thing?
Me: I don't like to call it a cold.
Nik: So it's just a nose thing?
Me: I refuse to conform to your binary labels.

Today, while walking down the street, I notice a man leaning out the window of his his oversized SUV. He is looking angerly at the snow.

"You couldn't pay me to live in Chicago!" he exclaims loudly.

Oh, sir, we wouldn't want you here anyway.

I got tired of MySpace and Facebook controlling the social networking racket, so I decided to start my own social networking site. But what kind of edge will it have? Ah! That's where it gets good.

See, my social networking site is for interesting people only. I wanted a title that would reflect that. That's why my site is at www.interestingpeopleonly.com. Clever, eh?

So stop on by, sign up, and join the the social networking site that won't expose you to losers and dullys.

Hanukkah is over. It was on the early side this year, and the last night was on Tuesday. So now I can sit back, relax, and watch everyone else run around and freak out about Christmas.

It's kind of like doing your taxes in January and then watching everyone else stress out, come April.

I don't know about you, but I'm more of a taxes-in-January person anyway.

My million dollar idea to make the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority, for you non-Chicagoans out there) more popular and get people to use it more: Celebrity Riders!

Every day there could be a new celebrity who would ride the CTA all day, transferring train lines, taking a few different buses - getting out there!

An average week could be:
Monday: Gary Coleman
Tuesday: Kathy Griffin
Wednesday: Scott Baio
Thursday: Lucy Lawless
Etc.

The thing is, you never know where they're going to be or what they're going to be riding, so you could run into the celebrity du jour at any time! Thrilling, no?

Oh CTA, you're welcome.

Today is Mom's birthday. So I thought it only fitting to give her props (are props an appropriate gift on someone's birthday?)

In place of props (or, at least until someone confirms whether or not props are an appropriate gift), I'm posting a picture Mom and I took at a photo booth last month.

Oh Mom, thanks for not being Joan Crawford, Susan Smith or the mom from Malcom in the Middle.

Things I would consider naming my blog if I were a goth, dark teenage girl:

- Emotion Sickness
- Debbie Does Depression
- Welcome to My Heart, Vulchers
- I Sit Confined in These Four Walls...
- Nobody Knows I Exist (except the 4,297 people who have viewed this site since July 2nd, 2004, according to the hit counter on my site)

I felt that K. would have some insight into this list as well. It turns out she did. Her suggestions:

- 16 and Writing Poems About Death
- Melancholy Disposition
- Can't Wait to Grow Up and Be Happy
- The Edge of Darkness: Downer's Grove
- S.A.D. = So Angry and Depressed
- I Hate Everyone, But They Don't Know That

As I write this I'm sitting in a coffee shop. Dean Martin's "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm," is playing over the speakers.

As a single person, I resent this song. We're in the beginning of a cold Chicago winter, and I get cold too. Can't my singledom keep me warm?

Perhaps I should write that song.

Last night Byron, Michele and I were playing Catchphrase, the game where one person has a word and has to get the others to say it. My word is "President."

Me: George Bush is our...
Byron: Bitch.
Michele: Fucking asshole.
Me: Um...no. Okay, um...Bill Clinton was our...
Byron and Michele: President.