Get well soon Benecio!

My car is sick. I went to start it after work last night and it was having none of that. The poor engine sounds like it's almost going to make it but never turns over. I tried getting a jump, hoping it was an obvious and easily solved problem like a battery. It was not.

I won't bore you with all the details of getting it towed. Let's just say it took up a good part of my day. Now, I'm just waiting for a prognosis. My best case scenario is it's a problem that is easily diagnosed and can be repaired for under $300. As Tom Petty said, "the waiting is the hardest part" and a dark spot in my brain keeps conjuring up nightmares of bad transmissions and thousand dollar repairs. Hopefully, I'll have a verdict in the morning.

So in an effort to get my mind off all this automobile badness, I present to you some recent things I've stumbled across that make me happy. If you are an attractive upstanding citizen, they might make you happy, too.

• Television Without Pity - I hate reruns but I love reading this web site's recaps of recent episodes of all your favorite TV shows. It's especially handy for shows like Lost, which is full of secret little clues you might have missed.
  
• One Red Paperclip - This was just a featured blog on the Blogger homepage. It's a sweet little story of a Canadian dude who starts with a paperclip and hopes to make trades until he gets a house. The journey is fun and the trades are endlessly fascinating.
• Ricky Gervais' Podcast - The perfect source for your weekly dose of monkey news. It's one of the most popular podcasts on the interweb. It features the guy from The Office and his buddies sitting around and talking about stuff. If you don't want to deal with the webpage, get the podcast from iTunes.
• The Arctic Monkeys - The hottest band in England right now is this group of young guys from Sheffield. The buzz around them is ginormous and this New York Times article makes them sound like messiahs. I was skeptical of the buzz until I heard them playing on Morning Becomes Eclectic. Great lyrics and fun music. Like Franz Ferdinand but much better.
  
• Class Matters - The New York Times did a big series abut the state of class in America that I only caught a couple installments of. This book is a collection off all their work and it paints an interesting picture how where we are born affects everything we become. Read it now!
• Snap Shirts - I just ordered one of these and you can, too. The company scans your blog and makes a list of the most popular words in it. They call it a "word cloud." It only scans the first page of your blog so it's better to have all the posts displayed before you have the cloud made. You can order a shirt with my blog on it here. It's also fun to make clouds with other blogs you like.

So there you are. Some sights to help you forget your broken car or sad, empty, meaningless life. For me it's a way to fill the days until Oasis comes to town.