yule log

 Just one more day of this: The Year in Review. 200+ links of "Best Of 2001" lists.

 In the '60s and '70s, WPIX in New York aired a burning log on Christmas day. For three hours. Just the burning log. With cheesy carols, but without commercials. "The Yule Log" burned out 12 years ago, but was rekindled this year -- and it scored the highest rating in NYC over the holiday. What, you don't get? Well, you can watch it yourself if you don't believe me. Is there a better statement on the state of television programming -- or, for that matter, contemporary familial celebration -- than this?

 Today's Word of the Day is one of my favorite rhetorical devices: epistrophe, and its mate anaphora and their child symploce.

 I haven't mentioned how much I hate Kevin Smith in at least a month. There. See also: What Kevin Smith Movie Character Are You?

 "She is vapid. She is a dream. She is irritating. She is a goddess. She is evil. She is divine." Tori Amos vs. Tori Spelling: ToriAntiTori.

 Funny. If you type in www.amazone.com (with an extra "e"), you get redirected to www.amazon.fr -- the French Amazon.com site. Amazoné!

 Slate.com reviews the X10 Camera: "Though it's likely that at grad schools across America there are Foucaultians beavering away on dissertations titled Toward a Hermeneutics of Wireless Web Cams, I care little for 'gaze' theories and discussions of the panopticon. I just want to know if those cheap little cameras really work or if they're the Internet equivalent of cereal box trinkets."

 Shit, it's New Year's Eve. 2002 -- a palindrome year -- is tonight, and I have nothing planned.