Resettling the Plains

Spotted a feature somewhere in the past couple of weeks about how some
Plains towns are offering homesteads to residents. It’s a twist on the
old homestead idea: Instead of 160 acres and five years to "prove out"
your claim  by farming it, you get something less than an acre in
town and need to build on it in a year or so. After seeing the National
Geographic article, I checked and found the story;
it was in the Washington Post. As an aside: What’s with the fascination
of the eastern papers — The New York Times has been running a series
of in-depth features on the depopulation of the Plains for at least a
couple of years — with the Plains?

Great Plains

Cover story in the May National Geographic: ‘The Great Plains: Change
of Heartland.’ Focuses on the un-settlement of the Plains and the
(supposed) comeback of the buffalo and Native Americans. Yeah, at this
point you have to get the magazine for the full story, which is
beautifully shot. But the online tease for the story contains one stunning picture that’s representative of the powerful pictures in the magazine.

All the Poop That’s Fit to Report

In the quest to find out more about ShitBegone toilet paper — facts such as, is it real? — I happened upon this stunning source of excretory information: PoopReport.com.
Full of useful and fun facts and speculation,  such as a quick
user review of the Toto Drake toilet — it disposes of absolutely
anything, despite using just 1.6 gallons per flush; and a report on
whether terrorists might launch a strike on the United States by
spiking our toilet paper.

And oh, yes, there’s a nice little interview with the creator of ShitBegone, a Brooklyn lad named Jed Ela.

[Generic] Toilet Paper

You can’t get much more basic than this: ShitBegone. Advertised as "100 percent recycled toilet paper," which might give your imagination some exercise. Ninety-six rolls for $44.99. Lovely — though I will quibble with how the name is rendered. "Shitbegone" follows "woebegone"; so it could be interpreted as "overcome by shit" — which would probably make it the perfect toilet paper for our times. If I were marketing director, or nitpicker in residence, I’d have fought for ShitBeGone.

By way of Boing Boing

Me and My Cameraphone

A picture named cabinet.jpg

(Warning: Details of boring,
bourgeois domestic existence follow.)

I was out shopping for a chest of some kind to put in our dining room. I was describing one over the phone to Kate, but wasn’t sure I was really getting the point across. Then I had the following genius inspiration: Take a phone picture  and send it so Kate could see what I was talking about. That’s what I did, and now the chest of some kind is in our dining room. Forget Iraq and al-Qaida and WMD’s —
this is life-changing stuff.

A Chron Alternative

The Los Angeles Times ran a story today about a group of local activists who set up what they’re calling an alternative news source — BeyondChron.org — to the San Francisco Chronicle. Bravo for more sources of news. On the other hand, what this group is really disappointed about (and somewhat naively so) is that the Chron does not share their activist agenda. So what they’re producing is not so much news as a series of closely related online leaflets about their causes. I know it’s stuffy and arrogant in an old media way to say it, but harangues about the way the world ought to be run aren’t news all by themselves; they shouldn’t be excluded from the news, but there’s a lot more to getting the story
than just having the Correct Point of View.

As Seen in The New Yorker

HappycrackWhat the people of Iraq will be missing out on if they reject our advances, Exhibit A: Yes, it’s Mr. Happy Crack.
On p. 58 of the March 29 New Yorker, there’s a little one-column ad
that says, "A Dry Crack Is A Happy Crack." (Who could disagree?) It
advertises "boxers, T-shirts, hats."

I wasn’t familiar with Mr. Happy Crack until today, and I imagined that he was promoting a New Era
of Better Personal Hygiene (as exemplified in a post-shower comment sometimes heard in our house: “I can feel the cleanliness ions sluicing all through my cracks”).

But no. He’s the mascot of The Crack Team, enemies of foundation seepage throughout America.