Aaaaaand I’ve hit the wall, and I’m coming down with something. Probably just the little bug my wife had – nothing severe, just a day or two of dry, constricted throat and heavy eyes. Or it’s just exhaustion, in that unique Western “I do no actual physical work” sense. But all this week I’ve started work at 9 and finished at 1:30 AM, with maybe an hour of TV around midnight, and I’m beat. Alas, I have two pieces to do tonight, so this will have to suffer.

It was a good day, though. The paper had a story about a bad intersection on the other side of town, and how the city planned to spend $735K on upgrades, including “art.” I was curious how art would help the situation, so I decided to drive over and see. Well: the intersection was indeed a nightmare, and I thought I’d do a video piece on the difficulty of crossing the street. It took me almost 20 minutes to cross all four corners. I sped home to edit the piece – took 45 minutes, with voice overs and editing and futzing, and then I shot it off to be crunched by Veoh while I picked up Gnat. (I’d like to Veoh, but they have some surprisingly NSFW videos right on the front page sometimes, and it autoplays, perhaps expecting you will do the same.) Then I picked up Gnat, played catch the ball for a while, napped the sleep of the dead for 22 minutes, got up, made dinner, did the Hewitt show, then spent half an hour attempting to set up a $*%#$ Barbie Fairytopia Interactve Remote thing Gnat got. You’re supposed to beam remote signals at Barbie’s neck and teach her the frequencies of your unit. It didn’t work. At all. In any way. “Press the blue button and hold it. The red light will come on, then gradually go off.” Well, it didn’t. Tried and tried, and it didn’t. Sorry, child.

But! It’s not like I’m leaving you with nothing. I’m reviewing movies now over at SmartFlix. You may have heard the company on BoingBoing – like Netflix, they rent DVDs, but unlike Netflix they rent instructional DVDs. How to disassemble a Sherman tank, how to create neutron stars in your basement, how to make gold from base elements, etc. One of the creators of a disk they rented sued, a fine case of being unclear on the concept, and some amusing lawyerly letters went back and forth. (Since removed from Boing’s archives, due to the illness of the attorney who filed the suit.) During the great Bucket Uncertainty of May, the owner of the company asked me if I’d like to review disks for a few bucks, and it sounded like great fun. And it is. Here’s the first review. Look for one every two weeks or so.

And then there’s the Diner.

iTunes version here, along with all the other archived Diners; MP3 here.

So then! A video at buzz.mn you may have missed, a review of an instructional video on how to photograph children, and a 33 minute podcast. (Modesty prohibits me from linking to my second genially humiliating Photoshop contest.) It’s not like I’ve totally left you without something here. Enjoy, and I’ll see you at buzz – and remember, I post on weekends, too. Thanks for the patronage!