I'm puzzled, really, at how I could have caught this stubborn cold when my human contact in the past week has been so minimal. My nose is so raw it hurts to breathe. I'm fairly certain that the truth behind Rudolph's red nose was that he caught a cold up at the North Pole. That or he was a coke addict.
When people say, oh, yeah, that cold has been going around, it sounds as if we're all sharing the same cold. How likely is that? Maybe we all caught it from Kevin Bacon? Paris Hilton? How many different colds are going around in one city? Which one is popular among Eastern European models right now? If I'm going to be sick, at least let me be sick in the most stylish way.
I'm torn. On the one hand, if it's the same cold everyone has been catching, then at least I know it's not fatal. A cold I can live with. Any flu associated with an animal--bad news. On the other hand, everyone feels a little possessive of their illnesses in a Larry David narcissistic kind of way.
On a positive note, I've been sampling the 2004 vintage of Vicks 44D. Very full-bodied, with a strong cherry bouquet leading into a musky finish. Tastes like port and goes wonderfully with leftover Halloween candy.

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A lot of the hooks in Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor sounded really familiar, like the ticking clock at the start of "Hung Up". Turns out her producer was Jacques Lu Cont, the British DJ behind some popular remixes of songs like Gwen Stefani's "What You Waiting For" (where I first heard that ticking clock) and The Killers' "Mr. Brightside."

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Today Microsoft released its backward compatibility list for the XBox 360. The list includes about 200 games right now. To play them you'll need to install a software emulator from XBox Live, by burning a CD-ROM of files from xbox.com, or by paying to have a CD shipped to you. Original Xbox game will be upscaled to 720p and 1080i.
It all seems like a hassle for the casual gamer--this Q&A with an XBox VP on this topic stretches on for nearly 4 pages. Not ideal as a marketing message.

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The first chapter of Nicole Richie's new book, whose title is irrelevant. It's as awful as you'd imagine, some of the most laughable fiction ever committed to print, but what I'm curious about is whether generations past have had to endure the same celeb-lit piffle. Did Plato lament when youngsters bypassed The Republic in favor of Confessions of a Teenage Eunuch by Anorexales?
Every book finds its audience, though, and Nicole has hers. When asked if the character of Simone Westlake was based on Paris Hilton ("Simone was leggy and tall, though no one knows exactly how tall because she'd never been seen out of pumps since puberty ... not even in her night-vision skin flicks, filmed strictly for private use, of course.") Nicole responded: ""It's not her. I've come across many people in my life that are like that."
Haven't we all.

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James Surowiecki writes about the at times symbiotic relationship between the government and the tobacco industry in this week's New Yorker. This quote intrigued me:

The industry now spends more than half a billion dollars a year in legal fees, and billions of dollars a year in settlements. In strict monetary terms, the settlement with the states might seem like a bad deal for the tobacco companies. Research by W. Kip Viscusi, a Harvard economist (and frequent pro-tobacco witness), suggests that if you take into account tobacco taxes and the higher mortality rates of smokers, which reduce the government’s Social Security and Medicare payments, smoking actually saves the public money.

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Our family is preparing a traditional Thanksgiving dinner this year, but I'd like to supplement it with an alternative main course. I've yet to try a fried turkey, a turducken, or a quaducant. The preparation of a fried turkey sounds downright intimidating. It involves several gallons of peanut oil, a hot tub, and a flamethrower wielded by ninjas. I doubt we'll be having that unless someone prepares it for us off-site. Preparing a turducken yourself also sounds like a chore--lots of deboning, preparing, assembling, sewing. Substitute people for fowl and you'd have Thanksgiving at Buffalo Bill's from Silence of the Lambs.
"It rubs the gravy on its skin."
"Please, why can't we have turkey like every other family?"
"Put the effing gravy on your skin!"
You can purchase a pre-assembled turducken, but they're not cheap. Those of you who've tried one: does the integration of the chicken, duck, and turkey actually lead to a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts? Would I get all the same benefits if I prepared a chicken, duck, and turkey separately, then had a relative spotting me so that I could shove one forkful of each meat into my mouth simultaneously?

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