Max: Tor

Did you know that Tor Books is giving away a free eBook every week? Now you do.

Max: LHC v God

Why can't I have the kind of crazy that comes with fun stories?

Max: Jericho

Wordsmith theme: words related to beards.

Jericho (JER-i-ko) noun

A place out of the way; an unspecified place; a place of concealment. Often used in the phrase "go to Jericho".

[After Jericho, an ancient city of Palestine, northwest of the Dead Sea, where David had his servants wait until their beards had grown. As in Samuel, a book of the Bible, "And the king said, Tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown."]

Max: Barak and Hillary Sittin' in a Tree

From CNN

Hillary Clinton on Wednesday reiterated her vow to stay in the Democratic presidential race, but she said it would be a "terrible mistake" for her supporters to vote for John McCain over Barack Obama.

"Anybody who has ever voted for me or voted for Barack has much more in common in terms of what we want to see happen in our country and in the world with the other than they do with John McCain," Clinton said on CNN's "The Situation Room."

It sounds like someone is making nice in advance of accepting a Veep slot.

Max: Garrison Keillor - Individual Like Everyone Else

A nation of individualists

The beauty of May is that the whole country is more or less on the same page, called spring, and spring is spring, in Minnesota or California or Georgia or Vermont. Slightly different birds and flowers, same feeling. April is blowing snow up north, and by June my friends in Georgia will be chained to their air conditioners, but here for a few weeks we are more unum than pluribus.

I grew up in a country where we all knew the same songs and watched the same TV shows, and now we live in tiny niches. Most famous people are people most people have never heard of. Which is fine by me. A nation of individualists. You work hard to be odd and try to have unique problems and a Facebook page that is weirder than everyone else's -- fine, it's your life, it's your arm with the crocodile tattoo, not mine, but enjoy this brief period of consanguinity.

Max: Puny Words! Why You Hurt BillO? BillO Smash!

Max: Herring Circus

Max: William Shatner - Ham and Human

One morning, shooting a Star Trek movie in the desert, I had a very early call.

So I told the wardrobe girl: "Give me my uniform and I'll put it on at the house so I don't have to come in any earlier for wardrobe. I'll just wear it to the set."

So at 4am I was racing across the desert to our location. I was way over the speed limit, figuring there wasn't another car on the road in the entire state.

It turned out there was one other car - and it had lights and a siren.

I got out of my car, dressed in my uniform. The police officer looked me up and down, frowned and asked: "So where are you going so fast at this time in the morning?"

I told him the truth: "To my spaceship."

He sighed. "OK, go ahead," he said, before adding the Vulcan blessing: "Live long and prosper."

From the Daily Mail's excerpt of William Shatner's autobiogaphy, Up Till Now

Max: Volcano Belches Hellfire From The Bowels Of Earth

Max: Snique Pique

New Futurama is acomin'