I'm not feeling nauseous enough so I'll go troll some news sites and see what I find.

FoxNews ran an editorial about teenagers. Specifically, it was about teenage sex, but for once, someone seems to realize that sex isn't always just about sex and that teenagers are human beings just like the rest of us.

Consider the following statements. For clarity, "FPS games" means "first-person shoot-'em-up games," such as the Quake series, the Doom series, the Duke Nuke'em series, and the bajillion other such games on the market.

I'm on my way to Kansas City to torque off NOW... I'm going to a Promise Keepers rally. I heard you go to things like that to learn how to oppress women. Although the way I read the PK message, it's more along the lines of this: Get off the couch, turn off the football game and pay some attention to your family.

Optimism. In an effort to answer a different question, I found myself mapping out the significant news headlines for the last 40 years, and suddenly I understood something.

On Day One, I reverted into news junkie mode. What I read, of course, sickened me. I undoubtedly have a few former classmates in New York, but no one I've seen or talked to in the last five years. Still, it wasn't much consolation. They're still my people.

Damsels in distress. Every time I turn around, there's a girl who needs her computer fixed. Not that I'm complaining. I was having a beer the other night with the music director from my church and told him about it, to which he said, "That's not a bad situation at all to be in." He's right.

If you're concerned about Amazon, or online privacy in general... On a serious note, Amazon's policies are gathering attention. As one who, as Pournelle puts it, "makes a living showing off" (and I have more or less since the age of 16), I've never worried about privacy. I quickly got used to the idea that if I drove down to Rally's for a burger, there was a decent chance that someone who knew who I was would see me doing it, and that didn't bother me much. Once I started seriously writing about computers, I couldn't go into computer stores without getting a bunch of questions, not to mention introductions ("Hey! This is Dave Farquhar, the computer columnist for the Missourian!") And of course people wanted to know what I was buying and what I thought of it and/or what I was planning to do with it. That didn't bother me much either. If people like the stuff I write and respect my opinion enough to care that I like Rally's hamburgers and Maxtor hard drives, well, that's a high compliment.

My sister's in town, and we were out shopping (she tells me what I need, and I go buy it--what was that I said about bachelorhood?) and she suddenly bolted. "Huh?" says I. "Johnson," she pops her head around the corner again, then bolts.