I've been sullen, sulky, and surly the past few days, and I don't know why. Things were going well until Monday afternoon, but then a black mood settled upon me, and it has not left since. Poor Kris: she comes home at night, eager to spend time together, but I'm all thorns and tar and not pleasant to be around. I spend my evenings in a sort of listless restlessness, uninterested in anything, unable to focus on any one task for long.

Maybe I have scurvy.

It certainly wouldn't surprise me. The only fruit in my diet lately comes from the berry jelly in the center of the butterhorns I eat each morning.

Carolyn Gingerich did some research and has confirmed that Jeremy is my third cousin, once removed. Does this make me feel closer to him? Yes. Yes, it does. I like to pretend that family ties mean nothing, but I'm not even fooling myself.

Need something to take your mind off the impending war? Here's a big-ass pile of links that is sure to do the trick.

• Two great food-based links: the gallery of regrettable food and Weight Watchers recipe cards, circa 1974.
• This periodic table has all the usual info, but it's also got a haiku about every element.
• An HTML version of Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Amy Ratzlaf had a nice poster of the Tinies when we were in college. I'd like to get one now.
• I spent much of my senior year at Willamette traipsing around the campus barefoot, even in the coldest weather. Perhaps I should join the Society for Barefoot Living
• Home English Home, a silly Flash-based English lesson.
• Setting up a home soda fountain made easy.
• The names of the planets in many languages
• George Orwell: Why I Write—Summary: 1. Sheer egoism, 2. Aesthetic enthusiasm, 3. Historical impulse, 4. Political purpose.
• Zempt, multi-platform posting for Movable Type
• Gizmodo, the gadget weblog (for all you early adopters out there).
• I thought I'd written about feral children before, but I cannot find a past post related to the topic. Feral children fascinate me. There's even a web site devoted to them. (There's a web site devoted to everything.)
• The Day the Earth Stood Still has come to DVD.
• The Shape of Her Footprints, a story.
• I never visit Slashdot anymore; I simply use Alterslash to filter out all the crap. Will Metafilter Distilled do the same for Metafilter? (And what does it say when I need tools to filter web filters? TOO MUCH INFORMATION! And a low signal-to-noise ratio everywhere I turn…)
• Snopes is a good urban legends reference page for those habitual forwarders of AMAZING! (but TRUE!) things via e-mail.
• And, finally, Joel points out that there are some animated Matrix prequels available freely online.

Whew. That was a huge pile of links, was it not? But wait! There's more (though these are war related:

• If you follow none of the other links here, follow these: resignations from U.S. diplomat John Brady Kiesling and British House of Commons member Robin Cook. The Cook resignation is especially good.
• First Iraq, then Canada?
• Google, hacked by peaceniks
• Where is Raed? A weblog from inside Iraq. This is a fantastic example of the way in which weblogs have the ability to change the manner in which news is delivered. (This first became apparent during the attacks on September 11th.)
• What happens when we move from orange to red?
• And finally, a repeat: Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over!

Tomorrow I'll write about personal history again, okay?

In 12 Monkeys, Jim Cole travels from the future to avert a deadly plague which is to be released in present-day Philadelphia. The authorities think he's a nut job, and they lock him away and assign shrink Kathryn Railly to his case. At one point, they're traveling in a car together, and they hear a news bulletin about a kid trapped in a well. Willis laughs and Stowe asks him what's so funny.

Cole explains that he remembers this—this event happened when he was a kid, just days before the plague struck and killed 99% of the world population. The kid isn't trapped in the well, he's just pulling a prank and he's hiding in a nearby barn.

Railly doesn't believe him. She doesn't believe anything he says. She certainly doesn't believe he's from the future. Until, later, she's watching television and she sees another news bulleting: the kid wasn't in the well, he was just pulling a prank and was hiding in a nearby barn.

Over the past couple days I've heard bits and pieces about the angry farmer who drove his tractor into a pond in Washington, D.C. Each time I hear about the farmer, I associate his story with the story of the boy in the well in 12 Monkeys: they're both odd little events occurring at the edge of doom.

Happy birthday, Paul!

Have a pleasant evening.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2005 — Lego Racers   Harrison is developing into a typical male, which, in a way, is fun to see. For example, he loves video games.

2004 — Geeky Sunday   Andrew, Joel, and I met at Dave's house for a little bit of fun last Sunday. We gathered to play Dungeons and Dragons, that rite of passage for geeks everywhere. You might think that a quartet of 35-year-old men is too old to be playing geeky boy games. You'd be wrong.

2002 — Frustrated   On Sunday I drove to six different stores around Portland searching for her album. None of them had it. What a colossal waste of time. I would have gladly paid $10 to be able to download the thing from an online source.

2001 — Disjointed Morning   I'm not the best judge of weather at 5:40 a.m. I had intended to bike to work today but when...