I'm lying on a large roundish rock/boulder, face down with my head to one side, ear pressed to the rock. It is not cold. I hear a deep, thumping sound, like a slow heartbeat, in a regular rhythm. This goes on for a long time until I drift back into un-dreaming sleep.

I'd attribute this to the trains that run by my building if not for the fact that they are always accompanied by a loud screeching noise as they go around the bend. So if the noise appears in my dreams at all, it generally appears as "train", or occasionally "predatory bird". The underlying repetitive thump is virtually inaudible unless you lay on the floor. Maybe I was just in a different sleeping position.

Anyway, there you have it. I won't speculate on the meaning except to say that calling me an earth-hugging liberal wouldn't be too far off the mark.

Thanks to a twisted tale of small worlds, I'm now a book review columnist. Details and an official announcement will appear when I'm actually in print, as the editor may decide I have horrendous prose and choose not to print me, which is the deserved prerogative of editing your own site.

Meanwhile, I've chosen my first book to review. I'm reviewing cookbooks, and I decided this book called Easy Sushi would be a good place to start. After all, it's precisely the sort of thing that people are frightened to attempt themselves, especially here in the Western Hemisphere.

However, in Japan it's quite common to prepare sushi at home, with only the more difficult preparations such as nigiri left to the professionals. Given the expense of eating sushi in a restaurant, knowledge of some simple home preparations could be a very useful skill for Westerners who crave the delicious dish.

So, I'm planning a dinner party in the near future to try out the methods in the book and see how we do. Thanks to the gift of a makisu (bamboo rolling mat) from my ex-girlfriend, ownership of a nigiri rice mold thanks to J-List, and availability of sashimi-grade fish and other necessary ingredients at awesome local markets, I should have everything I need to initiate myself and my friends into the world of home sushi apprenticeship.

In contrast to this much-anticipated endeavor, the prospect of using this sushi-wrapping robot is decidedly unromantic. It's not even cutely zoomorphic/anthropomorphic the way many Japanese robots—even the utilitarian ones—are. It's not even sleek—just boxy and metallic like a Volvo.

I admit it might come in handy if you're running a high-volume sushi purveyor. It even has a "wasabi depositor", which I must concede is an unusually picturesque feature for a big piece of machinery to have.

My preference would still be for a sushi-chef Asimo robot—now that would be cool!

Sushi wrapping robot link found via kottke.org.

Republican U.S. Representative Sam Graves has granted $273,000 to Blue Springs, outside Kansas City MO, "to identify Goth culture leaders that are preying on our kids." Mind you, this is not an out-of-pocket grant, this is Congressionally-approved funding.

This article gives the details, and an interesting look at the community and the goths in it to establish context.

It looks like a case of good motivations turned bad by stereotypes. Drug abuse, self abuse, and depression in teens are all worthy issues to address, but linking them to a particular subculture has led to a great deal of negative publicity and a case of "forest for the trees" mentality about these problems in the community.

"Goth leaders preying on our kids." As if.

(Story first spotted over at Rebecca's Pocket.)