For those interested, Bungie's finally released word on the downloadable content update for Halo 2. The short version: nine new maps released on a staggered basis beginning in late April. Half of them will be free from the get-go; all of them will be free by the end of the summer. Non-XBL users can buy a disc of them for $20; those who download the maps will presumably pay somewhat less than that.

Just in time for the sunny weather! This should help me maintain that robust pallor I've got going on.

a while back, i had a kind of controversial post where i stated that i thought several female bloggers received more traffic than they might have otherwise due to their choice to prominently display an attractive picture of themselves. one of those bloggers was lindsay at majikthise, and while i still stand by my earlier comments on the subject and normally don't find her blogging appealing, she has had several excellent posts on the schiavo case. in return, she is now now receiving death threats. lovely.

honestly, watching this entire schiavo thing unfold and reading about it on the internets has been one of the most surreal spectacles i've ever witnessed. these people are truly grasped in the fervor of some bizarre ecstasy i have never experienced, and that i hope to never experience. where's the outrage over the indian reservation killings (not to mention some sort of true action or thoughtful comments by the president)? does no one care that a 9 year old boy was shot in the face last night in d.c.? what kind of terrifying zealousness allows you to slander a private citizen with only hearsay and intuition to back you up or steal a gun to try to "rescue terry"?

honestly, i can't wrap my head around it, nor do i want to. and i obviously have nothing worthwhile or meaningful to say about this case, except that i don't scare too easily - but these people frighten the living daylights out of me. i feel like we're back in medieval times.

Check out my sister's new gig! Let's all go demand free drinks.

i was reading a guardian article on charlotte bronte, which complains that her biography (written by elizabeth gaskell) and other facets of her life have been, throughout the years, totally puritanized, and that bronte was really a "filthy bitch, grandmother of chick-lit, and friend." as you can imagine, i am already finding the piece pretty awesome.

so i'm traisping along through the article, finding out all sorts of things i never knew about bronte; for example, she had hardly any teeth! she had a torrid correspondence with a monsieur from brussels! she was obsessed with sex! (well, i guess i could have inferred that some of that last part from jane eyre.)

and, the best part of all: she HATED small children. now, i love small children (well, er, normally...don't ask tommy about my rants regarding kicking my six-year old students in italy out of windows), but you are a wasted, steel-hearted person if you do not find this passage from her journal as a schoolteacher mind-bogglingly hysterical:

"I had been toiling for nearly an hour. I sat sinking from irritation and weariness into a kind of lethargy. The thought came over me: am I to spend all the best part of my life in this wretched bondage, forcibly suppressing my rage at the idleness, the apathy and the hyperbolic and most asinine stupidity of these fat headed oafs and on compulsion assuming an air of kindness, patience and assiduity? Must I from day to day sit chained to this chair prisoned within these four bare walls, while the glorious summer suns are burning in heaven and the year is revolving in its richest glow and declaring at the close of every summer day the time I am losing will never come again? Just then a dolt came up with a lesson. I thought I should have vomited."

fat headed oafs! vomiting on children! oh, lord. i can't stop laughing. it's like bronte read my mind on the worst days of my brief teaching career. small children are generally lovable and adorable, but there are just sometimes when you feel ready to punt them over a wall. i'm glad to see that bronte agrees.

(ps - please do not find me psychopathic because i laugh hysterically at endorsements of child hate and often daydreamed about throwing children through windows. it's, erm...nevermind. it's nothing. i didn't say anything.)

update: once in a while i like to think about what great literary figures would have been good bloggers. i think charlotte bronte can be safely added to that list. she was ugly but filled with passion, so she could have hid behind the safety of her computer screen while composing an interesting personality; hyper intelligent but completely smothered by rage, and everybody knows you gotta be an angry freak once in a while to have a good blog. what other authors would have been good bloggers?

Well, I've got a problem. It's time to draw from the vast collective wisdom of the internet -- I'm counting on you guys. But this is sort of one of those "I'm running out of space for all my gold doubloons" problems, and I'll understand if you all just bitch me out instead.

So Catherine and I and several of you are all going to Italy at the end of April. It's gonna be great, and I'm going to eat thiiiiiis much gelato and ride the gondola twice. Or at least drink my bodyweight in wine.

Well, it'll be a fun time, but while they were busy filling their country with picturesque locations and people the Italians frustratingly neglected to build an effective, pan-Tuscan mass transportation system. The trains are great for moving between cities and non-miniscule towns, but we're still going to need some rental cars.

Italy boasts some of Europe's priciest rental cars. For an automatic transmission I'm having a hard time cracking the $700/week level. If I could drive stick, though... well, nearly $300 could be shaved off that figure.

The problem is that I haven't driven stick since I was sixteen. My mom felt it was important that I learn -- she approached it like a survival skill, and wanted me to be prepared for the complete lack of automatic transmissions that would doubtless accompany the nuclear winter/viral epidemic/zombie attacks of the future. So we spent a few hours driving up and down my grandparents' street in their decrepit Volkswagen Rabbit. I didn't perform very well, but neither did the car, so for all I know I could be the world's greatest manual transmission driver, EVER.

So what do you guys think? Is this fake-able? Is there a good way to learn before I go? The rental car's clutch only needs to last for seven days, after all.

if you watched this week's episode of american idol, you might have noticed that paula abdul seemed a little, well...more crazy-ass than usual. she slurred words, pawed simon even more than normal, lolled her head around and was just plain weird.

but we should have seen the signs a-comin'; it's clear that paula was on the verge of a COMPLETE INSANE BREAKDOWN, the description of which is so totally awesome that i must post most of it here:

Abdul flew to Kuala Lumpur last Friday for the Force of Nature Tsunami Aid benefit as the guest of the King and Queen of Malaysia. She joined the likes of Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, Jackie Chan, Bai Ling, Joey Fatone and the Black Eyed Peas. Abdul introduced Hill at a gala concert.

The next day, however, Abdul was at her suite at the Kuala Lumpur Ritz-Carlton when she learned that Los Angeles authorities planned to file a criminal charge against her for a hit-and-run incident she was involved in last December, which carries a maximum penalty of up to six months in jail.

Abdul was scheduled to have tea with the king and queen at the Malaysian Royal Palace on Saturday but refused to leave her bed, our source reports. A girlfriend who accompanied her on the trip told her she had to pull herself together and attend, since the royals were footing the bill. But when Abdul and her pal returned to the hotel, the pop star flipped out.

Abdul scratched her friend's face and the fracas was seen by a Ritz-Carlton staffer who entered the room. Before long, word of the fisticuffs spread among the other celebs staying at the hotel.

We're told that Abdul finally cooled off, but the next day, she flipped out again during her flight back to California with the friend. She threw a bracelet at her pal and screamed that the friend "owed her money" for a hamburger she'd consumed at the hotel.

fisticuffs over a freakin hamburger? paula, get your act together. this is not the kind of attitude i expect from someone representing the fine folks of american idol. clean yourself up, get off the quaaludes, and stop having sex with simon. it's obviously not helping.

also, WHO IS THIS FRIEND that puts up with a crazy bitch scratching her face and demanding repayment for $5 hamburgers? that's not friendship; that's a little thing called abuse.

More news from the "cellphone companies are evil" department: the collaboration between Apple and Motorola to produce the long-sought iPod phone is going to be delayed. The reason? Cellphone carriers don't particularly like the idea of consumers being able to put music on their phones at-will; they'd rather have them pay for every song that gets loaded, like the current situation with ringtones.

It's more or less tradition at this point, so I'll just stick it in here: cyber-serfdom! Perpetual revenue streams! Naked bodies in gel-filled pods!

If the carriers don't play ball, a phone becomes a much tougher sell. Standard practice is for carriers to chop a couple hundred dollars off the price of a handset, shifting the cost into the service contract. If the network operators don't want a phone released, they can simply decline to offer this price-shifting system, and suddenly the phone costs $200 more than it otherwise would. And if you think those shifted costs would be deducted from customers' service contracts, you're nuts. Owning an iPhone would get real pricey, real fast.

Anyway, the situation isn't all that dire. As the article notes, the iPhone could be a big win for a slightly-less-evil-than-usual underdog like T-Mobile; alternately, Apple might just try to sell the device at the full-price premium -- it wouldn't be the first time people have shelled out for a sexy slab of plastic from Cupertino.