and naomi and me at the soft opening of avenue:

The next XBox will be revealed May 12 on MTV. Good for them -- I'm sure this will be a mostly information-free event ("new giga-X processing makes games 300% more extreme!"), but it's never made sense that new consoles are revealed at trade shows to hordes of slavering adult geeks. When you'll actually be able to buy one of these remains a mystery (Christmas seems like a good guess), but at least we'll have plenty of advance opportunity to dismantle our social and romantic lives to make way for all those additional gigapixels.

In related news, MS has also announced that new titles for the original XBox will be arriving through 2007. Sounds to me like a "no" vote on the new console being backward-compatible, but what do I know? Some people think it means exactly the opposite.

If you're craving photos without noise, focus problems or a persistent blue tint on the lefthand side, have a look at Jeff and Marie's photos of their trip to Japan. Lots of good stuff there, and plenty of posed peace signs -- which are actually V-for-victory signs adopted from conquering US soldiers. What, you thought giant radioactive lizard fantasies were the only outet for their a-bomb neuroses?

Did somebody say "crappy cameraphone pictures"?

No?

Well, that's a pity.

Here's a shot of Catherine in front of the Arapaima. It doesn't quite capture the the fact that these fish are about six feet long, nor the associated pants-wetting terror of it all.

More fish!

Saturday night's long-talked-about Star Wars trivia throwdown between Kriston and Katie. Susan and Catherine both found excuses for temporarily leaving the party this time... how odd. Most of the rest of us sat around and made side-bets. I see no need to recount the exact details of what occurred, except to note that Kriston is a big disappointment and owes me a dollar.

And finally, if Borf ever records a techno album, the cover will look like this.