Check out Amazon's new Mechanical Turk initiative. It seems to involve earning small payments for completing captcha-style tasks. It's broken at the moment, but this still seems like a pretty interesting development.

so. where have i been? i don't know. i'll admit it - beat reporting and the constant writing about often-non-newsworthy events (we have to come up with three stories a week, whether or not there's actually, you know, A STORY happening in our area) has worn me down a bit. i did write a hysterical article yesterday, though, on a leather fetish museum in my beat. it was pretty awesome. did you know benjamin franklin might have been a sadist?! in a related note, the museum's guide, upon learning i was from d.c., reminded me that the Mr. DC Eagle contest will be held nov. 19! get your application at the bar now!

anyway, hopefully i can take this weekend to recharge - rumor has it that ms. seeking irony is in town, so i'm looking forward to a d.c. blogger reunion with her and mr. loop. and in a couple of weeks, the brave kyle will be the first to take advantage of the magic futon, flying in for the grand total of something like 36 hours and taking the windy city (and a super furries concert) by storm. and, then, THEN, i'm home for a week for thanksgiving. HOOrah. hopefully i'll muster up the energy to write something semi-interesting before then.