Find yourself to time to waste and head over to the New York Public Library's Digital Gallery:

NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 275,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.

And it's all catalogued and browseable and searchable and clickable... ahh.

I take back roads to work, because the main roads are full. These back roads are in pretty bad shape (including a couple of stretches where there is no pavement at all). But, they are still two-way roads, and as such, it's expected that people will keep to the right (the yellow lines make it easy to tell where to drive).

But, people in SUVs and trucks don't do that. Instead, they like to drive down the middle of the roads, to avoid driving over sections of road where holes have been patched. Yes, see those dark spots in the picture? Those are patches - new blacktop where there used to be a hole. They're smooth enough to drive on, even in my stiff little Beetle; but people driving vehicles that are advertised as being able to cross streams, climb mountains, pull a boat up a ziggurrat, while the driver sips her latte, are afraid to drive over a rumbly little patch in the road.

I expect to be killed one day, by an SUV driver who preferred to drive down the middle of the road, rather than subject himself to the horrors of letting his suspension do its job.

And yes, taking pictures while driving is much safer than driving down the middle of the road....

Dad's an English teacher at a community college in upstate NY. Over the years, he's built a collection of the truly awful things some of his students have handed-in. Here are two:

• Drugs first heavily came about in the time of the hippies, which was probably their escape from all the war they were put through by our government, who wouldn't want to escape the reality of countries trying to destroy one an other.
• Perhaps more important than physical beauty is internal beauty. I'm not talking about actual innards, like internal organs.

Many more at The Eiffel Ninety-Four.

I won!

Not really. But I did come in more than a minute faster than I planned, with a monstrous kick at the end. So, yay for me. Now it's time to forget about running, get drunk and then give in to all those viruses that have been chasing me for two months. Bring it on, bitches.

Max Blumenthal might have ID'd one of the two guys who killed judge Lefkow's family.

Sure looks like a match to me.

So, tomorrow's my big 5K race. Forecast: low 40s and clear. I managed to go 6 weeks without catching any of the various colds all my coworkers brought in to share. Instead, I've alternated days where I feel like I'm coming down with something with days where I feel like I'm getting over something - all the while maintaining a persistent cough.

But, by 9:30am tomorrow, I'll be done. And if all goes well, I'll hit the time I want, and I'll have accomplished something I haven't done since I was 16: finished a 5K race. If not, I'll live with the crippling shame... Either way, the Cary Rotary Club gets my $18, and I get a t-shirt.

Whatever you do, don't link to this column by Bill O'Reilly.

Three two-fers in 3 hours: two in a row from Gillian Welch, two in a row from Spoon and two in a row from The Cars.

Sounds improbable to me.

Urgent Update!
After lunch, another Spoon two-fer, followed by an REM song then another from Spoon. Something's up with the brain in my little white buddy.

Finger length predicts physically aggressive personalities, study shows.

Bands I wished iTunes had, or had more of...

Radiohead
Black Sabbath (pre 1980)
King Crimson
Spoon
Gillian Welch
Bauhaus

I've gone looking for stuff by these bands in the past few weeks, and have come back empty-handed. Don't make me buy physical media!