Practicalmadness

1. I will be away from Chicago during all of Independence Day week as I celebrate my ongoing need to suckle at the warm, happy, rancid teat that is my dysfunctional family. During that week -- June 30 through July 6 -- I will be bouncing between New Orleans, Mobile, AL, and Birmingham, and likely will not be updating, thinking about updating or in any position to use my fingers in a constructive manner. However, as a result of this mission, a certain fuzzy sidekick will be returning to the Practical family. (heh heh heh. feel the fuzziness. it is your dea-- ooh, fudge!)

2. Slinging my 2,000(,000)th Name Brand Ice Blended Beverage at work today, I finally hit upon a new paradigm for the site. My long-planned community features (user reg, message boards, etc.) will be set up alongside recipes for bizarro coffee drinks and tales from the front lines of the War Against Incorrect Drink Ordering in a new subsite called "Practical's Coffee Shop and Discount Brothel" (title still in beta). This got me going on a whole slew of ideas for other subsites: the movie reviews and Cine Calendar could live in "The Screening Room", et al. I don't know yet, however, how this fits in with the oh-so-staid New Design I debuted this morning...

3. I could write at length about the split decision by the Supreme Court that putting mentally retarded criminals to death is unconstitutional, but rather than keep us all here until dawn, allow me to make just the following observation: the news, which occupied a three-column, 72-point headline on Friday's Chicago Tribune, was deemed not so newsworthy by the editors and designers at the Chicago Sun-Times and USA Today. Both papers gave the story a large-type headline above the fold, but readers put off by the Trib's wordy look and tone of journalistic competence may find themselves believing that their paper's film reviewer's four-star advertisement for Minority Report or a rumored change to multicolor printing at the U.S. Mint is truly more important.