Okay, all right, we'll do the summer bit. But only a little. We'll grab our homemade eight-tracks of the Beastie Boys and Sergio Mendes, load the cooler up with goodies, turn the clock to the wall, put on our Victorian bathing suits and hit the sunny shores of Lemuria. Enjoy the pop culture report, and if you really begin to miss our smiling faces, send us a postcard.
 

Carol Lay sure knows how to make a soul think hard. Her weekly comic for Salon, Story Minute, isn't so much a funny strip as a cocky one - the Lay method sets you up for a punchline, then administers an actual punch. Her characters are long, skinny drinks of water, with teeth that consume the entire bottom quarter of their faces, as appealing as they are curious. They face off with modern times, ancient superstitions, duplicitous lovers and themselves, either solving or submitting to their respective quandaries in a manner that would do Aesop proud. Not to tell Lay her business, but what's she doing drawing comics while she has the power to save our dumb butts? Incidentally: just like the Passenger, Carol hails from Orange County, Calif., which is the reason she's so cheerfully macabre three strips out of five. Trust me - I know.
 

Attention criminal dirtbags: steer clear of Moab, Utah. It's a family community with little or no use for your kind of dirty hijinks, and Moab's police department can smell your kind halfway around the world, so even stepping foot inside city limits is ill-advised. Besides, your infractions will gain a global audience. The Moab PD Police Blotter appears in Moab's weekly Times-Independent; the online version offers more fascinating reading than you'll get in most newsmagazines. Bikes are stolen and returned, domestic abuse episodes are settled and those rotten "out-of-town criminals" are routed before they can raise a ruckus. Don't mess with Moab, bub.
 

I don't care how much rendering power Nintendo stuffs into their latest box or what breed of fresh hell may be gestating on your DigiMon - no toy, past or present, packs the engineering punch and simple pleasures of that 53-year-old misfit of science, the Slinky. In lieu of an official site (has anyone seen Whammo around lately? Are they okay?), this dynamite links page will show you the way to more Slinky facts than you ever dreamed of, take you around the world with our little coiled wire buddy and even provide you with a fatty pack of physics relating to the thingy. Of course, it goes without saying that the musical accompaniment is placed front and center. Over your neighbor's dog!