Where are you? You're missing Department Lemur's First-and-Last-and-Always Annual Pre-Millennial Moral Clearance Assembly and Rum Punch Mixer! C'mon - were mixing, we're mingling in ways previously thought scientifically infeasible! Didn't you get your invite? It was sent in the form of a "Win A Free Trip To Disney World" chain letter; you were supposed to read the letter as an acrostic, unscramble the magic phrase using your DJ Spooky decoder ring, then look for the corresponding phrase in your corresponding M. Doughty Brooklynese-to-English dictionary... I mean, come on, you didn't think that Bill Gates / Walt Disney Junior crap was real, did you? And to think I sent you the same invitation six times!
 

The Passenger doesn't follow professional sports, yet is fascinated by Jim Rome and his sports radio call-in program, "The Jungle." His lazy, hey-dude cadences recall the class cutup, the one who got everyone else in trouble ("Nice going, Beckster!"). Come to think of it, that was me. At any rate, Rose's show is a slam-pit of sharp tongues and stupidity, over which Rome presides with an iron fist ("Have a take and do not suck, or you will get run") and his own lingo, a chaotic, colorful language he calls "gloss." Built little by little by the host and his callers - whom he affectionately calls "clones" - Rome's "gloss" is a fascinating world unto itself: Northern Californians are called "Battery Chuckers," NASCAR is slagged off as "NeckCar" or the "Left-Turn Only Circuit," Shaquille O'Neal is remaned "Clank Fu" and Salt Lake City is rededicated "Weak Take Lake," for reasons made clear by the "gloss" glossary at Rome's official site. There's other diversions here - meet the Rat and Mr. Ed families, if you dare - but for the most part, it's all about jungle karma, and the Gloss That Would Cover The Earth.
 

I fell in love with Drue Miller's fabulous Hey Geek Girl! advice page before I read even one word - it is one swanky individual that decks herself in Passenger Green. Then I read her funny, lucid replies to the geek-gestated questions sent her way - "What should I wear to Burning Man?" "Should I get my geek girlfriend RAM for her birthday?" - and I fell in love with Drue. Don't worry, Drue, you don't need to black out your windows or block my domain. But the way you handle technical and bio-technical issues is worthy of admiration, and whether you're advising us lame male children to get culinary ("Geek girls are suckers for boys - and queer geek girls - who can manage a kitchen as deftly as they manage the server") or recommending decent "cool site" listings (please love me!), you never put on airs or talk down to your readers. These are rare and wonderful traits in a geek, Drue. Baby, you saturate my T1. If you're ever in Vegas, call me, and I'll don *my* old Madonna gear.
 

When Polish oculist Ludovic L. Zamenhof created Esperanto in 1887, he had high hopes that it would unite the globe; that it would become the tongue of diplomacy. That never happened - you can only take pidgin English from America only after you pry it from our cold, dead larynx - but Esperanto does thrive in its own strange and wonderful way. This brilliantly accomplished site promises to have you speaking the language "like a native," and as far as I've gotten - Leciono Nulo (Lesson Zero), your basic vowel and consanant sounds - it's smooth sailing. Esperanto has taken its share of hits - it was denounced by Hitler, Soviet Russia and several other national powers at some point or another - but continues to draw new converts, with an estimated 2 million people speaking the *lingua*. As for the controversy that has dogged the tongue since its creation, I would suggest the protests are based in the fact that Esperanto nouns are genderless. Hide that one under your unisex kilt!