I've taken to informing friends that I'm giving up on irony; that after mixing it up in Asia - a culture of subtlety - I'm ready to lose a few conventions that have informed my work up to now. And those so-called friends say, "Yeah, I can see you've given up on irony. Look how wrinkled your clothes are." Ha effin' ha. You can see what I'm up against here. At least I can take comfort in the fact that while irony can destroy rock and scissors, it can't flatten paper. I write on paper every day, and let me tell you - it's already flat.

Huh? What the hell am I talking about? Guess it's time to shave a cup or two off my coffee quota.
 

What is adventure? For years, I thought adventure was a gift exclusive to the cleft-chin set - something you could only have on tall ships or mountaintops, accompanied by roaring symphonic score and a ditzy sidekick. Not so. Adventure is fear by a better name - a descriptive of the hazy moment between falling off the ladder and catching the rung with a lucky hand. Perhaps no one understands this better than the creators of Infiltration, a 'zine devoted to "going places you're not supposed to go." Who hasn't yearned to know what goes on inside some ominous-looking, glass-faced postmodern office building? An abandoned factory? Or a subway tunnel, leading off to a vanishing point? The editors of Infiltration have been there - and more importantly, back - and offer advice to would-be explorers. Did you know that there's an enormous labyrinth of tunnels under UCLA? That the backstage area of most production shows is deadly dull, but with some nice salmon appetizers? You'll never know until you make up your mind to breach that "No Admittance" door and begin your adventures.
 

The Passenger could eat in roadside diners for the rest of his natural life and be happy. (Provided, of course, that some of those diners are in Asia and Europe.) Now, thanks to national diner directory Eat Here.com, I'm one step closer to that proud, slightly greasy endless highway. Listed here are hundreds of good places to nosh on burgers, barbecue, Tex-Mex, ice cream, steak, seafood and nearly everything else that can be slid across a stainless-steel counter, in every town from La Grange to Manitoba. Readers review and recommend establishments, and even offer a few tips to the uninitiated: the next time you're at Memphis Championship BBQ in Las Vegas, go ahead and let them pile some slaw on your sandwich. It's a long drive ahead, fellow traveler - let us be sated.
 

Three New Yorkers paint themselves blue and become bigger than Santa; hey, what's to stop an entire city from doing the same? Nothing at all, baby blue. Virtual Sortland is the official website of Sortland, a humble Northern Norway hamlet that the snobs at Rough Guide saw fit to describe as a "downright ugly urban sprawl" (feeling a bit overwhelemed by the Lonely Planet folks, are we?). Well, the Sortlendings aren't the kind of cats to take something like that on the chin, and are taking steps to put their cold dish of a town on the map - the first step being a concentrated movement to paint the entire town blue. Public opinion on this artistic statement is, not surprisingly, completely polarized ("Gode gud NEI!" cries one affronted reader), but everyone seems to be in agreement on the other promotional component, the website itself. It's a fun read from top to bottom, laced with self-effacing humor - what other city would have the courage to adopt the slogan "Probably a Good Place?" - and a few Monty Pythonesque belly-laughs (check out the "Dialect" page, and have some porridge handy). Does the campaign work? Put it this way: The Passenger would jet off to Sortland right now, held back only by a silly aversion to freezing his ass off.
 

I almost wept through the Jill Sprecher film "Clockwatchers," tortured by recurring visions of my short but awful time spent working as a temp for Apple One. It was like the first day of school every ... single ... day. And you're getting less of an education than the other kids, and if your so-called classmates decide they don't much like you, they simply go to the principal and complain, and you're booted to the curb. Freaking temp work. It's a goddamn miracle I didn't strangle somebody dead, strip to my altogether and run through the cubicles screaming, "You ... are all ... going ... to die!" Oh, my point ... Temp/24-7, a website by and for temps (once temporary workers, now "Totally Exploitable Menial Prostitutes"), focuses the righteous anger incurred by tempdom at the fattened hindquarters of Corporate Amerika, and fires salvo after salvo. Read through the "Temp Tales of Terror," adopt the "temp terms," and play the "Doom"-style "Temps vs. Suits" Shockwave game, the object of which is to avoid getting brainless busywork from the full-time drones. You bludgeon them with office supplies, and at the end, you're given a paycheck for your efforts, three-quarters of which goes back to the agency ... hang on, I'm having another episode.

What do you want from your Passenger? I do take suggestions, y'know. I also take cash donations, howdy-do letters and general wishes for well being at passenger@vegas.com. I'll take pretty much any damn thing from you, except fruitcake. My newfound love of subtlety goes only so far.