Not my practice blog, by Scott Knaster

Last dirt road to be paved

They're going to pave Towers Lane, the last private dirt road in San Jose, California -- you know, the "Capital of Silicon Valley". The city first promised to pave the road a little while ago, in 1961, and now only 44 years later, it's going to happen. Of course, San Jose is where the infamous finger-chili Wendy's is located, so the timing is suspicious. Are they paving over some evidence?

Microsoft decodes 133t5p33k

Microsoft has posted an article called "A parent's primer to computer slang" on its Child Safety site. Know the basics:

While it's important to respect your children's privacy, understanding what your teenager's online slang means and how to decipher could be important in certain situations and as you help guide their online experience. While it has many nicknames, information-age slang is commonly referred to as leetspeek, or leet for short. Leet (a vernacular form of "elite") is a specific type of computer slang where a user replaces regular letters with other keyboard characters to form words phonetically—creating the digital equivalent of Pig Latin with a twist of hieroglyphics.

There you go!

Unexpected vacation

A baggage handler in Milwaukee got locked in a plane's cargo hold and flew to Philadelphia.

TMBG in SF

They Might Be Giants performed live and free yesterday at Border's Books in San Francisco. A big, happy, all-ages crowd jammed the small space -- clearly more people than were expected. John and John and drummer Marty Beller hit the stage at 4:00 and played for about 40 minutes. We Knasters were right up front, about 10 feet from the tiny stage, and the band sounded great. The set was mostly very tight, except for a few minutes of Flansburgh guitar troubleshooting at the start (Flans: "We'd like to thank Guitar Center for not being open"). After that, the music poured out and soon the happy TMBG vibes were flowing.

They performed four songs from "Here Come the ABC's", the subversively addictive CD/DVD project that's supposed to be for "kids". The show started with a terrific "Alphabet of Nations" that included bonus nation lyrics by Linnell, and drummer Beller stepped to the mike to sing lead on "Alphabet Lost and Found" while John and John sang chorus harmonies a bit off key (big grin from Linnell). A tune that was "written by Linnell's right index finger" proved to be the intro to "Istanbul". They also performed "Robot Parade" and the 21-part classic "Fingertips".

Because the show promoted "Here Come the ABCs", there were plenty of little kids around. One tyke of about 5 wearing a "No!" t-shirt was loudly singing along to "Fake Believe". Linnell teased him by first holding back on his vocal and letting the kid sing, then jumping in fast to preempt the kid.

After the show, They set up a table for autographs and photos (Flans: "We're going to stay here until all of you are gone.") And it was good.

TMBG in SF TODAY

Attention, SF Bay Area fans of They Might Be Giants! They are appearing at Border's Books in Union Square for an all-ages free show at 4 PM today, Sunday March 27th. If you're there, come on over and say hi.

Baseball and bees

A spring training baseball game in Arizona yesterday was called on account of bees.

Soylent Green value menu

Don't be eating while you read this story of a human finger found yesterday in a bowl of Wendy's chili in San Jose, California, about 10 miles from my house (but I checked, and I still have all my fingers).

And kudos to the awesome lead: "Wendy's chili is not made out of people -- well, it is, but just a little bit."

The Original Illustrated Catalog of ACME Products

Obsessive and brilliant.

(Courtesy of the fine staff at Dave's Picks.)

Satan's turtle

A pet store owner in Indiana sees Satan on the shell of a turtle. The aptly named Lucky the turtle was the only survivor of a fire at the store.

The owner says: "The marking on the shell was like the devil wanted us to know he was down there. To me, it's too coincidental that the only thing to come out unscathed would have this image on it."

South City tornado

There was a tornado in South San Francisco yesterday, something that nobody around there could ever remember happening before. Well, it was probably a tornado. It might have been a funnel cloud if it never actually touched the ground. Whatever it was, at least 40 buildings were busted up.