Hey, not that I really mind sitting atop somebody’s home page for days on end, but can someone post something a little more interesting than my dopey M & Ms sidetrack? It’s embarrassing me that it’s still lingering on top of 12apostrophes. Where is everybody?

Here’s some news briefs to get you going:

• The Health Minister of South Africa—the country where 1 in 10 people has the HIV virus—has been publicly advocating vegetables and garlic as the best way to manage the disease. She went to an international AIDS conference in Toronto last month and displayed a table . . .

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I just bought some M & Ms, which I don’t think I’ve done since I was… Well, I don’t ever remember buying myself a bag of M & Ms, but I assume I have before. I mean, a small bag of M & Ms for myself, not some giant bag I throw into a bowl for a party and never look at again, except when I mindlessly stick my hand in it later and insert the M & Ms into my mouth without looking at them or remembering I did it. On those rare occasions, I could be throwing a handful . . .

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You make a boy smile as large as Pluto. Yes, I’m obsessed. But it raises another (controversial?) idea: Big Ten college towns. Why are they so much better than other college towns around the country? If I had to choose a college town to live in, I would choose almost every Big Ten town before any other part of the country (not that I’ve been everywhere). But Ann Arbor, Bloomington, Iowa City, Madison — in my experience, they seem so much more culturally interesting, playful, civic-minded, quirky etc. than say Gainesville, Chapel Hill, Syracuse, Tallahassee etc. The only other two . . .

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Crocodile-Hunter extraordinaire Steve Irwin died yesterday in a freak accident involving a stingray. If you didn’t know, he was the Australian dare-devil environmentalist that appeared non-stop on the Discovery Channel, wrestling crocodiles, poking venomous snakes with sticks, etc.

My dad worked in Australia for a year in 1993 and, when he came back, found Steve Irwin on late, late night TV (one of his first shows). My dad loved watching this guy manhandle horrifically poisonous snakes with nonchalance. For him, I think, Irwin was a mix of the Australian cultural bravado . . .

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If I hadn’t seen Lady in the Water with Salma, I would have walked out. But since I didn’t walk out, the question is—when would I have given up hope? When Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) tells Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), “Thank you for letting me wear your beautiful shirt”? (When she could have stood to ask him for some pants, too?) When the writer (M. Night Shymalan) describes his current project as being his thoughts on “all the social problems”? (Could he maybe have named one? Poverty? Pollution?) When the crossword freak drops a meta dis on movie critics that . . .

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