It has arrived...

Shirts. From Woot. This one's going to the link listing.

Dark Knight - Batman Begins Sequel

It looks like marketing for the sequel to Batman Begins has started. Not surprisingly it coincides with the ComicCon in San Diego.

Spooky 800 number and website: Why So Serious?. Call this number: 1-800-395-9646.

Crazy Baby Names

Babies to the left of me! Babies to the right of me! Amusing article passed my reader this morning on crazy baby names. My personal favorites:

• Fifi Trixibell
• Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily
• Jermajesty
• Moxie CrimeFighter

Walkable

Since my return to the US, I have tried to pursue a more walkable lifestyle. Primarily, it's taken the form of taking the BMW to work (Bus, Metro, Walk).

There's a new website that ranks your locale in terms of "walkability". It scores your neighborhood based on proximity to other amenities - restaurants, movie theaters, schools, etc. Although the addresses for non-US locations show up on the mashed Google map, the scoring is only available for US locations.

Check it out here.

Hiking the AT

A few months ago, we accompanied another couple on a hike on the Appalachian Trail. It was an exhausting, strenuous, but finitely rewarding experience. It was, in fact, the first time I had ever been on the trail.

We started by unloading our packs from our cars near Burkittsville, Maryland. You'll probably recognize the name of the town - it was made famous by a mediocre horror film, but it doesn't seem to have caved to the sellout nature of a lot of small towns suffering from the Hollywood effect. We hiked half a mile deeper into the rough and found a quaint cabin / campsite with primitive setups. We sprayed the DEET on like it was AXE body spray, then played the role of paranoid urbanites by rolling our pants into our socks (thank you ixodes scapularis).

The last time I really roughed it was when I was waiting on a desolate road outside of the town of Saou in France. It probably lasted all of 45 minutes. I was clearly out of my league.

We unloaded our stuff and rubbed our bellies for the first hour, trying to encourage our hastily-eaten Dominos pizza to digest and make way for the onslaught of GORP, beef jerky, and water that we would soon be subjecting our digestive tracts to.

We built a small fire and immediately got to drinking. We made our bunks in the rustic cabin and laid down to sleep, not knowing what hell was in store for us the next morning.

Waking up to a gloriously sunny morning, we returned our packs to the car and ventured up towards the AT. We made a wrong turn and eventually found ourselves in the middle of a steep ascent - when it was all said and done, we had risen 1000 vertical feet in .4 miles and lost somewhere around 5 pounds of water weight. The views from the vista were respectable, but didn't seem to do the effort justice. We got on the AT and hike another 11 miles into Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. We crossed through an area of forest infested with bark-eating caterpillars, endured a knee-busting downhill hike into town, then subjected ourselves to the tedium of walking 2 miles along a flat-ass path. My arthritic knees were not happy. The freakiest part? When our friends' never-ending barrel of energy golden lab laid down in the dirt from exhaustion. IN THE DIRT.

We made it back with our pride still in tact - enough for us to talk boastfully about our experience.

Flickr set is here.

Harry-est towns in America

Everyone with "I" in your Myers-Briggs in the states of Washington and Virginia unite! The cities with the most sales of the new Harry Potter book came from these two states, almost exclusively. Who the hell in lives in Katy, Texas? I thought that everyone in Texas grew up either playing football or cheerleading. I guess every team needs to have a marching band...

Witty Dialogue in 10,000 BC?

New trailer for a film has my snagged my interest - what language will people speak in the new film about life in 10,000 BC? If this is another ploy to get me to tune into that ludicrous idea of a sitcom about the GEICO cavemen, I'll just spit.

What else will be great? Seeing the VF version of the movie once it's translated into French. Heh.

Posts TBD

Coming up... posts from hiking the Appalachian Trail and spending a weekend at a friend's lakehouse on Smith Mountain Lake.