Giant boring machine up for auction! Also, I enjoy the Gizmodo guys’ snappy quippery.

A somewhat chilling Washington Monthly article on housing prices and the economy makes a fairly convincing (to me) case that the housing market this year is not unlike the stock market in the late ’90s, and that its collapse will be even more catastrophic for the economy at large. This would be spectacularly bad for whoever gets elected this year.
(that last sentence’s construction would have been useful in weeding out the grammar god wannabes, I expect)

Somebody at quizilla says:
You are a GRAMMAR GOD!
If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be. Congratulations and thank you!
How grammatically sound are you? brought to you by Quizilla

Based on the frequency of Grammar god scores visible via blogdex, a perfect score is not required. It’s also possible that one or more questions had more than one correct answer (in fact, one of them had to have had more than one correct answer, which gives the prescriptive morons a false sense of correctness).

My Louis Farrakhan African Name Generator name is, get this, "Shaft".

The new Dr Who will not be Eddie Izzard, and he won’t be wearing any silly haberdashery (darn the luck).
I enjoyed Eccleston’s performance in The Second Coming (which also involved Russell Davies, the new Dr Who series’ producer), so am looking forward to seeing his take on a classic rôle.

If I ever bilk my friends and/or colleagues out of a large sum of money, I will not then lose that money falling for a 419 scam.

But since it’s from Google, Gmail lets you store a gig of old mail and search for the message you want. Makes hotmail seem, well, uncool. (Note: you can’t actually get an account yet, but you can ask them to send you updates)

Simpsons voice cast on strike. I wonder how much of the staff will quit if they get replaced.

Need a porn name? Try my porn name (mine is Sean Shaft). Yahoo has a (fairly sparse, it looks like) directory of name generators, including one for your hobbit name (mine is Samwise Brockhouse of Loamsdown — interesting that I’m a Samwise). My elf name is Tuor Séregon — I didn’t like that at first, but it’s kind of grown on me).
For a bunch of names all at once (using, it appears, the traditional formulæ), try The Name Generator.

From the description of the book Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking Opens the Veil:
“A spiritual approach to human sexuality looks at the power of sex to bring readers to the highest spiritual states described in various world religions, detailing lovers who have experienced possession, channeling supernatural entities, visions, past lives, paranormal abilities, shapeshifting, nirvana, and more.”

I’m pretty sure those are among the last things I need. All I really need is someone to bring me to a sandwich after.