I was at the bar of the Brian Boru pub in Thames last week when the phone went off:

"Yup ... yup ... yup ... yup ... okay ... okay ... yup." the barman hung up, looked very serious, and announced to the half dozen or so people at the bar:

"That was the Junction. Betty's got her tits out and she's heading this way."

A quiet Wednesday in Thames. Betty never arrived so I don't know the end of the story. Somehow I doubt Betty looked like our muse.

Anyway we have some goodies fer ya. First up Mark with this on director Richard Linklater (Slackers, Dazed and Confused, School of Rock) has adapted Philip K Dick's A Scanner Darkly for the screen. The book's characters finds simplistic dichotomies such as good and evil hard to untangle. Funny that.

He also likes Maureen Dowd's take on American exceptionalism, reality TV's efforts to locate the ultimate Maria von Trapp for a new production of The Sound of Music and Jeremy Clarkson's (Top Gear) funny encounters with US officialdom:

And, unfortunately, these people at the bottom of the food chain have no intellect at all. Reasoning with them is like reasoning with a tree. I think this is because people in the sticks have stopped marrying their cousins and are now mating with vegetables.

Also from Mark, more on Jack Marx and Russell Crowe and Brits learn how to tell Aussies and Kiwis apart.

From Chris: death and destruction has caused the AK47 assault rifle's "inventor" (although the credit for that dubious achievement is, in itself, hotly debated) Mikhail Kalashnikov to join the chorus of voices calling for tougher restrictions on its use.

Not that anybody cares (however, like most, Chris cares an ångström unit more about Britney Spears than he does about the Paris Hilton), but compare and contrast this with this. Also sprach the Nerd: via Arts & Letters, Woody “Superman” Allen on the soon-to-be-all-the-rage-among-angsty-philosophy-students Friedrich Nietzsche diet.

Finally, from Stephen, Steyn on sex and why photographer Alfred Stieglitz never gave Georgia O'Keefe a Brazilian.

Auf wiedersehen muchachos.