Brain frenzy

I have to spend this weekend finishing a Flash Web site (when it's ready, I'll link it to the main page). To mark this foray into Web publishing, a field in which I hope to gain some professional experience soon, today we celebrate Nerd Day.

Here are some of the oddball things I have seen lately. All of them are unbelievably nerdy:

-- A dude with some kind of jousting equipment riding a bicycle on campus. I'm sure Leonardo da Vinci dreamed this up at some point.

-- This Might Be a Wiki, a Web site where people discuss my idols, They Might Be Giants. The "song interpretation" section has both confirmed and denied many ideas I have had over the years about TMBG songs.

-- One of the Gamera movies (I think it's this one), while grading papers Thursday night at Maude's coffee shop. If you sit between the projector and the screen, you can pretend you are on "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

99 broken glass bottles on the wall

In a rare fit of collegiate-ness, I spent Wednesday night painting the 34th Street wall, a locus of promotional graffiti in Gainesville. I helped put up an ad for my class's Nicaragua exhibition opening, which takes place Tuesday. Actually, I'm not sure I helped much -- I only painted a little, but I did bark a lot of orders regarding how to center the lettering on the wall.

We couldn't help but note that if we wanted to leave the wall in a truly Nicaraguan condition, we would layer the top edge with wet concrete, knock the tops off a bunch of bottles and sink them in.

It might stop intruders, but will it keep the sororities from painting over our sign before Tuesday? Only time will tell.