Oh, heck. My couture has become, uh, couture.

Last year Omaha convinced me to buy a Utilikilt. I'll confess to enjoying the darn thing, even if I think it's unnecessarily trendy in it's own way.

Last week came word that a novelty workingman's kilt marketed in Sweden really is a hit with working men, and that the company that makes them, Blaklader, is ramping up production to meet demand.

And although it was a women's fashion show in Paris for the Frank Sorbier 2008 collection, it looks as if he really wants his men in kilts. (No direct link; damn Yahoo's funky fashion photo copyright thingy.) Apparently the whole 'Dress to Kilt' fundraiser thing Sean Connery does every year is slowly making its way into the haute couture mindset.

Now that's data mining!

Books That Make You Dumb is a data mining exercise in which the writer take "My favorite books" from facebook data and indexes it with "My university," then uses the university as a key to correlate the popularity of a book with the corresponding university's average admissions SAT scores.

The results are fascinating. The "smartest" book, barely edging out the slightly wider spread of 100 Years of Solitude, is the Nabokov favorite, Lolita. The dumbest books? Almost anything by erotica writer "Zane." (Note to self: don't read!) The Bible did not fare well in this analysis, nor did The Color Purple.

Clear Channel is Evil

I went to the gym today. It was supposed to be arms and abs, and I did that, but because I'm on my physical therapy still I did all the leg toning exercises I'm supposed to. One new one is a forward lunge while carrying weights, dipping down until the knee touches the ground, then coming forward with the next leg. I upped from 12 to 18 the first time around, but just could not do a second circuit of them.

Still, I could see veins sticking out of my arms when I was done, which was kinda nifty. I've been working toward that effect for the past damn six months or so.

Mary Lou Freakin' Retton!

When I was doing some basic floorwork, though, I looked out the window and saw the very scary Mary Lou Retton grinning back at me with that "when I'm a zombie, these'll be great for chewing through your skull!" dental work. I mean, here I am, trying desperately to save my knees and what's she doing? Pimping artificial knee replacements. And not even good ones! They're just hunks of metal, not self-repairing, and probably not as good as real bone at interacting with their environment usefully. (Yeah, someday I'll get the full body upgrade, but when they get something with a decent maintenance and warranty period, something bookable in centuries). The ad panel is owned by Clear Channel, and whoever got the sale on it is just viciously minded.

I understand that my gym is not very cruisy and has a generally older clientele. Some respectably good looking older clientele, too, and more among the guys than the women, which surprises me. But I think the ad is just crass.

Speaking of crass, there's one guy at the gym, a beautiful boy with huge muscles and a good face, and as he was getting dressed I noticed that he wears lifters. He's not even short, why would he feel the need to put an extra inch and a half of height on? (Then again, I've seen him come out of the showers; maybe he's compensating for an inch and a half he might want elsewhere.)