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What's Playing in my Head: "The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living", by The Streets

Quote of the Day: If I could offer one piece of advice to the planet, it would be this: Don't marry for looks alone, and I'll tell you why. In a few years, when Barbara's boobs start sagging, she can get plastic surgery...If her belly gets too big, she can get a tummy tuck and have a belly like a cheerleader... But let me tell you something, folks: You can't fix stupid. There's not a pill you can take; there's not a class you can go to. Stupid is forever." - Ron White

Bonus Quote of the Day: "The safest way to double your money is to fold it in your pocket." - Mike Skinner, The Streets

One of the greatest things about the technofuturistic age we live in these days is, without a doubt, wireless networking. My girlfriend and I are a pretty computer geeky couple, with our two laptops, three desktops and assorted spare parts computers hanging around our two (soon to become one) dwellings. But I hadn't lived until I got a Linksys card for my laptop.

We're not talking about sitting around playing Everquest in your dad's basement, folks. This is a fundamental change in living patterns, an incontrovertible improvement in my daily life. Instead of sitting holed up in a computer room with a black-and-white TV with no antenna, I'm in my living room watching Boston Legal in blaring technicolor with my bare feet on the couch and a soda in one hand. If I want, I can be reading about the history of feudal Japan while I'm cooking stir fry in the kitchen, or watching my friend Dave verbally bitch-slapping some obstinate dude on one of my favorite message boards while I'm sitting out on the deck.

In short, the world is my oyster, and I've got the pearl.

Actually, my actual daily experience is a lot less interesting than all that. Usually, I'm sitting at the breakfast counter with my g/f, eating some cream of wheat thing, while poking over my e-mail or the Nationals box score from the night before. But it does come in handy, though - especially when we're cooking and need to pull down a recipe from the Food Network site, or looking at house listings over dinner.

My girlfriend often kids me about my computer being my newest appendage. Which is, of course, entirely true. I've carried it to bed, on car trips, in the sewing room, out on the deck...pretty much every place a 3-pound piece of plastic and circuits can go. Instead of falling asleep reading a good book, I fall asleep with a glowing screen on the bedcovers. (American society has just officially, completely jumped the shark)

My techie obsession doesn't even stop at the property line of my house. In the car, I've got XM satellite radio, which is the next-greatest invention in the world. (Is it a bad sign when you talk about your satellite radio receiver in the same way you talk about an actual human being? "I love you, XM...") Followed closely by my newest boy toy, the iAudio X5 - aka MP3 Player On Steriods.

This thing rips the iPod in half and takes a whiz over its smoldering, electrical-arcing corpse. Right now, I've got about 300 songs on it, plus about 15 videos, and it still isn't vaguely close to running out of storage space. There's nothing like rolling down the road at night listening to some great stand-up I downloaded, or sitting like a moron in some typical BS DC traffic jam, listening to the audio from an episode of Family Guy or South Park I haven't seen yet. It makes life a breeze.

Someday, I think we'll all have cyber-contact lenses that let us look at any blank wall and get a life-size browser window that can get TV, radio, Internet, and pretty much everything else you want. Sort of like having Google Toolbar sitting on your eyeball. This will be phenomenally cool, which goes without saying.

For now, though, I'm good with being a cyber-putz as-is.