Claire mentioned in her post a company called “La Petite Mansion.” They specialize in custom playhouses and doghouses running up to nearly $20k. Never mind that they’re awful, pretentious little horrors that I wouldn’t want to live in even if they were more than three feet high (or whatever), and never mind that one would cost about what I pay for two years’ worth of rent on my apartment, what on earth is the point of having a playhouse if it’s so exactly like your real house that you can’t play in it for fear of fucking it all up? When I was small, my brother and I had a lot of fun with a treehouse that my dad built for us in this gigantic oak in our back yard. Although I always planned elaborate structural improvements that would allow me to live there for ever and ever, it was pretty great the way it was. After all, the rampant mess and destruction caused by the squirrels discovering the stash of carefully collected acorns I kept there (good for confusing the dog from above) would have been much more of a tragedy if I’d had to worry about hand-painted wallpaper getting scratched or whatever.

I’m not even going to comment on the doghouses, because the pictures speak for themselves.

Mister Rogers has died, at 74 years old. I thought he was even older than that, but I think that’s just because he’s had the eternal grandpa thing going on since I was just a youngun myself. Either way, I will miss the cardigans and the puppets and everything else.

1. Check out the orchid exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden.

2. And speaking of orchids, read The Orchid Thief already.

3. See Lost In La Mancha

4. Draft another philosohpy paper, making a total of three different philosophy papers for three different philosophy classes due the same week, and also making me regret taking three philosophy classes the same semester.

5. Finish new content for Caoine and work on other, Super Excellent Top Secret Design Project.

Although last week’s snow has mostly disappeared from the city, it looks like some people (New Yorkers or otherwise) had plenty of fun while it lasted. Locally, I guess there was a huge snowball fight that I didn’t attend - did anyone take go? Are there pictures?

Harvard has been abuzz over a nine-foot snow phallus erected in the Yard, which was later dismantled by indignant student Amy Keel (and her roommate). The debate over the sculpture and its destruction still rages on, more than a week later. [via Hostile Environment]

Then there’s this, which maybe I should point out you might not want to open until you get home from work (although by now I’d assume you all of you don’t assume anything I link is worksafe). This one may or may not be a product of this most recent snow storm, but I mean if I’m talking about Harvard’s snow penis how could I not mention it? [via weblog]

And finally, there’s Crystal Lynn of Ohio who got in trouble for making her snowlady (relatively) anatomically correct. Snow-breasts seem fairly inoffensive after those other articles, but what made me laugh was that the police responding to a complaint about Lynn’s sculpture suggested that she just cut them (the breasts) off. Lynn refused, telling the officers that “No woman wants that,” and instead draped a tablecloth around the snowlady’s shoulders for modesty.

Dooce has some photos up that make me miss actually seeing the horizon. Just a little bit. Not that I don’t dig the whole city thing: I totally dig the whole city thing. And speaking of the whole city thing, Gibson’s latest post is rather urban, and I liked it particularly.

Other odds and ends: this Onion article is only funny if you’ve read David Foster Wallace in general and Infinite Jest in particular, but if you have read Infinite Jest, then it’s really funny. And if you haven’t read Infinite Jest, you should totally go read it, and then go read that Onion article. I have my brother to thank for getting me to read it, incidentally.

If you happen to be a New Yorky chick who’s all about Craig’s List and wanting a guy with whom to go to the Oscars, maybe this guy is for you. Neither I nor Supa (from whence the URL) is all about Craig’s List, and nor are we wanting a guy with whom to go to the Oscars (although we are New Yorky chicks). But I mean: you might be.

I’m not going to mention why Jenna Jameson news will always have a soft spot in my heart, but I will mention that she’s selling shoes now, apparently.

I wish I had a Thai place in my neighborhood where I could eat noodles and watch American Psycho at the very same time. As it is, I can hole up in my apartment with Thai Kitchen rice noodles (which are mightily tasty, despite their godawful site) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which I guess is nothing to complain about. There’s also a fantastic Thai restaurant near NYU with a really cheap lunch special that Chris and I are fond of. But they don’t show American Psycho.

Indeed: a new design. There are more bits and pieces (and even a new page or two) to be added over the coming days, but I felt I wanted to get the bulk of it up and running this weekend. Let me know if it’s broken for you. The usual disclaimers apply - Netscape 4.x users, you don’t need me to tell you it’s time to upgrade to something that wasn’t written in 1996, and I don’t need you to tell me the site doesn’t work in your browser.

A Slashdot thread this week points out an interesting article by Warren Harrison. Harrison discusses the problem of misrepresentation of software developers, especially in movies, and whether it has anything to do with how many students choose to major in computer science without having any idea of what it is programmers actually do. (There’s also the other side of the issue, whereby people who might be better suited to software development don’t study computer science because they don’t have any idea of what it is programmers actually do.)

I think his argument is certainly a valid one. I’m not a computer science major myself - perhaps because I do have an understanding of the industry, having worked from the design end of things during my time away from school. I’ve been taking some programming classes as electives, out of intellectual curiosity more than anything else; while I don’t think my philosophy major is really going to serve me well in any practical, career-oriented sense, I know that I’m better suited to philosophy than I am to programming professionally (although perhaps I’m better suited to design than either one of these, but that’s another issue altogether). My point, though, is that even in my brief time immersed in the academia of computer science, I’ve encountered a really surprising number of prospective cs majors who lack any concept of what it is they’re signing up to spend the next few years doing. These are people who, because they saw Hackers in high school or taught themselves HTML or are better at finding printer drivers than their little brothers, have deemed themselves Computer People and accordingly dive headfirst into the major when they get to college. I’m sure after the first couple of classes a certain percentage figure out exactly what it is they’re getting into (and get out of it as fast as they can), but it’s both frustrating and amusing to watch them struggle through something they don’t really enjoy at all when they’d be much happier majoring in almost anything else.

Not to say that Hackers isn’t truly the pinnacle of cinematic expression, but I’m not sure I can sit through another class with cs majors who can’t seem to grasp the concept of a memory address.

In his weekly Circuits column for the NYT, David Pogue suggested this Thursday that what the web needs is a site at which one could rate one’s exes, in the same vein as Epinions or Amazon customer reviews. For the good of humanity, you could warn everyone about that borderline-personality disordered guy who suggested such crude anatomical impossibilities during dinner at your grandparents’ house, or the heartless bitch who left you with intimacy issues and emotional scarring that may never be repaired. Wouldn’t it be great (writes Pogue) if you could look up a person and read the real scoop about what he or she is really like? Think how many weeks of dating you’d be able to avoid if you had capsule summaries available: “Comes across great on a first date, but beware - runs out of stories by Day 2.” Or, “A bit unkempt, but you’ll never meet a more loving, loyal mate.” Or, “Sharp dresser-warped mind.”

I’ve had my share of unpleasant club experiences, and even my share of unpleasant Limelight experiences, but I’ve never been trampled by a crowd of people trying to get to the dancefloor, as some 34 people were this past Sunday. I thought my black eye after the Ohgr show (at Limelight) was bad enough, but I think it beats getting caught in a stampede of Whitney Houston fans any day. [via Gawker]

I admit I’m perfectly happy with Celestial Seasonings most of the time, but for occasions when real tea is required (snowstorms are such occasions), there’s a good list of recommendations here. I would add Market Spice Original and Earl Grey teas, which have become two of my perennial favorites since, in his infinite wisdom, Tycho convinced me to bring some home from my trip to Seattle. If you don’t live in Seattle, you can order loose tea or bags from Blue Moon Tea. I’m also fond of Oregon Chai’s boxed concentrates - their Java Chai is an unholy blend of black tea and espresso that I’ve come to worship like the drinkable deity it is.

Now that we’ve got stampedes and tea out of the way, I’d like to take a moment to reassure the residents of New York in general and Brighton Beach in particular that water is wet (it is not lethal). In the wake of Monday’s snow and yesterday’s 40something temperatures, the sidewalks have become rather puddleful. This is vexing, because the sidewalks are at the moment only walkable in these little foot-wide shovel paths, and for some reason when people come to a puddle, they just stop walking. It’s not clear whether they think that the puddle will go away if sternly looked upon, or whether the people in question have never seen puddles before, or what exactly - but when one person stops in the middle of the little shovel path, everyone behind the person also stops walking, and I get irritated because it is (after all) just a god damned puddle. I usually end up clambering through the snow drifts and forsaking the shovel paths altogether, but really: it’s water. People of New York, when confronted with the disobediently existent puddle: step over or in it; if your feet become damp, you will live to tell the tale (I promise).