Drawback in the use of gestures, despite the inherent appeal of secret communication, is that it requires a second party to actually be watching. Or you look like an idiot constantly fiddling with your handkerchief.

That said, the above links to a great series of photos of a club owner demonstrating various gestures used to communicate to his staff while he's in the middle of conversations in booths with customers.

a) The ongoing recession/depression continues to make the world a sadder place: The owners of the Speakeasy movie chain are closing their Oakland location. I saw Seinfeld's Comedian there, as well as Dave Chapelle's Block Party (both with SigStat pal misuba) and was thrilled beyond words to find that they had another theatre in El Cerrito, just a short walk from where I'm living now. Despite our own shrinking finances (and more on that later), I think we'll have to make more of an effort to send entertainment dollars their way to make sure the Cerrito Speakeasy stays open. (There's a matinee of Labryinth this Sunday...)

b) It's a delicious faux-pig made up of pig bits... and it's delicious enough that even vegetarians have to try.

c) The Decemberists performed their new album at SXSW and NPR has it streaming online, if you missed it like I did.

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Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4pKFaF41mk

This amazing, creepy Claymation video clip is best watched with as little context as possible. Though if you must know, there's a brief explanation as to its origin on the YouTube page.

Say, fellow Americans. Got eight dollars and some change to donate to a net-savvy candidate who's looking to overthrow a Creationist Republican in Kansas?

It could lead to one less state being an absolute embarrassment for us on the international stage. Then maybe we can focus our attention on convincing Florida to secede.

Move quick and download the last episode of This American Life. And by "last" I mean "most recent." It's a fantastic episode, collecting stories about the Bush Administration's hard-line tactics and how they're affecting even minor, presumably uncontroversial functions of government.

You'll hear about an international (US and Canadian) organization that protects the shared border coming under fire from White House lawyers when they ask a Washington couple to take down a wall that infringes on the border.

You'll also hear about Immigration Services attempting to kick widows and widowers out of the country because they didn't manage an interview with INS before their partners passed away... and it's because of INS's backlog that the interviews aren't scheduled fast enough.

These last eight years have seen a lot of damage done to this country and it's not just on big issues like international sovereignty, torture, and habeus corpus. We'll be dealing with trickle down hard-line behavior for quite awhile. Whoever inherits the Presidency next is crazy to accept the responsibility for cleaning up after the current administration. Best of luck to them.