I just had a wonderful lunch with longtime friend and musical collaborator Gabe McElwain. All is well in the collective land of rock, comics and progressive absolutist thought. I've also been told that one Patrick Woods has been working on a senior undergraduate thesis on the metamorphosis of foreign policy within the Democratic Party. Fours words for when you're done, Patrick: send me a copy.

I just came back from a day at the 2004 Ohio Airports Conference in Columbus, hosted by the Ohio Department of Transportation and the Ohio Aviation Association. However gloomy the weather insisted to stay, the mood inside was festive and jovial. I missed the keynote speaker but was well in time for a series of lectures by the Federal Aviation Administration and Ohio's Homeland Security. News flash: government bureaucracies are reshuffling themselves To Better Serve You, Gentle American. They mean well, I'm sure. But my colleague leaned over to me during an overture on how every FAA agent will report to two-and-a-half people during a time of bureau transition and said "this is just government-talk." To which I replied "it's like decribing a Rube Goldberg invention. Sure, it's an admirably complex design but do you really need all of that to crack open an egg?" We also poked fun at the FAA's Joint Planning Development Office, a place where, ostensibly, men who sound like Professor John Frink of The Simpsons fame predicting that "planes will be piloted by robots. Stewardesses will be robots, although the passengers won't mind because they'll all be robots, too. This will happen, of course, two to three years after the end of The Robot Wars." A good time - good food, information and laughs. There's no better time to be had than with aviators.

Back in December, the capture of Saddam Hussein inspired me to write a spoof of Depeche Mode's "Never Let Me Down Again." Reader Hilary Egan complimented me on my lyrics - referring to it as a "filk." I certainly appreciated the compliment; though I don't write spoofs often, I'm pretty good at it. Or at least fast - that one took about ten or fifteen minutes. But a blogger whom Steven Den Beste found by chance - this guy can filk.

Responding to popular demand, Glenn Reynolds is sharing snapshots of the south in early spring. During my photo-documented trip to Maryland and Williamsburg last week, I couldn't resist preserving the beauty of a bank of daffodils. Yes, Ohio will bloom in time - but it's already downright pleasant in Virginia:

I contemplate this as forty-degree, drizzly weather swoops down over Cleveland, where it will reside for the better part of a week. But I've got proof that everything cold and grey is about to take a six-month furlough. It's only a matter of time, and these photographs ought to help me wait out winter's final throes.

If you've never read Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the book or the trilogy, there's little I can do but recommend the most successful paper-bound marriage of boundlessly original science fiction and good-natured sociopolitical satire. Well-read Pejman Yousefzadeh only recently enlightened himself with the best literature the English have offered us in thirty years. Verdict? He enjoyed it. It comes as no surprise; even though my buddy Ed once turned the book down for his sober, dystopian William Gibson library, Hitchhiker's appeals to just about anyone with - as Webster's says it - a keen sense of the ludicrous. As Pejman can attest, Douglas Adams' masterpiece has been wholly embraced by pop and kitsch. Deep roots have been tapped and examples are literally everywhere, from the namesake of Altavista's internet translator, Babelfish, to a man's name as listed in my White Pages:

The President of the Galaxy with a Cleveland address? About a decade ago, the information was passed along to me from the rumor mill. I immediately ran to the nearest phone book, whipped it open to the Bs - and son of a gun, there he was. On the side chance that this may not be the man who masterminded the Heart of Gold's heist, I've never called the number.

The book is right here - simply trade a night showing at the movies and you can invest in a story that reinvented fantasy burlesque. For all its logic-bending frivolity, Hitchhiker's is a carefully written, heartfelt commentary on the human condition. Douglas Adams, no Voltaire, always extends a favor or two to his characters. We'll never know, but I suspect the late author carried a certain fondness for his fellow hairless ape. As you read, just remember: Don't Panic!

You'd be surprised how many webpage shortcuts can accumulate after three years of using the same bank of Internet Explorer favorites. Doing a little spring cleaning, I rediscovered one of the most creative and useful free font sites on the net. Give "Han Solo," "Ninja" and "Laserian" a look. Scratch that; give these three special attention. Give them all a look. I guarantee you'll download a few on the spot [especially if you're into comics, which I'm not, which in turn says quite a bit about the fonts].

NICE: Here's an interview with the typographer, Dan Zadorozny.

I'm headed to Maryland today where I'll stay to visit family; we'll be skipping down to Williamsburg on Sunday and returning Monday. As is not always the case with trips, I do expect to be blogging - and, if software obliges, posting any worthy photographs the office Kodak manages to snap up. Stay tuned.

Spring is inevitable, but that doesn't mean arctic air has to like it. For the better part of the day, the entire region has been under a winter storm warning - at last notice, the warning is to expire three hours from now. Visibility is low, traffic is snarled, and nobody who's on the road wants to be there. Seconds after the boss phoned in an evacuation advisory, the office emptied of highway drivers; goodness knows they've got a busy late afternoon ahead of them.

I've postponed at least one errand until tomorrow. Now, come March, my blue chips slide over to Spring; if we had sunny skies and sixty degrees tomorrow, not to expect another flake of snow until October, I wouldn't complain a bit. But forgive me - all this makes me feel downright Christmassy.

There's a lot to be said for contracting to the lowest bidder, and it's full of four-letter words.