The reason I started writing posts for Echo-7 was to exercise my writing muscles so they didn't go into a state of complete atrophy. They say it's good to write something (anything) every day. Just so you stay in shape prose-wise. So I try to have original content on here at least once a week, but after I read this blurb from Chuck Klosterman's "Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs" last night, I just had to share.

"You're missing the point," she said. "What you're saying makes sense in theory, but not in practice. You're trying to compare apples to oranges." "Why do you keep saying that?" he asked in response.

"Apples and oranges aren't that different, really. I mean, they're both fruit. Their weight is extremely similar. They both contain acidic elements. They're both roughly spherical. They serve the same social purpose. With the possible exception of a tangerine, I can't think of anything more similar to an orange than an apple. If I was having lunch with a man who was eating an apple and - while I was looking away - he replaced that apple with an orange, I doubt I'd even notice. So how is this a metaphor for difference? I could understand if you said, 'That's like comparing apples and uranium,' or 'That's like comparing apples with baby wolverines,' or 'That's like comparing apples with the early work of Raymond Carver,' or 'That's like comparing apples with hermaphroditic ground sloths.' Those would all be valid examples of profound disparity. But not apples and oranges. In every meaningful way, they're virtually identical."

"You're missing the point," she said again, this time for different reasons.

The first thing I did when I found usernamecheck.com was to type in my usual username. This site checked 42 common websites to see which ones had that username registered.

Interesting, but who cares about my username? Let's try some others.

• god - 27
• satan - 20
• jesus - 26

What can we surmise by this? They say God is everywhere, but apparently, he's not on LinkedIn.

Surprisingly, God is registered on more sites that The Devil. Although, maybe Old Hickory uses different usernames like Lucifer or CoolDood28.

It also appears Jesus is online a lot more than God. This is pretty predictable really. Leave it to the younger generation to be on the computer all the time. "Jesus. Are you on the world wide web again?" "No, Dad. Just, um, working on this Excel spreadsheet like you asked."

Let's check out a few more.

• girl - 29
• boy - 22

That either means there are more girls than boys on the internet or that there are more boys pretending to be girls online. Both of which I'm willing to accept as true.

Here's a surprising one:

• porn - 18
• moral - 17
• love - 30

There is around the same about of porn online as there are morals. I would not have guessed that. But love is the greatest user of them all.

Starfucker is a good band and that presents me with two problems.

Problem #1: Incongruous band name.

When telling someone that I'm listening to Starf#%@er, I inevitably have to follow it up by a lengthy description to allay the odd look on his/her face.

"No, it's a synth-pop band.  Really.  Very pleasant sounding."

This never happens with bands like Air or The Knack.  For example, Cannibal Corpse sounds just like one would expect.  If they were called The Fluffy Bunny Experience, then I'd run into this same problem.

Problem #2: My four year-old. 

No matter what music is playing, my kid wants to know A) the song title and B) the band name.

"The song is 'Pop Song.' It's by...um, Star...[cough]...er."

How does one clean up that band name? Star Effer? Starshagger? Star Something-Mommies-And-Daddies-Who-Love-Each-Other-Very-Much-Do-er?

My one consolation is that they will never be the next Top 40 flavor of the month because there's no way the FCC is going to let that happen.  That means they can stay Portland's darlings of electro-pop music.  I just won't tell anyone I'm listening to them.

If you're new to this world wide web thing-a-ma-bobber you might not know that you can click on the image to make it even bigger!

Follow the full toonlet strip here: My Undead Life.

I have a new goal in life. It is to find the worst film novelization ever written.

There's something inherently horrible about a movie novelization. I imagine an aspiring writer given the screenplay to some b-movie and asked to make it into literature. It's sort of like trying to make Rodin's The Gates of Hell out of spray cheese.

It's the Kobayashi Maru of literary tasks. But apparently, many authors don't believe in the no-win scenario. Take Boyd Dickinson for example and his novelization of "Roadhouse":

Dalton knew he’d come looking for revenge, and he probably wouldn’t agree with the old saying that it’s a dish best served cold. No, he’d probably like to serve up a big hot plate of revenge.

Brilliant.

In my search so far, I've found some good ones including "Superman III" and "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome," but I chose the novelization of "Hackers" as my first candidate for the worst book-from-movie ever written.

Here's a growing collection of novelizations I find at bookstores.