On rainy days like this one, lunchtime soup warming one hand, fingers of other hand clicking out a path through the web-o-sphere in front of me, I like to take a few minutes to wander the quiet back hallways of the American Package Museum.

Maybe it’s because I work on the ‘net all day, in a world of branding and cross-branding, marketing and lifestyle and CPMs, but I find something very soothing about artifacts from a simpler time.

Like a “Week-End Assortment” of Uneeda Biscuits, from the National Biscuit Company.

Or a cylinder of Pablum in soothing hues.

Or a Depression-era shaker of Palmolive Talc for Men.

The wrappers, labels, and boxes in the Package Museum tell the story of America’s “corporate heritage” (ponder that phrase for a moment, please). They tell it in faded hues of blue and red, nifty type treatments, and very early attempts at the kinds of snazziness or sex appeal that we take so for granted, now.

They feel faded and nostalgic, at once hopeful and forlorn, kind of like a blues song, kind of the perfect lunchtime ramble for a rainy day like today.

Pardon the self-promotion, but this is so cool. A major national weekly knows a good zine when they see one. 400 Words, this little (seriously, it’s like five and a half by six inches) literary-cum-sociological experiment that I do, has been written up in the current issue of Newsweek, in the Periscope section at the front of the book. The Newsweek issue in question hits newsstands tomorrow (I’ll be the young lady at the 6th Avenue/22nd Street Barnes & Noble, buying five), and it’s online right now, here.

Merry Christmas indeed.

Incidentally, I’m now entering the early stages of collecting stuff for the third issue, which will be on the theme of Work. Got a story to tell about your working life? I know you do. Whisper it to me; details here.

…It’s only 16 days, 17 hours and 18 minutes until the Simultaneous Global Orgasm for peace.

The mission of the Global Orgasm is to effect change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy. Now that there are two more US fleets heading for the Persian Gulf with anti- submarine equipment that can only be for use against Iran, the time to change Earth’s energy is NOW!

The intent is that the participants concentrate any thoughts during and after orgasm on peace. The combination of high- energy orgasmic energy combined with mindful intention may have a much greater effect than previous mass meditations and prayers.

On Solstice Day, Friday, December 22, do your bit to change the energy field of the Earth by reaching climax, “in the place of your choosing and in as much privacy as you choose.”

Hokay!! I guess that’s more fun than writing letters to your elected representative. We’ll see what happens.

(Image source: Global Orgasm)

Here’s a Sunday game for you (assuming you’ve finished your six-word memoir, that is):

1. Write two sentences.
2. Create tension between them.
3. Define “tension” any way you want.

The task comes courtesy of Marcus Gould, who started the website two sentences (or 2entences) in September ‘06. It’s a resurrection of a creative writing project with which he achieved brief notoriety on a forum called Brainstorms way back in (gasp) 2001. “As a creative person,” writes Marcus,

“I am fascinated by structured improvisation. Completely free-form improv doesn’t interest me, because a game without rules leads to anarchy, and anarchy is usually ugly. On the other hand, a completely rigid game quickly becomes boring. Great rigidity stifles creative play.”

Word.

Warning: this game is not easy. It’s deceptively hard, and that’s what I love about it.

Extra bonus: the Digg-like internal rankings system. Bestow plus-ones on entries you like, and deep-six ones you don’t.

If you’re anything like me, legal agreements may make you uneasy and anxious. Legal language may bore you, frighten you, or simply cause you to feel cranky. You may deal with these feelings by racing through legalese, where you encounter it, as fast as you can. If you’re like me, when your computer tells you that it’s time to update software, you click “Agree!” “Agree!” “Agree!” on the licenses faster than a little kid playing Whack-A-Mole, all hopped up on birthday cake and caffeine soda.

And you might never pause to wonder what, exactly, you’re agreeing to.

Andy Sternberg’s blog The Small Print Project mines those passive kinds of legal agreements that most of us just gloss over. They’re called EULA’s, or End User Licensing Agreements, and they are like dense, forbidding fruitcakes: outrageous provisions lurk within them, like so many booze-drenched raisins.

Sternberg started the site as a project for a graduate course in online journalism at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication. He writes:

“This site is designed with the hopes of fostering discussion, suggestion, exposition and implementation of EULAs (electronic and otherwise) in an effort to help define, describe and mediate the nature of agreements in the digital age.”

I’m partial to the most recent “EULA of the Week,” a pastel-colored sign at Disneyworld—the mere act of walking past it constitutes permission to allow one’s voice and likeness to appear on film.

Go on, be brave. Take a look at the fine print next time. And when you find something outrageous, call it like you see it.

What would a nun have to confess? Apparently, plenty. An article by Tony Allen-Mills in today’s Times UK comments on an upsurge in blogging from the cloisters.

“Yesterday three of us went and played mini-golf. We had a blast,” writes Sarah, a 26-year-old Benedictine novice whose weblog, The Ear of Your Heart, discusses everything from the teachings of Jesus to cooking tofu stir-fry.

They have become known as the “sister bloggers”, a network of nuns around the world whose online diaries are providing insights into previously closeted lives.

With disarming enthusiasm and intriguing frankness, dozens of nuns of all ages are contributing to a revival of American interest in life behind convent walls.

Curious about the blogging nuns? Start your exploring at The Ear of Your Heart, here.

And now, for a moment of self-plugging. (I swear, it’s not as filthy as it sounds.)

Some of you know that while I’m not working for my employers, or blogging for this guy (hi, Larry!), I can be found putting together a little magazine of short-short nonfiction called 400 Words. The premise is pretty simple: I ask people to write a true, personal story of 400 words or less on a theme, and publish the standouts on my website and also as an annual book, which is tres exciting. (Don’t tell the web, but I have a special soft place in my heart for print.) The first 400 Words print issue was made up of 400-word autobiographies. For the second issue, I had people write about their compulsions.

This morning, a FedEx freight truck pulled up to the door of my apartment in Brooklyn and slowly disgorged the entire print run of 400 Words, Issue 2. It came on a pallet. A pallet!

If you’re in the New York area, you are invited to come out on Wednesday, November 29, and celebrate the launch of 400 Words, Issue 2: Compulsions. The festivities occur at Club Midway: a warm, cozy, funky-fabulous spot at 25 Avenue B (between 2nd and 3rd Streets), in Manhattan.

The party is from 7-9:30 PM. Come drink, read (as at the last party, you can sign up to read something whether you had a piece in the issue or not), meet people, and klatch about the odd little things you do for no good reason, or for reasons you know to be perfectly bizarre. It’ll be liberating!

Best of all, and I’m going to put this in capital letters here, the club has HALF-PRICE WELL DRINKS FOR LAUNCH PARTY PEOPLE (that’s you) for the duration of the event.

Please come out and support the project. It will be a good time, you’ll drink for cheap, and maybe you’ll meet someone else who shares your irrepressible need to speak in sentences that end in multiples of nine syllables…or whatever it is you do.

I can’t wait to see you there.

The Best of the Blogs international weblog awards have been decided, with the US blog Sunlight Foundation carrying off the top honor.

Personal media lovers may be interested in the lucidly designed anonymous-confession blog, Joe Apology, which took 9 percent of the vote in the “Best Weblog: English” category.

Joe posts confessions as he receives them (there’s a form on the website), and he even has a toll-free number to which penitents can call in and leave a message (”your recorded apology,” Joe notes, “will be available as an online audio file for others to listen to”), and a section of apology-themed Flickr photos.

I’m sorry I didn’t think of it first.

(Image source: littlemisskool)

Over at Learning to Love You More, a project-based, personal art-and-media omnibus from the fertile brains of Miranda July, Harrell Fletcher, and Yuri Ono, comes news that the site is planning a book, presumably featuring the best of the reader-generated responses to projects. The book is expected in fall ‘07.

Of more immediate interest to me — having just moved into a new apartment where the upstairs neighbor is a little, ah, fond of his TV — is the new Assignment #58: Record the Sound That Is Keeping You Awake.

May I make a suggestion to the LTLYM editors for an extension of the “Sound That Is Keeping You Awake” project? I’d love to know what the sound is that’s grating on your nerves at work.

When I started 400 Words, I thought that the idea — spurring creativity by giving people a writing personal-writing prompt with a rigorous and arbitrary word count — was a pretty cool idea.

Well, much as any time you’ve been thinking about something new and suddenly start seeing it everywhere you go, I’ve since realized that mine is far from the only fun-with-word-counts show in town. That makes me happy. I may roll out a few of my favorites over the coming weeks, but right now I’d like to introduce you to my current darling, a project called “40×365.”

Kristen, an expat who lives in Japan and writes the blog Media Tinker, is writing 40 words every single day about someone she’s known in her life. She started last March, and will presumably be done around the end of February, ‘07.

I think 40×365 is going to become a daily read for me. And I leave you with today’s entry, for “Tom.”

208. Tom
Tom founded a luxury resort in Panama that hosted the elite and famous. His success miffed the local cartel and Tom was left for dead after a fiery raid. He recovered and opened a new resort in the South Pacific.

Short and sweet. That’s how I like it.