I'm not sure where this comes from, but …

Am I the only one who watched "Fantasy Island" and really, really wanted something bad to happen to Mr. Rourke?

I remember one episode where he got kidnapped, and I was kind of keen on seeing him all flustered and confused and pissed off and maybe scared, but I don't think he even got a stain on the white suit. Something about his sanguine superiority — there's no way I'm really in danger — annoyed the crud out of me.

The same goes for Nancy Drew. My favorite mystery of hers was the time she pricked her finger on a tusk of an ivory elephant (or something equally as bizarre) and collapsed, poisoned.

I desperately hoped she wouldn't wake up. I ignored the fact that there were dozens of other volumes to be read. That girl had no personality trait beyond "intrepid." And my copies were so old she was wearing hair that even outdated my mom.

I'd like to note that these are not new thoughts, I've had them since I was, oh, say, ten.

Superheroes don't bother me quite that way, though I have to admit the episodes/volumes/stories told there that interest me the most are when danger actually seems imminent, but then again — hundreds of more volumes, editions, episodes indicate they clearly do manage to escape unscathed. But then again, I'm not a comic book fan the way many are.

So that's off my chest.

In unrelated linkage, I was looking around for my next piece of rewriting and came across two interesting lists I found on the Internets many years ago. I'd made copies of them and saved them as text because at that point, I actually thought something could disappear once it had been on the Web. Boy, was I wrong. So here they are for your edification, still up there for all to see. Not that I have a huge readership, but it'd be fun to get these circulating around again.

First, the serious one: Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.

My favorite:

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the
interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art
conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no
actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

And the amusing one, which is apparently just about every-freaking where. My list starts and ends in different places, but this one more or less resembles it: How to Keep a Healthy Level of Insanity and Drive Other People Insane. It's still amusing, but I immediately can flash back to my temping days when it all really made sense, man.

That's what you think.