first:
it turns out that my ISP has a streaming radio thing that's not bad. I've been listening to Yo La Tengo, Le Tigre, Cibo Matto, Cat Power, Sleater-Kinney, Elastica and some interesting bands I've never heard of.
actually, when I first signed up with Speakeasy, I had to call them a couple times and I noticed that their hold music was great; I'd bop around my apartment forever, forgetting that I was on hold. aMAzing.

second:
earlier I had so much to do and I stumbled on the 5k instead.
it's a competition:
"The deal is, you have 5 kilobytes to make the best web page or site you can."
really great stuff. I've looked at the winners for 2000 and 2001, and some of it is just flabbergastingly fun.

this happens to me every time I get bored and disenchanted with the internet and everything on it.
kaboom! someone shows me something creative and fun that makes it all worthwhile again.

I looked to see if I knew of any of the judges, and the only one I recognized was Dean Allen, whose blog I read from time to time.
but- another judge is Susan Kare, who's been designing icons (and I mean icons) since, well- for a long-ass time.
Finding the person who designed the happy mac icon feels oddly personal.