Today I bring you an article from the Washington Post about a company called Second Life. It involves an online community that works very much like the popular video game The Sims except that it is not a game. Observe this excerpt:

What's different about Second Life is that most everything inside its virtual environs is created, managed and owned by users. Players retain property rights for their creations and can sell them to others for “Linden dollars,” a virtual currency. Those fake bucks can be swapped for real ones at exchanges rates of about $1 to 250 Linden dollars. Second Life makes money by selling “land” and charging virtual rent ranging from $5 to $195 per month.

All you have to do is take one fly-through and see Ferraris whizzing by below, vintage aircraft gliding through clouds above, bling-bling hanging from shapely women in skimpy clothes who hop, skip and fly everywhere, and you get the picture. It's about the same things as the real world -- identity, status, seeing and being seen.

I always knew this kind of thing was bound to happen, and I imagine that it will only get bigger from here. For years there have been games such as World Of Warcraft, vast online roleplaying games which feature community elements like these as sort of a sideline. What appears to make Second Life different is that it dispenses with traditional game play in general and instead attempts to create an entire virtual world. I think once the type of video processing hardware necessary to smoothly run a program like this becomes closer to standard in off the rack desktop computers, you will see this kind of plotless virtual wonderland become a real phenomenon.

The website for this thing can be found here: http://secondlife.com/

The Washington Post article about it can be found here.

Its over. Arrested Development will not, as I hoped, be moved to Showtime. The creator, Mitch Hurwitz, doesn't want to do it saying, “Arrested Development reached its end, creatively, as a series.”

This is probably for the best, but I am both SAD AND DISAPPOINTED that the show, which was one of the funniest shows on TV, was not ultimately more popular. Oh well. At least people like My Name Is Earl, which is not as well written, but at least features Jason Lee, which is something.

If you have ever seen the FOX TV program That 70’s Show, then you may be familiar with Fez, the loveable goofball and foreign exchange student who’s fish out of water antics have kept us in stitches over the years, and have allowed us to feel OK about laughing at foreign people. It’s not a bad show, against all odds, and I can admit to having seen several episodes, as they air almost perpetually in syndication.

Fez is played by a guy named Wilmer Valderrama who, aside from being Fez on TV, has gained a certain notoriety for becoming romantically involved with a host of famous women, including Ashlee Simpson, Lindsay Lohan, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Mandy Moore. You may assume, as I did, that a man sporting such a startling bedtime resume would know a thing or two about discretion. We would both be wrong.

According to WENN, Wilmer, and I love that name by the way, went on Howard Stern’s radio program and got all CHATTY. I will now quote from the article I read:

Among his revelations were that Lindsay Lohan was one of the best girl's he's ever had slept with, Ashlee Simpson was loud in bed and he rated Jennifer Love Hewitt an “eight” out of ten when it came to sex.

Classy.

He went on to talk about his own sexual skills, how big his penis is, and how he has slept with two women at once, among other admissions.

Now I understand that when you go on Howard Stern’s radio program, otherwise known as ‘The Boring Part of Hell’, you may feel compelled to engage in the special sort of humor they do over there. I can understand the intense wave of peer pressure that might overcome you as you sit behind the microphone across from ‘Butman’ himself, and are asked to dish on all of your various celebrity bedfellows. It can be hard to resist. “Come on,” Howard Stern seems to say, “you can tell us. It’s just us guys. We’re all friends here.” You may cave, and slip a few details to the crowd in order to look cool. I understand. You may forget that Howard Stern is not your friend, but instead a savvy media figure who has built a career on extracting such personal information from strangers. He is like the Barbra Walters of asshole humor. (He also has strippers make out on the radio, which I have never understood, and which has no Barbra Walters equivalent, but you get my point.) Caving to the pressure of Stern is no crime.

However, a guy who will sell out his personal connections, brag about how many women he’s had hot sex with, and reports on the size of his penis to anyone who will listen, is not weak, but a slime bag, and is probably lying. Famous people included.

Phil has some Fat Robot Radio news up at his blog:

http://www.sltmonkees.com/phils_blog.htm

Check this out from the AP:

BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. (AP) - So now the alligators are going door to door. When Lori Pachelli heard someone knocking at the door of her home in a gated community in this southwest Florida community earlier this week, she looked out to see an unwelcome visitor on her front stoop: an 8-foot alligator. The bull gator, which had wandered up from the pond behind the house, had a bloody lip from banging its head against the door.

“You're starting into what's called the crawl season, the breeding season,” he said. “We get them out of front porches, out of garages, out of swimming pools.”

CRAWLING SEASON? I don't want to live in a place where it is “not unusual” to have full grown alligators hiding in my garage and following me home. Maybe that's just me. I had a rat in my apartment once, and I nearly moved because of it. Alligators are just out of the question.

Fred Savage is gonna be a dad

I am 3000 years old.

I am sure that you have heard the expression, “Like trying to find a needle in a haystack” meaning that something is quite difficult to find. We here at Brain Pan Online, as a public service, have solved this little riddle so that now the expression “Like trying to find a needle in a haystack” can mean that something looks like it should be really hard to find, but actually is not. Our team of crack researchers over at Brain Pan Research and Development, (BPR&D for short) have been working around the clock to come up with a solution, and we are happy to present it here today for the first time.

TO: MOTHERBRAIN@BRAINPANONLINE.COM

FROM: BPR&D

PROBLEM: HOW TO FIND A STANDARD STEEL NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK

SOLUTION: USE A MAGNET

So there you have it, one of the great mysteries of the universe, as well as one of humanities most tired cliches, has now been resolved. Just another reason why BRAIN PAN ONLINE is America's most trusted resource for trivial solutions to problems nobody was really worried about.

Today the President gave a press conference as part of his current national tour to both help his flagging poll numbers, and vigorously deny any assertion that he looks at the polls. While he said all manner of ridiculous and crazy things during his long exchange with an unusually hostile press, there is one that I would like to focus on, as I think it cuts to the heart of the current Iraq war debate. He said that, “we're making progress [IN THE WAR] because we've got a strategy for victory.” He's been really big on that lately. This must be why he thinks that “failure in Iraq,” just “isn't going to happen.”

Great. I hope that works, because I have a plan of my own. I want to make a million dollars, and I have a strategy for victory that involves the purchasing of a lottery ticket twice a week. Now according to the Bush formula: (Strategy + Goal = Certain Victory) I CAN’T LOSE. If he can reject any amount of evidence (mounting sectarian violence, the Iraqi people’s growing animosity toward the US, the failure of a coalition Iraqi government to take shape, looming civil war, etc) and still come up with the outlook that failure is impossible due to the existence of a plan, then I can ignore the wildly improbable odds of hitting the Powerball and still wind up a millionaire. THIS IS AWESOME! I think I'll quit my job right now. In Bush world plans don't fail.

Wait.

Except he had plan before, when he first went in three years ago, and that didn't work out, which is why he has to have a new plan now. What happens if that plan fails too? Wouldn't that mean failure in Iraq COULD happen? Doesn't that prove the formula wrong? How does that impact my lottery millions? Am I going to have to try to get my job back? Even after I told my boss he was a big fat asshole windbag and then defecated in his trash can?!?!!? Crap. GOD DAMNED YOU GEORGE W BUSH!!!!!

Donald Trump's wife, a Slovenian model who, giving her the benefit of the doubt, is definitely NOT with The Donald just because he is rich, gave birth to an as yet unnamed baby boy Monday. The child, Donald's fifth, can look forward to a lifetime of unrestricted wealth and social fortune, pampering at a mind blowing level, a near certain host of mental problems and issues, and male pattern baldness. We here at Brain Pan wish Mr. Trump and his freaky child bride good heath and warm congratulations in what must be a very happy time for them. Or at least her, as I am not convinced that Donald Trump is actually human and may not therefore be capable of tangible human emotion. (And also his wife isn't that young. She's like thirty-six, but I really like the expression “freaky child bride,” and I have not yet had occasion to write about Nicolas Cage).

I am not a huge fan of prank phone calls as a rule, but today's selection is an exception. It involves a guy calling into QVC and discussing his new Dell computer with plastic mannequin people that host the “Computer” show. It's really funny and worth looking at. I think the best part is how solid the guy is. There is none of the usual tell tale snickering and goofiness that gives these things away. He is just so straight forward that the hosts either don't notice that he's messing with them, or are too professional to show it.

Its right HERE.