A few years back, California cartoonist Jesse Reklaw published Applicant, one of the best one-off ‘zines I’ve run across. Its source material was gathered entirely from a recycling bin near an Ivy League university’s biology department, where he had been scavenging for gently-used magazines to read. Instead, he struck the mother lode of hilarious, heart-rending, ‘zine-worthy finds: hundreds of confidential Ph.D. applicant files from the sixties and seventies, complete with photographs and some very strange, telling and often unflattering remarks written by the students’ former professors and employers.

Having had similar applications of my own pass through many a university department, I’ve always been curious as to what was really said or written about me; this delicious peek into the guts of the Ivory Tower — available in its entirety here — helps satisfy that masochistic urge, at least vicariously.

If you’re claustrophobic and can’t intone through the confessional window, there’s the always-accessible portal at Absolution-Online. Though it’s not officially endorsed by The Church, it’s quite easy to navigate, although it comes with a disclaimer that insists you contact your priest if you’re uncomfortable with the service. If you aren’t Catholic, or if you prefer to sublimate your venial sins into collage, you know you can always contribute to the beautiful index at PostSecret…if you haven’t already.

Nintendo Wii users surely get the bulk of their entertainment from actual video games on the console, but there’s a bizarre and wonderful little feature in the Photo Channel: the Help Cat. When using the Photo Channel’s “Fun” section, a little Help Cat saunters onto the screen in the upper right corner. If you need help using the Photo Channel, you have to catch the Help Cat using the Wiimote. It’s basically a mini-game you play in order to get help — and you have to be fast, since the Help Cat is on the move!

This interaction is delightful, provided you don’t need help right now. It makes the process of getting help engaging and fun, adding a playful touch to what is normally a totally utilitarian operation: clicking the Help icon.

You can watch a movie of the Help Cat in action (QuickTime format), or read Cabel Sasser’s blog post describing the Help Cat (scroll down a bit to the Help Cat section) for more information. For User Interaction geeks, here’s an extensive post on Interaction Design of the Help Cat.

Even if you’re not a Help Cat fan, you might enjoy WiiKitty.com, which is exactly what it sounds like — photos of cats with Nintendo Wii systems. (Note for readers: apparently the plural of “Wii” is “Wii systems,” not “Wiis” or “Wiii” as I would have guessed.)

Today’s Word Wrap keeps on with our tradition of bringing you the hippest, most happening new words and phrases being coined, as they’re coined… well, okay, with at least a 5-second delay.

Today’s sparkling entries, as usual, are brought to you by the good folk over at wordspy.com

• shoefiti (shoo.FEE.tee) n. One or more pairs of shoes tied together by the laces and dangling from a powerline or other type of overhead wire. (Citations)
• newpeat n. A repeat that is slightly different from the original. (Citations)
• climate porn n. Extreme or alarmist language or images used to describe the current or future effects of man-made climate change. Also: climate pornography. (Citations)
• photolurker n. A person who obsessively and anonymously browses strangers’ photos posted to online photo-sharing sites.
  —photolurking pp. (Citations)
• bitcom n. A short, sitcom-style video available over the Internet. (Citations)
• celeblog n. A blog written by a celebrity; a blog devoted to a particular celebrity or to celebrity news and gossip. Also: celeb blog. —celeblogger, celeb blogger n. (Citations)
• carnography (kar.NOG.ruh.fee) n. Writings, films, images, or other materials that contain scenes of carnage or other types of violence. [Blend of carnage and pornography.] Also: carno (cf. porno). (Citations)

What should I write about today?

This question is part of my morning routine. Between taking out the dog and hopping in the shower, I search my favorite sites for an answer. Potentially blog-worthy material is carefully arranged in new Firefox tabs, which I will read and evaluate during my commute. I had some good stuff this morning.

But Firefox quit unexpectedly so now I’m screwed. Well, not so much screwed. Just unable to give a trivia slant to the news of the day. Conceivably, these tabs could be reopened once I get to work and internet connectivity is restored. But it’s a busy morning. We’re going to have to wing it, live from the bus.

I guess I could tell you about my fellow travelers. One lady called her financial services provider to activate a credit card, which violates the strict no cell phone rule. I was not compelled to complain. The woman beside me is reading every word I type. I find this incredibly awkward.

(She just read the last sentence and is now staring out the window. That was fun. I’d say more but her eyes will surely wander back.)

Nobody else is doing anything particularly notable today. This is trivia in the worst sense of the word.

It’s not always this banal. I’ve seen some magic on this bus. Here are three examples.

If you have any more interesting stories about commuting, go ahead and leave them here.

Quite possibly, screaming toddlers. At least the snakes kill you; the screaming, like Chinese water torture, just slowly drives you mad. I should know: a LAX->JFK leg I recently flew on featured more than 95 minutes of uninterrupted, top-volume toddler-screaming, so out-of-the-ordinary bad that several passengers got into heated arguments with the child’s mother (certainly a rarity in the mind-your-own-business world of airline travel). Easily the worst flight ever, it got me to thinking about the Hawaiian 16-year-old who was kicked off a flight for suffering an excessively long coughing fit. A statement issued by Continental Airlines maintained that “the captain felt he was acting in the best interest of the passenger and other passengers on the flight.” (Hmmm … double-standard?)

Also, you may remember in January, a family whose screaming three-year-old wouldn’t get in her seat for takeoff — thus delaying the flight more than 20 minutes — was kicked off the plane so the flight could take off. They then went on TV to complain. (Needless to say, the other passengers supported the captain’s decision.) In another incident, a Northwest Airlines flight attendant pleaded guilty to giving a 19-month-old baby Xanax in apple juice to stop her crying on a transatlantic flight. Certainly a bit excessive, but it, and these other examples, raise a crucial question: what steps can be taken? Do passengers over the age of three have a right to some modicum of comfort on their flight? All questions … just questions.

It’s Opening Day! Time to buy some peanuts and Cracker Jack (or at least some soy nuts and rice cakes).

Baseball is full of legends, and plenty of legend. But can you tell truth from fiction? Download and print out our “Reverse the Curse” worksheet so that you and your friends can determine which of these around-the-bases stories belt it out of the park, and which ones whiff at strike three.

Batter up!

I am reminded of Spinal Tap guitarist Nigel Tufnel’s remarks during the break of their heavy-metal anthem “Stonehenge”: “No one knows who they were … or what they were doing …” Which isn’t quite true, of course: the ‘henge has long been considered a site of both astronomical and ritual importance to the Bronze Agers who visited it. The strange and impressive Serpent Mounds of Ohio, however, are another story altogether.

Mound-building native Americans were active in many parts of what is now the U.S., but usually their earthen structures were just that: hill-like mounds, often used as burial sites. Not so the Serpent Mound. While there are a number of animal-shaped effigy mounds, as they’re known, in the upper Midwest, the Serpent is by far the world’s largest: it measures about 1,370 feet in length and between one and three feet high. Its beautiful and precise shape are also a marvel (drawing inevitable comparisons to Peru’s Nazca Lines and other such ancient super-structures), often attributed to the Adena culture (800 BC - 100 AD).

But what’s it for? No burial sites were found within the mound, and while it does seem to have some astronomical significance — the oval-to-head area of the serpent is aligned to the Summer Solstice sunset and the snake’s coils align with the Winter Solstice sunrise — but considering the extraordinarily elaborate nature of its design, experts believe that its usefulness as an enormous calendar was merely secondary. Also adding to the mystery is the serpent’s open jaws, which surround a 120-foot hollow oval feature, thought variously to be an egg, the sun, the body of a frog, or merely the remnant of a platform serving to support something. So what does it all mean? Your guess is as good as ours!

Meet the beggiatoa. Since he’s a chemolithotroph, he loves sulfur (or brimstone, if you prefer!) and while he’s a pain to confront if you’re managing a sewage treatment, industrial waste plant, or a decaying seaweed bed, he can detoxify all the hydrogen sulphide in your soil. Just don’t think it’ll be pretty–the oxidation produces a pale, stringy deposit known as sulfur sludge. Beggiatoa are famous for causing “bulking,” in which a sludge mass thickens in volume but not in weight. Fully activated “bulking sludge” creates a real problem for purification plants, but despite all this, beggiatoa still managed to land a “Microbe of the Week” slot back in ‘99.

• Lumberton, NJ, (population 12,000) is the most active community of eBay buyers and sellers, per capita.

• Items banned for sale include ammunition, used underwear and teacher’s editions of textbooks.

• The first item ever bought on eBay was a non-functioning laser pointer. When the buyer was asked if he understood the product was broken, he replied, “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.”