As American photographer Gregory Crewdson celebrates his 46th birthday today, let’s take a look at his life and methods. (Shown above is one of his untitled photographs from 2004.)

1. Remember that song “Let Me Take Your Photo” that played during Hewlett Packard’s digital camera commercials? The song was the first single released by The Speedies, a punk rock band. Crewdson and his friends Eric Hoffert and Allen Hurkin-Torres had formed the band as teens.

2. During his childhood, Crewdson would sometimes try to eavesdrop on his psychoanalyst dad’s sessions (his office was in the basement). Crewdson explains, “I could never really hear anything. All I knew was that it was secret and that it was forbidden. And there you have it. That’s my work in a nutshell.”

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Allison Keene is off today, but will return next Saturday. Give her a head start on her link-gathering by sending your most fabulous web gems to flossylinks@gmail.com.

We’ll kick things off with the 15 craziest taxis from around the world.
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The 8 Worst Real Life Jobs of Video Game Characters. Doc Louis gets a mention. If you’re in the mood for more Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!, try this old quiz.
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Did your representative make Roll Call’s list of the 50 richest members of Congress?
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Here are 7 Fantastic Podcasts for Geeks. Anyone want to recommend a podcast other readers might enjoy?
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Random great Onion headline this week: Alcoholic-Beverage-Consumer Confidence Skyrockets.
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Good news for future Mars colonists—the iron on Mars is ideal for building future bases on the red planet.
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In case you’re looking to kill some time before tonight’s Presidential debate, here are some of the stories we’ve run during this extended campaign season:

1. Stacy Conradt, Live from the Iowa Caucus

Way back on January 4th, Stacy taught us what happens inside a caucus. She also had a run-in with the Obamalac.

2. A Brief History of Celebrity Political Endorsements

John McCain has Curt Schilling. Barack Obama has Oprah Winfrey. Richard Nixon had Wilt Chamberlain. (Seriously.)

3. What’s The Highest-Rated Debate in History?

Could it be tonight? The previous record was the Reagan-Carter debate in 1980, when 80.6 million people tuned in. Read up on the top ten.

4. The First Time The Candidates Made Headlines

Here’s a look at the first time The New York Times mentioned each of the candidates, back when “the candidates” included Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul.

5. Let’s Play The Debating Game

If at some point during the campaign you thought to yourself, “I’ve heard this all before,” you’re probably right. We’ll give you ten excerpts from Presidential debates; you decide if they’re from this year or a prior campaign. Take the quiz.

It’s time for a new occasional feature! Rejoice! In this column, I’ll talk about my personal experience being diagnosed with sleep apnea, what treatments are available, the science behind the condition, and (hopefully) my miraculous improvement after being treated. For this first entry, I’ll talk about the experience leading up to my sleep study. In future columns I’ll reveal the diagnosis and treatment, and you can follow along as I try to catch some sleep. Before we begin the narrative, let’s get a quick definition of “sleep apnea” from Wikipedia (slightly edited for clarity by me):

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder characterized by pauses in breathing during sleep. Each episode, called an apnea, lasts long enough so that one or more breaths are missed, and such episodes occur repeatedly throughout sleep. The standard definition of any apneic event includes a minimum 10 second interval between breaths, with either a neurological arousal, a blood oxygen desaturation of 3-4% or greater, or both arousal and desaturation. Sleep apnea is diagnosed with an overnight sleep test called a polysomnogram, or a “Sleep Study” which is often conducted by a pulmonologist.

…the individual with sleep apnea is rarely aware of having difficulty breathing, even upon awakening. Sleep apnea is recognized as a problem by others witnessing the individual during episodes or is suspected because of its effects on the body. Symptoms may be present for years (or even decades) without identification, during which time the sufferer may become conditioned to the daytime sleepiness and fatigue associated with significant levels of sleep disturbance.

My sleep problems started probably ten years ago, during college, when I became aware that my snoring was really loud. And let me dwell on this a moment — we’re talking sawing logs with industrial machinery loud. The term “epic” was used to characterize my snoring, and neighbors in my college apartment building actually complained. I tried using several nose-opening devices, nasal sprays (disgusting!), sleeping with my mouth closed, and different sleeping positions, but nothing seemed to help. Eventually I ended up in a corner apartment where my neighbors couldn’t hear me: problem solved?

Rewinding a few years…at some point during my teenage years, my father had been diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. He and I have very similar body types, including a predisposition for charming plumpness as well as a relatively narrow airway in the throat. I have a small mouth (at least relative to my neck), and I still have my tonsils. So it stood to reason that I might develop obstructive sleep apnea as well.

In the time since my snoring became an issue and my recent diagnosis, I really didn’t do anything about my sleep problems. I’ve always been a very sleep-positive person, often sleeping in until noon (and beyond) on weekends. Over the last year or two, I found myself even sleepier: spending entire weekend days asleep, and ultimately not feeling refreshed. Something was wrong. I went to my doctor, who did a bunch of blood tests and ultimately referred me to the Sleep Disorders Program at a local medical institution.

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I’m considering a video feature with a weekly guitar lesson for beginners. By that, I mean I’d be showing the real beginner a thing or two each week in a 2-3 minute video. Starting with the presumption that you’ve never even held a guitar in your hand and moving slowly through different chords and techniques, I’d take the lessons as far as I can, so long as people are watching them.
But I’m only going to attempt this if there’s real interest out there. And by real, I guess I mean 100 or so weekly viewers, if not more. So, by a show of comments, anyone think they’d actually get into something like this? For those who like to read the blog but never comment, and we know that’s most of you, now’s the time to speak and be counted.

Behind every good war are many good women. Using their feminine (and in at least one case masculine) wiles, the following five spies would make James Bond proud.

1. Mata Hari

While Margaretha Geertruida Zelle MacLeod (1876–1917) may not have caused World War I, she sure as heck kept it going. Having spent time in Java with her husband, Captain Campbell MacLeod, Margaretha returned to Holland and sued for divorce. To make ends meet she took up exotic dancing and the name Mata Hari (meaning “the light of day” in Malay). With her sensual performances becoming the attraction of the major European cities came the men and the gifts for her favors. Many of these favors came from royalty and high-ranking French and German military officers. As World War I progressed, both sides became suspicious that Mata was spying for the other side. The French eventually put her on trial and, although the charges were never proven, Mata Hari was convicted of espionage and was executed by a firing squad on October 15, 1917. Playing the seductress up until the end, Mata refused a blindfold, smiled, and blew a kiss to the firing squad as the fatal shots were fired.

2. Noor Inayat Khan

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This week I thought we’d do a lightning round of questions from previous Happy Hours, plus name the winners of last Friday’s Create Your Own Holiday contest. Answer whatever you’d like…

1) What’s the most shocking thing you’ve found while snooping? (Snooping stories not limited to closets and medicine cabinets. Think email, Googling, NSA files, etc.)

2) What’s the crappiest car you’ve ever owned? Was it a clunker from the start, or did you simply drive it into the ground?

3) What’s the most intriguing VHS tape you still own? (We’re not looking for movies you’ve bought in VHS format. Rather, stuff you’ve taped from TV or shot yourself.)

4) What’s the strangest place you’ve been that offers free wireless internet service?
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I’m struggling today, you guys. I can barely keep my eyes open. All I can think about is getting home and closing my eyes for a few minutes. Which actually isn’t going to happen, but hey, a girl can dream.

Anyway, since I can’t think of anything else, I thought we would go for a sleep-related Quick 10 today – just some random facts about sleep. Hopefully I make it through all 10 before my head hits the keyboard.

1. Thai Ngoc is a Vietnamese man who has supposedly not slept a wink since 1973. The story is that he came down with some sort of a fever and, for whatever reason, hasn’t been physically able to get any shut-eye since. Tests are out of the question; Thai hasn’t left his village in 60 years and doesn’t intend to. Amazingly, he appears to be pretty healthy otherwise, except he did say a couple of years ago that he is starting to feel like “a plant without water”.

2. No doubt we have all experienced the microsleep. It’s a brief episode of sleep that only from a portion of a second all of the way up a few seconds. It’s probably most familiar to people who have been driving and feel like they spaced out for a minute, or perhaps during a particularly boring class when you do the sudden head-jerk move and wake yourself up almost immediately.

3. Exploding head syndrome sounds like it involves spontaneous combustion, but it doesn’t. It’s when you’ve been asleep for a couple of hours (usually, anyway), and then experience a really loud noise within your own head. It can sound like an explosion, a roar, loud voices – anything of that nature, really. There’s no pain, but people who have experienced exploding head syndrome can be fearful and anxious after the attack. Doctors don’t really know why this happens, but some think it might have something to do with stress and fatigue. Women are more likely to experience it than men. Any _flossers experience this? I’d be interested to hear about your episode(s).

4. Ever wonder what a good thread count for your sheets is? (more…)

If you’ve made it this far, I commend you! One more puzzle to solve and you’re home free. First one to send in the correct answer to the challenge below, along with the correct answers found all along the path this week, AND, the logic behind ‘em (which is to say: HOW DID YOU KNOW?), gets a pick of any t-shirt and book from our store.
As with last month, we’re also adding some special prizes this time around for those who come really close, but don’t get all the answers in time. We’ve previously awarded some shirts and books to a couple contestants who impressed us with charts, diagrams, and other complex methods of recording and organizing the clues/answers. So we’ll be on the lookout for the creative among you, as well. This is all to say: it pays to play whether you nab the grand prize or not.

Also new this time around, we’re going to give away a really big, sa-weeet prize to any winning contestant who can defend the title three months in a row. Details on that as they develop, if they develop. If you haven’t met defending champion Chan Stevens, you can read about him here.

As comments have been turned off for the length of the hunt, please click on the following link and send your answers and logic to us at: TriviaHunt@Gmail.com

If you missed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday’s challenges, there might still be time to solve them all. No one knows how long it’ll take for one of you trivia junkies to nail down the whole megillah, so make haste, make haste. And now, on the next page, I present the final puzzle, drawing on all the answers you dug up along the trail.

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As Seinfeld taught us, some men will stop at nothing to stake their claim to a Twix bar that’s rightfully theirs. While George Costanza was unable to fool anyone with his all-Twix candy bar lineup at David Puddy’s car dealership, maybe you’ll have better luck identifying your favorite unwrapped confections.

Take the George Costanza Candy Identification Quiz

Note: We haven’t done a fill-in-the-blanks quiz in a while, so be sure to read the instructions and use the answer key.