I get to keep the caricatures. They were custom-drawn for yours truly by the very talented, very expensive Mr. Scott Dickensheets. He never draws caricatures of anyone else that I know of, and hasn't taken a hack at me since I got a haircut. Scott is a man's man, dammit. He eats raw plutonium and excretes pure charisma, which he sells to Tom "Chuckles" Cruise at cost.

The shade of green that used to adorn this page has already been returned to Mr. Guy Schackman of Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New Orleans. Guy tried to match the green of the shirt I wore when I met Sigourney Weaver. I guess he'd hoped that I would recapture that I-just-met-Sigourney-Weaver glow every time I wrote the column. Maybe I did. Guy also discovered every other site reviewed in this column.

Ms. Michelle Felice and Mrs. Aubry Meusy did all the actual work. I can count all the times I actually put up the column on the fingers of one hand. They make me look goooood. Michelle and Aubry are smarter and better looking than I could ever hope to be, but they still had to put up my column every week, which just goes to show what solid self-promotion will get ya.

Mr. Bryan Allison edited the column every week. The column was originally his idea, which I bent and mutilated into what you've suffered through for two solid years. I think he edited it because he liked it. Either that, or he wanted proof that I was actually doing something besides turning oxygen to carbon monoxide.

Ms. Jennifer Whitehair, Mr. Mike Westfall, Ms. Dianne Cauzillo, Mr. Mason Turner, Mr. James Welborn and Mr. Gregory Crosby have all made significant contributions to the column over these two years. Gregory even wrote one while I was vacationing in Seattle one fall. Now, according to Union rules, I don't have to pay any of them a freakin' dime.

And as for myself -- I am just the man who sings.
 

"Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say, 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, baulked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until, at last, rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity." I can't tell you how many times that Ralph Waldo Emerson passage has borne me through difficult times. It is one of those truths I hold dear, and I've taken pains these past five years to write it - or an abbreviated version of it - on bathroom walls from the Strip to Sukhumvit. When the last free press is bought out by some weapons manufacturer or funny-money dot.com, the bathroom wall will be the last place to read the truth, you know. In something resembling print, anyway. Latrinalia celebrates this still-popular means of expression in a more tasteful manner than you'd expect. By the way, the abbreviated version of the Emerson quote that's most appropriate to bathroom walls is "Doubt not, O poet, but persist." But there's no denying "It is in me, and shall out" might get a bigger, more empathetic laugh.
 

I won't say much about Southern Words that the site can't say bettah. Have you ever wondered what the Sam Hill those NASCAR (pronounced nice car) drivers were saying on ESPN? Consider this a primer. Use of the noun "Emerson" as a descriptive phrase: "Emerson fine lookin' tars ya got on yer truck there, Leroy." That was Dale Gordon, live from the pit!
 

Man, nothing pops my bacon like a website that hasn't been updated since 1997. I mean, kee-rist, that was back in the nineteen hundreds. I feel like a goddamn relic just looking at this stuff. Still, most everything at Phobe.com is pretty fat-ass funny, and worthy of a long look. Thrill to the "Furby Autopsy" ... recite the beat-o-riffic "Llama Poetry" ... make a coffin-shaped purse from household items ... join the feared "Colonel Klink Exchange." It's all so delightfully late-nineties!
 

Elliot S! Maggin is so damn cool that I'll forgive him the substitution of an exclamation point for a period in his professional name. Besides, what could be more appropriate to one of the greatest writers ever to pen the Superman comic? Maggin wrote the adventures of the DC comics superhero from 1971 through 1986, created two novels -- "Last Son of Krypton" and "Miracle Monday" -- that more or less redefined the mythos, and generally accomplished the impossible - he made a human being of the "self-righteous lunk" (Lex Luthor's words) in the red pajamas. It's a right treat, winding through the involved worlds Maggin has created for his charge, and if someone out there has even half a brain, those worlds will be translated to film someday. Stop by this tribute page -- part of the Superman Through The Agessite -- and see the movies that could have been. Any Superman movie that features Albert Einstein in a small but pivotal role has to be a good one, right?

Nothing much to say down here, aside from this: It's getting late, kids. I'll see you next week for the big finale. Cheers.