Ah, bella, I will take you to Venice. She is l' acqua di vita, the water of life, no? We will walk its Grand Canal, swim in the radiant light and color of the gibigiane. We will embrace in the shadows of St. Mark's Square. Then, as lo spirito di Italia fills our hearts to overflowing, we'll cross the Culinary Union strike line and zip across the street to the California Pizza Kitchen, taking care to avoid the wet paint and plaster. Time permitting, we'll stop by the Double Down for a cool, delicious glass of "Ass Juice." Life, she is beautiful!
 

"In the world there are espresso drinkers and there are other people. In Italy, we are espresso drinkers. Americans are the other people." So declared Andrea Illy - grandson of Francesco Illy, inventor of the modern espresso maker - in an interview with The New Yorker. Nessuna domanda, Illy knows his joe - as president of Illycaffé, the supreme espresso roaster of Italy, he's been on both sides of the counter. Illycaffé's official site gently touts the talent and skill the company has put into its beverage since 1933, while educating the neophyte (meaning: America) on the bean's finer attributes. Trace coffee back to its point of origin; break the elixir down its base chemistry; enjoy its pleasant side effects. And once you've achieved enlightenment, take Illy's personality test and find out how the nectar has shaped you. At the very least, your re-education will compel you to cut down on your milk intake - a substance Andrea Illy described as anathema to everything good coffee should be. "Brutto," as they say in Venice. And they mean it.
 

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." So wrote Charles Bukowski in a moment of clarity, and so read thousands of Los Angeles commuters every day, as they pass the intersections of Arroyo and Pico, Beverly and Ogden, La Cienega and Guthrie. Poets Anonymous, a nonprofit group, put Bukoswski's words on billboards, along with poetry fragments from Lucile Clifton ("You know the saddest lies / are ones we tell ourselves," Melrose near Irving), Octavio Paz ("The road never stops arriving," Santa Monica and Westwood) Frederico Garcia Lorca ("In your ship of lights / you go / along the high tide / of the city," Wilshire and Highland) and many more. The intent is, simply, to stir thought and passion - perhaps even encourage you to pick up a book of poetry, or pen some of your own. It's such a brilliantly sublime idea that it seems a shame that Los Angeles holds the franchise on it. This should be a national campaign, to festoon America with roadside lucidity and legal graffito.
 

What, a movie is coming out before "The Phantom Menace?" Can they do that? Goddamn right they can, especially if that movie is a remake of the 1932 horror classic "The Mummy." The official site of the Universal release - it comes out this Friday - will convince you to get in line now with the rest of the SFX-starved geex, with a look behind the scenes of this special effects bonanza, a difficult-to-follow Shockwave game (ah, the mysteries of the ancients), VRML views of the sets, a pair of screensavers and absolutely best of all, digital postcards from "Hamunaptra - City of the Dead." Any site that allows you to send a postcard from the "City of the Dead" has got to be worth its weight in papyrus, right? And the trailer looks like a right doozy. Brendan Fraser's in it, and then there's that part where, like, that cloud of dust with a face eats the plane . that's it, man, I'm taking Friday off. Don't even try to stop me. May the dust be with you!
 

"I can eat glass, it doesn't hurt me." By itself a statement of purest braggadocio. But in the capable hands of Ethan Mollick, it could become a powerful diplomatic tool - one that could unite the many nations of the world, smooth over our differences, or at the very least change our dining habits. Based on the supposition that the average world traveler can't resist the urge to try out a foreign tongue, the I Can Eat Glass Project gives him or her something interesting to say in that tongue - that statement being "I can eat glass, it doesn't hurt me." Not to put too fine a point upon it, but this idea is pure freaking genius. "If one says 'I can eat glass, it doesn't hurt me,' you will be viewed as an insane native, and treated with dignity and respect," Mollick conjectures. Well, let's try it out, shall we? You, there: off to Portugal with you, and your "Posso comer vidro, no me fere." Marcel, I don't know if you used "Ik kan glas eten. Het doet geen pijn," while you were in the Netherlands, but I know you've eaten plenty of glass in your time. As for myself, I'm keeping "Mi posso magnare el vetro, no'l me fa mae" at the ready for my trip to Venice. Venice! La vita bella!

What do you mean, it's not really Venice? C'mon, pal, I know Venice when I see it! It's not like Bellagio or Paris or Monte Carlo, so it must be ... uh ... well. All right, maybe it isn't Venice. Maybe it's just another damn casino-hotel. See what you've done? I'm depressed. Why must you be so brutto? Eat glass, you heartless wretches!