The evil geniuses of Department Lemur are taking their work underground, and since I'm justifiably fearful of what they might do to me if I turn my back on them, I'm going with. You may think that "going underground" is fancy hipster parlance for Avoiding The Man, but that just ain't the case. We simply want to get out of the heat, and our vast underground bunker is naturally 20 degrees cooler (we're talking temperature and aesthetics) than the smog-choked, ultraviolet-soaked chaos you surface dwellers call "a really nice day for a picnic." Plus, we'll have a chance to load up the time capsule with more goodies for a future generation, and see if that mess of stinky shale we bought at that garage sale last year is anywhere close to becoming crude oil.

Oh, come on. You don't expect us to keep our standard of living up by simply maintaining this fabulous site, do you? Enjoy the pop culture report, and make your checks payable to the Passenger, capital P. Keep smiling.
 

Don't call them spelunkers; apparently that's a word for untrained and uninformed amateurs. The true underground explorer prefers to be called a "caver," or a "cavediver" if there's water involved. It is not a testosterone sport, so just leave that case of Mountain Dew behind; the caver does what he or she does out of a curiosity so advanced it borders on the obsessive, and to go underground - really go underground - you had better have nerve to spare and a love of spaces so tight you may as well be crawling through an unstrung tennis racket. Case in point: the international team of cavedivers exploring the underwater caves of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula have logged over 35 miles underground and underwater, discovering rare and exotic creatures, ancient skeletons and new limits of human courage. This handsome page offers up gorgeous photos of the caves and the dense jungle that surrounds them, a form of underworld in itself. If you get nervous just sitting in a locked closet, go outside right now and get some air; if not, cave in without delay.
 

It was 20 years ago today / Bauhaus started as The Craze. Never really gone out of style / their records popular with necrophiles. So may I reintroduce to you / that band that many long have feared... Yes, kids, Bauhaus has returned from beyond the beyond. If you've been following the solo careers of Peter Murphy, David J, Kevin Haskins and Daniel Ash ("GO! Yah, yah, yah, yah, yah...") then you've waited for this reunion since the band parted ways in 1983. If not, here's a quick primer: they are dark (but ever-so-slightly humorous about it), appeared in the film "The Hunger," and their biggest hit was a clever little dirge called "Bela Lugosi's Dead." Get the rest of the story from the new Beggars Banquet compilation "Crackle" and from this wonderful fan site, lovingly titled "Dark Entries". And Ziggy played ... guitar!
 

The New Orleans Cemetery and Voodoo Pages are fine viewing even if you've never quite subscribed to the concept of Voodoo. (Better get your lucky Mojo working, child - Windows 98 may promise total consciousness, but Voodoo has been serving it up forever, well before the embryonic Bill Gates even went to beta testing.) Read through the enormously helpful FAQ, get a few N'awlins travel tips and - so cool! - look at pictures of New Orleans' gorgeous cemeteries. Perhaps then you'll understand why we won't trade those Basin Street Blues for anything - not even for a bagful of 'gator teeth.