Well, a professionally mandated good time was had by all at this weekend's annual VBGS Corporate Retreat and Muffin Bakeoff. We bonded through trustbuilding exercises like "Credit Card Number Roulette" and "Let Your Wife Sleep With Peterson in Marketing." We listened to professional motivational speaker Brad McMichaels, who informed us that "motivation is the onion in the hamburger of success." (Or some equally tortured metaphor like that; honestly, there was a pretty good buzz going in the room at that point, so who knows.) Drunken admissions of mutual affections, barely contained hostility and bitter morning after recriminations were the order of the day. Now, we're rested and ready to provide more faintly bemusing bloggertainment (Like that? Just one of the many buzzwords you can look forward to in the coming year) to the four or five people who stumble onto this site each week. Also, we promise that this is the last entry where we use the royal we.

Three things that rule at this given location in the time-space continuum:

1. Ben and Jerry's brownie batter ice cream. I almost gave up on Ben and Jerry's after they tried switching over all their flavors to that "2-Twisted" format, but they've finally come through with a delicious new flavor. Not quite as salmonellicious as real brownie batter, but an acceptable simulacrum nevertheless.

2. Only three months until season 3 of Mr. Show comes out on DVD. I don't need to tell you that you need to own this, right? Best season of the funniest sketch comedy show ever. (Yes, I rank Python a close second, though I might feel differently if I came of age in 70's England instead of 90's America.)

3. New Radiohead album. Haven't heard all of it, but approve greatly of what I've heard so far. I'm still a OK Computer loyalist over Kid A and Amnesiac; too much meandering atmospherics on the last two albums, and the new album sounds more like the former than the latter.