Click here for JWER’s amazingly insightful review of “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” and his perceptive views on “where Lucas went wrong” in his imagining of the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.

Oh, wait …

I’m thinking about getting another job. Part time, at night. Shelf stocking or clerking at a 7-11 or something. If I’m serious about getting out of debt, I’m going to need to pay my dues – even if that does mean eighty hour work weeks.

(At the very least, it’ll be a strong motivator not to get back into this much unsecured debt … ever!)

Atomic Books is offering Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince 40% off the price if you reserve it ahead of time. This is also the same price Amazon is offering it for, and really, who wants to wait for the FedEx guy, or pay for shipping?!? I’m planning on being at Atomic Book’s door at six am.*

We will not be stocking or shelving this title. We are offering it here as a special order so our customers who enjoy the Harry Potter series and would perfer not to give their money to a corporate chain to get the book will not have to.

And that’s why Atomic Books is the best bookstore ever.

*Nah, I won’t actually get there until … when do they open?

California and Maryland’s own Ocean City might not be slipping into the sea anytime soon, but it would seem that Neptune wants to punish the sinners in New Orleans and the greedy oil barons in Texas.

(Or, y’know, it could just be erosion or what not…)

That’s the sobering — and controversial — conclusion of a new report published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that finds the northern Gulf of Mexico is sinking much faster than geologists thought.

The report centers on the humble benchmark, a small metal disk bolted to the ground, that provides a standard elevation above sea level for land surveying and mapping as well as determining flood-prone areas.

But there’s one problem with benchmarks: They don’t give reliable elevation readings if they’re sinking along with everything else.

That’s what the geologists who wrote the NOAA report say is happening in Louisiana: The yardstick is broken. Instead of minimal geologic subsidence along most of the Louisiana coast, as previously thought, the state’s entire coastal region is sinking at least 5 feet every century.

And although a number of local officials disagree with the report’s conclusions about Texas, here’s a scary thought: Similar forces could well be at work just a few miles south of Houston.

“Subsidence doesn’t stop at the Texas border,” said Roy Dokka, a co-author of the NOAA report and a Louisiana State University geologist.

A colleague of Dokka’s in Houston, the editor of the Houston Geological Society Bulletin, is more blunt in his assessment of the report. “Galveston,” says geologist Arthur Berman, “is history.”

Um. “Don’t mess with Texas?”

Blogtimore, Hon is set to be launched tomorrow night at six, so I did what any coniving bastard would do – I stole a Blogtimore button from eebmore. They’re nice. You should steal one.

UPDATE:

Eebmore updated his post with this text,

“special note: the first two of these were built so I could have a good laugh and be a snarky ass. the rest were built out of boredom and exhaustion. Truth be told, it really isn’t my place to be building these, and I wouldn’t use them if I were you; unless baltiblogs feels like endorsing them.

It’s their site.”

What a snarky little …

Oh my dear god, is there anything George Lucas won’t merchandize to make a buck?

The airline that never misses a gimmick is striking back with another one: Star Wars-themed airsickness bags.

This month, Virgin Atlantic will stock flights with 100,000 bags to appeal to fans of the hit movie series. One design demonstrates how to hold a lightsaber; another spells out the rules of Jedi combat.

But trust Virgin chief Richard Branson, who previously introduced flying beds and on-board masseuses — to give the allusion to airsickness a positive PR spin.

“Of course, we hope that our flights are as smooth as normal so that passengers don’t need to use the sickbags. We want them to see the funny side … not the inside.”