If all goes according to plan, tomorrow will be the day that the weather finally catches up with the calendar. That weird sense of unease that we've all felt while waiting for the season to assert itself will finally be lifted, and we will be thrown headfirst into autumn. Finally, the feeling of promise we always have at this time of year—now we're going to get serious, this is when it's really going to happen for us—will settle in alongside the lower temperatures, the smell of smoke, playoff baseball and warm alcoholic drinks with breakfast. The feeling will last until, oh, the end of October, when the Christmas music starts up in earnest, but for that month everything's going to feel pretty good, so try to enjoy it while you can, because winter is coming and winter will be hard. Anyway, while I have you here, read these:

• Seven Awesome Roads For Your Next Trip

• How To Save The Postal Service

• An Evening With Jeff Mangum

• How Much More Are Movie Stars Making Today?

• Chris Christie's Bernie Madoff Problem

• How To Write A Love Poem

Photo by _PaulS_'s, via Flickr

It all started with one of those women who won’t give out her recipes. You know the sort. I suppose if I were a tougher lady, more Joan Collins-esque, I would have told her to stop being a ridiculous Greedy Gerty over her stupid brownie recipe and then thrown my drink in her face for good measure but the reality is that I’m the type of sucker who says, and really means, things like “I totally get it, no no, I completely understand—don’t give it another thought, you’re so sweet to even apologize.”

However.

While I may be a simpering twit, I’m also a touch competitive. So as this recipe unsharer went on and on and on about how she makes the BEST brownies and they’re like CRACK and everybody who has ever had them just RAVES about how GREAT they are, I sat on my barstool working myself into a silent rage.

And when I got home, several glasses of wine-with-ice deep, I hit Google like I’ve never hit Google before looking for a base recipe I could tinker with. I resolved to make replicating these brownies my mission in life. READ MORE

46. “London”
45. "Together"
44. "Numb"
43. "Beautiful People"
42. "Integral"
41. "Did You See Me Coming?"
40. "Absolutely Fabulous"
39. "Minimal"
38. "Was It Worth It?"
37. "Home and Dry"
36. "Yesterday, When I Was Mad"
35. "Miracles"
34. "Single-bilingual"
33. "I Get Along" READ MORE

When I was 14, after we graduated from Markham Place School at a ceremony by the gazebo on the hill by the baseball fields, there was a party for my eighth grade class with pizza and a six-foot-long sub from Danny's and a DJ and stuff. We were euphoric, as kids are at the end of every school year—and even more so this year, it being the end of grade school in its entirety, and us having recently returned from an overnight class trip to Washington D.C. that had seemed to engender good feelings all around. I was a dork in 8th grade, not invited to many of the birthday parties you'd overhear about on Monday, at which more popular guys would get to kiss the girls who would end up signing your yearbook, "Dear David, I don't know you very well, but I know you're very nice! Have a great summer!" READ MORE

Since I'm a graduate student and drunkenness on a Thursday night is practically required, last Thursday I was terrifically far from sober and, as a direct result, read an article about Das Racist. I read this article because whenever Das Racist pops up on my radar, I read about them, like I read about MGMT even though I've only ever listened to MGMT once, and that was their song “Kids,” and, when I listened to it, it was about two years after “Kids” was a hit. I try to avoid dwelling on Das Racist, but, like I said, last Thursday I was drunk. Even when I'm not drunk, I have this terrible compulsion to read everything ever written about Das Racist because we all went to the same college, and because that fact signifies to me something particular, some life I wanted and didn't have. This particular article said that Das Racist was pronounced Da-as, as in "That’s," and it occurred to me that I’d always pronounced it in my head Dass, like "Ram Dass," and how horrifying, because the members of Das Racist were practically in my year. (My internal voice is slightly histrionic.) Which at my university actually meant something, since it was a student body of 2,800 and everybody there seemed to know everybody, except for me.

I had hit college at 17 full of optimism that I’d find friends. I had a whole slew of them in high school and figured it would be easy to find new ones in college. We would do what college girls do: hang out in each other’s dorm rooms at night, talking, and there would be somebody lounging on the floor and somebody propped up on a pillow on the bed, and we’d stay up late and share makeup and maybe someday there’d be weed. How exciting! And then, as if it had been predetermined, and there was nothing I could do to change it: nothing. No friends, no late-night gab sessions. Nothing. READ MORE

Safe Slope is up and running this weekend, offering accompaniment home for women, gay men and trans people. It'll probably be a lot more effective against violence in the neighborhood than police officers telling women not to wear shorts, skirts or dresses. (FOR REAL.) Or also maybe not silently following women at night? To get an escort home after 7 p.m., call 347-709-8852. (That's 347-SØY-TULB. Or 347-PØW-VULA. Hmm. Not so helpful. Maybe just program it into your phone now?)

Despite acres of publicity and buckets of scandal, Julian Assange's unauthorised autobiography sold just 644 copies last week.

Created with Assange's cooperation (according to its publisher Canongate the Wikileaks founder spent more than 50 hours being interviewed for it) but published against his wishes, the book went on sale last Thursday amid widespread coverage and serialisation in the Independent.

—Wait. Did we "know" that Assange's "autobiography" was based on "more than" 50 WHOLE HOURS of interviews? I mean, gosh, that's 2.12 whole days! We probably did know that, but I guess maybe it was glossed a bit in the promotion? Fully ridiculous! Alice B. Toklas spent more time writing her autobiography. Also, sure doesn't leave him with much of a copyright claim against the book, does it now. This guy!

"What the movie shows is very interesting. The animal excavates sand to get the shell out, then swims for a long time to find an appropriate area where it can crack the shell. It requires a lot of forward thinking, because there are a number of steps involved. For a fish, it's a pretty big deal."
—I'll say! University of California ecology and evolutionary biology professor Giacomo Bernardi talks about the orange-dotted tuskfish he filmed opening a clam with the help of a rock. It is the first filmic evidence of tool usage by a fish. I can't wait for the next scene, when the fish uses a fork to twirl up the spaghetti vongole he's made for himself because it is impolite to slurp at the dinner table.

I thought British people were allergic to self-promotion or, indeed, any kind of reference to oneself that was not heavily caked in self-deprecation. Doesn't it make you break out in tea rash? Now look at you, instructing your Twitter followers to read your blogs, "check out" your articles, etc. This makes me suspect that Britain and all of its inhabitants have been swallowed up by an apocalyptic fire and replaced by an island of replicants who are planning world domination. Amirite or amirite?

Yet retweeting compliments is to harmless self-promotion what freebasing crack is to marijuana. And, going by this analogy, it grieves me to tell you—although I can't deny that I rather enjoy typing it—that Joan Collins is a crackhead.

—Did Twitter export American narcissism to Britain? One woman (rather correctly) says yes!

Sunday, October 2

At Dallas -1 Detroit
Everyone loves Detroit!
Are Lions Super Bowl-Bound?
Eminem Halftime! PICK: LIONS

New Orleans -7 At Jacksonville
Jaguars D not bad.
But Saints no doubt have a
Jones-Drew voodoo doll. PICK: SAINTS

At Philadelphia -8.5 San Francisco
Vick sick of hits.
Dream Team is a Scream Machine.
Philly Not Sunny. PICK: 49ERS READ MORE