Click here for the biggest geekout ever.

But to be honest, I’d take the Dark Side PC over a stupid U-2 iPod anyday. I mean, dude, it’s got the Deathstar. On your freakin’ computer!

Lord Vader makes you go the long way around the barn for the punchline today, but it’s so good it’s worth the trip.

Another blog that’s new to me: Query Letters I Love. It’s filled with Hollywood script pitches. Sample:

“Animals have been hunted and killed for thousands of years. They were part of God’s food chain and kept everyone alive. For the last 100 years, furs have become charmingly fashionable and now, animals are skinned for just their furs. Their bloody remains, their bodies, left to rot. Now it’s their turn, to repay mankind… …..and they’re pissed!!

Number of Pages 191

Go, read, enjoy.

Galley Friend T.J. points us to an interesting site, Upstateblog.net. It’s a blog about economics and policy in upstate New York and it’s run by Matthew Maguire and the Public Policy Institute of New York State. Interesting, smart stuff, particularly if you live in the area.

If only someone like the cranky economist would explain why I am supposed to be troubled—as per Bob Herbert’s instructions—by small downward ticks in unemployment figures for age groups who are either required by law to be in school full time or just likely to be in school full time.

Also: Herbert ends his cold-water column on the latest jobs report, which showed unexpected growth in several areas, with an amazingly stupid Louis Brandeis quote, an especially valuable fatuity for its perfectly distillation of the left’s obsession with wealth. Said Brandeis: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. But we can’t have both.”

As if the purpose of democracy were to equally distribute wealth! As if equality weren’t in fact the enemy of all wealth! You want material equality? It’s available and it’s called universal poverty.

As if the equal distribution of wealth makes people more rather than less free, and political systems more rather less democratic. As if! As if! A hundred as if’s! It’s quite rare to read something so grand-sounding and completely reprehensible. Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, with North Korea still a going concern, and Castro alive, how can an intelligent person say such things?

Mickey Kaus is kind to The Dennis Miller Show in its passing. (Unlike Evan Smith, who’s obviously just a jerk.)

As a rule, I don’t like going on political TV shows, but The Dennis Miller Show was the big exception.

The show was always populated with a stream of interesting people. During my appearances on the show other guests included Martin Landau, Stan Lee, and Ray Bradbury–you don’t meet people like that on The O’Reilly Factor. And the production staff was full of the type of people you and I would want to be friends with, as opposed to the carnivorous stick-insect producers booking the “serious” political shows. (Note to all TV people: You should scoop Miller’s staff up ASAP. They’re the best.)

And then there’s Dennis. He was a gracious and funny host and, unlike most heads, he actually knows things. A good guy and a great interviewer.

So tonight we raise our glasses to The Dennis Miller Show. May everyone involved in that wonderful project go on to better things.

P.S.: If I was an MSNBC executive, I would reconstitute The Dennis Miller Show and run it in the 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. slot giving you a prime time lineup of Hardball, Tucker Carlson’s new show, and Miller. That’s a great slate of programming.

Do not miss Darth Vader’s account of the Ewok cook-out. Oh, to have been on Endor that merry night.

The Onion makes a funny:

AMSTERDAM—American students traveling abroad confirm the findings of a study indicating that Washington’s unilateral approach to foreign policy has seriously undermined Americans’ chances of getting laid.

“I’ve been in Amsterdam for two months and have yet to begin a conversation with a cute girl that hasn’t ended in a lecture about how big, evil America is taking everyone’s oil,” said college sophomore Brad Higgs, a participant in Johns Hopkins University’s study-abroad program. “I offer to buy them a drink, and they tell me I shouldn’t just stand by and watch Bush destroy the world. Look, if I had that type of pull with the president, I obviously wouldn’t be out trolling for anonymous Dutch pussy.”

The report, released Monday by the Center For U.S.-International Casual Relations, was based on interviews with approximately 1,400 American students returning from abroad. According to study director Gilbert Hapbrook, sexual contact between American students and foreigners has declined steadily since January 2001.

“Unpopular military actions and dismissal of international organizations have galvanized world hostility toward the U.S.,” Hapbrook said. “Instead of being inundated with questions about Hollywood and requests to help hot young foreigners practice their English, Americans are being openly scorned in European pubs and cafes. Data taken from a poll of students in December 2004 showed that only a dismal 11 percent had achieved sexual congress with a non-American.”

Hapbrook said the 2004 overseas-coitus figures show a slight recovery from the all-time low reached in November 2002, after the Afghanistan invasion and during escalating conflict with Iraq. But the figures are still well below those of 1999, when Bill Clinton was in office and a very healthy 67 percent of respondents scored abroad. . . .

University of Colorado junior Casey Knight recently arrived in Amsterdam after a month in Germany.

“I asked a group of German girls at some Eurotrash disco to dance and they started yelling at me,” Knight said. “They said that by paying taxes to the American government, I am no better than a fascist. Well, they would know, I guess.”

Good to know they can still hit it out of the park.