Last weekend, we got to New Orleans on Saturday afternoon. Mrs. theskinnyonbenny and I sat in a bar talking to the tourists from Baltimore and keeping an eye on the football games while we waited for our friends to arrive. We walked around the French Quarter in the evening, and once it was dark, went on one of those haunted house walking tours.

On Sunday, we went to the Voodoo Fest (or, officially, I think it's the "Voodoo Music Experience") in city park. I may tell you what I thought about the festival itself later in the week, but more importantly, I need to tell you about where we went afterwards.

On my quest to listen to all of my music alphabetically, I'm up to the songs that start with "Heart." You might not be surprised to hear that there's a lot of country music in this section. Lots of country music writers out there with heartache. So how do I make sure that I listen to all of the songs?

This week, I did my first stint as a Junior Achievement volunteer. I was assigned a class of 7th graders at a school right down the street from my house. All of the junior high stereotypes were in full play: the boys who were too cool to participate, the class clowns, the smart pretty girl who kissed my butt. From what I saw, very little has changed in the junior high classroom in the last 20 years.

I have a friend, who works for a guy that I will refer to only as "The Big Doofus" for the remainder of this post. The Big Doofus works for a company with corporate headquarters in California. So I guess he has to fly to corporate for meetings every now and then.

A Netflix charge and what exactly is a banshee?

A long story about how the calzones at DeAngelo's make me smell so bad, and that there's nothing that can be done about it. Also, a haiku and a note about my site stats.

You know what really wasn't ever satisfactorily explained? How is it that Scooby Doo has a nephew? I don't remember seeing the episode where they premiered Scrappy Doo, but I would like to take a look back and see if there's any mention of where the little guy came from. I have my own hypothesis.

The city of Baton Rouge recently issued us big garbage bins. The prospect of not owning our garbage cans for the first time in our lives caused a brief excitement among my fellow residents.

Here's my public service announcement for this week. My recommendation for your next oil change.

My friends Steve and Jodie have two adorable little girls. He told me a story of how they were being entertained by his computer's screen saver. He had one of those screen savers that scrolled through some collection of pictures and showed each picture for some number of seconds before rolling on to the next. Each time a new picture would come up, the girls would say "Ooooh. Doggie." Or "Ooooh. Airplane." Or whatever the picture was that came up.

There's been much hubbub on the Apple message boards and on blogs regarding the bugginess of the new release of itunes.