"I also really like how he swears a lot, but it sounds so sweet because his voice is nice and the melody's pretty that it's only when you think back and go 'huh' that... *off his skeptical look* yeah, ok, I'm somewhat crushy on Ben Folds right now."
"He makes you cry!"
"Really, history would suggest I like that in a man."
--A girl and a guy at Reel Video

"It's weird stuff. At a low dose, they use it to treat chronic pain, and at ten times that dose they use it to treat OCD."
"So 'take ten of these and wash your hands once in the morning?'"
"Kind of. Yeah. I think I know the way it works, though. One pill makes me sleepy, ten must make you unconscious. Temporarily treats the symptoms, but..."
--A girl and a guy talking at the Parkway Theatre

"Oh, you know me. I'm so disorganized, it's an oxymoron that they call me a professor."
--A woman talking on a cell phone outside Cody's Books

"California: The Wish We Were Kidding State."
"Did you vote?"
*silence*
"You forefited your bitching rights."
"So that's what those stickers are good for."
--Two guys at La Salsa

"Hrm. No, let's go to McDonald's. It's more family-oriented."
--A woman with two children, eyeing the menu at Crepes-a-Go-Go

----------------------------------------------------------

In three and a half years of active evesdropping, this is the single most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I didn't know whether to put it under bizarre or tragic. What kind of person actually talks like a target demographic drone?

"See, if I'm actually up and checking work mail at 5am, I make sure as hell that I respond to everything. Even stuff that I really only have a ping response on. Just so people know I'm working at 5am. I figure they'll figure if my answers are vague, it's because I'm so tired."
"That's not really what we've been figuring."
--Two men talking in line at Jamba Juice

"I've got a lot of T-shirts, but I can only wear a limited selection of them to work."
"Don't want to traumatize the children, eh?"
"Oh, no, I'm happy to traumatize children. I just want to keep my job."
--A guy and a girl shopping at Crossroads Trading Co.

See, I keep my promises. Sometimes I wait until everyone's forgotten precisely what I promised, or that I promised anything at all, but I keep them, nevertheless.

Wait, what I meant to say was, welcome to the new and improved In Passing!

This feature upgrade was more than partially precipitated by the discovery of Drupal, a very full featured content management system with all of the features In Passing needed. Drupal is open source, and best of all, it's already written, which frees the In Passing team (and I say "team" because I couldn't have done any of this without Benjy's mad tech skills) to focus on content (my real job around here) rather than worry about how broken the site was.

In Passing is up, but what you can see right now barely scratches the surface of what Drupal will allow us to do in the future. Before I start getting carried away and claiming people will architect cities around Drupal, let me describe the notable features currently enabled.

Drupal will improve your In Passing experience by allowing you to create user accounts, to ensure that no user can be impersonated in the comments. People who would prefer not to register will still be able to post in the comments, but their comments will appear as an anonymous user.

Furthermore, each user can have his/her own blog on the site, so you can record your very own things heard and seen In Passing. Remember, In Passing is all about chronicling the humor, beauty and utter strangeness of the world, and your posts should stay true to that theme. There are many other places (blogspot, livejournal, etc) to go if you would like free hosting for a more traditional blog about your life. The content of the blog entries will be the property of the original poster.

Finally, the site is still in a transitory state, so if you find anything wrong, drop me an email and wait a few days and hopefully everything will be straightened out and running smoothly in a week or so.

Go, register, blog! Have fun!

I'm going to be upgrading In Passing today, so while that's happening, comments will be disabled. Sit tight, and once the upgrade is done, there will be lots of surprises and twice as many opportunities to share your thoughts.

"Wait a sec, these are heavy."
"Come on, we're going to be late."
"The girls are going to be late, so we can be late. Besides, they owe us a rib from way back."
--A teenage guy carrying several pizzas, and another teenage guy, outside Round Table