"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

"If somebody ties me up in a room, or holds a gun to my head -- well, I would
kill the person... if I wasn't restrained."
--A loud guy at Jupiter, who was apparently already drunk at 5pm.

"I have a horrible confession to make. I've been watching the OC."
"Nooooo. Not that. Do you know what that is? It's just the 9021-OC. Who's their star? Peter Gallagher? Do you recall he played a corpse in a Sandra Bullock movie?"
"Coma patient, not a corpse. Much more acting ability required."
--A girl and a guy at Max's Cafe

"A hundred dollars?"
"They haven't played together in twenty years!"
"And here I thought shelling out forty-three dollars to watch a jumbotron on Radiohead was madness."
"Oh, they had nosebleed seats for forty or so."
"But in Oakland Arena... from up there you'd just be able to see their bald spots."
--A girl and a guy outside Arizmendi bakery

"Well maybe then he'd have to choose between us."
"Ok, you're talking about bringing life forms into the world just to make your man settle down?"
"A baby is a life, not a life form."
"I wouldn't make some poor amoeba part of this plan, and that amoeba wouldn't even have to have that jerk as a father."
--Two women talking in the bathroom at Straits Cafe

"Are you going to challenge me if I try to play 'hamsuit'?"
"Not if you wear one, to prove such a thing exists."
--A girl and a guy in a group of folks playing Scrabble at Raleigh's.

"I don't know, it's hard to put it in words."
"Too much Chex, not enough mix. That's your problem."
"Ok, I guess it isn't hard to put into metaphor. Just words."
--Two girls talking outside Ross