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Welcome to BenWoods.com
July 10, 2000
Computers can be your friends. No, they won't take you to lunch or buy you a drink. But they can do more than collect dust. Assuming you are human (and if not, don't let that stop you from reading), you probably fit into one of four categories:
1. You still use a typewriter, you're still building a bomb shelter, and your best friend in grade school was Robert "Robbie" E. Lee.
August 28, 1999
Editor's Note: This was Ben's final column while writing for the Crawfordsville (Ind.) Journal Review.
This will be the last column I write for the Journal Review. I may start them again sometime in the future. I would like to. But for now, this will have to do.
If any of you have column ideas, please still tell them to me and send them. I will keep a list, and somewhere down the road, maybe they will let me do this again.
August 21, 1999
In a day and age when there are so many different types of people, with various races, ethnicities and personalities, there is one type I'm more likely to associate with frequently.
I have an insatiable and unconscious desire to surround myself with Dr Pepper drinkers.
But IÃm also convinced that most Dr Pepper drinkers are psychotic.
Which comes first is unclear. And calling someone psychotic can be misconstrued, so Dr Pepper drinkers, donÃt take this personally. But ponder the following arguments.
August 13, 1999
The world's not revolving faster, nor have its inhabitants been hibernating, but time is moving faster. If time doesn't slow down, it could get pulled over, and it won't stand a chance in court.
Vacations have a lot to do with the insane pace of minutes. No, not the vacation you take. The vacation other people around you take. Many people working at the Journal have taken trips all across the United States, even to Canada. When someone leaves any business for a break, the remaining people must suffer the consequences.
August 6, 1999
Most sensible people would probably concede, pay the ticket and try harder next time. Not me. Finally, Aug. 2 at 8:50 a.m., the charges were dismissed. I was a free man. But the way it happened was a bit intriguing.
From the Archive
February 19, 2001
Besides the Slap a Spice Girl game, the most useful things on the Internet are the various e-mail, street address and phone number lookups.
That's right folks! You can continue to stalk that high school sweetheart or the person at the gym until your fingers can't type anymore!
October 3, 2008
We're down to the home stretch in the 2008 American presidential nomination. As usual, the television ads are full of interesting tidbits, many not even true, about the candidates. It hasn't always been this way. In fact, in the recent past, nominees actually created ads for reasons other than seducing the United States into a trance to vote for them.
Haha, just kidding. I mean, would this great country all a politician to just speak the truth and lay out the facts?
September 27, 2005
If people are really starting to get on your nerves (I mean, come on, how can they not?), and you are a great babbler, there is finally a simple alternative for you. And as always, that alternative can exist at your very own home, assuming you have a computer, Internet access and time to waste.
May 13, 2002
I finally discovered something I could not easily find on the Internet: tickets for the newest Star Wars movie.
Sure, it is still a few days before "Attack of the Clones" opens in the United States, but I should already have tickets in my hand. I'm not claiming to be the biggest Star Wars fan in history. I've never dressed up as Darth Vader in public or dated a girl named Yoda. True, she was from Dagobah. But I do have a lot of Star Wars memorabilia hanging on my walls at home, and all of my action figures are stashed away in places I can get to easily.
December 24, 2004
Even though it might be after Dec. 25 by the time you read this, it is still not too late to make that last shopping run. This year, especially if you live in the Midwest, your excuse will work even better:
"I ordered your present online, and it hasn't arrived yet."
That simple sentence should give you at least an additional week to make purchases. And with the 236 inches of snow some areas have received, there's no telling when a present, even ordered after Lincoln's birthday, will appear.