Hey, I just looked through the Video Dog archives and there don't seem to be any Hometown Baghdad clips there. Did Salon pull all the Hometown Baghdad clips? If so, why?

I just saw the latest Hometown Baghdad clip on another site and it's very interesting. It looks like it will be the last H.B. clip, at least featuring one of the well-known Iraqis. The clip shows his and his family's reaction after one of his close relatives is killed by a U.S. soldier (while doing nothing to provoke the soldier). If anything makes you understand why average (non-extremist) Iraqis would want to kill U.S. soldiers, this does.

You should track down Hometown Baghdad and see the latest. It's worth it. I am sorry Salon is not carrying it on Video Dog anymore, because it was one of the best regular things going here.

Sorry to say, the rabbits just don't do it for me. I am thinking of doing a mash-up of these Rabbit Bites videos with that rabbit-killing scene in "Roger & Me" edited alongside the boiling rabbit from "Fatal Attraction," set to the tune of Elmer Fudd singing "kill the wabbit" on the melody of "Ride of the Valkyries."

Dear Salon editors: What's up with Video Dog? Between the Rabbit Bites episodes and the visually and mentally inert cartoons, it's like you're trying to drive your audience far, far away.

After giving it some thought, and even though I still don't much care for the "Rabbit Bites" videos, this one did leave me with an interesting impression. That's because it uses clips of both Rob Zombie and Eli Roth in which they each demonstrate a level of denial or rationalization about what they're creating.

Rob Zombie makes statements to the effect that his movies are designed to give people a "jolt" out of their daily existence. The rabbit commentary was actually worth hearing, this time: Wouldn't it be nice if people could be jolted by enjoying some nature and sunshine? I also appreciated the comment about Zombie's porn comparison; Zombie says taking violence out of horror movies would be like taking sex out of porn -- it would create an "hollow experience." The rabbit responds by making fun of the idea of porn being un-hollow.

The video clips of Eli Roth are equally damning. Roth at first is glib about being chainsawed during his Bat Mitzvah, then tries to intellectualize his horror fetish with references to Museums of Torture and a famous historical torturer (the rabbits make fun of Roth's attempt to be highbrow). Finally, he is gleeful about all the things he was able to get past the ratings board. At no point does he confront the simple fact that what he's creating -- devoting his life to -- is inherently sadistic. We see him rationalizing it in every way possible.

So whoever is behind the "Rabbit Bites" video has a good instinct for social commentary. If they honed it a bit more, I'd even say they were on to something. I personally don't like the rabbit voices and cutesy-ism, but I have to admit that this particular video was better than others.

Cheap, simple wooden mousetraps work like a charm. Don't use cheese, use peanut butter. It's hard for the mouse to dislodge, so the trap will spring. It also has an odor that travels farther than other bait. Mice love it....to death!

I don't know if anybody else has brought this up, but there seem to be people out there who laugh not because something is funny, or for any other direct reason. Instead, their laughter is a nervous tic.

One guy I knew had a laugh that sounded like a car trying to start, and it always seemed to come out of nowhere. It reminded me of the little laugh made by the Saturday Night Live character "It's Pat!" It could have been nervousness, but as I got to know him over time, and he became more comfortable, the laugh didn't go away. I tried to gently bring it up to him once, and he got offended and asked me to back off. Clearly it was a problem he had no control over.

I also met a woman who tended to emit a tremorous tiny laugh at the end of sentences, as if in place of punctuation. You might describe it as a "fluttering squeak." She was an attractive, sophisticated woman, but for whatever reason, the communication center of her brain was installed with some sort of laughter plug-in.

Everything else about each person was normal. I am sure that most people they met were taken aback by these tics, and then eventually realized they were simply part of what made them who they were.