When the White House changes party hands, there's a tradition among outgoing staffers to play harmless prank. Junior Clinton officials famously rubbed the Ws off the keyboards in the West Wing before President George W. Bush took office. But the current commander-in-chief has just pulled a doozy on his successor.

As even us 30-somethings have come to accept social networking as part of our lives, here are a couple ways to keep your social platforms organized and one way that social networking is helping promote social justice...

Some blogs offer thoughtful insight and commentary on the political process, international relations or spiritual issues. Others take you through their play-by-play on attempts to literally nail jello to a wall. This post focuses on the latter category with three fun ways to vacuum up all that extra free time you have between conference calls (note to my staff: please don't read any further)...



Second Rate Snacks
Ready to end the Ho Ho vs. Swiss Cake Roll debate? Head to Second Rate Snacks and vote for your favorite junk food. A great idea even if the lack of a hyphen between Second and Rate still bugs me as an editor. The head-to-head matches include Hydrox vs. Oreos, Pringles vs. Lay's Stax and Pop Tarts vs. Toastem's Pop Ups. For the record, the bloggers (SnackGirl and her husband Ethan) and the site's readers got all three right (Oreos, Pringles, Pop Tarts). But those were the easy ones. What about Mellow Yellow vs. Mountain Dew or Eskimo Pie vs. Klondike Bar? You'll just have to see for yourself.

My new discoveries from the past week include a band from Cambridge, a perfect fall beer and an old TV show that I should have checked out a long time ago.

Paste has just launched two new blogs, TV Detail for television news and reviews and List of Day. My TV Detail reviews that used to appear on this blog (like last night's review of True Blood episode "The Fourth Man in the Fire") will now appear on the new blog. And lists like this one will be moved to the List of the Day.

The List of the Day blog will kick off with a countdown this week of the 20 Best TV Characters of the Last 20 Years. We'll be unveiling four each day, starting with #20-#17 today.

The High Gravity blog will be reserved for musings on culture and new discoveries in the realms of music, film, books, video games and beer.

It didn't take long for the show's title to make sense. In the premiere of My Own Worst Enemy, regular guy Henry is just beginning to come to terms with the the existence of his alter ego Edward, or more specifically, that he himself is Edward's alter ego. But the split personalities have to keep peace between themselves to survive. This precarious truce comes unraveled by the end of the second episode.

In the sixth episode, Heroes Season Three slowly, finally comes into focus. It's all about the villain, Arthur Petrelli, back from the grave. Not that there are enough other bad guys to spread around. The creepiest is the puppetmaster, Eric Doyle, one of the escapees from Level 5. He's found his love, Claire's mother Meredith and going all psychopath on her and the rest of the family. Meanwhile, Dr. Suresh's little lair is growing more crowded with... prisoners? snacks?

I'm not often side-tracked by the many books that come through the Paste office. We have an extremely capable editor who does a mighty fine job on our books coverage, but the beautiful hard-bound book of Paul Simon's lyrics has yet to make it past my desk. Due out Nov. 11 on Simon & Schuster, Lyrics 1964-2008 is just that—all of Simon's lyrics throughout his storied career.

In the words of Amy Poehler and Seth Myers, "Really?" Really, SNL, you're going to open another Thursday night special with a fake debate? Really? Where last week's episode was filled with laughs, this week's fell flat at almost every turn. There's only so much humor you can wring from Joe the Plumber, and while Fred Armisen does a pretty good Obama, he's yet to be given a single memorable line. And Seth, really? You can't read a teleprompter? This is prime time, baby. It'd be forgivable if your jokes were half as funny as last week, but this felt like the final half-hour of a typical Saturday Night Live where all the sketches that bombed during dress rehearsal go. There's a new SNL on Saturday Night, and I can only imagine that it's eaten up most of the writers' effort. I mean, the crazy lady from the McCain rally? Really?

We're 5 episodes into Fox's Fringe, a show about the outer reaches of science—imaginable if not particularly feasible advances in areas like telekinesis, telepathy, reanimation, invisibility—and a global conspiracy to develop and test these advances, often with murderous results. Only it sounds more interesting than it is.

Here are five reasons that I'm taking a break from Fringe: