THE SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL announced that Florida KFC’s were giving the venerable deep-fried, biscuit-eatin' chicken icon Colonel Harlan Sanders a face lift. All the better to reel in the younger customers, my dear. As if the 18-to-35 demographic ever needed an added enticement to scarf down junk food.

Company spokeswoman Bonnie Warschauer explains, “Yum! Brands Inc., which operates the fried-chicken restaurants, is testing a more youthful version of Sander’s image and bringing back the Kentucky Fried Chicken name to 50 stores that it’s opening.” Ask yourself: just how buff do you want the Colonel to be? What’s the proper BMI to attract a new generation of iPod zombie gravy-slurpers?

IT’S THE SEASON TO ASK THE TOUGH QUESTIONS, LIKE: Can a vampire be photographed with a digital camera? It depends upon whom you’re asking, or from which movies you gather your monster knowledge.

LOYD IS ALERTING NEWCOMERS AND OLD FRIENDS that he is writing an experimental Twitter novel (that means weird and funny) one tweet each day. At this rate, Loyd calculates he will be done in 5,665 days, or more than fifteen years, probably long after Twitter lies a-moldering in the digital dustbin of history. No matter. Warm up your thumbs and send in your own sentences to help write the anti-saga of Minimal Boy

FIVE RUSSIANS A GERMAN AND A FRENCHMAN WALK INTO A BAR... no, wait. Five Russians, a German and a Frenchman took a 105-day trip sitting still to simulate a 172,000,000 mile trip to Mars. When they got back, they were right where they started.

I recently taught a video production class at LifeQuest Academy in Sanford, Florida to a group of middle-schoolers. The students helped with graphics, script, concept, and on-camera antics. This is the result.

A WATERSHED HAPPENED THIS WEEK, though you may not have noticed. Barack Obama, already setting a number of historic “firsts,” had the very first Presidential portrait in history to be taken without the aid of film. Digital culture has proven its artistic hegemony once again.

A photographer friend of mine used to have the phrase “Digital Photography” on his business cards, when he was the only one in town doing digital. This was back in the Dark Ages, you know, five years ago. Now, digital imaging is so omnipresent in the commercial world that my friend eventually removed the phrase. No more red-lighted darkrooms, mysterious trays of magical liquids, or photo-sensitive paper you had to handle with tongs fresh out of their chemical bath. Now it’s Photoshop and a high-quality ink-jet printer all the way.

A WITNESS FOR CHRIST may be wrapped in unlikely packages. Here’s two: NASA and Charlie Brown.

NOW THAT MUTANT AMPHIBIOUS BEING Michael Phelps has more gold around his neck than 50 Cent and is no doubt currently swimming in Scrooge McDuck’s old cash-filled pool, I now feel confident enough to state the truth without fear of hurting his feelings: Michael Phelps is really goofy-looking.

IF SOME BROADBAND SERVICE PROVIDERS HAVE THEIR WAY, whatever you do on the Internet -- searches, checking the news, reading sports scores, even typing an e-mail -- may launch targeted ads right to your digital door.

I’VE RECENTLY HAD AN EPIPHANY, or a Gran Mal Seizure (can't tell which) over a new idea that’s been bubbling in my mind for a while. Corporations should pay me every time they request my information.

I ONCE SAW AN AD IN The New Yorker selling the services of artists to “paint original portraits of your family.” The ad features a luxurious portrait in oils of two children with the words: “Immortalize Them.”

QUIDDITCH FANS WERE CIRCLING the nearby Borders adorned with lightning bolts emblazoned on their foreheads like getting stamped to enter a rave. They were distributing color-coded wrist bands for the privilege of waiting in line for hours to grab the first copies of -- what was that book again? -- oh yeah, Happy Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in the remarkably successful J.K. Rowling series, or, as fans like to call her, "Jo."

So says Don Draper (Jon Hamm), a whiskey-drinking, grey-flannel-suited advertising executive in the upcoming AMC TV series Mad Men, debuting July 19th. It’s about the so-called “Golden Age” of the modern advertising industry, created by The Sopranos’ Executive Producer Matthew Weiner. And it promises to be the basic-cable ad bonanza of all time.