My cover story today is a look at fireworks by the numbers. I won't be fireworkin' it this weekend because I'm not a big fan of bombs bursting in air (especially after this story).

What are your Fourth of July plans? What's on your to-Doodle list?

Oh, boy. The latest fashion trend: Leggings for men, which I'm calling maleggings.

From Givenchy to John Galliano, maleggings were all over the Paris runways, New York magazine reports.

Other male trends:

>> murses: Male purses, which were recently showcased on the Milan runways. Jerry Seinfeld pioneered this trend in "Seinfeld" season 9 with his European carry-all.

>> guyliner: Male eyeliner, which is popular with Pete Wentz

>> manpris: Capris for men

>> mirdle: Girdles for men with muffin tops

>> mandals: Like Jesus, serious walkers prefer mandals over flip-flops. Mandalites also tend to wear socks with their mandals, sometimes because of foot odor problems.

Are these next?

>> manny packs: Fanny packs for men

>> mandex: Spandex for men

>> hank top: Male tank top

>> manscara: Mascara for men

What other manscaping trend am I missing?

My cover story today is about people who carefully watch the Web like hall monitors. They meticulously review the entries in Wikipedia and urbandictionary.com.

I'm an avid Wikipedia user. I go there never to source information, but just to get a general overview on a topic.

Have you ever read a Wikipedia page, clicked on a link to another page, then clicked on another link, then another, until you were on a Wikipedia page that was far diffferent from the page you started on?

Call it Wik's degrees of separation.

For today's story, I started on four Chicago-related pages and tracked the six degrees of link separation. Here's an example of two Wik's degrees of separation.

>> Start: Barack Obama >> South Side >> Bud Billiken Parade >> grand marshal >> NASCAR >> land speed records >> sound barrier

>> Start: Chicago Transit Authority >> bus >> public baths >> British culture >> fish and chips >> lard >> soap

The newest version of the Associated Press stylebook is out -- and so are some of the words that have been in the book for years.

Among the entries eliminated, according to Editor & Publisher:

>> milquetoast: "not milk toast when referring to a shrinking apologetic person. Derived from Caspar Milquetoast, a character in a copic strip by Harold T. Webster."

>> Photostat: "a trademark for a type of photocopy."

>> riffraff, barmaid, blue blood

>> WAC: "which is no longer used by the U.S. military but may describe a woman who served in what had been the Women’s Army Corps," according to the AP.

>> malarkey: "not malarky."

The reference book, which is used by journalists and worshipped by journalism students, made way for 200-plus entries including anti-spyware, high-definition, outsourcing, podcast, text messaging, social networking, snail mail, Wikipedia, anti-virus, iPhone, WMD, minicamp and wild card.

Which words should the AP add?

In the past I thought about becoming a vegetarian, not really for moral reasons, but I knew I could never give up chicken.

Ever had a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich? I rest my case.

Flexitarianism is the middle ground between vegetarianism and carnivorism. Sometimes flexitarians eat vegetarian meals and sometimes they eat meat.

At least 10 percent of adults consider themselves vegetarians even though they eat fish or chicken occasionally, according to Vegetarian Research Group, as reported by Cox News Service.

By cube neighbor Brian Moore, retired author of RedEye's "Vital Idol" blog, considers himself a vegetarian, though he loves bacon. Mmmm bacon.

He IMmed this to me:

spicyeditor: flexitarian: I hope PETA doesn't come after me, but I admit it: I sometimes eat meat. Or, should I say bacon. I love the smell, the taste, the cripy burnt edges. Veggie bacon is good, but nothing beats the original.
spicyeditor: "nothing beats the real thing."

Is there a middle ground between vegetarians and carnivores?

The Tribune's Bacon Headquarters thoughtfully dropped off "The Daily Candy Lexicon: Words that don't exist but should," which comes out next month.

I haven't had time to go through the whole book, but a few words in the "work" section caught my eye.

>> e-maul: to stalk someone via e-mail.

There's always a delicate balance of how quickly one should reply to an e-mail so as not to see too eager. The same goes for text messaging. But I don't know if you can really stalk someone via e-mail. You can certainly stalk someone via Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. You can look through their friend lists, study their Wall postings and analyze their status updates. I think e-maul should be used to describe people who are overeager to correspond with you via e-mail.

>> promotion sickness: the queasy feeling one gets when someone really stupid gets promoted.

I whole-heartedly agree with this definition and concept. Promotion sickness usually involves an eye roll and an audible sigh.

>> reply-arrhea: e-mail incontinence; an inability to stop e-mailing.

Personally, I would use reply-arrhea to describe people who hit "reply all" to mass e-mails instead of just sending a response to the original sender. Daily Candy describes this phenomenon as no cc ums, "the pesky e-mails that everyone gets -- whether they're relevant to the recipients or not."

What do you think of this list?

This morning I fell victim to an all too common phenomenon in Chicago: bus bunching.

For my non-Chicago readers, bus bunching is when buses arrive at stops in bunches instead of arriving at regular intervals.

After 20 minutes of waiting this morning, the #65 bus arrived at my stop packed with passengers. Two minutes later, another overfilled bus arrived. The bus that came 30 seconds later was not full at all.

CTA officials say they are working at reducing bus bunching by instituting bus trackers on various routes. But the #65 is not currently one of these tracked routes.

So often I Flo-Jo to the bus stop, only to be disappointed that I have to wait for a cluster of buses to arrive.

To sound off more on the CTA, check out my work bestie Kyra's CTA blog.

Is bus bunching common where you live?

I apologize for taking a break from posting this past week. I was busy reporting and being the office Magellan.

What I should have been doing is preparing for The O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships. Every year, punsters from around the world gather to sling groan-worthy puns and put on punny performances.

You better believe this pun'dit will be there next year.

The Tribune recently wrote about the championships and the Pun American Newsletter, a quarterly publication "jest for fun."

The newsletter and the Pun Club is based in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago.

I'm going to have to work my Magellan magic to find that suburb since all the 'burbs look the same here in Chicagoland.

I feel like I'm going to need a punny team name to compete in the championship. I'm wavering between SwartzCenter and Swartz Bras (for extra support).

What would your pun team name be?

Today's RedEye cover story is about people who rent paparazzi to follow them around and take their picture so they feel fame-ish.

Fame is difficult to measure. Most people would probably consider John Cusack famous but would you consider "Top Chef" Stephanie Izard or Bag Boy famous?

Reality TV (and guys with bags on their heads) have helped blur the line on who's famous. If you're a pop culture figure in music, TV or movies and I recognize you I probably consider you famous.

But, sadly, I didn't recognize Blues legend Buddy Guy last month when he was filming near my apartment in Wicker Park. I did, however, recognize JM J. Bullock at a New York City cafe a few years ago.

One of JM's last ventures was playing Serge, the wedding planner on "The Bold and the Beautiful," according to imdb.com. But I guess in my book, he's still famous.

Where do you draw the line between famous and fame-ish?

Update: New York magazine has a new article out about the micro-fame game. Would you play by these rules?

The Baltimore Sun has an interesting article about an activity that I have been practicing for years: hypermiling.

Hypermilers "strive to maximize the number of miles they get per gallon of gasoline by, say, driving at or below the speed limit and braking as little as possible," according to the Sun.

The practice has become popular as drivers try to save money on gas and help the environment.

I try to hypermile because I've always hated going to the gas station, not just because of gas prices. It's one of my least enjoyable errands.

I also hypermiled when I grew up in Sarasota, Fla. That wasn't by choice -- the pace of driving there is about 30 mph. Thanks, old people!

The Sun reported "Consumer Reports" studied hypermiling and recommended getting better gas mileage by:

>> driving at a moderate speed (55 mph instead of 65 or 75 mph).

>> keeping tires properly inflated

>> avoiding frequent bursts of acceleration, sudden braking, the use of premium fuel and driving on a cold engine.

Do you hypermile? What are some other ways you save on gas?