It’s Friday, so I’m tired and depressed thinking about a Supreme Court that rules it’s OK for the government to take your property and give it to somebody else they think will do a better job with it and it’s OK for the goverment to take your property if they think it has something to do with drugs. 

Instead, it’s Sudoku time with Mathtrek. Follow the links to the world of Sudoku.

Shelley takes a walk on the wild side and has pictures of it! Now we know what forests symbolize in old tales.

Who can’t use a good laugh on a monday? Therefore I give you Cap’n Wacky’s Death Star of Fun. Enjoy. You can thank me later.

John Smith was the only Protestant to move into a large Catholic neighborhood. On the first Friday of Lent, John was outside grilling a big juicy steak on his grill.

Meanwhile, all of his neighbors were eating cold tuna fish for supper. This went on each Friday of Lent. On the last Friday of Lent, the neighborhood men got together and decided that something had to be done about John, he was tempting them to eat meat each Friday of Lent, and they couldn’t take it anymore.

They decided to try and convert John to be a Catholic. They went over and talked to him and were so happy that he decided to join all of his neighbors and become a Catholic. They took him to Church, and the Priest sprinkled some water over him, and said, “You were born a Baptist, you were raised a Baptist, and now you are a Catholic.”

The men were so relieved, now their biggest Lenten temptation was resolved. The next year’s Lenten season rolled around. The first Friday of Lent came, and just at supper time, when the neighborhood was setting down to their tuna fish dinner, came the wafting smell of steak cooking on a grill.

The neighborhood men could not believe their noses! WHAT WAS GOING ON? They called each other up and decided to meet over in John’s yard to see if he had forgotten it was the first Friday of Lent?

The group arrived just in time to see John standing over his grill with a small pitcher of water. He was sprinkling some water over his steak on the grill, saying, “You were born a cow, you were raised a cow, and now you are a fish.”

Sometimes are odder than others, and now is such a time. I open up Google news, and what do I read, right after Schroeder Seeks Early Election; Polls Predict Defeat which isn’t odd, just uplifting and well deserved but does serve to set up the oddity, namely Dow, Nasdaq advance on Apple-Intel talks! That’s a double entodder, a twofer of oddity, a man bites dog while veternarians cheer kind of story. First, the wonderment of Apple and Intel getting together, but to follow that up with the idea that the market rallied on the news: “Wall Street was cheered by the Apple report … and could make the machines less expensive.” I guess themoney that all those traders won’t have to spend on the next Apple product is burning a stock sized hole in their pockets or something.

So after scratching my head over that, I move on to a story about Kylie Minogue having a cancerous lump removed from her breast. Nothing odd about that, but it’s from a Chinese news agency, Xinhua, that runs a picture that pretty much let’s you see where the lump was removed and allows you to compare the two. Breasts, that is. On the same page there’s also a picture link to an article headlined “Hot: Tempting Swimsuit Girls” and the picture demonstrates for once there wasn’t any bias in the headline writer. Next to that picture is another picture link with a hot tempting woman winning the Eurovision song contest. If I was at some British tabloid site I wouldn’t be surprised, but this is the State Chinese news agency, you know, home of the little Mao suit and antidote to the decadent West.

So enough Google news or my mind will boggle, but guess who watched the Incredibles this weekend? That would be me and James Lileks, that’s who. And it’s not like the first time the James and I have been synchronized. The male fruit of the Murphy loins was not at the boyscout campout as planned but was sick at home with me. So we watched movies together, including the Incredibles which even better the second time around, and amazingly enough is really a movie more for grownups than kids. Yes, kids will enjoy it too, but I think the person who will enjoy it the most is a married parent who loves the Sean Connery James Bond movies.

But that’s not the oddest thing, no the oddest thing is that somebody left a comment you only dream about: “You nailed it!!!” I usually don’t get comments, and usually they point out either where I’m wrong or where I left something out, but nothing life affirming like “You nailed it!!!”. Now I just have to figure out if I’m Katrina or a Wave.