Well, yeah.

AP Wire | 04/14/2006 | Agent who shot himself during gun safety talk sues DEA over video:

Paige “is the target of jokes, derision, ridicule and disparaging comments” because of the publicity, according to the lawsuit filed April 7 in federal court in Washington.

A pear!

Square renovation bears fruit - The Boston Globe:

And it's not just any pear, said Laura Baring-Gould, the Somerville artist who created the piece. It's a Clapp pear -- a plump and juicy variety originally cultivated in the 1800s in Dorchester by the Clapp family, she said.

Not just any pear indeed. Plump, indeed. But juicy? The thing's made out of bronze. Weighs 10 tons. Costs...well never mind. Just be assured you're not likely to want a pair.

The Spinner

I've been trying for years to get a decent photo of this statue in nearby Turners Falls, MA. It's difficult to do because, maybe you've noticed, it's black. I took this picture yesterday and it's as well as I've done so far.

The statue's called "The Spinner" and it commemorates the girls who worked in the local textile mill.

This one's on her break.

Madness on the corner of Federal and somethingorother.

That traffic light I mentioned, the one that honked like Clarabell? Today it sings like a bird. What's that about? A traffic light with mood swings?

It's making me nutSo.

I think it's another freakin Neocon plot.

You know what I mean. Days off are shorter than days on.

It's some kind of time crime.

Whew! For a minute there I thought they said Tobasco.

Burlington Free Press:

Tobacco and soda taxes under consideration

But wait, I'd be wanting to exit wouldn't I?

Like the one about how the murder weapon was an icicle?

OAKLAND / No one knows why ice fell from sky / Big chunk hit park, leaving in its wake 24-by-18-inch hole:

The Oakland Fire Department's hazardous-materials team analyzed the projectile and concluded that it contained nothing more hazardous than water, fire Capt. Melinda Drayton said Monday. Fire officials have no idea where it came from, she said.

Math soars in popularity among British boys.

Sunday Times: Have you got the definitive derriere? [ 09apr06 ]:

FEW women would claim to have the perfect bottom. But for those in need of reassurance that it is within reach, a scientist has come to the rescue by working out a mathematical formula they believe adds up to the perfect posterior.

The magical figures are (S+C) x (B+F)/T = V. Though the equation looks rather complicated, it is, according to the scientist, simple.

Students behaving badly.

MIT Fraternity Accused Of Robot Hazing |The Onion :

On another occasion, a robot was locked in a room and forced to calculate pi to the 1083 decimal place in what officials called one of the worst cases of binge-thinking they'd ever seen.

Well, alas.

I'm not putting the book I just finished, Lisa Scottoline's “Dirty Blonde,” on my “books I liked” list in the sidebar. I figure when I say I liked I ought to have liked it at least more than a little. Which is about how much I liked Blonde. A little, I mean.

It's not a bad book and if you're a Scottoline fan you might very will like it more than I did. It had the misfortune on my list of being the first book after “Tale of Two Cities,” which would put just about any book at a disadvantage right there. And it might have been partly the reader's fault as well - not that she was a bad reader, I liked her, but she seemed to miss the tone now and again. A case, I imagine, of a bad match between the reader and the book more than anything else. Too bad.

So, on the whole, it was a less-than-a-lot-of-stars book for me. Which is what the next book might be too, “Freddy and Fredericka,” But Freddy has the advantage of being long and I need a long book to fill out the month. So we will see.

How blue is your caboose?

Gives new meaning to the adage about the bad penny.*

Biology News: Great fakers scammed ancient Italy:

An ingenious counterfeit-coin scam has been rumbled by scientists in Italy. But no one is going to jail, because the forgers lived more than 2,000 years ago.

*A bad penny always turns up.

Of course.

Gasoline Prices Rise As Summer Approaches - Yahoo! News:

WASHINGTON - Gasoline prices are surging again with summer on the horizon, pushing or even passing $3 a gallon in some places.

Meanwhile the price of heating oil is coming down. Just mentioning.

And speaking of mentioning, you may be relieved to learn my phone blogging thing doesn't work. I changed phones recently - the number is the same but the hardware is different so maybe that's what happened, I don't know. I will fix it when I get a round tuit because I don't want to miss the next big thing. OK, the last next best thing. Happy now?

So anyway what I was saying was I found a stoplight that sounds like Clarabell the Clown. Really. Like, honk honk. (But it sounded better on the phone.) I thought it was Howdy Doody time.

You wouldn't know.

Oh. And something else. I meant to ask. Can you say “mellifluous” unmellifluously?

Wow! Wow!

In Germany they're retraining prostitutes to work in nursing homes.

Rita Keuhen of Diakone Westfalen said: “They have good people skills, aren't easily disgusted and have zero fear of physical contact. These characteristics set them apart. It was an obvious move.”

Well. I'm not so enthusiastic about the disgusted part but...oh oh...

...Ms Keuhen warned there was one danger. “Nursing home bosses will have to be discreet so that elderly men don't try to get more than they are paying for.”

Hmmph. Ms Keuhen should go take laughing lessons, chill out some.

Otherwise, I think it's a great idea!

Remind me to check my Medicare booklet.

New class.

So I've got my teeth brushed and my head shined and a clean pair of jeans, new class starting today. Two new classes, in fact. And out of town. It's not to far, out of town, but far enough to get me travel expenses from my employer, which is good. At my rate of pay it'd cost me half what I make just to make it.

I have three ground rules for my classes:

1. If anything goes wrong it's the computer's fault.
2. Cheating is encouraged.
3. And so are questions.

Any questions?

Good. Now let's talk about the ON switch.

Work just gets in the way, doesn't it?

I just found this awesomely awesome page of Lily Tomlin clips on NPR and I don't have time to watch them all because I have to go to it. Work, I mean. Phooey.

Keep my place till I get back.

I feel...

...overinstructed.

Wow! And I thought mangoes were the problem!

But no.

(Careful, it's an audio file here.)

We're in a lot worse trouble than I thought.

(This report brought to you by the movie “Cannibal Women in the Avacado Jungle of Death,” which you can read more, much more, about at badmovies.org.)

I think this more or less means “we've sold all the damn jeans we can.”

The Seattle Times: Living: It's spring, ladies — let's dress the part:

“We've gotten to the point where it's OK to wear jeans anywhere, and now we're going the opposite way and taking something dressier and making it fun for all occasions,” said Linda Sabee, owner of Carmilia's in West Seattle. “Dresses are very versatile. You can put on heels and jewelry or toss on flip-flops and go strolling.”

Maybe I should just go back to reading about mayhem. It's simpler. Somebody mays, somebody hems, and that's that. This stuff about jeans and dresses is sort of over my...under my...beyond my...in other words I don't get it. (Hey that “in other words” trick really works!)

Who says white guys can't?

AskMen.com - Dance moves:

How To: Pretend You Can Dance

Once a theologian, always a theologian.

'Good Judas' idea provocative, but a tough sell / Early manuscript a hot topic in area's churches for Holy Week:

“I think it's much ado about not exactly nothing but much ado about not much at all,” said the Rev. Jim Bretzke, chairman of the theology department at the University of San Francisco.

Wow. Is that guy good or what?

Hang on. This Judas guy could be bigger than Michael Jackson. Fox News will go all Judas all the time (I mean the lawyers have had their day, why shouldn't the theologians get their shot?). I'm waiting for the first R to call a D soft on Judas.

This guy needs an assistant mayor named Tell.

They could campaign on the slogan “Vote for Kiss and Tell.”

Burlington Free Press.com:

Mayor Bob Kiss will ask the newly formed 2006-07 Burlington City Council tonight to confirm two appointments: Jonathan Leopold as the city's chief administrative officer, and Larry Kupferman as director of human resources yada yada

A morning in spring.

How's your eye?

Is that house green?

Oh, that's the one you wanted.

The subject - The Boston Globe:

''You're making a commitment to mankind,“ he says of the tests. But also, ''it's a tremendous screening device for you to find out your whole system and your mental ability, to see whether you're losing it or not.”

The losing it one. Well.

Go figure: There is an Iowa.

And it sounds like a helluva place.

An Iowa Town's Story Told in Portraits 21 Years Apart - New York Times:

“I shoot 'em, bleed 'em, then skin 'em,” reads the text between Mr. Feldstein's 1984 portrait of Mr. Lindley, in jeans and a cowboy hat and a dark mustache, and the 2006 image of him with salt-and-pepper hair, in billowy camouflage pants that emphasize his larger belly. “One thing I do if kids are around is I cut out the eye (it's a little smaller than a golf ball) and I swish it around in my mouth.”

Oh. Sorry. You haven't had breakfast yet? Well don't worry. It'll wear off by noon.

There are some pictures. None of eyeball swishing. That I noticed. You have to register to read it but that's free. The story, I mean. Of course.