I wish this joke had been mine.

[Alas, this post is no more.]

Sold...to the drunkest bidder!

[Removed by FOSCO.]

Practice Safe Horticulture

[Self-censored.]

This lime-tree bower my balcony

Fosco is proud to announce a new addition to his sub-tropical balcony: an honest-to-goodness lime tree! The idea, of course, is to fill the balcony with as many plants as possible that would not be able to grow back in Michigan. At some point, Fosco should be able to garnish his Gin & Tonics with a lime picked off his very own tree.

And, of course, sitting under it will produce Romantic, Coleridgian, thoughts:

Nor in this bower,
This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd
Much that has sooth'd me. Pale beneath the blaze
Hung the transparent foliage ; and I watch'd
Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov'd to see
The shadow of the leaf and stem above
Dappling its sunshine!

Did You Know?

Pulitzer-prize-winning author Jane Smiley continues to remain silent on the subject of her brief (and, some speculate, abusive) first marriage to television personality Guy Smiley.

No, this is not where Beaches was filmed.

[Redacted because I want a job someday.]

With a face of pure demonic insanity...

No, you see. Here's the problem. You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do.

I made my first ever purchase on eBay last week, and yesterday my item arrived. Say hello to the "Tom Cruise Jumping on Oprah's Couch" bobblehead--given away by my new favorite sports team, the minor-league baseball Lake Elsinore Storm (located in SoCal, I'm told). In addition to the fabulous bobblehead, Tom Cruise night featured a number of other festivities, including a "silent inning" to celebrate the "silent birth" of potentially real baby Suri. Read about the night here. (All Cruise quotes in this post are from the transcript of Matt Lauer's interview with Cruise on the Today show, helpfully transcribed by blogger Michelle Collins. Thanks, Michelle.)

Matt. Matt, Matt, you don't even-- you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, okay? That's what I've done. Then you go and you say where's-- where's the medical test? Where's the blood test that says how much Ritalin you're supposed to get?

As someone who has dabbled in the psychological arts, I must say that it is exciting to be tutored about psychiatry from a funtionally illiterate cult puppet. Every time I look at my bobblehead, I can here an angry little voice squeaking "I've read the papers! I've read things! Where's the blood test?"

And then I thwack his head with my finger.

Did You Know?

The quality of a university's dining hall food is inversely proportional to its academic rigor.

Did I just receive... Le Fingre?

[Self-censored.]

Narrate Your Life

[Redacted.]

It's a Dickens Universe, We Just Camp in It...

[Redacted.]

Did You Know?

"Children shouldn't be targets of war."

Wow, brilliant. Read about more similarities between Beirut and Santa Cruz--seriously.