Me: Hello?
Spouse: Hi!
Me: . . . Hi.
Spouse: How did Elaina do when you took her to school this morning?
Me: The first thing I want to point out is that it's not my fault.
Spouse: . . .
Me: I mean fine, really, at a fundamental level, I'd argue.
Spouse: What happened?
Me: Nothing too bad.
Spouse: . . .
Me: Let me just point out that it was somewhat chaotic after you left early this morning. What with the bickering, and the guinea pigs out, and me yelling at Abby to put the guinea pigs back, and Evan whining about something, and Elaina shrieking for no particular reason.
Spouse: Of course.
Me: Anyway, they all got to where they were supposed to be, and that's the main issue.
Spouse: What. Happened.
Me: Well, I did check to make sure Elaina's hair was reasonably well held together with barrettes.
Spouse: Yes . . .
Me: But somehow, in the confusion, with the guinea pigs and the screaming and thus and such, she snuck into the bathroom, took out the barrettes, and put about twelve bobby pins in there.
Spouse: Bobby pins.
Me: Yes.
Spouse: The devil child is on the loose with twelve bobby pins.
Me: Well, the good news is that I don't think the teachers will focus on the bobby pins.
Spouse: . . . . [very small voice] . . . why?
Me: Because of the cream cheese.
Spouse: . . .
Me: Yeah, uh, apparently she got some cream cheese into her hair this morning and I didn't notice until I got her to school.
Spouse: Cream cheese.
Me: Yeah. I tried to get it out. To the best of my hairstyling ability. It's not in clumps any more. It's more like highlights.
Spouse: Did the teachers see it?
Me: Well, they're still checking every kid for lice when they come in because of that outbreak last week, so I sort of assume so. I left before they said anything.
Spouse: . . .
Me: So, how's your day going?

Four out of five doctors recommend HEAT BALL ® for their patients who suffer from mercury poisoning!

Via Kids Prefer Cheese.

Mark Bennett of Defending People has discovered a secret memo from the TSA to the FBI. Was Wikileaks involved?

Go. Read.

Yes, we hate an ungodly high percentage of marketers. But as we've noted before, The Bloggess has much, much more fun hating them than we do.

Is Barack Obama a Keynesian?

Even asking the question proves one to be a racist, ignorant teabagger.

A bit of wishful thinking from Fox News, at roughly 8:30 pm Saturday night.

If the site has web editors working on Saturday night, it will be down the memory hole by morning.

Vladimir Putin Action Comics!

Note that the middle panel is an homage to Russian artist Dmitri Vrubel, a subversive from a country where being a subversive artist is actually dangerous, rather than a cocktail party pose as it is in Hyde Park.

Plenty more here.

Hat tip: Angus.

I'm much too lazy to write a thousand words on how I feel about people who are relentlessly threatened by the existence of people speaking other languages and belonging to other cultures, right here in God's own America.

So I will let a picture from the reliably awesome Criggo say it for me.

We allow comments!

More specifically, we have an active community of readers who deign to give us their thoughts.  Often we enjoy lively discussions with these readers, and they with one another.  Sometimes these readers, even the ones who were described by a proud internet curmudgeon, making the point that blogging under a pseudonym or incomplete identity is wrong, as needing to:

finish your high school or undergraduate degrees; and/or secure non-peasant jobs. But you must use your real names.

or by the same person, commenting under a sockpuppet pseudonym, as:

embarrassingly but proudly out-to-lunch. These folks, I would wager, are quite young (really thin-skinned) and pseudo-something. Is it Libertarian? I hope not. Includes some of the least-educated “thinkers” I’ve seen. No wonder they shy away from real names.

add more to our posts than we do.  Comments are the key to this blog.

As for the noted internet curmudgeon and his sock puppet, I'll quote a truly great blogger. "Read the whole thing!"

Personally I'm convinced.  I'll never write again under the pseudonym "Patrick."  I'm using my real name from now on.  Let the chips fall where they may.

And for our valued comment community, a game and a challenge.  Devise a pseudonym which sounds like an obvious pseudonym, yet could still conceivably be a real person's name.  The bar set by "Holden Oliver" (or should we name him "Caulfield Twist"?) is high.

My choices, appropriately, appear in the comments to this post.

With apologies to Shakespeare.

I love the internet.

Unlike many of you, I remember days when home internet access was limited to a few superbrains and no one else.  (A middle school friend's dad had it.  He designed the electrical systems on the ALVIN submersible, as well as a lot of stuff he refused to talk about even to his son.)

And only the internet could have made possible what I read this morning: supremely erudite Cato Institute scholar Walter Olson, commenting on Lindsay Lohan's Twitter feed.  Though the two seem to be ideological twins, Olson is critical of Lohan's research methodology on federal sentencing policy.

In the 1970s you had to read underground magazines, circulated only in certain Chicago book and record stores, to enjoy this sort of thing.  Today it's available to everyone.

It's time for the Road to Popehat the feature in which we check out the traffic logs, look at the searches that brought you here, and wonder whether universal suffrage is really such a realistic idea.

This month's theme: life's unanswerable questions.

[approximately 30 searches, differently phrased, asking for the page number in Anne Frank's diary that mentions her hoo-ha]: You're seriously creeping us out here, people.

why haven't the aliens interfered more in our latest development: They're lulling us into a false sense of complacency.

what doesn't the navy tell you: That ain't grog.

What wards off stupid people? So far as we can tell, absolutely nothing.

when did prostitution become a federal crime in Chicago, Illinois? Almost certainly before you did whatever it is you did.

When will people be required to have microchips [and two variations thereon]: That depends on whether the aliens start interfering with the implantation program.

what state do people stomp on pigeons? I'm thinking that would be a state of anger.

do really wolff man exist? [sic] Yes. But in real life they don't have good abs. They're built like me.

Who does Debbie Schlussel like? Absolutely nobody.

how to handle foolish client/what to do if you have a crazy client/what does the bar say about suing a delusional client: Hey, if you find the answer to those, please drop me an email.

roommate has schizophrenia and didn't tell me — legal? No. But only his dominant personality is liable.

how do you properly use hyperbole You beat your worthless fucking opponents bloody with it. You crush their skulls like grapes with it. You turn their pets into small wet stains with it.

what makes orly taitz a good candidate: Entertainment value.

Iggy Pop may or may not be the hardest rocking singer of the past fifty years, but he has certainly drafted the finest contract I've ever seen.

It even insults the Insane Clown Posse. Iggy should know.  He's from Detroit too.

The Geocitiesizer makes any website look like something dreamed up in the 1990s.  I have some quibbles with our page design (it's asymmetric), but when I see this artist's recreation of Popehat as it might have been ten years ago, my concerns vanish.

It appears that I misjudged that Turkewitz fellow yesterday. I apologize to Mr. Turkewitz for my rudeness.

At least I wasn't the only one who took the bait.  Can't win 'em all.