I'm really not sure what to make of this company's plan to get people to put notable quotes on their walls. However, I think this idea brings more than its fair share of fraught to the table. After all, if something from that movie's going to be scrawled on your walls, it really should be "REDRUM".
(via Pop Culture Junk Mail)

Fools. Know now that fraught is not to be trifled with.

The thing that gets me about this article is the fact that we had a first cycle of news of this guy being caught where he was listed as "Gary Ridgway", now that he's confessed, why are we now authorized (some would say compelled) to add the "Serial Killer Naming Convention" and make him "Gary Leon Ridgway." Why does this happen? Would someone like to explain this to the class?

They're droppin' like flies. Extraordinarily sucky flies.
This article tells me that I should be much more hopeful about my LaPlaca ballot. And my hopes for getting Your Million Dollar Chance of a Knifetime on air. More importantly, you can actually sense the fear in the executives as you read.

At the risk of sounding like Special Ed from Crank Yankers: "I got to vote for prothonotary! I got to vote for prothontary!"

The prothonotary is this odd post that is elected, but nobody knows what it does. I thought it was like "clerk of courts" but then we found there was an actual "Clerk of Courts". As near as I can tell, it's one of those Pennsylvania rituals somehow derived from Scotland (other examples of this include alcohol-fueled open rebellion against the state.)

The interesting bit is that I may have had the last shot to elect a prothonotary. As part of the Allegheny County Chief Executive election campaign, the Democrat, Dan Onorato, basically pledged to blow up most of the county offices. The weird thing about this election for me was watching this one, I couldn't actually tell you one policy difference between the two, aside from Onorato was telling us in ads that Jim Roddey was lying about his record. I'd really love to know where those ads were that Onorato was talking about, because they weren't airing anywhere near me. Not that I was expecting Roddey to win. He's always been percieved as a sort of shadowy figure in area politics, prior to his election, always there but never directly involved. (The fact that he looks exactly like what you'd imagine THE MAN who was perhaps not hassling you, but definitely involved in organizing a hassling campaign, didn't help.) The only reason he won the slot was because he was running against Cyril Wecht (known to most of you as talking head brought in whenever talk show X needed a coroner, or if you're not a single bullet theoretician). So, oh well, I don't think much will change, I would have liked having Roddey in negotiations to keep USAir here, but I don't think either candidate could save it.

I'm starting tonight ticked off, mostly because I'm going to miss out on the fine office tradition: The Mystery Bag of Candy. I've got no shot at it this year. Not only have I moved to the other side of the building, so I won't have access to the kitchen where the candy appears every November 1, but this year, November 1 is a Saturday. This means that unlike all previous years, where the candy would be stolen from the kids had they had collapsed into sugar coma, the kids will have three days to pace themselves, and that means nothing will be left. Not good, not good at all.

S'anyway... Why don't you score some points off this: In this article on a new artificial sweetener, you'll find a nice quick history of artificial sweeteners. (Probably 30 points a year here)

Possibly part of a continuing series of my baffling utterances at quiz bowl practices:
"Well, that explains why the sponges fled Nauvoo."
Believe it or not, it made perfect sense at the time.

And that wasn't even my neg I was trying to justify. (My bad neg: Wrong: Lilliput, Right: Ethiopia. All the names in the question sounded fake to me, and well...)

Which finding from this list of celebrity impersonators is most disturbing? (Admittedly this is a Vegas-casino-size buffet of weirdness of which I'm sure I've only scratched the surface.)
1. The abundant number of typos, e.g. Patsy Kline, giving the feeling like your buying the services of a fine Rolax watch.
2. The concept of getting celebrity golf impersonator just weirds me out. I assume this is some sort of scam that I don't know about, not being a golfer. That and the fact that the two celebrity golf impersonators are Tiger Woods (OK, I understand), and Tom Kite (?!?!)
3. I can sort of understand how they put together entire teams of celebrity impersonators, the Rat Pack makes sense, I can see how a couple of women could begin to accrue a group that would look reasonably like the Spice Girls. The one that is however throwing me a major curve is how exactly six people got together and realized that, "you know, together, we look like the cast of Renegade. We can make this work for us."
4. I would like to think that this particular one is not merely an actual excellent physical resemblance, but in fact is Don Novello, achieving a new level of situational comedy, by actually selling himself as his own impersonator.
(via
Boingboing)

Whereas last Friday it was the two most unrelated things I could find in two minutes to put together, today I have the two things I found with two minutes between them that led me to find all these:

The Cod War (1|2)
The Chocolate War
The Pastry War

To these, let's add two more, found about 2 minutes apart from each other:
The Butter War and the Marmalade Rebellion.
(various pieces via MattW, Dave Barry, and Saute Wednesday)

In other news...

Believe it or not, it is only now that the Pat Meares era ends in Pittsburgh.
(the proof)

This is interesting, mostly due to the idea that you could combine both Gaelic and Australian Rules.

I kept meaning to mention Scrabbl...no, Wordblo....no, Puzzleblog, because of its interesting approach, and because it's now including the Countdown number rounds every day. (That's Countdown, the UK game show, not Countdown, the Olbermann Evening News). It's a tack with these things that seems obvious to drive hits, but as far as I had seen no one had done it before. Now I'm a little concerned because they've added the feature of an interactive Flash version, allowing you to move the tiles and check your word. The possibly fraught aspect of this is, now anyone can do it on their own site. (See!) Hopefully this won't cause the original site to suffer.

Day 20.
20A. Medals of the World
20B. Britannica
20C. Whatis.com
20D. The Great Heresies
20E. The Simpsons Archive

I hope it's not me, but I'm sure that someone's going to play the "given the nickname of a national rugby team..." card at some tournament this year (The Rugby World Cup is afoot, in case you didn't know). Well, think of this website as innoculation against that. It'll be worth 30 points somewhere.

Day 19.
19A. IMDB
19B. Historical Atlas of the 20th century
19C. Eserver Drama Collection
19D. Virtual Museum of Computing
19E. Wikipedia

This is going to require a taste test to determine fraught capacity. If this Snapple Pie is anything resembling the company's old Cider Teas, which may have never left New York State, then it at least has a chance (the black cherry cider tea was absolutely excellent, balancing all three flavors against each other). However, the bit that completely scares me is the concept that they want the entire flavor of apple pie in the beverage, right down to the crust. We're so close to Cookie Dough Gatorade in this concept, it's frightening.

Okay, added two little things to the left hand column. The first is just an actual list of what I've called fraught, for future liability proceedings. Note that I've moved Maurice down on the fraught scale, because there's little more he can do for a couple months, outside of reenacting an episode of Playmakers.
Second bit, I've appropriated Memetracker, a script which tracks searches which lead to your page (thanks to the guy over on LaputanLogic), and the results, as you can see, are a bit interesting. Apparently people really want to go as the Labatt's bear for Halloween, and really, it's a fairly simple costume, rent bear suit, buy six pack.

I guess now might be a good time to make this suggestion, we're about midway through the first semester at most schools, so you've basically established your freshmen for this year, and you have them developing. Now might be a good time to ask them if they know of anyone who they went to high school with, who might be interested in playing in college, but are at other schools. Then if you get any hits this way, you can talk to the other teams and make sure those teams are aware of potential players. Basically, by doing this you're doing a favor for all the other teams out there. We always need additional players, and people always slip through the cracks. I'm sure some teams have done this already (I know of at least two people who joined up with teams this way), but I just want to make sure other people consider this action.

Day 18.
18A. Bardweb
18B. InfoPlease
18C. ESPN
18D. Chemistry Hall of Fame
18E. 100 Events that Shaped a Century of U. S. Business

Notes from all over:
If someone asks what exactly this weblog is about (and believe me, I ask myself that on occasion), I guess the best answer I can offer is this: This may be the only weblog where you'll find articles on Sumerian mythology, side by side with a quick analysis of the crucial role in the war on drugs played by asparagus.

Based on this article, folks, do you think that we could/should resurrect Manute Bowl as a charity event? (via SportsFilter)

Also in sports today, expect this story to become a total trainwreck in a few months. It would be difficult for me to call fraught on the entire sports-entertainment-litigational complex, but if anything could, this might.

I'll point this one out, as an excellent quick guide to your post-Soviet dictators. There's probably about 100 points a year in this for ya. (via Ed Cohn)

If, during the interview for this article, anyone uttered the phrase "look what KFC does to increase the size of its breast meat," we would have had the first irony-related fatality.

I mention this only because now you, my loyal readers, can say "I know TWO Dutch authors!" And mean it. (Cees Nooteboom + 1!)

Finally, this article gives the wisest advice I can give you all: if you leave your laptop unattended in Nairobi - leave a banana on top of it as a protection offering. That's important to know.

Day 17.
17A. Historic US Maps
17B. Famous Trials
17C. Amino Acids
17D. A Great Day in Harlem
17E. History of Economic Thought

There are a number of problems I have with this article, mostly with its statement of how it's "a very elegant upper-class field sport" in America. Come on, for America, it's a town which couldn't even keep its NIFL team.
(via Cronaca)

Day 16.
16A. Timeline of Asian civilizations
16B. Anthropology Biography Web
16C. Google News
16D. Toonopedia
16E. Constellations