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Too tired for coherence. I may be coming down with a cold. In the meantime, while you wait, some links. Talk amongst yourselves.

Merriam-Webster rocks on with its bad self. Dictionaraoke. God bless these people. Found via Mighty Girl, which found it via xBlog.

Gone & Forgotten offers “the worst, the lowest, the most ludicrous, the least memorable and the downright un-funkified of the whole world of comics.” Where else are you going to read about Hansi, the Girl Who Loved the Swastika? Found via xBlog, which found it via Boing Boing.

“When the audio play pattern changes on your Tickle Me Elmo Surprise…if a new message spoken by your Tickle Me Elmo Surprise is a special message in which Tickle Me Elmo Surprise uses the word ‘Congratulations’…” So, how many times can you work the words “Tickle Me Elmo Surprise” into everyday conversation? Try it, it’s fun! Found via Boing Boing, which found it via Exciting Monkey Bum Stories For Boys and Girls.

And really, when the words “monkey” and “bum” pop up like that on your screen, that’s as good enough a reason as any to call it a night. Maybe I’ll just go watch The Daily Show and fall asleep. But, before I do, one final link: Lazarus, which Margaret describes as “a trivial comedy for serious people” and which she seems to be writing once again.

Some thoughts for today:

I think my favorite military operation name from Paul Ford’s random generator has to be Operation Wraithlike Sweet Baby Jesus.

I think if I had the money, the patience for an eight hour car ride, and a walking knowledge of downtown Boston, this is where I’d like to be this weekend.

I think, all things considered, last night’s episode of The West Wing was pretty keen.

I think the poem I wrote last week makes it sound like it’s still cold here, when everyone’s getting by with short sleeves again. The leaves have changed color, but our jackets have found their way back on to their hooks. The sky no longer looks like it’s threatening snow.

I think fiddling with Blogger’s template is harder than it looks, even if all you’re trying to do is add permanent links to your posts.

And I thought I knew nothing about web design. Turns out, this could be so much worse.

So I’m over at Metafilter this morning, reading about how The National Review has decided to let columnist Ann Coulter go, and I’m genuinely amazed that anyone could view her as a martyr to free speech. This is the woman who called her editors spineless girly-boys (among other things) on national television and in the Washington Post when they refused to print a column where she angrily called for the detainment of all “swarthy males” in the wake of last month’s terrorist attack. The National Review is under no obligation to print anything she writes, and if they reach an editorial impasse and refuse to print an individual column, that’s not the same thing as censorship. Coulter was not let go because of a difference of opinion or because her editors feared the backlash from a politically correct Left. As National Review editor Jonah Goldberg so eloquently points out, her syndicated column was dropped because of poor writing and her subsequent insubordination in the national press. “Ann didn’t fail as a person…” Goldberg writes, “she failed as WRITER, which for us is almost as bad.”

In other news, Dean Allen of Textism suggests, “Do not measure distance in kilometres; use gila monsters instead.” Oh, and guess who’s come to town?

I find, quite suddenly, that I have too much to read. Last year, I made myself a promise that I failed to keep–I was going to re-read Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, and I wanted to do it before Halloween. I wanted to really experience October and remember a book I haven’t read in…my gods, has it really been eight years? Yeah, I suppose it has. But I was distracted by something else, another book or too little time, and I never got around to it. This year, I’ve made myself the same promise. But I’m desperately in love with the book I’m reading right now, Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and I have five hundred more pages to go. And on top of that, the film of Alan Moore’s From Hell opens in less than three weeks, and I would like to be finished reading that before going to see the film. I often feel like I read too slowly, but it’s rarely built up like this. It’s a nice sort of pressure, sure–too much of a good thing–but it’s pressure nonetheless. Maybe I should have learned how to speed-read.