• McSweeney's offers us Advertising slogans targeted at the Lovecraftian Elder Gods. Remember: Choosy black goats with a thousand young choose Jif.
  
  
• Part II: maybe they should just call it Cthulhu Friendly? Sid makes the mistake of breaking the seal, with some unexpected results.

• Humor: The prizes from my stint on NPR's Weekend Puzzle have been arriving, piece by piece. First, I received an envelope containing one (severely mangled) Weekend Edition pin. Chris was able to straighten it out so that it was wearable. The book of Will Shortz puzzles showed up a few days later. One day, I came home and there was a Merriam-Webster encyclopedia on the front porch. Most recently, I was coming in through the garage, and there was a large box. "This must be the Scrabble game," I thought, as I wondered why they had shipped it in such an enormous package. They had shipped me a case of Deluxe Scrabble sets.
  
  
• Comics: Get Fuzzy. I love Satchel. Plus, another cute one from Mutts.
  
  
• TimeSink: PopCap Games. I'm addicted to Alchemy right now. Check them out at http://www.popcap.com/. Diamond Mine/ Bejeweled is also highly addictive-- and there's a downloadable version for the Palm.
  
  
• Rejoicing: I finished doing my 1040 and Mass. Form 1! For the love of Cthulhu, do not attempt to do the Mass. Form 1 on paper; I nearly had an aneurysm. Go to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue site and use their free webfile app. No charge to file electronically, and you don't have to try and divine your way through the myriad calculations and random worksheets. I wish I had gone there first.

Atlanta, Ga. (SatireWire.com) - Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center today confirmed that foot-and-mouth disease cannot be spread by Microsoft's Outlook email application, believed to be the first time the program has ever failed to propagate a major virus.

"Frankly, we've never heard of a virus that couldn't spread through Microsoft Outlook, so our findings were, to say the least, unexpected," said Clive Sarnow, director of the CDC's infectious disease unit.

We ought to have miles of UFO sightings by now. I'm losing my faith. The other night TiVo recorded an X-Files for me - a first season episode whose synop was almost touching: "Mulder believes the government is covering up evidence of a flying saucer." You don't say.

The first thing I noticed about my new employer was how the halls of the offices ran rampant with representatives of alt culture. Up to that point managers' hiring practices seemingly consisted of recruiting anyone they gamed, partied or slept with, and preferably all three. If you were a Seattle gamer in 1994-95, you had to be willfully incompetent to not get a job at Wizards. (That happened, of course. One guy interviewing for a customer service position expressed enthusiasm at the anything-goes dress code, since it meant he could wear his "Star Trek" uniform to work every day. I myself interviewed Raven C.S. McCracken, who was already a legendary industry boob for his terrible self-published role-playing game, the World of Synnibarr. When Raven told me that if I didn't hire him his next job interview would be at Burger King, I thanked him for his time and politely showed him the door. The aspiring Enterprise crewman suffered the same fate.)

Peanut Reader and peanutpress.com will be called Palm Reader software and Palm Digital Media, respectively. Palm Digital Media, which will become a group within Palm, will retain the 17 peanutpress.com employees and remain in Maynard.

Host Melissa Block visits the staff of The Onion - the news-satire tabloid self-identified as 'America's Finest News Source.' The Onion recently moved its editorial offices to New York City, and Melissa caught up with them during one of their planning meetings.

Hang your burnished head in shame, you language slaughterer, you egregious verbifier of stout nouns. Stoppage of such linguistic mauling is required forthwith. Reformationing, in short, is demandfully requiremented.

It came after Square Pegs, which I don't directly remember, but I liked Whiz Kids. It came on the heels of WarGames and was about computer geeks. It was vaguely spun-off/related to Simon & Simon.

If I remember correctly, the theme song was some sort of computer music a la Switched-On Bach.

Janelle Brown's article does have one glaring mistake, though. [She writes] "it was "Freaks and Geeks" that first embraced the idea that the weirdos are more interesting than the normal people and worth a prime-time TV show."

Any *real* geek knows that the first geek tv show was Square Pegs. A geek classic at so many levels. A theme song by The Waitresses (best known for "I Know What Guys Like" and the x-mas classic "Christmas Wrapping"). Written by an original SNL writer. Sarah Jessica Parker and Jami Gertz. A character named Johnny Slash. Cameo by Devo. What's not to like?

Salon: I confess that as a general rule I don't like puns, so I consider it a huge accomplishment of this book that I love the puns in it. My favorite pun is the cart without an engine or anything to pull it. To get somewhere in it you have to be very quiet because it goes without saying.

NJ: That's my favorite also! My father was a punster. I had the same reaction that you do; he'd say something and I'd groan. There's no way you can deal with that as a child. You're not that facile or quick. Years later I got to appreciate it. He'd sometimes walk in a room and say, "Ah ha! I see you're coming early since lately. You used to be behind before but now you're first at last…"

"Such disrespect is but the tip of an iceberg of ignominy heaped upon geeks in Chris Carter's new TV series "The Lone Gunmen," a show that triumphantly insults the very constituency it's supposedly trying to target. Any true geek will watch this show and wince. But fortunately for today's techies, "The Lone Gunmen" is far from the only place on the TV dial where they can find their own kind: In accordance with the cultural rise of all things nerdish -- the Internet, digital culture, hackers -- we are also being blessed by the emergence of what can only be called geek TV. On Comedy Central and the Learning Channel, programs such as "BattleBots," "Junkyard Wars" and the upcoming "Robotica" feature geeks in their home habitats, wielding power tools and wreaking mechanical havoc…"

With an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease leaving British sports in disarray, what's a gambler to do?

Well, at least the hamsters are running.

In this nation of inveterate bettors, the wagering world is getting creative -- or maybe a little desperate -- as a severe outbreak of the livestock ailment has quieted the action at the gambling parlors that dot the streets of most major British cities.

One Internet betting site is offering hamster races to keep bettors happy until the schedule of more well-established sports returns to normal.

"We've been running hamsters in these little dragsters," said Ed Pownall, a spokesman for the online company, Blue Square. "You put an exercise wheel in the middle of a 10-inch-long dragster. As they run in the wheel it moves the thing forward."

Then we go back upstairs for more work. I try to pretend that she's never seen these toys before, but no one's fooled. She has one item that's full of jingle bells; I like to shake it and tell her that this is de time uf de Pon Fahr; then I roll up my eyes to simulate de Blud Feefer. No, she doesn't get the reference either.

Equality Expert 'Harassed Air Hostesses'

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The Swedish cabinet's gender equality expert harassed airline hostesses and vomited in the lap of his boss, Sweden's female equality minister, on a flight to New York Saturday, a Swedish tabloid reported Monday.

A spokesman for Agriculture Minister Margareta Winberg, who is also responsible for gender equality, told Reuters a report that gender equality expert Lars Back had vomited was accurate but that no harassment had occurred.

Sweden is holding the rotating European Union presidency and Winberg and top government officials were traveling to the United States to represent the EU at a United Nations conference, The Commission on the Status of Women.

The tabloid Expressen said several passengers on the Delta Airlines flight to New York from Stockholm had found Back's behavior disturbing.

"He was insolent and his behavior toward the women of the cabin crew was abusive," the paper quoted one passenger as saying.

Winberg told Expressen through a spokesman the incident had been embarrassing. Back told the paper he had had too much to drink but denied that he had harassed anyone.

Two Contests - Curatorial and Interpretive
Preliminary plans for the "Do You Have What it Takes?" contest call for the committee to post several new works of art on the MOBA web site. Contestants will tell us which works ought to be added to the MOBA permanent collection and why.

The "Who Do You Think You Are?" contest will invite contestants to write a narrative description of one or two sample works of art.

Winners will be allowed to continue curating and interpreting at exactly the same salary earned by the recently released MOBA executives.

Rejection Collection Auction - April 1
The art is piling up! Many well-meaning contributions are, after much soul-searching, determined not appropriate for the Museum of Bad Art Permanent Collection. With some the decision is made in seconds.

As in the past, MOBA will dispose of this art in a charity auction. Every piece auctioned will include a certificate of authenticity that the piece has been rejected by the Museum of Bad Art.

The Auction will be held at the Dedham Community Theater in Dedham MA on April 1. Friends of MOBA who are not in the Boston area will be able to bid on some items via internet or phone. Details to follow.

The whole genre of beauty events may be primitive, but the networks persist in trying to "usher them into the 21st century." On tonight's "Miss USA Pageant," for example, the traditional "Parade of States" will be replaced by a stylized music video. Plus, there will be an on-location swimsuit shoot. The spectacle begins at 9 on Ch. 4, with William Shatner hosting.

Well, everyone has been asking about this product and we have been answering a lot of questions about Japanese products getting exported to the U.S. We have decided, as always, to be very up front and honest about how this whole process works. It is not very complicated but we always want our customers to know that working with Japan is sometimes very difficult and new products are hard to come by.[…]

One of our distributors has ordered the maximum they can which is not very much considering once it gets here they have to supply their local grocery stores with the product BEFORE we can even get any. We have tried to reserve several cases BUT only about 3 or 4 of both flavors. And there is NO GUARANTEE that Japan will even ship what our distributors have asked for. Products like Glico Pocky Mousse, which are selling crazy in Japan, get exported to the U.S. only when they have lost their Japanese popularity.

Taurus: (April 20--May 20)
You've always thought the difference between you and other people was your uncommon empathy, but it turns out it's the tentacles.

Cancer: (June 22--July 22)
You knew that the veins in the human body, stretched end-to-end, would reach from L.A. to Tokyo, but it's still impressive to see it firsthand.

Leo: (July 23--Aug. 22)
You will learn from bitter experience that it's not a good idea to ask certain people how they're doing.

Sagittarius: (Nov. 22--Dec. 21)
You've listened to it over and over, but you still fail to see how Frampton is supposed to "come alive."

Fleet announced plans to install the first "talking ATMs" in New England and will build voice-guided ATMs in Lowell and nearby New Hampshire locations within two months.

The initiative, announced yesterday, calls for upgraded ATMs to provide audio instructions for blind or visually impaired customers. Talking ATMs are scheduled to be installed in the Lowell Plaza, the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua, N.H., and the Mall at Rockingham Park in Salem, N.H.

Each machine will include a universal jack where visually impaired users can plug in headphones and receive private audio instructions for all transactions. When prompted, users can then enter information using braille on the keypad.…