Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I was in the mood for mostly lighter-side stuff today, though the first item was already in the file where I accumulate these links. More serious links later.

• A dog named Dosha may have as many lives as a cat. Stuff you don't want to hear about a dog experiencing, with the one cool bit being that she made it through the ordeal alive.
• Yet another entertaining custom 404 message. Anyone collecting these in one place?
• The third image from the The "Feature" category of The Best of Photojournalism 2003 at Poynter Online really, really cries out for a pithy caption implying something other than what's really happening in the photo. Do look at the photo without the explanation first -- as melebeth wrote in melaniesue72's journal, "it's ever so much funnier before you know what is going on." (I expect that I'd enjoy looking at the rest of the categories, and probably learn a lot, but unfortunately the site uses JavaScript navigation, so I haven't looked at the rest yet. At least the real URLs are completely contained in the JavaScript function call, so I can copy/paste/edit to move around, but it's a bloody nuisance for anyone with JavaScript turned off nonetheless. I got the link from vvalkyri who said she got it from melaniesue72.)
• An ailing, 17-year-old goldfish is placed in a sling to allow him to swim despite having a diseased swim bladder.
• Mark Evanier's story about the elephant -- if you only visit one link from this entry, make it this link.
• The Arcata Eye police blotter contains such gems as: "No less than three impassioned folk in the 2700 block of Alliance Road made a hasty judgment that intersecting their knuckles with each others' jaws would somehow transform the world into a better place. Police didn't follow the logic." And: "A woman left her 10-speed mountain bike unlocked in the 900 block of I Street, thus donating it to a representative of the town's always-active amoral opportunist faction." There are a couple of Limericks in there as well. Come to think of it, maybe I should just include a link to the index of past issues' police logs so y'all can find items like what happened 18 September 2002 at 3:24 p.m.: "Here's news that journalism professors can really grok -- after all, it's right out of the textbook: A man bit a dog."
• Well this must be the opposite of the "kittens" post to a mailing list several folks on my friends list are on (and if that's too cryptic, just don't worry about it -- it's mostly just an excuse to write something here besides, "I thought this was cute but some folks are going to blush"). Why God gives us puppies.
• And folks with compatible Nokia cell phones can obtain software that'll help with creating those puppies...
• "Sex Tips From Rick Santorum, In which the noxiously homophobic Republican senator answers your naughty e-mail" (Mark Morford in SFGAte.com) is more mean than funny, but y'know, I think I'll go ahead and link it here anyhow...
• Back in January, I mentioned a book that my brother gave me for Christmas, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire. Well it's been turned into a musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, opening in San Fransisco in May, and will be headed to Broadway in October. Looks like I'll need to schedule a road trip to NY then ... and probably start saving up now to afford theatre tickets.
• And on a more serious note, this publically searchable NATO database claims to have six bilion passports stored. You might want to peek at what information about you and your friends is accessible there.

Yes, I did look up my passport info. The photo was a better likeness than I remember it being (my most recent passport is somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon) but the issue/expiration dates were wrong. :-P