Isegoria

William Goldman (The Princess Bride) once said that network television is much more interesting when you come in partway through a show. It’s too on-the-nose otherwise.

Now someone called theblackw0lf offers this suggestion: How to make Garfield funny…remove his thought balloons. Check out the examples.

Low Sierra cites yet another example of good intentions going awry:

There are few things more distressing than aid intended to help the poorest actually causing them harm. For example, it is a sad irony that aid for HIV care is actually displacing far more valuable child immunization work in the wretched West African country of Sierra Leone. Rather than adding to capacity, the few competent staff are simply drawn away from these basic but vital services toward the high-profile, higher-paying HIV program. An integrated approach to aid giving must occur or more will die needlessly from good intentions.

It’s hard not to smile at this Elephant Trunk Heart: “Nam Choke, an 8-year-old bull elephant (L), and Boonrawd, a 7-year-old cow elephant, form a heart shape with their trunks while the sun sets in the background at an elephant camp in the former Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya, 70 km (44 miles) north of Bangkok February 12, 2006.”

I haven’t read Doonesbury in years, but this Intelligent Tuberculosis bit deserves some eyeballs.

Tour de Quoi?:

Earlier this week, at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, the mayor of London unveiled the route for the 2007 Tour de France. That’s no misprint. What the French call la Grande Boucle, the pride of Gaul, will spend its first three days in perfidious Albion, opening at Trafalgar Square. The prologue time trial, a day later, will send the caravan of gaudy advertising floats, mad photojournalists atop motor scooters, cars stuffed with VIPs, even a couple hundred bicycle racers wedged in between, past Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace. And then the first stage of the race begins on the Mall and finishes up, 125 miles later, in Canterbury, before crossing back to the Continent.

London won the right to give the 103-year-old bicycle race a distinctly English flavor with a £1.5 billion bid to the organizers, setting off Tour de l’Angleterre fever, of a sort, and for good reason. A London-to-Paris race, from The Mall to the Champs-Elysées, will link the greatest of Europe’s capitals for the first time. “When the Grand Départ gets here next summer, it will receive the biggest welcome from the fastest growing cycling city in Europe,” Mayor Ken Livingstone said in unveiling the itinerary Thursday.

Wow. Woman Carrying Human Head Arrested in Florida:

Airport baggage screeners found a human head with teeth, hair and skin in the luggage of a woman who said she intended to ward off evil spirits with it, authorities said Friday.

Myrlene Severe, 30, a Haitian-born permanent U.S. resident, was charged Friday with smuggling a human head into the U.S. without proper documentation.

Note that the crime is smuggling a human head into the U.S. without proper documentation.

As they say, real life is stranger than fiction. From 3 Arrests Cap Probe of Poached Mushrooms:

Last week, deputies arrested three men — all of Eastern European origin — who allegedly used global positioning satellite units to plot the location of chanterelle colonies, communicated by walkie-talkie and kept meticulous records of back-door sales at gourmet restaurants.

Stephen Bodio’s Querencia shares this crazy Whale Attack story:

Last Wednesday evening at just before sunset, Gerald Gormley left Santa Barbara harbor in his new 27 ft Bayliner boat. It was a brand-new boat, only the second time he had taken it out, and two friends accompanied him for a planned sunset run. They were off Leadbetter Beach and Santa Barbara Point when a 30 ft long gray whale suddenly breached – came completely out of the water – and landed on top of the boat. The weight of the whale crushed the cabin (see photo above) and it rolled off the boat back into the water. Just to show this wasn’t a clumsy whale accident, the beast came around and took another run at the Bayliner and slammed the boat with its tail. This damaged the boat’s rail and injured Gormley’s friend Robert Thornburgh. The whale’s tail broke some of his ribs, cut his hand, and imbedded some barnacles in his back. Finally the whale made a third run at the boat, rolled one of its eyes out of the water and stared at the boaters.

”You can look into most animals’ eyes and see nothing,” Mr. Gormley said. ”But not this one.”

Greeks find largest Macedonian tomb of nobles:

The eight-chamber tomb rich in painted sculpture dates to the Hellenistic period between the 3rd and 2nd century BC and offers scholars a rare glimpse into the life of nobles around the time of Alexander’s death.

‘This is the largest, sculptured, multi-chambered tomb found in Greece, and is significant in that it is a new architectural style — there are many chambers and a long entrance arcade,’ the chief archaeologist at Pella, Maria Akamati, told Reuters.