Trees getting married! How dare they? They are ruining the sanctity of marriage. Marriage is between a man and a woman, not oak and pine. Can't they just live together?

Here's a weird story from Popular Mechanics claiming to describe how governments will deal with alien first contact. But the whole article credits no sources and most of the details sound like ideas straight from ET, Close Encounters and whole lots of B-grade extraterrestrial films. Take with a grain of salt.

Australian man is searching for friends he saw a UFO with 30 years later. He can't get the incident at Darwin Airport out of his mind.

Sea lion is found on a California highway, 65 miles from the ocean.
"The animal basked in the sun on the back of a CHP patrol car."

McSweeney's asks you to discern between quotes from two war-time leaders: Bush and Palpatine.

Ghost stories of the day:
A ghost version of the tell-tale heart.
Thailand promotes ancestor ghosts as a way to keep kids off drugs and not having sex.
And John Cleese, former atheist, discovers religion, California-style.

Jakarta, home of the weird story. This week: Fears over 'green underwear' beast.

Scientists study submerged trees in Lake Tahoe that date back centuries. They're also interested in small jellyfish-like objects that live among the trees. What are they?

Someone tell these penguins that being gay is unnatural!

Motime Like the Present has been posting a lot of essays on his reading of "Watchmen." It's a joy to read his take on comics, he sees them through such a peculiar lens.

Ray Bradbury offers a literary parlor game based off his novel "Fahrenheit 451."

Jimmy Carter (yes that Jimmy Carter) is blogging about his trip to Ghana. The blog also includes photos. It seems his idea of a blog entry is about the length of a New Yorker article. So, naturally, I haven't read any of it yet.
By the way, if both presidential candidates and ex-presidents are blogging now, does that mean blogging has officially jumped the shark? Or maybe that happened when I started blogging?

Check out The Online Video Game Atlas. They've archived maps from all kinds of video games. Neat!
(Link found at Return of the Reluctant.)

Parrot who speaks back and has a sense of humor stuns scientists! I would feel a lot more interested in this if they didn't offer this little tidbit:
N'kisi's remarkable abilities, which are said to include telepathy, feature in the latest BBC Wildlife Magazine.
It's not enough that you have a parrot who can converse with people, you have to say he's telepathic too? If it's true it's amazing. Otherwise, it's simply interesting.

This an interesting article on slave-making and parasitic ants. But more importantly, it has one line of dialogue I'd love to see somebody use in a short story:

"'I went over there and looked at it and said 'Oh my god, you've got minutissimus."'

I don't know, it struck me funny.

The late, lamented Captain Kangaroo could have helped out science. Apparently, scientists are using ping-pong balls to simulate snow avalanches.

Hair pieces for cows. It's a big scandal at the Ohio State Fair.

At Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, Sarah Weinman gives a great entry about why blogs are different than journalism and what keeps us reading. Here's one portion:
"Second, the best blogs know how to construct their content to keep reading. Just when you think they've put up a fantastic post--oh wait! Here's another one. Just when you think that earlier post couldn't get more thoughtful, provoking, or controversial, they are back with another one. Blogs know how to move quickly, efficiently, and keep the reader strung along."

FARK has the right idea:
Dear CBS, FCC and NFL: We really don't care that much about Janet's booble. Please get on with your "Has the Media Gone too Far" retrospective. Love, the public.
Also, props to TMFTML for the "IT WAS A NIPPLE. GET OVER IT." headline.
Can we please stop talking about this story now. Jackson showed her breast on national TV, no one is quite sure whether it was planned or not. (Although if it was planned, it was pretty fuckin' stupid.) We've all seen Janet's breast now, and sure, we're all pleased, but it's over. Get on with life.

Feeling jealous of the pope, President Bush gets his own Bushmobile decked out in red, white and blue.