Ever wonder about the economy of Middle-Earth? Like: What do Rangers eat, where do their children sleep, and how do they pay for their beer at the Prancing Pony? What do the goblins of the Misty Mountains eat between dwarves? Why has Eriador – which ought to be hospitable to nomadic shepherds if nothing else – been mostly empty for a thousand years despite being defended by the Rangers?

This week KTEH showed a Lovejoy episode in which the owner of a splendid collection of Jewish antiques is made to crawl for having acquired it by bartering food and supplies to the ghetto of Cracow during the war. Heaven knows I don’t watch Lovejoy for profundity (Q.: Why the heck do you watch it? A.: Quiet, you.) but still – where in pop entertainment is any character with the character to stand up and say, “If you think my profit was excessive – and of course it was high, which is why I risked my life and reputation – you should encourage and honour the smuggler, so that in the next war there will be more of us, to drive prices down. But I suppose the moral thing, in your eyes, would have been to let people starve, and let all this fine work be melted down by the Nazis.”

Five Technically Legal Signs for Your Library

Q. How can you tell when the FBI has been in your library?

A. You can’t.

the USAPATRIOT Act makes it illegal for us to tell you if our computers are monitored; be aware!

And now for some news that has nothing at all to do with nude women . . . yet:

As of about an hour ago, I am the nervously proud owner of a Toyota, the first car with my name on it since some clown wrecked my Chevy in – has it really been fourteen years?

Now to deal with insurance. Kibitzing is invited.

Nude gymnasts banned

Three Romanian women gymnasts have been punished by their national federation for giving a nude performance in Japan.
. . .
The trio had “tarnished the image of gymnastics” with their naked performance . . . said the Romanian gymnastics federation president Nicolae Vieru. . . .

Spoilsport. He should look up the etymology of gymnast sometime.

Someone just offered me bigger breasts. That doesn’t happen every day.

Once again, a seaside resort restores a man’s health.

For the first time, cancer has been treated by removing an organ from the body, giving it radiotherapy and then re-implanting it. The out-of-body operation allows doctors to administer high doses of radiation to widespread tumours without affecting other organs.

The technique has been dubbed TAORMINA after a resort town in Sicily. It’s also an acronym for Trattamento Avanzato degli Organi per Mezzo d’Irradiazione con Neutroni e Autotrapianto.