From the Associated Press:

President Bush, center, struggles over a hat with a Mexican dancer as Mexican President Vicente Fox, left, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper look on in Chichen Itza, Mexico, Thursday, March 30, 2006. Secret Service agents eventually forcibly removed the dancer from the site, leaving the hat for the president. The three leaders took a tour of the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, as they began their two-day meeting in the south of Mexico. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Truly bizarre.

Now, update your blog.

In Kate’s honor, a site capable of sending anyone into a diabetic coma after browsing it.

Want still more World of Warcraft or want to play a character of a new race before the Burning Crusade expansion comes out (later this year, hopefully)?

Check out the Murloc RPG, a Flash-based game that, surprisingly, captures a fair amount of the flavor of World of Warcraft, featuring the adventures of Murk, a murloc living in the Elwynn Forest. You roam the forest on quests from your chief and other important murlocs, fight wolves and other creatures, explore a miniature dungeon, level up, spend talent points to customize your character and, eventually, visit some somewhat surprising areas. (After you reach the end, save your character and reload it to get to explore the area you see in the ending animation and get to have some more fun.)

For those of you out there (Peter) who download shows off iTunes, there’s a free “Best of Ghost Hunters” from the Sci-Fi Channel now available. Get it while it’s hot/free.

Josh Friedman, the screenwriter soon to be best known as the a writer of the forthcoming masterpiece, Snakes on a Plane (no, really), was once mostly known for his very funny blog about Hollywood. Then he had the selfishness to go and get cancer and, not surprisingly, the blog took a more serious turn.

In the wake of his cancer surgery, Josh is in an introspective mood, and discusses life, writing, his eulogy and the words he knows will make him immortal:

I had to be at the hospital two hours before surgery and my biggest worry was leaving before my son woke up. My second biggest worry was not leaving before my son woke up.

As it turned out, he woke up a few minutes before I had to leave. I hugged him, told him I loved him and that I would see him later. Toddlers have no sense of time and as far as he was concerned, the word “later” meant either “when you walk around the corner” or “oatmeal.”

I knew that “later” meant one of two things: either “five days from now when they let me out” or “never.”

When I was young my parents took me to the funeral of a family friend. I’m sure at the time I thought she was old. I now realize she was probably younger than I am. She died of cancer, I don’t remember what kind, and who really cares. Dead is dead and no one ever asks the families of shooting victims what kind of bullet it was. What I remember was she had written her own eulogy. I don’t remember a single word of it, but I remember hearing her voice in the words. It felt like she had traveled some way to find us, and I was happy she had taken the time to visit. I missed her less, and wasn’t nearly as scared of where she had gone. She was real, she was present, and while she was less than alive she was much more than dead.

Back then I knew that words were fun toys and that I was a clever little boy who pleased the grown-ups who watched him play with pen and paper. I could rub two sentences together but did not understand that doing so might create fire. This was the first time I had witnessed a spell being cast.

I won’t spoil the rest. You really ought to read it for yourself.

I feel sorry for the guys at The Onion. Making up fake news must get harder and harder when real life keeps raising the bar, as this story from the Associated Press illustrates:

Britney Spears will soon be giving birth again — in Brooklyn, as a sexy sculpture that has drawn thousands of hate e-mails.

“This is a new take on pro-life. Pro-lifers normally promote bloody images of abortion. This is the image of birth,” Daniel Edwards said of his work, to be unveiled at a Brooklyn gallery in April, months after Edwards’ sculpture of Ted Williams severed head stirred up an artistic storm.

The life-size pop princess is naked and pregnant, crouching face-down on a bare-toothed bear rug as the baby’s head appears on the opposite end.

I had to check to make sure this wasn’t an early April Fool’s joke article.

Protesting students could face $375 fine.

• That third paragraph is supposed to read thus:
  

  Hesperia Unified School District Police Chief Bob Mosley saw three groups of students leave class and head toward Main Street, carrying signs protesting H.R. 4437.

  The layout software for the paper justified the text, which the Web page building software took at face value.

• The full text and other raw data on H.R. 4437 is available online here.
• It’s always interesting writing for an editor you don’t normally work with. It might seem that a properly written story is a properly written story, but every editor I’ve ever encountered had certain things they wanted from a story that were unique to their particular editing style (often based on how they write themselves, in the case of those that were newswriters themselves once upon a time).

  This story was edited, I believe, by Daily Press Editor-in-Chief Don Holland, as editors Matt Durkee and John Iddings (the latter of whom I have worked with when Peter takes his yearly vacations) were both out on Monday evening.

  There were a few things I forgot about Daily Press style, including the Hesperia dateline, which changed my lede slightly, since I didn’t need to mention Hesperia in it, as I did in the original version. (We don’t use datelines in the Star, since 99.9 percent of our stories are set in Hesperia.) Other minor details were changed as well.

  My original story will be the basis of a story in next week’s Hesperia Star.

New postmaster is sworn in, Graffiti costs city $150,000 annually, Marriott Courtyard hotel planned for Hesperia, Sheriff’s log and other stories.

• I have to say, the graffiti story turned out pretty well for what started off as a quickie idea. And I finally learned how to spell “graffiti,” at long last.

Happy birthday to the other Jennifer Yarbrough.

Leaving aside the TV show tie-in nature of this album, the Desperate Housewives soundtrack stands up nicely as a concept album, with female artists covering classic tunes relating to love and domestic life.

A glance over the list of artists will suggest the soundtrack will be somewhat uneven, and that’s borne out by a through listening. SheDaisy doesn’t really have the chops of Martina McBride, Liz Phair or the Indigo Girls (and the latter don’t even seem to be trying particularly hard).

Some artists, like Phair or Gloria Estefan, try and put their own spin on things, while others do a more note-for-note classic rendition. It’s typically those trying to make the song their own who succeed the best, and there are enough such performances to make this album work.

Fun stuff, although it’s a shame more of it never made it onto the actual TV show.

A recommended purchase for fans of Liz Phair, Gloria Estefan or Martina McBride.