Although it’s hard to see where any value is being created:

Some enterprising youths have made a killing on eBay with my son’s TI-83 calculators — four stolen in two years. My husband is convinced he has bought back the exact same calculator four times.

Three times, I’d believe. (First time it was new, right?)

Then again, this might be the result of a limited pool of equipment. Halfway through the 1975 model year, Toyota apparently changed the starter design on the Celica — and then changed it again for the ’76 models. Which meant that starters for the 1975½ (for lack of a better term) were few and far between. In 195,000 miles, I went through three starters; I’d bet the third one was the first one with a coat of paint and a fresh Bendix.

The 389th Carnival of the Vanities is titled “Last fight of summer,” and indeed summer is drawing to a close in the Northern Hemisphere.

On the other hand, fighting goes on, some of it near the US/Mexican border, which extends for 389 miles west of the Rio Grande.

There are two left turn lanes at Northwest Distressway and Penn; I first saw him between them, sandwiched between me and someone else’s truck. He wasn’t taking up a lot of space, to be sure, but it did mean an extra bit of caution when the light changed and we started through the intersection.

Or so I thought. The second the green appeared, he was gone and halfway across before any of us lowly motorists could do the lateral move from brake pedal to gas.

And then he hung a right on 50th westbound, precisely where I was headed — except that he was going right down the center strip.

The guy was doing an honest 20 mph, which, all things considered, is fairly speedy; the SUV in front of me hung back so as not to crowd him off the road, and then exited to the side. I slowly pulled even with him, and then left him behind.

This experience left me with two thoughts:

• We really could use more bike lanes in this town;
• But where would you put one on this stretch of 50th? It’s one of the narrower two-lanes around.

I’m assuming he got home, wherever home is, okay.

Universities, with few exceptions, want new students, and Drake has come up with a campaign to attract undergraduates. The “Drake Advantage” reads well enough:

At Drake, learning doesn’t just take place in a classroom. Nor is traditional learning the only goal. Sure you’ll get an excellent education here, but you’ll also be transformed by an experience that puts opportunity into action and gives purpose to your passion.

Okay, maybe not that well enough. Let’s see some of the next paragraph:

Every moment at Drake is one that has the power to educate, to transform, to open minds and to unleash potential — to introduce who you are, to who you hope to become.

To whom did this appear to be correct English?

Were this one of those lolcat-obsessed sites, you’d see the simple word FAIL. But technically, this isn’t a FAIL at all:

See what I mean?

(From Sheena Dooley of the Des Moines Register, via Nancy Friedman.)

The FDA is worried about your cough suppressant:

Federal health regulators are weighing restrictions on Robitussin, NyQuil and other cough suppressants to curb cases of abuse that send thousands of people to the hospital each year.

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday posted its review of dextromethorphan, an ingredient found in more than 100 over-the-counter medications that is sometimes abused for its euphoric effects. The practice, dubbed “robotripping,” involves taking more than 25 times the recommended dose of a cold medicine and is mainly associated with teenagers.

Twenty-five times?

The alarm is being sounded because something is unsafe if you take more than two dozen doses at once? Hello, McFly? Twenty-five doses of anything is risky. And the riskiest of all, I’m starting to believe, is listening to the government gin up threat noises.

Sarah notes:

Out here in The Sticks, there’s no such thing as an open pharmacy at three a.m. You can go into the pharmacy section at Wally World and buy whatever’s on the shelves, but you can’t get your hands on anything that’s either locked up or a prescription drug. Put medicines like Robitussin and NyQuil out of our reach and we’re going to suffer for it. We already pay the price for meth cooks when we have sinus problems; when I go to buy a box of meds, my photo ID is put into the record books along with the amount of sinus medicine that I purchased. The state treats me with undue suspicion because I dare to properly use a sinus treatment that used to be an OTC product. Oh, the horrors.

My own best guess here: some clod at GS-whatever level figured out that you can’t spell “dextromethorphan” without “meth.”

I have Joanie to thank for introducing me to Chris James and Patrick Rynn, whose first collection of traditional Chicago blues, Stop and Think About It, was a heady mixture of originals and reimaginings, of solid instrumental chops and worthy words.

She’s since reviewed the second album, Gonna Boogie Anyway, which gives me the opportunity to express a bit of gratitude for that introduction by pointing you all to Blues Lens, her new music site.

This clip from Zillow pretty much redefines the term:

That’s a little over 10,000 acres, or about 15 square miles.

Comparison: the present-day Biltmore Estate covers about 8,000 acres.

A promotion earlier today by Allied Arts:

GIVEAWAY: 1st to tweet their fave Shakespearean line wins 2 tickets to OK Shakespeare in the Park! Romeo & Juliet this weekend!

I missed out on that, because I was contemplating this:

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

And I was contemplating that because of this: “I don’t have any girl names.”

Because, you know, she wasn’t expecting a girl, except in the sense that (1) she’d been expecting and (2) it was in fact a girl.

And after that, things got complicated.

It’s the highly-underrated Padma Lakshmi’s 40th birthday, and since I have no idea what she’s doing tonight, here’s a photo from the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, in which she’s apparently wrapped in a layer of unobtainium foil.

I admit here that I’d never seen The Scar before. The Grauniad told me where it came from:

At the time, she had been very unwell and had just spent three weeks in hospital before being diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, caused by hypersensitivity to an infection or to certain medicines. “I got out of hospital on a Friday and on that Sunday my mother, who is very religious, took me to temple so we could thank God for making me better.” Driving home from the Hindu temple in Malibu, the car was caught in a collision that sent it spinning off the freeway and 40ft down an embankment, hitting a tree. Paramedics had to cut open the car roof, on to which the tree had fallen. Lakshmi, her mother and stepfather ended up back in the hospital she had left two days earlier. All three recovered, but Lakshmi was left with a seven-inch scar along her right arm.

I suspect she probably doesn’t refer to it as “road rash,” either.

It’s real! It’s imaginary! It’s two numbers in one! And it’s how our days are numbered. Maybe.

I was young (twenty-four) and horribly immature when I got married, so I was wholly unprepared to discover one of the Primary Purposes of a Wife, which is to advise her husband that he is a bonehead. John Phillips of Car and Driver explains how this works, during a three-week vacation in Montana:

Items observed: four feet of snow at 2:30 p.m. on June 21 in blinding sunlight at a site called Valieaux Spring. When my wife saw me shift our red Chevy Silverado into 4WD low, she said, “You know what? Feel free to get out and walk ahead to see if it’s passable.” I did. I can’t express the unalloyed joy on her face when I sank to my crotch in wet snow. I was wearing khaki shorts, and my groinal region instantly triggered a phalanx of DEFCON 1 synaptic klaxons that all males understand intuitively. Then I performed a Gerald Ford-quality face plant.

Phillips does not record whether she pointed out that they’d actually strayed into Idaho.

And really, the risk of poisoned apples is pretty small:

Luke, tagging along with his mom on her errands, saw the display of girls’ Halloween costumes, sniffed out the Snow White ensemble, rejoiced, and insisted on trying it on. The surprise of finding the costume, the low price tag, the flattering fit: It was the perfect storm. What mother could say no?

Besides, it’s a major character. Nobody wants to be Just Another Dwarf.

(Via Miss Cellania.)

For a change, this isn’t from my life, but from the life of someone I follow on Twitter: “You should not shave your legs when you’re angry.”

The payback, apparently, is swift. Not to mention sharp.

I’ve visited a few vineyards, but never worked one, so I know better than to question an actual vintner’s threat assessment. Lisa, for instance, is beset by deer and evil grape-eating turkeys.

I’m pretty sure, though, that she’s grateful she doesn’t have to deal with drunk baboons:

Groot Constantia, in the heart of Cape Town’s wine country, can deal with inebriated holidaymakers — but it is invading baboons which have developed a taste for its grapes that the wine makers are struggling with.

Each day, dozens of Cape Baboons gather to strip the ancient vines — the sauvignon blanc grapes are a particular favourite — before heading into the mountains to sleep. A few, who sample fallen fruit that has fermented in the sun, pass out and don’t make it home.

If they stopped at that, it might not be so bad. But they don’t:

Last week, a 12 year old boy was left traumatised after confronting a troop who had broken into his family home.

Hearing noises from the kitchen, he went to investigate and found the beasts ransacking cupboards. When the child fled upstairs to find his babysitter, three males gave chase and surrounded him as he made a tearful phone call to his mother, while the animals pelted him with fruit.

Not even vuvuzelas can drive them away.

(Via Shooting the Messenger.)

I have to admit, his inactivist platform has a certain appeal:

Vote for me, and I promise to do absolutely nothing for the duration of my term. If elected I won’t serve — won’t vote for anything, sign anything, hire anyone, or speak in public. I’ll take my salary, read quietly at my desk, and go home at 5:00.

See also the proposed Constitutional amendment: “Congress shall make no law.”

This takes, if not the cake, at least several petits fours and a spatula coated with frosting:

Con artists went door-to-door in California selling senior citizens fake health care policies called “ObamaCare,” threatening that they’d have to go to jail unless they paid up.

Um, thou shalt not use the name of the Lightbringer in vain.

The unfortunate marks fell victim to a con, unaware that the actual jail-threatening ObamaCare peddlers will be wearing official Star Wars stormtrooper uniforms and won’t be hitting the streets until well after the midterm elections.

What’s more, said peddlers can’t actually throw anyone in jail. I think.

Mentioned in a current Entertainment Weekly article (and also this Khloé Kardashian fan site): an upcoming Kardashian-branded debit card. (If you can’t tell one Kardashian from the other: Khloé is the youngest of the three, and is married to Lakers forward Lamar Odom.)

This will probably be a big hit, since fans of the Kardashians are also, I surmise, likely to be fans of spending a lot of money. And if it turns out to be a MasterCard, I hope they respell it with a K.

Back in the spring, I noted that Ryanair, the no-frills airline based in Ireland, was about to install pay toilets in their aircraft. If you’re headed to London on Ryanair, this is the hotel for you:

At the Tune Hotel — an ugly concrete thing that overlooks an even uglier empty office block and a Costcutter shop — you pay for the room, and the bed inside it, and then everything else — towels, television — will cost you extra.

It is the hotel equivalent of Ryanair, without the general contempt towards customers from staff. Then again, it’s only been open a week. Give it time.

For now, rooms start at a mere £9, though the fees mount up pretty quickly: a clean towel and a bar of soap will set you back £1.50, and the television runs £3. Wireless Internet service? £3. Room service? Not going to happen.

Tune, which has operated profitably in Malaysia and Indonesia, expects to open 15 locations in the U.K. Who will be their best customers in Greater London?

It would be as good a place as any to go for a lunch break with the secretary you are having an affair with, but you probably wouldn’t want to take your wife there for a romantic weekend (now I think about it, I’m not even sure that you could fit two people in the room).

But its perfect customer? The politicians, 10 minutes across the river, who are currently moaning about having to sleep under their desks due to the “abortion” that is IPSA. Nine quid a night for a comfortable bed and a short walk to work should soon shut them up.

Right. Like MPs are going to walk to work.

One of the trickier aspects of writing about Cee Lo Green’s new single is avoiding the F-bomb in the title: after a while it gets tedious, except in the hands (or mouths) of the expert, which I am not.

That said, or unsaid, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen it in its undiluted form in a song title. Return with us to those halcyon days of 1978 and Alberto y Lost [sic] Trios Paranoias, who followed up their modest UK hit “Heads Down No Nonsense Mindless Boogie” with a pogoing thumper that, they must have reasoned, couldn’t possibly be as annoying as the Pistols’ “God Save the Queen.” This is not related to the Canadian punk anthem recorded by the Stiffs that same year.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Lily Allen’s bouncy little pop number from 2008, which actually made the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100, and Anna David’s 2006 dismissal of a former lover.

Other songs with the F-word in the title include the 1981 Dead Kennedys track which the British charts listed as “Too Drunk To”, which the DKs obligingly followed up with a denunciation of Nazi punks, and Jenny Owen Youngs’ evocative waltz, whose title makes no sense until you hear the chorus.

All this and we haven’t even mentioned Nilsson’s “You’re Breakin’ My Heart,” from 1972, which my mother refused to allow to be played in the house.

(I need hardly point out that these will likely not be appreciated by your boss.)

Allan Sherman, circa 1965:

My fastback has Wide-Track and Autronic Eye
Which winks when a cute little Volvo goes by

As usual, Mr Sherman proved to be prescient:

CarLashes don’t appear to be movable, alas, but whaddya want for twenty-five bucks? (It’s $45 if you order the optional Crystal Eyeliner.)

Anyone who complains about “chick cars” should be required to install a set of these for the duration.

(Via Autoblog.)