It's that time again

While hands are wrung at the seeming (and, I think, synthesized) return of Osama bin Laden, blogdom turns its attention to what really matters: the Carnival of the Vanities, now in its Mark VIII incarnation.

I have noticed that I tend to plug the Carnival more enthusiastically during weeks, such as this one, when I have no entries of my own. Not that I'm inclined to pay the guy with the really nice leather couch thirty thousand dollars in $150 increments to tell me why.