David Lynch made a series of 4 ads for Georgia Coffee to run on Japanese TV. They made up a mini-mystery, & used several of the Twin Peaks regulars & locations. (They're included on the recent TP gold box dvd.) Somehow I think Lynch would like this handy combo-pack.

There was a very funny Joe Queenan piece on this book in last Sunday's NY Times. I hadn't heard of the book, and thought he'd completely invented it as a satirical sendup of the “How Longitude or Beer or the Irish or Something Changed Civilization” genre [Queenan's term]. The bits he quoted were so over-the-top -- such a hash of grandiose & mundane -- that I figured it had to be a spoof. Pencils, I get; toothpicks, I don't. Guess I'll have to read it!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/books/review/Queenan-t.html

A bit o’ public health info I learned recently/colorfully & am trying to share: If you think you or your cat (or your catamite, whatever) might have been bitten by a bat, KEEP THAT BAT and bring it to the hospital. If you’ve into contact with bat blood (see below) and you bring the bat into the ER, they can test the bat for rabies -- if it’s not rabid (it probably wasn’t if it was flying), you get one shot & go home. If you don’t have the bat with you they’ll assume you’ve been infected and give you the whole course of rabies shots -- 8 immediately and 4 or 5 more over the following weeks. Those shots are no picnic.

A few months ago my cat woke me up in the middle of the night by pulling a bat apart *on my chest*. There was blood on the sheets, on me, on the wall, the poor blighter was still sort of flapping and screeching, my cat was amped up some kind of protective bloodlust... not the very worst way I’ve ever woken up, but close. After subduing the bat I pitched what was left of it in the bushes behind my house. When I got to the office some epidemiologists I work with told me to get the bat & go to the hospital right away. The bat was gone, of course, so at the ER I got the full course of shots: ouch times eight. Rabies is just about 100% fatal, so I was happy to err on the side of caution.

I adore bats and yes, they’re still my friends. But I now keep a butterfly net under the bed to avoid future bat-bogey hexing.