Fun things that give me a brief respite from dusting:

Zeke's daughter has been born! And she immediately started blogging. My kind of girl. Check her out.

The Stickman web animation series is one of my favorites -- incredible fight choreography, all done by stick figures. Now you can control the action! I so suck at this game....

A story that has been widely reported, but I'm going to link to it anyway: Chinese newspaper runs a story from The Onion, about how Congress is threatening to move to Memphis or Charlotte unless they get a new Capitol building with luxury boxes and a retractable dome, as if it were fact.

That alone is funny enough. But my absolute favorite part is this bit, from the Chicago Tribune/LA Times:

Yu Bin, the editor in charge of international news, acknowledged Thursday that he had no idea where the writer, Huang Ke, originally got the story. Yu said he would tell Huang to "be more careful next time."

But he adamantly ruled out a correction and grew slightly obstreperous when pressed to comment on the article's total lack of truth.

"How do you know whether or not we checked the source before we published the story?" Yu demanded in a phone interview. "How can you prove it's not correct? Is it incorrect just because you say it is?"

"Let me repeat that bit: "How can you prove it's not correct? Is it incorrect just because you say it is?" That, my friend, is the absolute perfect Chinese functionary response. Because, God forbid they should ever admit making a boneheaded mistake. From my (admittedly paltry) experience, it's not really a laugh-at-yourself sort of culture. They're practically French when it comes to taking themselves seriously.

That story, and that quote, just made me day.

Now, alas, back to dusting. Thanks, JP, for saying you'd like to help, and maybe next time one of us will be solvent enough to fly you out from New York to help.