Chaos Theory

That'll make you believe in God. Or not.

Woman struck by lightning while praying.

"She said 'Amen' and the room was engulfed in a huge ball of fire."

FYI.

"A DRUNK lederhosen-clad yodelling folk dancer has been arrested for thigh-slapping his way across nine cars in Innsbruck, Austria."

Lost in translation

You Are SO Cursed! becomes Maudite:
"I’m feeling a certain giddy weirdness at holding, for the first time, a novel of mine translated into a foreign language. I wrote it. But it doesn’t look like what I wrote. My Vick Marotti has a tendency to drawl out things like, “Hey, I’m gonna go to the mall. Wanna come?” The French version, however, minces around in her purple bustier and inquires, “Perhaps you would like to accompany me to the commercial center? Let us go!” In my book, Vick waxes rhapsodic on the pleasures of cheese-on-a-stick (“Mmmm! Cheese! On a Stick!”), but the French Vick makes me slightly ill by extolling the wonders of cotton candy. “Un joli nuage de sucre!” Pretty sugar cloud, my ass."

Attack of...

the Killer Tomatoes.

Another Star Trek band.

(Have I mentioned them before?) Stovokor.

I have to say it...

Good cop! Lotsa donuts!

That's a cool idea.

The Counterfeit Crochet Project. Making designer crap, but in yarn!

If I didn't think almost all designerwear was so frigging boring, I'd hop right on this.

Love is strange.

Circling like sharks, baby. (NYT) Man, doesn't this drag on?

"SOMETIMES life throws people together a few times before it finally hits them that something significant is going on.

So it has been with Marie-Elizabeth Mundheim, now 39, and Taylor Mali, 41. The two have been circling each other since 1979, when she was a ninth grader and he was an 11th grader at brother-and-sister prep schools in Manhattan. There was an attraction, nothing more, and soon he was off to Bowdoin College. They lost touch.

Six years after their first meeting, Ms. Mundheim was in Berkeley, Calif., having recently received a degree from Oberlin College and shed a boyfriend. While wandering in Berkeley, she ran into Mr. Mali.

The high school friends made a date for the following afternoon, which stretched into a chilly evening lounging on his porch. Mr. Mali brought her one of his sweaters only to discover that she had already put on one of her own. That was when he realized he was in love with her. "I knew then that I'd be good at anticipating your needs," he told her years later. The next morning (yes, the date lasted that long) he drove her to the airport, thinking that a relationship had begun.

But Ms. Mundheim was not ready to involve herself again so soon and rebuffed him. Mr. Mali, a poet who has won the National Poetry slam four times and a voiceover artist for commercials, took the rejection more or less in stride. "I felt as though I had had a brush with absolute true love," he said. "I considered myself lucky to have been in her presence for such a brief time."

In 1993, he married someone else. Two years later he sent Ms. Mundheim a cassette of his poetry, which included "I Want a Woman":

I want a woman in whose presence the room becomes suddenly hot.

Who, when lost in her beautiful eyes I completely am articulate not!"

The poem did not bring her closer to Mr. Mali, but playing it became her litmus test for deciding on whether to date other men.

Near the end of 2003 , Ms. Mundheim, sick of being single, made a list of the qualities she desired in a partner — someone who was passionate, creative and generous of spirit. She realized that Mr. Mali came awfully close.

But when she bumped into him soon after that, she learned that he was living with a girlfriend, having separated from his wife. Nine months later he called her in California, where she was taking a life coach certification course, to tell her that he and the girlfriend had broken up. During a second call, she asked him what his intentions were.

"I want to marry you," he said. "I've wanted to be with you since I fell in love with you on the porch in Berkeley."

Her reply? "Good, now we can date."

But first they waited for a month, what they called the "trusting time." "We both did a lot of inner work, especially him, getting his life together in order to initiate a new relationship," she said. Then in September 2004, intent on proceeding with his divorce, he flew to the coast to be with her. But then news arrived from New York that Mr. Mali's wife had committed suicide."

Frolic and Detour sums it up in a more amusing manner: 

"Boy and girl (boy will eventually win the National Poetry Slam four times; girl will attend Oberlin; yowza) meet when they're in high school, they keep running into each other, she acts like a flighty weirdo because she's a little too much of a product of Oberlin in the not-so-good way, he sends her poetry on tape which she promptly uses to evaluate other potential suitors, she comes to her senses eventually after some deaths and other tragedies force them both to reevaluate. She trains to be... a life coach. Their wedding guests write good wishes on purple index cards and throw them into a blazing fire, because it's that kind of wedding.

This is an exceedingly easy story to make fun of. Seriously. The National Poetry Slam? Dude. The Incredibly Meaningful Sweater Incident? DUDE.

But anyway, I have learned one thing about stories like the Mundheim-Mali story, and here it is.

Don't laugh. Because your story will probably be stupider.

Honestly, every story I've heard that ends well sounds, in some way, either dumb or horribly off. You met... how? He did... what?"

Also for your perusal: how a Mac fan proposes.

You're not allowed to be a politician without kids.

No, really, you're NOT. Even if your wife isn't capable of popping out kids, clearly you shouldn't have married her if you ever wanted to go into politics.

Oh yeah, and if you don't have kids, it means you're gay.

Sex on campus.

Boinking in the arboretum, nookie in the library.