“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right
to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

- George Orwell

My body aches all over and I've felt lethargic all day and barely able to keep my eyes open. Not from strong drink, mind you, but as part of the "come down" from the last few days of work. And yes, those days did include both days of the past weekend as I prepared for a sudden request on Friday to do a 30-minute presentation on Monday afternoon. That also happened to be the Monday immediately before one of our big marketing conferences of the year that my assistant and I have been working on for several months. I finished that late last night and came home and basically crashed — but never walked away from the wreck today for some reason or other.

I wanted to write something but found it hard to get motivated, so I decided to just do some browsing tonight for some laughs. Lately that means heading over to Are We Lumberjacks, and Rodger didn't disappoint. First he suggested that polar bears have got it coming after he found proof that they aided the Nazis in WWII.



Then he helped me decide what I want for Father's Day:

Bug Bat Swats Flies With Endless Love, Electricity

The scenario has happened countless times before. A pesky fly interrupts a dinner party. Brad, the club's resident tennis pro and notorious alcoholic, takes to his feet, Prince racket in hand, and smites the beast violently into a wall with a few tottering swings. OK, so it doesn't happen exactly like that, but you get the idea. Fly swatter, tennis racket or bare hands, the end result is the same. Boring. Enter the misnamed, but nevertheless brilliant, Bug Bat.

The Bug Bat is shaped like a tennis racket, but the similarities end there. Anything that touches the strings on the racket face receives a powerful electric shock. Gizmag got their hands on one and said the shock is enough to sting your finger if you touch it, and packs more than enough juice to end the life of an insect. Fittingly, the insect's death is punctuated with the satisfying crack of an electrical discharge. And a smile. Your smile.

The rechargeable Bug Bat retails for about $20 (or $3, if you happen to live in Bangkok).

Man, that's just what I need around the house. Having one of those might even put me in the mood to get another cat!

Ah, I'm feeling lighter. Maybe I'll post more thoughtful stuff tomorrow.