A school counselor hit the jackpot when a computer error caused the state of Minnesota to issue her a $2.5 million check.

Sabrina Walker did what any sensible, school counselor-type would do. She cashed the sucker. And bought thousands of dollars worth of jewelry, electronics, cars (4 of them), and limousine services (when she was too tired from shopping to drive one of her cars). And -- being a sensible, school counselor-type -- bought a $500,000 certificate of deposit and a $500,000 Treasury bond, and funded two retirement accounts.

Sabrina's shopping spree came to a screeching halt when the state caught on and arrested her. The school also put Sabrina on leave. I suppose it would have been kind of awkward to counsel kids on how to get into Harvard, when you're sitting behind bulletproof glass, with that staticky phone and guards eavesdropping on your private conversation.

School counselor gets millions after typo [MSNBC]

The latest miracle facial promises to leave tortured, dull and sun-damaged skin healthy and silky smooth.

So what if it's made from nightingale poo. Before you say, "No way, Jose," let Hari Salem, owner of a West London salon offering the new treatment, reassure you:

The treatment was pioneered by the Geisha girls of Kyoto. It is an ancient tradition that goes back centuries and is totally organic.

Totally organic, huh? Well, so is poopy. Oh, wait...

Bird poo used for beauty face mask [metro.co.uk]

It looks like beer, foams like beer, but tastes like apple juice.  They have kid champagne, wine and cocktails too.  Kampai!

Japanese Beer for Kids [shortnews.com]

Hallelujah! The Creation Museum opened yesterday, in the heart of Jesusland, AKA Petersburg, Kentucky. The $27 million, 60,000 square foot museum presents a literal interpretation of the Bible, complete with animatronic dinosaurs.

Never mind that dinosaurs are nowhere mentioned in the Bible. They were there! C'mon, don't you remember "The Flintstones," "B.C.," "Alley Oop"?

Besides, as professor Robert Riehemann points out, kids like the dinosaurs:

They've got a lot of beautiful animation to attract the kids. It's as believable as any fantasy science-fiction movie or museum that you'll see.

Especially plant-eating T Rexes with puppy dog eyes. Because the lawyer-eating kind depicted in "Jurassic Park" is just too scary. And just wrong! Hollyweird again trying to lead our vulnerable youth astray.

Oh, and Thou Shalt Have Dragons, too. Because dragons are cool.

So where are all the dinosaurs and dragons now? They're in heaven. They all died in the Great Flood, after drinking too much Jack Daniels and falling off the Ark.

Thousands attend opening [Cincinnati Enquirer]
Creation museum brings dinosaurs on board Noah's Ark [Times Online]
Creation Museum [Flickr]

If you really are what you eat, my 4-year-old -- like most, I imagine -- would be sporting feathers and a beak. All the food she eats is beige, and the Queen of Beige Cuisine is, of course, the Chicken Finger.

This anatomical anomaly -- a shortening of chicken finger food -- is no longer confined to Mickey D's and the homes of lazy suburban moms like me. It's everywhere, even the rarified Park Slope environs of New York Times reporter/parent David Kamp:

I came to the realization that America is in the grips of a nefarious chicken-finger pandemic, in which a blandly tasty foodstuff has somehow become the de facto official nibble of our young.

These days, even the most sophisticated restaurants have kids' menus, with a list of foodstuff straight out of a Midwestern diner. It's the perfect storm of weary parents and complicit chefs.

Happily, a few chains such as Disney and Ritz-Carlton are starting to break free of the iron claw of the chicken finger. As should we all. Let me know how it goes.

Don't Point That Menu at My Child, Please [NY Times]

Another great British tradition has bit the dust. The country's top doc is shaking a stern finger at pregnant pub crawlers, saying women who are knocked up or trying to get there should stop drinking alcohol entirely.

Fiona Adshead admits that the new advice -- prior guidelines said women can drink up to two "units" twice a week -- was not in response to any new medical evidence.

So what gives? Adshead says women are often "confused" about what drinking in moderation really means.  She is so right. I don't know about you, but I often forget how to count to two, especially when I'm drinking. And that "week" thing is confusing too. Is she talking 24/7? Or is it like a cell phone plan, so you get, like, unlimited drinks on nights and weekends?

The change, Adshead says, sends

"a strong signal" to the thousands of women who drank more than the recommended limit that they were putting their babies at risk.

Here's what I think:  Since drunk men cause about twice as many fatal car accidents as women, let's send a strong signal to them by setting their recommended limit at zero as well.

Zero -- the new alcohol limit in pregnancy [TimesOnline]

Hospitals are terrible places to be sick. It's like living in a casino, except you're stuck full of tubes and don't have any chips. It's bad enough for adults; for a preemie who has only known the dark, warm, quiet aquatic cradle of a uterus, hospitals must seem like the worst kind of purgatory.

Now there's a movement to make NICUs more preemie-friendly. These kinder gentler "womb rooms" try to mimic as many of the uterus' qualities as possible, with uninterrupted sleep, indirect light, and lots of kangaroo care (time with mommy). The results, according to a recent study, are everything you'd expect:

a faster transition to independent feeding, fewer days needing extra oxygen, better growth and fewer days in the hospital. Once home, the infants showed improved attention and motor skills, and better cognitive and social skills.

From the preemies' perspective, it's a no-brainer. It seems about time someone finally asked what they thought.

For the Tiniest Babies, the Closest Thing to a Cocoon [NY Times]

A weekly roundup of news in parentville, including the good, the bad, and the utterly trivial.

The Supreme Court ruled that parents of children with disabilities need not hire lawyers to sue public schoolzzzzzzzzzzzz ... sorry, must've dozed off for a moment.

Let's try again. Carlos and Fernando, a gay flamingo couple in England, have become the proud foster parents of their very own chick. Hey, I think all pink animals should be gay. Elyse Gazewitz, a single mom, also adopted. She provided Armani -- a 1-year-old capuchin monkey -- with a $4,000 room filled with toys, bottle fed him, shuttled him around in a red stroller, and dressed him in Huggies and OshKosh B'Gosh. But then animal control officers took Armani away, claiming he's an illegal resident. Elyse says the separation is taking a terrible toll on both her and Armani:

He watched everything I did. Monkeys learn from their mothers.

Another single mom, a hammerhead shark in a Nebraska aquarium, didn't need no stinkin' guy to get pregnant. She knocked herself up, but sadly, all her hard work was for naught. The sharklet was gobbled up within hours of its birth by a stingray with no respect for weird science. Moving up the evolutionary scale a notch, freebirthers want you to know that they don't need no stinkin' midwife to give birth. They prefer to go it alone, with nothing but their own insanity to guide them.  Carbirthers like Stephanie Green -- two times in 17 months -- prefer to take care of business in the nice leather seat of a friend's ride.

Just because you're a parent, you think you know about sleep deprivation. Ha! says Tony Wright. Try staying up for 11 days straight. But Tony didn't even beat the world record! Next time, he should try the flying alarm clock. When the alarm goes off, the clock takes off, buzzing around the room like a giant mosquito until you peel back your bleary eyes, haul yourself out of bed, catch the thing and put it back in its stand. Or hurl it out the window.

Good news come to those who scroll down. Potty-related news:

Man Gets 5 Years for Blowing Up Toilet

Bruce Forest blamed the series of portable potty bombings on psychotic episodes brought on by a drug to get him unaddicted to painkillers taken for migraines brought on by a severe fall ten years ago when he was running for his life from a rhinoceros after having been shot in the leg by his archrival Rene Belloq while searching for the lost tablet of the 11th through 16th commandments.

Bruce eventually retired to Connecticut, where he stumbled on his new hobby. Most of Bruce's dirty work was done at night, by loading the target potty with explosives and shooting at it with an assault rifle. But the last blast, in Norwalk, occurred during the day in a heavily populated area. EEEEWWW. YUCKY. (Sorry, DU.)

Freaky birth stories, of course.

Woman Gives Birth in Car. For Second Time.  In 17 Months. Stephanie Green was philosophical about her dubious achievement:

We saw the exit on Lake Boone Trail and said, 'We are almost there.' But the water broke, and then out came the baby. Yep, we are not going to make it -- yet again.

"We" being Stephanie and her ever-so-patient friend, Shanika, whose car apparently has become Stephanie's private maternity ward. Hey Stephanie?  You really owe Shanika a new car.

Sixty-Year-Old Woman Gives Birth to Twin Boys.  Frieda Birnbaum bested her friend Lauren Cohen by one year. Lauren, who gave birth to twins last year at the age of 59, had some useful advice for Frieda:

We talked about babies; I suggested things that would be helpful when you try to feed two babies simultaneously.

A 60-year-old woman breastfeeding. Thanks, Lauren, for sharing that visual. It will always be with me.

Woman Gives Birth in Car for Second Time [AP]
N.J. Woman, 60, Gives Birth to Twin Boys [AP]

Good news for women for whom "period" is a four-letter-word:  The FDA has approved the first no-period birth-control pill.

Some women are weirded out by that idea. According to the Wall Street Journal health blog, about half the women polled said their period comforts them because "it lets me know I am not pregnant." Hello? You're on the pill!

Side effects of Lybrel include the following: 

1. Stress over not being able to blame PMS for psychotic behavior. Or forcing the boyfriend to run to the drugstore for your you-know-whats.
2. Museum of Modern Art puts Playtex Gentle Glide tampon on display next to Bic pen and  Alvar Aalto stacking stool.
3. White is the new black.
4. Maxi pad with wings rebranded as Super Bounty, the Quickest Pickest Uppest.
   
5. Tampon arts 'n crafts
   

I, for one, am lovin' it. As for the rest of you who just can't get enough of your little friend (I am woman -- watch me bleed), here's a museum just for you.

FDA approves period suppression pill [Yahoo! News]

As this nifty chart from the Economist shows, the closer you are to the equator, the more kids you will have.

Why? Because you're poor, according to the Economist. Why are you poor? Because you have so many freakin' kids.

Making babies [The Economist]

The kid doesn't even reach crotch level, but she rules the roost. And no, we're not talking about Britney's tarmac tantrum over her plane's pleather seats. Here are 5 handy tips for taming your strong-willed toddler:

1. Act like a moron:  Be forgetful, wrong and incompetent. Pretend to get into her stroller, put her panties on your head.
2. Use reverse psychology: "Can you really get your jacket on by yourself? I don't think so!" etc.
3. Wear rose-colored glasses: Turn letdowns into opportunities and mundane chores into fun. "A rainy day is the perfect chance for camping indoors!" Blah blah blah.
4. Say "Yes, but": "Yes, you can have an ice cream, but only after you pick up your toys." AKA bribery.
5. Meet her needs: Remember that hunger, fatigue and frustration fuel most toddler tantrums.
   

As a grizzled veteran of the toddler years, I can attest that these tactics all work beautifully. I'd add one more: Get competitive. Toddlers love to beat the pants off of big people.

Outsmart Your Toddler: 5 tricks for getting yours to do what you want [CNN]

Forget epidurals and c-sections. Freebirthers think midwives are for wimps.

Freebirthers advocate delivering at home, sans midwife or medical help and often alone. Diana Drescher, for instance, says it doesn't make sense that birth, which ensures the continuity of the species, should be considered dangerous and scary:

We've been giving birth for thousands of years and we're still in this world. If it was that dangerous we wouldn't be here.

Sorry to burst your bubble, Ms. Drescher, but it is that dangerous. In the first half of the 19th century, one out of every 200 American women died in childbirth. (Today, thanks to modern medicine, the rate is down to one out of 1,000). A breech baby almost invariably led to the death of mother and infant.

The fact is, we have evolved to the point where a baby's head is almost too big to deliver. Developmentally speaking, humans are born about nine months early to accommodate our big fat heads, and that's cutting it close.

Freebirthers say giving birth is the most natural thing in the world. Well, so is dying.

Freebirthers dismiss fear and bring babies home [Reuters]
 

Few things are more depressing than writing about a 13-year-old who is smarter, more ambitious, and soon-to-be richer than you are.

My only solace: Now you're depressed too.

This weekend, 13-year-old Anshul Samar was all the buzz on the expo floor at TiECON 2007, the big tech conference in Santa Clara, California.

Anshul's company Elementeo -- which also includes Anshul's 11-year-old sister as vice president of sales -- touts a new board game that teaches the periodic table of the elements via virtual butt kicking. His catchy slogan: "We inject fun into education!" Natch, he has a YouTube video. Check it out -- the kid's verrrrrrry smoooooth.

Anshul's goal is $1 million in first year revenues by the time his braces come off.

Elementeo's 13-year-old CEO, highlight of TiECON [VentureBeat, via BuzzFeed]

Ten-month-old "Bubba" Ludwig may not be able to walk, talk or eat anything more complicated than Cheerios but then again, he doesn't have to.

He's licensed to kill.

Bubba's doting grandfather, Bubba Sr. Sr., gave the little man a 12-gauge Beretta shotgun as a gift. Being a law-abiding guy like all good gun owners, Daddy filed for the permit, listing the baby's height (2 feet, 3 inches), and weight (20 pounds) and plunking down the $5 fee. Bubba provided his own John Hancock.

After checking that he isn't a convicted felon, the State of Illinois okay'd Bubba's God-given right to bear arms. As it should be. To quote Charlton Heston:

There are no good guns. There are no bad guns. A gun in the hands of a bad baby is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a good baby is no threat to anyone, except bad babies.

Bang, bang.

Baby 'Bubba' gets a gun permit [CNN]

It was only a generation ago that we were playing jacks, jumping on pogo sticks, and defending tree forts. Apparently, however, the drugs took their toll on our collective memory, and the New York Times informs us that these quaint activities are as alien to today's parents and kids as, well, aliens. Joan Almon, coordinator of a play advocacy group, says:

These kind of games, including tag, have practically died out.

Fortunately, professional help is at hand. A cottage industry of instruction has sprung up around the ancient art of being a kid, with play conferences, courses on how to play, and leagues for activities like kickball and tag. Books, too, like "The Dangerous Book for Boys," which shows how to build a tree house, fold a paper airplane and skip stones, and is currently No. 2 on Amazon's sales ranking.

Huh. I must live among Luddites, because I see plenty of evidence -- bike riding, hopscotch, scavenger hunts, swings -- of old timey play. Then again, it's a different way of life here in Westchester County.

Putting the Skinned Knees Back Into Playtime [New York Times]

Tragedies brought on by extremism invariably bring out the finger-waggers. The recent conviction of vegan parents for the death of their six-week-old infant provides easy fodder for red meat-and-lard pusher Nina Planck to hammer home one of her favorite topics -- why veganism sucks.

Actually, the real lesson here is why stupid people shouldn't be parents. The baby was fed largely soy milk and apple juice, which any sensible person, vegan or not, knows won't keep a kid healthy.

But Ms. Planck has an agenda and she's not going to let mere facts get in her way. First, she wants you to know that she too used to be a vegan -- or someone who doesn't eat animals or animal-derived foods -- so you should believe everything she is about to tell you. Then she offers a number of dubious claims and sweeping generalizations to shoot down all manner of vegan parents, not just the dumb ones. Because babies, she says, 

are built from protein, calcium, cholesterol and fish oil.

All of which are available from plants, supplements, or better yet, breast milk.  Even the "fish oil" (by which Ms. Planck means essential fatty acids).

Ms. Planck describes herself on her website as "the antidote to the faddists & kooks." This is someone whose favorite foods are red meat, egg yolks, butter, lard and raw milk. And who brags that her three-month-old son is using a potty. Unlike Ms. Planck, I've never been a vegan, but after reading her op-ed, I'm tempted to give it a whirl.

Death by Veganism [New York Times]

A weekly roundup of news in parentville, including the good, the bad, and the utterly trivial.

This week in parenting, it's all about sex, drugs and, uh, shark attacks.

An 8-year-old Chicago girl found a really fun collection of toys in her McDonald's Happy Meal: a bag of pot, a pipe and a lighter. Of course, her parents plan to sue. Welcome to America, where there's a car in every garage and a lawsuit in every pot.

Speaking of dopes, cyclist Floyd Landis' doping trial took a surreal turn on Thursday, when three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond revealed on the stand that 1) he had been sexually abused as a child, and 2) Landis' manager threatened to reveal his secret if he showed up to testify. Floyd wasn't allowed to say anything while he watched LeMond ruin his day, but he did swap his yellow (tour winning color) tie for a black (LeMond hating color) tie in protest.

Moving on to sex. In Hong Kong, a book that chronicles the incestuous, raping and murderous ways of our forebears narrowly missed getting labeled indecent. Despite over 2,000 complaints about its sexual and violent content, Hong Kong's Television and Licensing Authority said the Bible will not have to wear the brown wrapper of shame. Sunday school teachers across the island breathed a sigh of relief.

But smutty talk has no place in India, where six states have banned sex education, saying it goes against Indian culture. They plan to offer yoga classes instead. Flexibility + ignorance = the highest number of HIV-positive people of any country in the world. On the other side of the ocean, sex is OK with Aussies, as long as you keep it clean. In Brisbane, a nudie car wash got the green light. Hey dads? Just make sure the kids in the back are asleep before you get your scrubbing at Bubbles 'N Babes.

What do nude car washes and sharks have in common? They both plague Aussie moms. While wading in knee deep water with her 3-year-old son, Becky Cooke was attacked by a reef shark biting her leg. Somehow (we can't really picture it) she saved everyone involved by fighting the shark off with her camera.

Pamela Anderson will not be among the Aussie car wash crew, though several of her look-alikes have signed on. Pam's too busy being a mom, which pissed off papparazzi at the Cannes Film Festival when she blew off a photo shoot, saying:

My kids come first. When I schedule anything that I do, it's around their baseball games or their soccer matches or their ... everything.

What is up with all these celebreeders hawking their parenting creds? If I hear about one more celebrity dad talking about how many diapers he's changed or celebrity mom saying how having a kid has changed her forever, I'm going to throw up in my mouth. So you're a parent. Yay for you. Now stuff a binky in it already.

Twelve years ago, Lisa Belkin, the New York Times' self-appointed work/life trendspotter wrote a piece in which she described a divide between careerism and momism akin to the Berlin Wall. The piece, as Ms. Belkin notes somewhat proudly, fanned the slumbering embers of the mommy war into a full-blown media-generated conflagration.

A new flurry of mommy war pieces in the Times and elsewhere has caught Ms. Belkin's attention anew. There's a new trend in town, Ms. Belkin proclaims, and she aims to take credit for spotting it, and giving it a nifty new moniker: "opting back in."

The trend: moms are going back to work! And businesses are slowly but steadily taking them back!

Ms. Belkin says it's a movement that's still in its infancy. Why? Because she hasn't written about it until now, I suppose. Today's SAHMs return to the workforce on average in just 2.2 years, she notes. But she doesn't bother to provide past stats, so it's impossible to know how truly trendy this trend is.

Yeah, companies today are starting to offer more flexible work arrangements for moms and others. But it's hard to say how much of that, as Ms. Belkin claims, is due to a newly enlightened crop of employers. Technology drives a lot of that flexibility (as I sit here at home typing on my computer).

I'd better sign off before I risk sounding like a writer for Broadsheet, all thoughtful and deep and whatnot. To get back in the First Feeding mood, I now turn your attention to my favorite topic -- poopy.

After Baby, Boss Comes Calling [NY Times]

Control freaks will be thrilled to learn about a new test that tells parents the sex of their fetus just six weeks into pregnancy.

The test by U.K. company DNA Worldwide called "Pink or Blue" analyzes fetal DNA that leaks into the mom's bloodstream. It's supposedly 98 percent accurate. The mom-to-be sends in a drop of blood and 4 to 6 days later, parents can start shopping for gender-specific clothes, painting the nursery and arguing over the baby's name.

But the sticky wicket of sex-selection has the panties of medical ethicists like Marcy Darnovsky all in a bunch:

Tests like this could normalize genetic selection and lead to a scenario where parents are one day picking out their child's characteristics from a catalog.

Pottery Barn Kids is already studying the tie-in potential.

Test can tell baby's sex 6 weeks into pregnancy [MSNBC]

Think being a 2-year-old diva is easy? Think again. She doesn't even get to keep the rocks.

The Pearl Out Takes [Funny or Die]
 

Thank goodness for Arkansas. Without that fine state, there wouldn't be a Wal-Mart on every Miracle Mile, or a Bill Clinton in Harlem, or the freak show that is Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar.

The Duggars have made a business out of having babies. Sixteen of 'em, to be exact, with a 17th on the way. All of the kids' names  start with "J" just like Jim Bob. Ain't that cute.

Michelle is modest about her motherly ways:

Here I am a mama with her 17th child on the way, and so many people think 'Oh you've got it all figured out.' I am still learning. Just when I think I've got something figured out I try it on the next one and it doesn't work.

Actually, Michelle, I don't think you've got it all figured out. In fact, I think you're nuts. For one thing, you've been pregnant for 144 months of your life. That's 12 years.

In case you were wondering, no, the Duggars don't believe in birth control. So what's up with the television show? A half hour dose of life with the Duggars and I'd be ready to get my tubes tied.

Arkansas Mom Prepares for Birth of 17th Child [Fox News]
Every Sperm is Sacred [Monty Python, via Google Video]

Egg donation is not the most pleasant process -- hormone treatments that will send your boyfriend running for cover and a surgical procedure involving like a 3-foot-long needle-- but it's a nifty way for young women to pay off student loans. And the price of eggs is skyrocketing.

Seems like good news to me. But medical ethicists like Josephine Johnston want to rain on the egg donors' parade:

We hear about egg donors being paid enormous amounts of money, $50,000 or $60,000. How much is that person actually giving informed consent about the medical procedure and really listening and thinking as it's being described and its risks are explained?

Sixty grand? Where do I sign?

Anyway, the ethicists say they worry about the unknown long-term effects of egg extraction. But if the procedure is considered perfectly fine to do on thousands of fertility-challenged women each year, why isn't it OK to pay someone for it? I'll bet my tuna salad sandwich that Ms. Johnson is not in her prime egg-donating years, or staggering under the weight of crushing student loans.

As Demand for Donor Eggs Soars, High Prices Stir Ethical Concerns [NY Times]

This headline left me scratching my head like I had been attacked by a hundred mosquitoes:

More Companies Find Moms Really Work

I can think of only three possible explanations:

1. Super slow news day at MSNBC
2. The news offices at MSNBC have been sucked through a stargate and sent back a half century in time
3. Our society is that pathetic

The survey by Salary.com's Department of D'oh has more groundbreaking insights:

1. Some moms don't want a full-time job or even one that requires them to leave the house. Because we gotta watch our soaps.
2. Other moms are nervous that their business chops are hopelessly rusty due to "time off." That's true. Just take a look at your work wardrobe -- the high waistlines, the clunky pumps. Hopelessly out of date, and not a thing you can do about it.
3. Another startling finding: Moms actually expand skills through child rearing! That's because the workplace is basically like kindergarten, only with coffee instead of naptime.

Rejoining the workforce? You will have to learn to swear again, cut back on the "poopy" references, and stop referring to yourself in the third person. Plus, co-workers really don't appreciate hearing, "Use your words." Save that for children and spouses.

More companies find moms really work [MSNBC]

Another adoption story? Yes and no. When I started reading this article, I was prepared to hate the writer for her maudlin, cliche-ridden, solipsistic, secretly self-congratulatory Story of Adoption. We couldn't get pregnant, so we went to China to adopt a baby, and what an adventure it was! Yadda yadda yadda. I was not going to write about it.

But this story is none of the above. It's got meaning and resonance and all that shiznit.  It broke through my carapace of cynicism. Words like "incredible" and "heartwarming" rose like a lump in my throat, and rattled out through my fingers and onto the keyboard. My eyes got watery, and it wasn't my allergies.

I'm interested in what you think. Have you a similar story? What would you have done?

My First Lesson in Motherhood [NY Times]

Without further ado, the most popular baby names of 2006:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Rank	Male name	Female name
1	Jacob	Emily
2	Michael	Emma
3	Joshua	Madison
4	Ethan	Isabella
5	Matthew	Ava
6	Daniel	Abigail
7	Christopher	Olivia
8	Andrew	Hannah
9	Anthony	Sophia
10	William	Samantha

Some interesting (or not) trends: Hollywood glam names are big for girls (Sophia Loren, Grace Kelly, Angelina Jolie) and old Jewish grandfather names for boys (Jacob, Nathan, Samuel, Noah). A lot of vowel names too (Emily, Emma, Andrew, Anthony).

Addison is the biggest success story of the list, rocketing up 80 slots, to number 27 from 107 (girls). (Addison, BTW, means "son of Adam.") The authors of the Baby Name Bible tie Addison's success to the character of Dr. Addison Forbes Montgomery, an OB-GYN on Grey's Anatomy, proving that we all watch way too much TV. 

P.S. The website has other fun time-wasting features like a function that lets you check out the popularity of any name in the last 15 years, and chart toppers by state, decade and year going back to 1880 (when John and Mary ruled).

Croc season is here! I broke down over the weekend and bought my daughter a pair of hot pink crocs. (Sorry, Daddy Underground!). My daughter likes them for the jibbitz, in the same way she likes bread for the butter.

I didn't realize that I was buying into a cult so despised there's even a website devoted to ridding the world of them forever. I Hate Crocs dot com is  "dedicated to eliminating Crocs and those who think that their excuses for wearing them are viable."

Vincenzo Ravina, a 19-year-old Canadian who created the site complains that crocs "offend our eyes." And he doesn't buy the comfort line either:

Bathrobes are comfortable. I don't wear my bathrobe to the grocery store. And on a really hot day, you don't see me running around with no clothes on at all, though I'm sure that would be comfortable. Crocs are the same thing.

Actually, on a really hot day, my daughter frequently runs around with no clothes on at all. Although I do make her wear her Crocs.

Since you've read this far down, I'll reward you with some actual useful information that you can use. Crocs and escalators don't mix. Well, they do mix, but not well. What am I saying? They chew up toes.  Take my word for it, and be careful on the moving staircase, or click here for the coverage, along with some yucky pictures of croc-ified toes with stiches and pins and whatnot.

I Hate Crocs
Crocs Accidents

Mickey Mouse's evil twin, Farfur, has a new cause: indoctrinating children with the agenda of Hamas, the majority Palestinian political party that is best known for blowing themselves up in Tel Aviv nightclubs.

Farfur has a TV program in which he and a little girl

urge resistance against Israel and the United States, along with stressing the importance of daily prayers and drinking milk.

Because strong bones are so important when you're carrying 40 pounds of dynamite strapped around your torso.

Apparently, the show's only saving grace is that it is so boring even a preschooler won't watch it for more than five minutes.

Al-Aqsa Television was predictably defiant in the face of calls to pull the show, complaining that the barrage of criticism levied at it was "shocking interference in our internal affairs."

Mickey Mouse, reached on holiday in Cancun, declined to comment.

Hamas TV refused to axe copycat Mickey Mouse [ABC News Online]