Some crazy “wanderer” damaged the Liberty Bell with a hammer. The loonies always ruin everything.

I think the American press is actually more interested in Sophie Rhys-Jones’s comments about the Royal Family than the British are. I mean, I’ve read over what she supposedly said and I pretty much agree with all of it. Tony Blair is very presidential. Cherie Blair is a horrid woman. (An irreverant late-night fake news program portrays her very accurately as an animated frog.) William Hague does look deformed. Nobody would be surprised if Charles married Camilla after the Queen Mum dies. The British don’t care exactly what she said; it’s that she said it at all. The higher your class, the less you talk about yourself. The whole concept of her babbling away to a “sheik” (a disguised tabloid reporter) about sensitive family issues just smacks of the lower classes. As an American, I found this British attitude very difficult to understand at first. Unfortunately I seem to be absorbing it unconsciously… I can’t define the class structure for you, but I can definitely sense when it’s been violated.

Meg found the coolest game on the Internet: Bilbana. I have no idea what that means – it’s Swedish – but you build a scalextrix race track (one of the ones that snap together and have little electric cars that whizz around) and then race against a cockatoo. Yes, a bird. I told you it was cool.

What? Puff Daddy now wants to be called P. Diddy?? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I never thought that anything could be a step down from “Puff Daddy,” but he’s proven me wrong. Is this some weird attempt to copy J. Lo?

I think somebody at The Onion lives in Northern Indiana. This article is just too “local” to be believed. University Park Mall? Yeah, that was my college mall. (And yes, they have a Marshall Field’s.) Glenbrook Mall in Fort Wayne? That’s where my sister shops.

This is a really cool web application that maps the distribution of your surname across the United States. Not surprisingly, Kentucky is the jackpot as far as “Howards” are concerned.