Pandemic of oddities

Too much has happened to be able to write about it. Give me a couple of weeks and then maybe...

In the meantime enjoy this:

LOS ANGELES, Nov 15 (Reuters) - When Tom Cruise marries Katie Holmes this weekend, like many a devout Scientologist, he may promise to provide her with "a pan, a comb, perhaps a cat."

in my meantime I've been finding out exciting things like the meaning of "fc"
to drivers during the Cold War.

Also:
I'm mildly obsessed with the gothic and grotesque, an admission that shouldn't come as a surprise to any of you. After reading some Hoffmann and then pondering the impossible existence of sugarplum fairies in a certain ballet supposedly based on his story. I settled on a solution: a global plot by the manufacturers of tutu voile. Actually, the real story is rather interesting. And predictably, it took Maurice Sendak to bring the cloying holiday sweets back into the grotesque realm of distended bellies and gaping mouths where they belong. This, as any Jewish child knows, is the real meaning of Christmas--and most other holidays too for that matter.