No-kill overkill

“I want to plead guilty, and I’m going to plead guilty 100 times over."
- Times Square bombing failure Faisal Shahzad
in Federal District Court (Reported in The New York Times)

No, that's OK. I think once is enough.

Great moments in non sequiturs, Part 1

I'm hoping that you've noticed that SFTC has been on the downlow for the past few weeks.

I apologize for the lack of hilarious anecdotes and wry observations. Although, in fairness, none of you wrote in to ask if I was OK. If I were you, I'd have been worried about this sudden and unexpected online silence. "Oh no!" I might have thought to myself. "SFTC might have had his hands cut off by a combine in a tragic farming accident."

But I (overly dramatically) digress.

The real reasons for the hiatus were that I was unusually busy with my other kind of writing - the kind I get paid for - and that I promised that I wouldn't post again until I came up with a monumental blog post, a captivating story truly worthy of my triumphant return to blogging.

I have since reconsidered on that second point, in favor of "whatever the heck I could think of on Wednesday." So here it is:

My aunt is the queen of non sequiturs. Conversations often take odd left turns, making it an adventure to keep up. Emails often contain random mixtures of topics, often completely out of context. Like the one she sent last night.

It read: "Did u know Paula Abdul is Jewish? Guess where I am? xxoo "

I wrote back: "I didn't know that about Paula. I also don't know where you are, but given the setup, I'm guessing Paula Abdul's bat mitzvah."

It turned out she was just in Baltimore. But I was pretty close.