Friday Aimless Blogging

• Here's some proof that I'm the secret power behind the local media. The Oregonian's A&E section waxes poetic about the hidden joys of Washington Park, following up on this post of mine from a couple of weeks ago. And today's Trib rants about Tanner Springs Park, doing a great job of echoing the sentiments I expressed here. The Oregonian even saw fit to point out those weird crumbling stairs I wrote about, although they refer to them variously as "stairs to nowhere" or a "stairway to heaven", proving once again that the MSM just doesn't get it.
  
• It's been an entire week, which is an eternity and a half in Internet Time, and I still don't have a catchy friday blogging gimmick. The Countess has a cute cat up today. Here are two more Friday cute cats. And another two. And here's one of the blogosphere's inevitable cat carnivals It's clearly a trendolicious trendy trend that's sweeping the interwebs, but sadly I don't have any cute cat photos of my own to post. So in lieu of that, this post contains a bunch of random crap, as usual.
  
• So that last item was about cats, and this one is about fish. Here are three recent items about newly discovered species of fish that were already in the aquarium trade before they were even recognized as new species. This is just bizarre and creepy, and I'm not just saying this as a b-monster movie fan. People are bringing into their homes and businesses creatures that science knows next to nothing about. Nobody knows how abundant they are in the wild, whether they're endangered or not, or what they eat in the wild, or how to care for them in captivity, or what would happen if they got loose in your local rivers and streams, or anything. But so long as there are people with money who want them, who cares? The Invisible Hand says this is a Good Thing, and that's all that matters, dammit. What are you, some kind of hippie tree-hugging commie?
  
• I keep getting search hits here from people looking for info on Ms. Merche Romero, the Portuguese TV personality. Seems she's the GF of Cristiano Ronaldo, who plays (or played) for Manchester United, and who knocked England out of the World Cup on penalty kicks in the semis. Turns out he's been getting death threats ever since, so now the couple doesn't intend to go back, because they don't think it's safe anymore. Um, it's just a freakin' game, everybody. Killing people over a soccer game is maybe not such a super-smart idea, ok? Am I really the first person who's ever told you that?