Get smart with our last two-digit time-waster. Today's short but-oh-so-sweet question:

What do therapy, eczema, and abalone all have in common?

First correct answer posted to comments wins an advance copy of the DVD director's cut of No Desposit, No Return, which features a wonderful outtakes reel in which Don Knotts accidentally protrudes his left eye partially out of his skull. No Googling or using distributed computing. One guess per commet but comment as often as you like.

"Now that I am 23, I realize that I cannot help feed every hungry kid or find every lost one. However, there is one way that I know I can help people: by sharing the secrets of my successful marriage."

From Jessica Simpson's book proposal for Jessica Simpson & Nick Lachey's Secrets for a Happy (and Sexy!) Marriage

I just recieved this email:

Good day,

Best regards,
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If you'd like to see the website in question, Google the phrase "accelerated pace unproductive emotions like shame" and you'll find a single link to a page chock full of words and phrases, many of them involving the same letters and punctuation marks the WF has employed over the years. Hence, I suppose, the natural connection between the two. Or maybe it's the fact that my prose is considered by many to be downright mesmerizing.

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Also on the WombatFile-as-e-commerce-vehicle front -- I confess, I was sort of sorry to delete and close down the comment-spam tar-baby that was this entry. I don't know how or why it started -- it wasn't the only archived post to attract the occasional "your site is very informative" with a link to the peddlers of some crap diet or other. But I suppose that the way these things work means that each link by one quasi-dadaist 'bot made the page that much more attractive to others; soon, a soggy-minded sketch of a scene from last year's endlessly-delayed Spring became a clearinghouse for hawkers of human growth hormone, cashmere sweaters, naughty DVDs, and crap diet after crap diet. There was something fascinating about watching it build. How high would the mound of garbage get?

High enough. An eyesore is an eyesore, and it's gone, along with a pleasant exchange in the early comments about the meaning of the phrase "rope-a-dope." Sorry -- I had to kill all the comments to close the door.

If you've ever wondered what our government is doing with the "freedom.gov" domain, wonder no more.

You'll learn "Why America is Safer" -- through a collection of links to such authoritative resources as an outdated Charles Krauthammer op-ed and a condemnation of Time magazine from the always-informative Eufaula Tribune.

You'll also see Congress in Action "on the ground" in Iraq -- OK, technically that would be "G.O.P. Members of the House" in Action, but whatever. The Empire State's own Sue Kelly brightens up lunchtime for a few soldiers, Virginia's Ed Shrock looks like he might have thought about hamming it up with a statue of Saddam, Kansan Todd Tiahrt takes a break from his audio tour of the palace, and last but far from least, Maryland's Wayne Gilchrest helps Iraqi schoolchildren understand the complexities of Iraqi-American relations.

Oh, and if you want to see a record of all of the valuable work that Congress is doing to keep the country secure, just check out this list of resolutions. Doesn't get any more homeland-securifying than this! Unless, of course, it's lifeandliberty.gov.

Because today's quiz is being run from the Home Office, with many a diaper change interrupting the attentions of the editorial staff, we'll be both to-the-point with our question and possibly a little longer than usual in replying to guesses. Today's mind-blender:

It was a flag with two parallel bars, red and white. In the upper portion were written the words "Independence, Liberty, Justice." What was the name of the republic for which this flag was planned to serve as a symbol? Extra credit: what was the -- purported, at least -- symbolism in the red and white stripes?

First correct answer posted to comments wins four large bags of styrofoam packing peanuts that I can't bear to throw away. No Googling or turning on The Flag and Naval Ensign Channel. One guess per comment, please, but comment as often as you like.

A new administration trend:"Let's just leave it at that". It's good to watch Laura Bush picking up on the Secretary of State's example of how to close the door on a line of questioning that's making you uncomfortable: tell 'em that gum-flappin' time is over!

But note also the skill with which Mrs. B. gets in something very like the opinion she denies having: "It's a very, very shocking issue to some parts of the American people." (Some parts of the people, indeed!) The double very leads into the mismatched pair of "shocking" and "issue," intensifying it, and leaving the sentence translatable, if one likes, as "People are being shocked by the debate over this subject." But of course, to the extent that gay marriage is an issue -- the subject of public debate -- people are not so much shocked as they are of strong opinion about it, one way or the other.

In this context, almost anyone ought to recognize "shocked" as a standard term of conservative cultural outrage, invoked to convey the outrageousness of equal rights for homosexuals. Like her "watching with concern" husband, the First Lady has got to signal her disapproval without overtly claiming it as her own: her garbled wording pretty clearly covers something more like "very, very shocking idea" -- in other words, an expression of active distaste for the notion, for which the administration would rather not have to take full responsibility.

Oh, and bonus points for her pinpointing of the proper standard by which questions about GWB's national guard service should be evaluated: "And, you know, he knows that he showed up the whole time." If you can't shut their mouths, you can always leave their jaws dropped in wonder.

Everyone I've talked to, including a senator who had just come from a meeting with him, says the president himself is feeling feisty and peppery, up for the battle. He believes he did the right thing in Iraq and feels internal confidence about it. He continues to hope that the question of what happened to Saddam's WMDs, which the dictator had used before in Iran and on the Iraqi Kurds, will be fully answered in time. Were they destroyed, or sold? Are some still hidden? I was told that whenever U.S. troops find and search a new facility, Bush wonders if something will be found.

We're a little late to point out Peggy Noonan's Friday the 13th column, but if you missed it, it's worth a look: an informative example of how the goofy, bubbly side of the right wing talks to itself. Since Bush has a well-documented goofy side (not to mention his bubbly qualities), there's every reason to view Noonan's mixture of happy talk with a bizarre twisting of political reality (in which Republicans, ever the outsiders, have watched over their mac'n'cheese tv dinners as the Democrats ride around in limosines!) as indicative of the presidential mindset.

And as such it also indicates Bush's greatest strength as a political warrior. Like Noonan (and her hero, St. Ronnie), Bush doesn't refer very frequently to the sources of information the rest of us consult. He prefers to dismiss such quotidian perceptions, and instead visualizes the world he wishes to operate in. And we all know that creative visualization is a vital element in the kind of magic -- political or otherwise -- that can achieve stunning results.

Note -- Noonan's bleating via JMM's Talking Points Memo.

Before the age of Cialis, Botox, and the Purple Pill, free-thinking Americans in this great nation of ours didn't need a wimpy "prescription drug plan" or visits to the plastic surgeon. In the interest of both health and beauty, they rolled up their sleeves and made their own tonics, lotions, salves, balms, plasters, and so forth. The following six formulae can be found in The American Domestic Cyclopedia (1890), all advocated as effective treatments for the same condition -- still common, though no longer as much a matter of concern:

1. Five grains corrosive sublimate, two ounces alcohol, two ounces water...At night use the following...one ounce of white wax, one teacupful of nice white lard, lump of camphor the size of a chestnut, one teaspoonful glycerine.

6. Take grated horseradish and put it in very sour milk. Let it stand four hours...
For what condition are all of these mixtures meant as a curative? (Futher details about how each formula should be employed have been omitted.)

First correct answer to comments wins an empty Ronnybrook Farm Dairy bottle, which can be returned for a $1 deposit. No Googling or consulting the rival volume The House-Wife's Treasury of Improving Facts. Only one guess per comment, please, but you may comment as often as you like.

Roddy Doyle joins Dale Peck in the pleasure of a little Joyce-bashing. Somebody find me a third contemporary writer who hates Ulysses and we can call it a trend.

You know, I was feeling a bit lame about becoming yet another consumer sporting those trademark white headphones on in the subway. While I quite enjoy having my small music collection available to listen to while I'm out (which, these days, is about the only chance I have to listen to music), it irked a bit to feel like I'd been bitten by a marketing strategy. I thought -- "gosh, what a trendoid I am!"

Then I read this thread on Mefi. I conclude that, while succumbing to the latest iteration of gadget-marketing may uncomfortably reveal how easily one is drawn into the consumerist web, the practice of piling on the technofetishim re how to make/listen to/mix one's MP3s -- or the criterion for selection of good headphones, or the necessity of hating something 'cause it can't be cool if the masses are buying it -- in the sneering tone of a 15-year-old know-it-all is in truth less appealing than walking down the street to the beat, looking not a little like a hapless demographer's target.

That said, Opus Dark's salvo in aforementioned thread was pretty well-placed.

Another sleet-astical winter morning: the perfect time to warm over your frozen brainpain by applying it to some trivial labor. A double answer is required in today's quiz:

While reading the scene in Lawrence's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy in which Uncle Toby spares the life of a fly, this famous figure is said to have remarked, "Had I read Sterne more and Voltaire less, I should have known the world was wide enough for ----- and me." He referred here to another well-known personage.

Who was the speaker? And to whom was he referring?

First correct answer posted to comments wins a raisin that bears an astonishing resemblence to Burgess Meredith. No Googling or working the phones. One guess per comment, but comment as often as you like.

This whole Internet thing all you people do: it's exhausting. Wonkette posts, it seems, on a quarter-minute basis, and while I am a serious, serious admirer (I once asked the editor/writer's not-undistinguished partner if he was, indeed, Mr. Anna Marie Cox, this in midst of correspondence about actual work I was going to do for the guy), there's something dizzying about getting wickedly pointed barbs about the news before you've even gotten the damn news in question.

Granted, she's presumably getting paid for her labor; yet there are many within even my timid circle of clickitude whose proficiency leaves me gasping in the dust of their intake and output: Dr. Green reads more papers than that dude at Slate, drops the political and foreign-policy science, and then goes on to do a whole nother job involving teaching and whatnot. Ditto Prof. Kathleen, except that she proceeds to go on and have big long, meaningful written conversations in the comments. If I skip Bookslut for a day the amount of sheer link-homework I have to do is daunting. The political musings over at Torrid's World are not, perhaps, Kaus-ian in bulk, but they're in that ballpark.

This all to say nothing of MeFi and the infinitely beguiling if not all-consuming info-clearinghouse it hath spawned. I should be grateful that Rory is, at least, lying low for a while.

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Bizarrely complaining about having too much diverting stuff to read endlessly fed into my computer, for free, aside (subject of next rant: availability of inexpensive, diverse fruit in local markets creates a constant, unpleasant reminder that I should start eating better -- the pain of it all!), I wish to make a few notes about a recent experience (last night's, to be precise), with the hope in mind that some of you may find something instructive in it.

1. When, as you are considering whether or not the baby would like to play more with the yellow birdie or move on to a pre-bedtime visit from Mrs. Ladybug, your wife calls to you from the dining room, "There's a fire, we have to get out right now," you should probably realize that there is absolutely no reason in the world why anyone would just make up about something like that, particularly as they ran around grabbing things. There's just no comedy value in it at all. Hence, you don't need to waste an additional second asserting something that should be obvious is a falsehood, viz, that she "must be kidding."

2. You also don't need to spend a minute and a half putting the baby in the baby carrier. You could just continue to carry her in your arms, straight out the front door, past the guys in helmets dragging the hose into the apartment across the hall. Would work, I think, just fine.

3. Your neighbors across the street will probably offer to take you and your coat-wrapped baby into their living room or something like that. And they'll hang out with you for a long time, and basically give over their evening to you, as you all stare through their picture window at the front of your building and the firefighters helping people down the fire escapes. You will discover that you wish you had the means to buy these neighbors a very large and expensive piece of consumer electronics by way of thanks. Although cookies will probably do.

4. The lobby can hold a surprisingly large amount of water.

5. The absence of people being taken away in ambulances can be the very nicest thing one doesn't see in an evening.

6. It is perfectly OK to thank the firefighters, even if you're voice is shaking and you feel a bit foolish.

7. If you are extremely lucky, even though the fire was right across the hall, you might be left with just tiniest lingering smell of smoke in your place, along with a less tiny, also lingering set of horrible thoughts about what might have been. You'll want to sleep over at friends', just because.

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Finally, apropos of none of the above, don't you love it when Google ads unironically reflect the content of the satirical piece to which they're attached? (You don't? Well, who asked you anyway?)