According to a 1991 report by the Wildlife Branch of Manitoba Natural Resources in Canada, it was fashionable in the 1880s to picnic at a "hibernaculum" near Stony Mountain. But this place and others like it caused local unrest as well -- the one near Stony Mountain was at the center of Manitoba's first major labor strike, when penitentiary construction workers refused to work there until the hibernaculum was destroyed. But now visitors are again drawn, seasonally, to Manitoba's Interlake region, particularly the Spring spectacle that occurs there. It is so popular that highway signs in the area direct visitors to the appropriate places to view the yearly event. The community of Inwood has gone so far as to erect a monument in recognition of this aspect of Manitoba's natural heritage.

What do people make an annual journey to the hibernaculum to see?

First correct answer posted to comments wins a Bacardi "Your Night Just Got Interesting" promotional headband. No Googling or asking any professional comedian, most of whom are Canadian and we;l-informed nature lovers with summer homes in rural Manitoba. One guess per comment, but you may comment as often as you like.

I didn't know I needed to know this stuff, until I knew it.

Scroll down for a brace of wild rock anecdotes, in which a drummer learns a life lesson, and we learn how the Fightin' Irish became inextricably linked with a classic tune.

More from the Another Insufferable Parent and His Digital Camera Department:

H.C. Claire Presents 'Springtime is Swingtime.'

Karen Hughes on CNN, quoted in the New York Times:

"I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life," she said. "President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."

This isn't the first time we've seen this tired-ass trope turned against the pro-choice movement, and it won't be the last, but please won't somebody call Hughes on the notion that fundamentalist Islamic radicals are on the same page as NARAL?

UPDATE: Jon Stewart was all over it. Americablog has audio clips to the Daily Show segment in which Stewart plays Hughes' comment and marvels at the rhetorical gymnastics. Link via Wonkette.

Today's quiz, we hope, comes in on the early side. So, for all of you
worm-lovers, here's one for your beak:

Director Otto Preminger became legendary in his career for challenging
the repressive Hays code -- for example, refusing to cut "offensive"
language from the film adaptation of The Moon is Blue in 1953. In 1971
he revealed that his refusal to be bound by convention had extended
beyond celluloid, as he acknowledged his (illegitimate) paternity of
26-year old Erik Kirkland. Kirkland's mother (who had died that year)
was considerably more famous than Preminger. Her fame spread beyond her death, through a popular fictionalized version of her life story.

Who was Erik Kirkland's mother? Bonus question: what two words (not
precisely opposites, but very nearly so), was Preminger condemned by
the Catholic League for using in The Moon is Blue?

First correct answer posted to comments wins a National Poetry Month
"Poets Do It In that Corner of the Bookstore Behind the Biographies"
t-shirt. No Googling or going on one of those live chats with Elvis
Mitchell or whoever. One guess per comment, but you may comment as
frequently as you wish.

Colleague of mine, who passes oft
That place where I, both meek and soft
of voice, do labor through the day,
please bend an ear to what I say.

I gather you are unaware
Of all you do -- and to be fair
This is a universal trait
Found from the Yukon to Kuwait:

Through others' lives we're apt to stumble,
And, knowing this, I shall be humble
And not presume you are a boob --
Why must you rub against my cube?

Each time you saunter to a meeting
Or, hasty ('cause your pager's bleating),
Back to your distant desk you rush
You give my cubicle a brush.

It's not an intermittent tap
A once-fortnightly, friendly slap
But a habitual caressing
Perhaps you think it's Debra Messing?

You've never stopped for any talking
But let your fingers do the walking
Along my cube, unconsciously.
I think you must have O.C.D.

At times I've seen you, harried, bolt
But even so you give a jolt:
For, jogging by, you stretch your mitt
To make quite sure you're touching it

As I can't seem to catch your eye
My thinking cap I must apply
To put a stop to your glad-handing
While my poor cubicle's still standing

Electric shocks are a deterrent
But I'm no good with wiring current.
I could affix some broken glass
To make surprising your next pass,

But that might cut an innocent
And I'd be asked to fold my tent.
So, as I'd like to keep my job
Yet disencourage touchy slobs
Like you, perhaps I'll coat my cube
With gallons of protective lube.

Day off...family struck down by cold virus...grandparents visiting...sure, sure, you say. The same old bloody excuses.

Anyway, on to today's late-edition cortex-mushifier. It's a two-parter, ripped from the tattered pages of the once-mighty news organ The Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

On December 3, 1936, a front-page story announced that Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey had busted open a multimillion-dollar monopoly racket in New York, through which a handful of individuals had illegally come to control the market for these secondhand items. "The racket, which is estimated to have cost the city more than $840,000 since Sept. 1, 1935, maintained a complete monopoly on the industry by a reign of terror, which consisted of burning trucks, holding up drivers with guns and beating up dealers."

But the big story on the front page, given a screaming headline and supported by two supplementary front -page items, was about another scandal of even bigger proportion. The first four words of the headline read " "Won't Give Up Wally..." The subhead read "Baldwin Bars House Debate; 'Armistice' Seen." Three other pieces on the front page address the same story. One led with this arresting image "Working men in their rough clothes, smoking smelling pipes, talked volubly today of the ---- case, in uncomplimentary terms, cursing heartily."

What secondhand market was this criminal conspiracy monopolizing? And who was at the center of the really big story overshadowing Dewey's gang-busting?

First correct answer posted to comments wins two tickets to see Baby Sandy, Mischa Auer, and Shirley Ross in "Unexpected Father," on a double-bill with "I Stole a Million" (George Raft and Claire Trevor) at the RKO Albee theatre at Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues. (Air-conditioned!) No Googling or bribing old uncle Abe down in the news morgue to look it up. One guess per comment, but post as often as you like.

Granted, Peggy Noonan can be counted upon to regularly represent the least coherent element of the G.O.P. faithful. But this attempt to do a little damage control in the aftermath of Tuesday night's press conference is revealing -- not that Noonan's a bad writer, but that the mainstream conservatives are getting close to the bottom of the barrel when looking for an argument to back their man. Complaining that the press questions were too tough for the poor Prezzie is a questionable means of convincing the country that Bush is really up to the job. And whining about how democratic inquiry ought to shut its yap during "wartime" was a massively successful, if noxious, P.R. strategy two years ago, but there's a problem with running a con on this big a collection of suckers. You can't run the same game twice: not every reporter is that dependable a mark. One might suspect that Noonan doesn't have a lot of friends in the non-pundit-class media world -- otherwise, it would follow that she'd have noticed some signs of the growing won't-get-burned-again attitude.

The kicker:

More and more it seems to me Mr. Bush is not only Bill Clinton's successor but his exact opposite: Mr. Clinton perfectly poised and hollow inside, a man whose lack of compass left him unable to lead within the Oval Office but who gave a compelling public presentation of the presidency, and Mr. Bush a strong president with an obvious soul, decisive at the desk, but with no dazzling edifice. It's actually amazing that two such different men came so close together.

So, this is the heat that the fabled Wall Street Journal op-ed page is bringing. "Bush can't really explain himself well, but just look at that obvious soul!" If this is the best pitching that the conservative pundit bullpen can offer, one hopes that Kerry will start swinging at these big, fat meatballs.

You know, I really wanted to post a David Brooks watch item this week. In the midst of yet another journalistic shredding of Brooks' 2001 Red State/Blue State fabulism, the country's new fave public psuedointellectual mines his only vein in a hi-larious riff on the ideological divide, in the comic vein that makes Maureen Dowd look like Chris Rock.

But there's a quiz to administer, so onward and upward with ye trivia. Today's mind-melter:

In 1949, the year-end Publisher's Publishers Weekly* list of nonfiction bestsellers contained not one, not two, but three separate titles devoted to unveiling the mysteries of one particular subject. All were from different authors and different publishers. No how-to on this topic had ever cracked that list before 1949, nor has it since.

For what subject was 1949 the annus mirabilis, bestseller-wise?

First correct answer posted to comments wins a bottle of white-board cleaner and three neatly folded paper towels. No Googling or asking David Brooks. Only one guess per comment but comment as often as you like.

*Title correction courtesy of Soren P. Dant

I know that all the reliable sources have been busting on Al Franken's Air America as a slightly less-exciting alternative to NPR's midday filler. However, in my dip into the "Unfiltered" broadcast this (Wednesday) morning, Chuck D. and his two well-caffienated friends* did do a nice job of pointing out that the administration is finally on top of this global warming thing. Where? On the CIA for Kids website, of course! (If you guessed that the growing of narcotics abroad is the trigger for all of the tree-hugging, give yourself a Top Secret Gold Star.)

*Chuck himself made much of the fact that he was really quite sleepy. And he sounded it.

My jaw agape in wonder, I offer you the closing paragraphs of Chapter Seven in David Bergantino’s Hamlet II: Ophelia’s Revenge:

”You know that I love you, Cameron,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion. “Not your new wealth, not your castle – “
“Good, cuz you’re signing a prenup anyway.”
“Shut up!” She swatted him playfully. He quickly snapped out of silly mode. “It is you that I love, it is you that I have loved since we were kids, and it is you that I need.”
“Let’s live the rest of our lives together,” she told him.
Silently, he led her beneath the great canopy of the bed, where they made love, and it was like a feather falling from a great height onto a landmine.

At that moment, steam began to rise up from a section of peat bog below Elsinore. Within minutes, the dark, rich earth began to boil impossibly. Soon after, something as insubstantial as steam but infinitely more dangerous emerged from the earth. Invisible to humans, it nonetheless was made of water and peat, a blue-green and brown thing with tangles of algae for hair.
It was ancient. And like many things resurrected after centuries of sleep, it was angry. And it wanted revenge.

Inside the back cover (after the killings have concluded, the most memorable involving amputation-by-hurled-garden-shears), the publisher recommends that readers check out the original Hamlet, to find our "how the horrors at Elsinore Castle began."

Having passed a depressingly un-hoaxed April 1st, I am happy that, at least, it's Friday and we can all turn our attention to the next best thing: the diverting minutae of cultural history.

In 1891, the English performer Lottie Collins leapt from relative obscurity to fame with the performance of a single song by Richard Morton, which she first performed in the pantomime Dick Whittington at the Grand Theatre in Islington, as Alice Fitzwarren. The Times of London wrote that Miss Collins "sang and danced with the utmost verve," gaily high-kicking on the chorus of this song about being a good girl who's not too good. Such was the public furor over Collins and the song that she was then engaged by a rival theatre (the Gaitey) to perform the song in their burlesque Cinder-Ellen-Up-Too-Late, although Dick Whittington was still running. Collins would perform at the Grand and then race to the Gaitey to do it there. She later toured America, performing the song which became her signature piece. The tune became a hot sheet-music item, and its popularity long outlived Collins' career, and its chorus is still widely known.

What was the name of the song?

First correct answer posted to comments wins this charming bathroom companion. No Googling, and don't shoot the piano player. One guess per comment, but you may post as many comments as you like.

April 1st, 33 C.E. Christ places joy buzzer in side, tells disciple Thomas "Go ahead. Put your hand in there."

April 1st, 1544. Henry the VIII has sixth wife, Catherine Parr, taken to the Tower and stages mock beheading with a papier-mache axe. He assembles nobles and ecclesiastics to watch with concealed mirth from behind tapestry as she shrieks in terror.

April 1st, 1765. While the great man enjoys a post-prandial doze, Boswell replaces Dr. Johnson's wig with a rainbow-colored one, eliciting the well-known remark "Sir, a man who switches the wig of a friend is indeed no friend, but merely a wig-switcher."

April 1st, 1863. Robert E. Lee convinces gullible Stonewall Jackson that Jefferson Davis's mother was born in Massachusetts. That night in the officer's mess, Jackson does not know why his toast to the "Daughters of New England" is met with silence and hostile glares.

April 1st, 1928. A group of twenty Harvard students are killed while attempting to Lindy inside a telephone booth mounted on a thirty-foot pole.

April 1st, 1954. Senator Joseph McCarthy introduces evidence that Vice-President Richard Nixon had chaired a "communal" cigarette-sharing co-operative on board ship while serving in World War II. Nixon's tearful, 18-page self-defense is drafted before the Senator phones to alert the veep that he'd been a victim of a "Special Joe Gotcha."