So this is a bit of an odd one, but my friend Joy Goodgame recently did an album cover for musician Randall Goodgame (cousin, it’s all in the family) that plays off of Randall’s very strange, though apparently benign obsession with Charles Schultz, and it turned into a great website, but now that I am “attuned” to the undercurrents of Charles Shultz, I’m a little freaked out that I’m starting to see Peanuts stuff EVERYWHERE.

OK, so we all like Charlie Brown, some more than others, but my “Strangest Predeliction Award” goes to Michael Paulus for his Skeletal Systems of cartoon characters. All I can say is wow.

I love it when non-Houstonians discover that Houston isn’t quite the swampy freeway-laden hell-hole they had always assumed. From Houston’s Clear Thinkers:

Christopher Soloman, the NY Times’ Frugal Traveler, noticed an earlier Times article referred to in this post on the unusual “Houston. It’s Worth It” public relations campaign. As a result, he decided to travel to Houston for the first time and, in a first for the Times, actually gives Houston a favorable review.

Discovered a few new ways to find airfares without searching multiple websites thanks to Metafilter.

…travel aggregator sites like Mobissimo, CheapFlights, Qixo, or Sidestep allow you to search Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity with a single query, as well as bargain airlines like JetBlue and Southwest, which aren’t covered by the big three.

Every now and then I am reminded that some people, not from the Gulf Coast generally, do not know what a nutria rat is. It can actually be pretty hard to convince these people that there does in fact exist a large population of giant swamp rats, that can generally be found in just about any body of running water in East Texas. Anyone who has seen one can attest that this is one of God’s most unlovely and unlovable creatures. At least that’s how they look to me. A quick search of the internet will pull up a number of nut job cajuns who keep the damn things as pets - Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C…. I rest my case. If you go down to Cafe Adobe in Sugarland, you can see them come out to feed at sunset —

Boy: Mommy, look at the beaver!
Mom: That’s not a beaver. Get away from the rail.