Nothing substantial today, but a few things that are worthy.

Whimsical puzzle games are most worthy, so here’s the rather excellent, if frustrating Hapland. Similarly sillily, an old-ish Wired article on gross sweets, made relevant by Kraft’s insane axing of its roadkill-shaped candy (Wired story via BoingBoing).

Like the rest of the world, I salute Brian Sedgemore MP for his excellent retirement speech, including "it is a foul calumny that we do today. Not since the Act of Settlement 1701 has Parliament usurped the powers of the judiciary and allowed the Executive to lock up people without trial in times of peace. May the Government be damned for it". Full thing here.

James Wolcott is also a master of smackdownery. If you don’t read him already, you should. Start with this piece – it’s vaguely reminiscent of the recent UK cases of racist fuckjobs trying to smear non-racists as antisemitic.

Finally, if you’re desperate for a meme, here’s one via Jim: grab the nearest book; open the book to page 123; find the fifth sentence; and post the text of the next three sentences on your blog along with these instructions. The original text insists that one must not "dig for that ‘cool’ or ‘intellectual’ book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest" – so consider yourself warned.

Mine is the riveting "To this he added the shaving-scene – which, if it comes from Stow’s Annales (1592) gives a clue to the date of the play. The early title-pages state that the play was performed by Pembroke’s Men (in the City of London, according to the first edition), but in the course of printing his edition Bell altered the title-page to read instead the late Queen’s Majesty’s Servants at the Red Bull. The latter performances wold have been in King James’s reign."

I’m sure you’re dying to know that that was a note by E D Pendry from the Everyman edition of Christopher Marlowe’s Complete Plays and Poems. The second-nearest book on the shelf was The Proud Highway, which would have skated dangerously close to breaching the ‘cool’ instruction above.