Not that any of us need another way to put off that which must be done, but I am pretty intrigued with Fantastic Contraption.

It’s touted as an online physics puzzle game, and, really, it is for those more spatially gifted than I. My brainy Brother, in particular, would love it, but he is not one given to procrastination. (At least not yet…) It doesn’t cost anything, so you can give it a try yourself, but you can’t say I didn’t warn you!

–S.

Some of us worry more than others. For my part, I do it a lot. So much, in fact, that I’ve taken to wearing a rubber band around my wrist, and, when I catch myself borrowing trouble from the future, I give my wrist a wicked snap. I have gone through four rubber bands so far. They start out nice and stretchy, but, eventually, they become slack with overuse.

 Anyway, one of my favorite people has had some extra things to worry about lately, so I made her the Worry Man above. To employ his services, you simply scrawl your worry du jour on a tiny scrap of paper, fold it up, and pop it into the Worry Man’s creepy, gaping maw. There is no way to retrieve your worries, by the way. They remain permanently in the Worry Man’s guts, and I made sure he has space enough for a few years’ worth of worries at least. Once they are in him, the burden of your worry has been transfered to him — leaving you free to come up with some new worries, I suppose.

–S.

So it’s like this. I just got married. Thought I never would, but there it is! Anyway, we hardly told a soul and had a teeny “wedding” in a romantic courtroom. And now I am really in the doghouse with some people for not sending out fancy invitations, for not alerting them to our plans, for not having a “proper” wedding in the first place. The funny part is, we’d hoped to minimize the drama often associated with weddings, but, in the process, I guess we made it worse? Hey, at least we tried.

So I have a new holiday to celebrate: June 13 marks the Coronation of the King of SusanLand. Here’s the best our imaginary wedding photographer could come up with. . .

–S.

I’ve come to admire mixed martial arts cage fighting in general and Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners like Forrest Griffin and Diego Sanchez in particular. So I jumped at the chance to catch some live MMA action at my area AMVETS hall. I expected to see local fighters in peak condition accurately executing devastating strikes, takedowns, and the occasional rear naked choke, but, save a couple of bouts, most of the fighters looked like this guy. . .

He weighed in at 316 pounds and pretty much laid on his opponent the whole time. Complete with sloppy, looping blows and easily-winded combatants, many of the other fights could’ve just as easily taken place at TondaBeth’s Hideaway Lounge. A spectacle for all the wrong reasons.

–S.

Ah, happy, inexorable decay! This morning my toilet broke, but by early afternoon, I had that bastard schooled. Thanks goes to the handy Dare to Repair: A Do-It-Herself Guide to Fixing (Almost) Anything in the Home.

I tip my hat to authors Julie Sussman and Stephanie Glakas-Tenet — and to the grizzled man at Kleindorfer’s who sold me a replacement Fluidmaster 400A fill valve seal for $1.39. I am especially pleased that the problem was not with my septic tank. . .

–S.

Used to be that I hated seeing most kinds of clouds. The big fluffy ones set against a blue sky were OK. So were the dark gray ones rolling in and promising a good, creepy thunderstorm. But as for all of the others? Eh. Until now. I’ve been reading The Cloudspotter’s Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds by Gavin Pretor-Pinney — the founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society — and I love it.

So far of particular interest was the tale of a pilot — Lt.-Col. William Rankin — who as Pretor-Pinney puts it, “got intimate with a Cumulonibus.” While flying directly over a large storm, Rankin’s aircraft experienced engine trouble, and Rankin was forced to eject. He parachuted right through the Cumulonibus — complete with lightning, torrential rain, and hail — and managed to get away with only decompression sickness, frostbite, welts, assorted bruises, (and a phenomenal story to tell at dinner parties.)

–S.

What does it mean when no one notices your new haircut? That it is so bad that it’s better not to speak of it? That people just don’t look at each other much anymore? What?

James did it. Turn-about is, after all, fair play.

–S.