I was checking out the Times Online’s puzzle page and came across KenKen, a pretty cool math game that most Sudokuites (I just made that word up) should get off on.

I dig it. I also dig the ideas on learning and education that game inventor Tetsuya Miyamoto puts forward and bases his teaching methods upon.

Any attempt here to encapsulate the ideas of the game or its inventor would most certainly and miserably fail to accurately convey the complete icy coolness of both. Someone smarter than me needs to figure out to make a Facebook out of this thing, smack up a couple of ads and retire.

Our girl Via has finally gone and done it…come through on her wonderful promise to break out of the office grind and into what she’s meant for: illustration.

I’d try and describe just the fine she’s done, but I think her own words spin the Baron’s tale best:

Have you searched in vain for original, whimsical paper goods for your child? Did little Hamish’s last ‘Duck Tales’ birthday party leave him feeling common, even bourgeois?

Visit www.baronvonfreckle.com to view the Baron’s bookplates, calling cards, stationery, and party supplies. Of note: all our paper products are made from 100% post-consumer content. {It’s only civilized.}

It’s beautiful, witty and well-crafted stuff for consumers of all ages, from one of my best friends. Check her out, cut me my 10% finder’s fee when you’re selling her first edition sets for phat on eBay come this time next year.

(Image ripped from an interview she did on RealSimple.com)

UPDATE: It’s official. The image of JFK-getting-down-with-his-chowder in the President’s Favorite Food series under the Children’s Soiree section is genius.

My iPhone keeps rebooting.

I think my Powerbook’s hard drive is starting to thrash.

My Vista machine is…well, a Vista machine.

My refrigerator just started making that noise all day and night, instead of just all day.

I just got a nasty, nasty metal cut off a whipping rusted Craftsman tape measure.

Today I hate technology. A lot.

But bathrooms? Did someone say bathrooms?! I love bathrooms! Happy, happy bathroom! But sometimes sad boo-hoo bathrooms. Sometimes pretty, shiny bathrroms! Like a boooootiful princess kinda pretty. Even, sometimes, ugly, ugly bathrooms. Vandalized and whored, like my dark, prickly, anti-technology soul has been today.

So here’s a new site dedicated to My American Bathrooms.

Enjoy!

“They have no conscience. They were born without a conscience. They’re psychopathic personalities. There is a wonderful medical book about them. It’s called The Mask of Sanity. It’s by Dr. Hervey M. Cleckley. It’s about people who were born without consciences. They don’t care what happens next…You and I would say, ‘Jeez. I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do now.’ A psychopath would say, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. Bang.’ Women go for these guys, too, because they’re so decisive.”

More excerpts from my therapist’s notes - as well as a fair encapsulation of my favorite author’s life and motivation - in Stop Smiling’s interview with Kurt Vonnegut, compiled about a year before his death.