Last Monday on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Scarlett Johansson appeared with a cold she got from Samuel Jackson (who was in Star Wars with Natalie Portman, who will be in New York, I Love You with Kevin Bacon).

Jay Leno suggested she supply some of the valuable germs to a Kleenex in the usual manner and auction it on eBay.  She agreed, offering the proceeds to USA Harvest (“moving food from people who have too much, to those who have much too little”).

Ms. Johansson: How much do you think I’m gonna get for this?

Mr. Leno: More than ten dollars.

The auction closed last late last night, earning $5,300.

I’m somewhat discouraged to see that Charity Navigator doesn’t even list USA Harvest, but if we as a people will only be motivated to feed the hungry when a celebrity auctions a Kleenex for a charity with no rating, then we should stil give all we can.

The first two sentences in this morning’s Boston Globe read:

The Federal Reserve cut its key rate yesterday to a range between zero and 0.25 percent, the lowest figure ever.  The Fed acknowledged that it has virtually exhausted its rate-cutting arsenal….

Really?  We think there’s no more room for cuts when the rate is down to zero?

I just noticed this headline in yesterday’s Boston Globe:

Police team up to solve robberies

In related news, “Fire department seen putting out fires.”

Page A9 in this morning’s Boston Globe contains a very brief article, quoted here in its entirety (there is no byline):

Protest in South Africa

Minibus taxi drivers set fires yesterday during a march in Cape Town against the government’s proposed bus transit upgrade for the World Cup, which the taxi drivers say will cost them revenue.

I fully expected it to continue, “In other news, oil companies threatened to uproot train tracks and sabotage any cars used for carpools.  Electric company officials were also seen breaking into homes known to have installed energy-efficient florescent or LED lighting.”

A South African website called Independent Online covered the event more extensively yesterday, running an article with the absolutely awesome headline “Commuters flee rampaging taxi drivers.”

Taxi drivers blockaded roads and threw stones at Golden Arrow buses and private cars, allegedly in protest against the formation of the city’s new Bus Rapid Transit system, perceived permit inequalities and the taxi recapitalization process.

Then it just goes over the top in insanity:

[Commuter Thembakazi Bizana] said commuters ran for their lives when taxi drivers started throwing stones. “It was chaos out there… I took a cab and they started stoning the cabs also, saying we are not allowed to use any transport.”

This might be the worst protest plan in the history of protests.  First, they stoned cabs as part of their protest to encourage cab use.  Second, better mass transit is a good thing, but they’re opposing it for personal reasons (and that’s a hard sell).  Third, and most importantly, they’ve caused people serious harm.  I know I’d be a lot less inclined to take a cab in Boston if I knew the driver was prone to dragging people from buses and beating them up.

From the Report of the Virginia Tech Review Panel, analyzing the mass murder there last year:

A female student trying to get into Norris Hall shortly before the shooting started found the entrance chained.  She climbed through a window to get where she was going on the first floor.  She did not report the chains, assuming they had something to do with ongoing construction.

I can’t imagine that if I showed up to work to find all the doors chained I would even consider that a gunman could be responsible, nor that he was inside at that moment preparing to start shooting.

However, I also highly doubt that upon finding the doors chained shut I’d consider climbing through a window to get in anyway.

By Ashley Halsey III in the Washington Post (via this morning’s Boston Globe):

There will be no visitors allowed at the grand opening of the US Capitol Visitor Center.

Uhh…  you keep using that word.  I don’t think it means what you think it means.  I here advance the notion that until visitors are allowed in, the visitor center isn’t particularly “open.”

(They’ll be allowed in later in the day.)

An Associated Press article in the Boston Globe, 14 November 2008 begins:

VIENNA – Prosecutors filed a murder charge yesterday against the man accused of imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in a rat-infested cell and fathering her seven children, saying one of the youngsters who died in infancy might have survived if brought to a doctor.

It gets worse.  It gets a lot worse.  Read the whole thing and you’ll feel your grip on reality slipping away with every sentence.  The absolute surrealism of this story – the natural subconscious belief that this surely cannot have happened in the real world – almost makes it seem like this must have been written for The Onion, except nothing about it is even the tiniest bit funny.

I loved the last hours of this election.

First, the pundits nearly pulled muscles trying not to call the election too early, even when the outcome became blindingly apparent.  We heard a lot of hypothetical scenarios like, “Let’s suppose Obama wins California.  Here’s how he might win the election then.”  As it turns out, 61% of California voted for him, and I’m sure we’re stunned.

The lessons of the 2000 election seem to have set in too deeply.  They shouldn’t have jumped on the “victory” button the moment Pennsylvania went to Obama, but they probably didn’t need to wait until California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii all actually closed.

Second, although I generally detest when my neighbors shout “whooooo” from their balconies in the dead of night, watching Grant Park erupt into cheers at the same moment my entire block began to scream “Obama” from their windows portrayed, better than anything that came before, the unifying power of this leader.

Third, I realized for the first time watching Obama’s speech that this election was played “for keeps,” and we have chosen a man to serve as our president for four years.  I’ve forgotten what it’s like to want to tune in when presidents ask to address the nation.  Now we can feel something we haven’t felt in eight years: inspiration.