Barns painted red reminds me of a (bad) joke I used to tell when I was young and obnoxious.

Why are fire engines painted red? Because 2 + 2 is 4 and 4 x 3 is 12. There are 12 inches in a ruler. Queen Elizabeth is a ruler. Queen Elizabeth is also a boat. Boats sail on the sea. Fishes swim in the sea. Fishes have fins. The Fins fought the Russians. Russians are also known as reds. Fire engines are always rushin’, and that’s why they’re painted red.

You really didn’t want to know me in junior high.

You all may or may not find this useful (I know I will), but I’ve added a “permanent location” to the bottom of each entry. It’s a bit of a misnomer, because they really won’t be permanent until they’re archived, but you’ll be able to bookmark specific archived entries if you wish. You can link to specific entries here, as well, but the link will expire after 10 days. Until I can find an automatic way, you can construct the permanent address if you wish from the date of the Sunday of the week I posted the entry. Sounds confusing, but it’s not too bad. For example, the address to this post is </#78374> while it’s on the front page. The perrmanent address is </archive/2000_03_05_archive.html#78374>. If you know the entry number and the Sunday’s date, you can construct a permanent link to any specific post I’ve written, going back to day one. Thanks to Matt Haughey for explaining how this works.

So, why are barns painted red? That happens to be the most frequently answered question at The Barn Journal, and of course they have an answer. Several, actually.

Today, the Brunching Shuttlecocks provide us with a thoughtful analysis and rating of the This Little Piggy rhyme. “For all the flaws, the work illuminates a universal human truth: grabbing someone’s pinky toe and going “wee wee wee” is fun. "

One of the most entertaining thins about Monday mornings is looking through the logs to see what those wacky AOL’ers were searching for when the found Kestrel’s Nest. Today’s winning entry: “[nude and telescope](http://search.aol.com/dirsearch.adp?query=nude and telescope)”. Maybe I should have joined the Nekkid Astronomers Club in college after all…

Biblical Discernment Ministries does its best to show us how far to the right the extreme right can go. During a quick browse through the site, I discovered that the TBN (home to the 700 Club) and Pat Robertson are blasphemers helping spread secular filth, that someone is wearing Hitler’s secret Mormon underwear, that Elvis Presley is burning in Hell (and Billy Graham will be joining him there), and of course that Bob Jones University is anything but a bastion of Bible Christianity. Did you know that Bob Jones allows sodomites to view his collection of blasphemous “sacred art” and sponsors a demonic karate team?

TVEyes, we’re watching while you’re not! This company will monitor the TV airwaves for utterences of any word or phrase you choose, and then email you a notification. It seems this is mostly intended for financial types who want to see what people are saying about their hot stock, but it has other interesting uses, too. For example, Chip over at Chip’s SpyNotebook watched for the word “monkey” Wednesday evening and found a number of quotes.

Macaroni & Cheese makes me dance, too. Requires Flash.

Mike Gunderloy, author of Larkfarm (a favorite site of mine), has shown me to the Degree Confluence Project. And suprisingly enough, the 34N, 83W point near my house has not been done yet. So, I’ll just have to find a GPS unit to borrow and go hiking…

Lady Luck walks out on the Kilkenny Cats on the one day they need her most as Cork stage a dramatic triumph. You can catch up on all of your hurling news, thanks to a site from Guinness. I think if you were to follow a link labelled “hurling” from an American brewery’s page, you might expect to be taken somewhere entirely different.