"Giant Risk"

Drink whisky, push little plastic army guys around with sticks, conquer the world. Sounds good to me.

Weird display problem at the-big-meow.com -- can people help?

I had a mail from a nice lady who said she wanted to subscribe to The Big Meow, but was having trouble. I suggested she click on the button at the top of the sidebar, and she wrote back, "What button?"

This is extremely weird, as the button displays perfectly on every browser I've got. Would those of you who have a moment please look at the "Big Meow" website's index page and tell me whether you can see the "Buy Now" button or not? And if you can't see it, please let me know what browser you're using.

Thanks!

(BTW,  for those of you who might be interested -- now that Lulu.com is offering hardcovers [with dustjackets even!], I'm going to do a costing on how much an "upgrade" to hardcover would cost for those who've already subscribed to the paperback. Stay tuned.)

(If you are interested, you might drop the contact email on the TBM page a mail with just the word HARDCOVER in the subject, so I can get a sense of the numbers.)

The accident scene you really don't want to be sent to

After 16-year-old Jacqueline Cossairt of Markle lost control of a sport utility vehicle on gravel-covered Wells County Road 1050 North about 4:30 p.m., it struck an old hollow tree, rousting 80,000 to 100,000 honeybees inside.

By the time Ossian Volunteer Fire Chief Kent Gilbert arrived he found a black cloud of the insects swarming around the GMC Envoy.

“Those bees were mad,” he said. “I’ve never seen bees, especially honeybees, attack like that.”

And those angry bees turned what Gilbert said should have been a 10-minute extrication of the teen who was pinned inside her truck into 45 agonizing minutes as firefighters tried to figure out a way to safely work among the bees.

Cripes, what a nightmare.