As we browse a voluminous list of non-paywalled news sources each evening, looking for a story we feel like riffing on worthy of bringing to your valuable attention, we’ll often bookmark an item or two “just in case” — just in case, that is, we can’t find it in our soul to launch into a 2,000-word discourse analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of policy positions held by the most prominent of Our Nation’s hack bloviators public intellectuals.

Which is why, this fine spring morning, we’re proud to present fucking frogs.

[via Sully]

[via Jezebel/RML]

“REVEALED — THE LEFT’S ECONOMIC TERRORISM PLAYBOOK: THE CHASE CAMPAIGN BY A COALITION OF UNIONS, COMMUNITY GROUPS, LAWMAKERS AND STUDENTS TO TAKE DOWN US CAPITALISM AND REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH & POWER” [The Blaze]

Mr. Shatner was born on this day in 1931. You are now obligated to “sing” Rocket Man in his honor.

‘Talk Like William Shatner Day’ Video Contest [TrekMovie]

Sooner or later, it had to happen: We’ve been nailed by a New York Times trend piece.

Not by name, of course. The New York Times would never lower itself to source us on a story. (Except for that one time it did.) No, they just identified something Everybody Is Doing, and we got caught in the net.

Or rather, something everybody isn’t doing: The telephone is dead.

Dead, that is, for people who once used it. We’re already a generation into a demo for whom it never really existed, except as something you text and tweet and Facebook on. Those of us who once engaged in its original Ma Bell function are now disengaging.

And why? Because it’s fucking annoying.

Especially, say, if you work for yourself, and you’re in regular contact with people who work for a salary. Dear gawd, do they know how to waste your time! We’ve been training clients for years to scribble it in an email, because it takes just a glance to determine what they want, instead of pleasantry-pleasantry-weather-pleasantry-request-pleasantry-sport-pleasantry-bye!-recover.

We can’t afford to talk, and that’s been going on for fifteen years. Nice of Manhattan to finally catch up with us.

Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You [NYT, via Kottke]

“The American Bird Conservancy estimates that up to 500 million birds are killed each year by cats — about half by pets and half by feral felines. ‘I hope we can now stop minimizing and trivializing the impacts that outdoor cats have on the environment and start addressing the serious problem of cat predation,’ said Darin Schroeder, the group’s vice president for conservation advocacy.” [NYT]

[MSNBC]