John. There is something wrong with you. Where do you find this stuff? (head on desk, laughing)

Shows what you know. I am a hobbit. I swear.

And yeah, what's with the square door? Don't you just love these inane comments in your inbox???

Yeah, yeah, yeah--where's the photo of the dragonfly shaking it off??? ;-)

My half-sister was born and raised in South Ayrshire. I bet she's already heard about this on the news--not much happens there.

N

Ned Flanders is based on a professor at Oral Roberts University named Gerald Landers. Nicest guy ever--and yes, they are dead ringers. The lead animator for the Simpsons got his AV degree at ORU where Gerald was one of his professors (and mine, too). There is a wonderful bit where Homer steals Ned's diploma, hangs it on the wall, and scratches his own name in. It reads, "NED FLANDERS ORAL ROBERTS UNIVERSITY." Gerald was really one of the nicest people ever and I enjoyed his company. I could totally understand the homage.

My daddy always called them the "fuzzy tailed fungus". Nan

Hi, Phil. As I do script editing and got an order today to send out a whole bunch of scripts to a whole bunch of places, I appreciated the timing of this. Geeze... ;-) Nan

ROUS's? I don't believe they exist. ~Nan

HEY PHIL! Nan, fellow writer here. I am so glad you posted about Lives of the Monster Dogs--I read that book when it came out and it is very, very good. Didn't get a whole lot of publicity, but it should have. Thanks for mentioning it.

If you get a chance, read a book called Lethe. It's out of print but extremely cheap--you can probably get it for a penny on amazon, and old sci-fi novel about how in the future, dolphins replace supercomputers when it comes to dealing with abstract math. Wonderful novel.

ACK STACY--now I want watermellon. With salt. Not molten, of course. ~Nan