My spring fever. Let me show you it

Don't know what happened to flick the mental switch, but I am battling a vicious case of fever, spring variety. I think it's the fact that it's recently gotten warm enough that I can go to sleep with a fan blowing on me. I don't care if I had Bill Gates' money, I would still opt to sleep with a fan on in the warm months. (Of course, if I had Gates' money, I could sleep with a fan trained on me in the winter months, too. Just thump the wall dial up to 85 or so, and have my own little endless summer. Hey, if Al Gore can't be bothered with Earth Hour, then my hypothetical billionaire self can indulge in a few wasteful kilowatts.)

So, gripped by fever, fever when you hold me tight...Jonny Quest looked more like Race...the hedges really should be pulled up...look! A chipmunk!

I'm having trouble focusing, is what I'm saying. And, since I'm actually wanting to put a little thought into the final installment on comedy, I'm postponing it until later. I think it'll be worth the wait.

With the appropriate weaselly excuses dispensed, let's move on to the glued-down channel clicker that is currently resident in my head. (Those of you who are fans of coherent thought might just want to leave now. I'm telling you, this is gonna be random enough to pass Pearson's chi-square test. See, Dr. Byrd at Enterprise State Junior College? I did in fact learn something from that calculus class.)

The Wild West had hanging judges. Alabama has the Paddling Judge.

Another man told investigators that when he was 26 and on probation, Thomas told him to prepare to get paddled. The man responded that he was "a grown man and that was a betrayal of his manhood" and walked away. He said he saw Thomas some time later, and the judge asked him "why he didn't come visit him anymore?"

These ungrateful kids of today. They take your paddling, sure, but do they reciprocate the good wishes by visiting you later? Nooooooooooo.

On "Survivor" last night, fellow Samson native J.T. expressed his disbelief in Coach's wild story of being held captive by pygmies by saying that if that had really happened, "I'd have wanted to reckon with those [people]." Not that I needed a reason to root for a fellow Samsonian, but when he used "reckon" proudly, I all but got a tear of pride in my eye. Now if I can get The Lovely Missus to acknowledge that "tote" is a perfectly good word.

Ate at Cracker Barrel yesterday, because it's a fairly kid-friendly place. Jacob was fascinated, pointing in all directions and saying, "Ga." (For him, "Ga" is an all-purpose word. Kinda like "Aloha" for Hawaiians.) But he eventually tired of sitting in the high chair, so I took him to the store part of the CB and strolled around. They have Bottle Caps! They appear to be of a smaller diameter than the ones I remember, but still, they're authentic Bottle Caps. Suddenly, I'm 10 years old again.

The Oprah has decided to explore the Twitter phenomenon. As if she weren't already beaming thought-control rays directly into the minds of her acolytes. Honestly, people, all the woman lacks are virgin sacrifices to complete the transformation from former weatherwoman into deity.

You also have to wonder if this is the death knell for Twitter, geekerati-wise. When your uber-cool tech tool is discovered by people as un-geeky as The Oprah, it's time to move on to something less accessible.

If you don't have a scanner, go buy one. You can get a fairly good one from Amazon for roughly $100, or off eBay or some such for even less. Scan some of your old family pictures, and start emailing or printing out and mailing them to family members. Now, before you lose any more. It'll be the best investment in family togetherness you'll ever make. And when birthdays or Christmas come around, check out eBay or a postcard show for old postcards of the old hometown. They're absolutely the cheapest, most impactful (is that a word?) gifts you can buy.

That's it, peoples. I can't type any more. The fever, it has me, and I can't fight it any more. See you Monday.