Under anesthetic, subdivided and synthetic

NEW DELHI, India (Reuters) -- A Muslim couple in India have been told by local Islamic leaders they must separate after the husband "divorced" his wife in his sleep, the Press Trust of India reported.

Sohela Ansari told friends that her husband Aftab had uttered the word "talaq," or divorce, three times in his sleep, according to the report published in newspapers on Monday.

When local Islamic leaders got to hear, they said Aftab's words constituted a divorce under an Islamic procedure known as "triple talaq." The couple, married for 11 years with three children, were told they had to split.

The religious leaders ruled that if the couple wanted to remarry they would have to wait at least 100 days. Sohela would also have to spend a night with another man and be divorced by him in turn.

The couple, who live in the eastern state of West Bengal, have refused to obey the order and the issue has been referred to a local family counseling center.

...Okay, that's it. I'm actually baffled.

A big body count does not a good TV show make. Are you listening, 24?

If you thought last week was bad, tonight's going to be nine times worse.

Seriously, I expected wenchamok to (omg spoiler-saturated link) explode.

Romenesko's summary: A suburban Chicago woman's refusal to watch a videotape that reputedly depicts her gang rape could end up derailing the trial of one of her accused attackers. Also, she could be held in contempt of court.

And now I just threw up a little bit.

Halo 2 for PC? Only under Windows Vista.

Why in the name of God was Snow Day playing on Cartoon Network yesterday?

I mean, I know MTV abandoned its "all music, all the time" idea a long, long time ago, and M2 is now similarly tainted, but really, how hard is it to confuse the imperative behind the name "Cartoon Network" -- ? It's not like they ran out of cartoons.

I have two perfectly legitimately-obtained copies of Windows XP SP2 installed on the two house computers. Neither of them will allow themselves to be activated, preventing them from having security patches installed, requiring me to make what I'm sure is going to be an excruciating telephone experience sometime tomorrow.

Doing a quick Google for the solution returns several dozen ways to circumvent the activation procedure, but I figured if I've actually spent money for the stupid thing, I should go ahead and do everything by the book.

But yeah, this is not encouragement to do so in the future. Being good is more trouble than it's worth.

I'm not really worked up about the whole "Christmas"/"holiday" pseudo-controversy. I say "Christmas," because it's what I and my family has always celebrated. I don't aim to offend. If one of my Jewish friends wishes me a "Happy Hannukah," hey, that's great, I'm not going to be offended, and I'm pretty sure nobody's trying to inflict their holidays on anyone else. (Of course, this is just personally -- I know things work different on an institutional level. Good thing I'm not insitutionalized. Yet.)

But the one thing I am sick to bloody death of is "Festivus." I got exposed to enough Jerry Seinfeld before his show and never could enjoy it. I found it too self-congratulatory, self-absorbed and just too smarmy...worse, I just never found it funny. But if I had a nickel for every supposedly-clever "Festivus" reference I've seen online in the last two weeks I could afford to buy the World Wide Intarwub. Yes, synthetic holiday, yes, alternative to Christmas, yes, ridiculous rituals, yes, some people are taking it seriously. Ha ha, I understand, you can stop telling me about it now. Since every television station is apparently required to syndicate either Seinfeld, Sex in the City or Everybody Loves Raymond, you can probably flip channels and watch the damned episode instead of inflicting it on others. It might've been funny or original when the episode aired. It certainly is no longer either. Spare me.

Eh. Maybe I just need to start taking Panexa.

Mufferfupper. Fo apparenwy my gumf haf fwowwen a bit in the waft few dayf. Fo dey had to numb me up (firft wif a fwab and den wif WOTF OF NEEDLEF) and fwap de teef in, and dey're afkin' me, "Do dey feew okay?" and I'm aww wike, "No, you foow, becaufe haff my fafe if afweef!" Fo when it wearf off I'll frob'ly haf a cwooked fafe. I'm awweady tawkin' like Gweta Van Fufteren. Grr.

Oh, in unwewated (or if it?) newf, bwame Wore for dif:

Superb. Apparently the denistry went okay, but I guess I needed laser surgery, which explains why I awoke feeling like I got hit in the face by God. Normally the residual pain is minimal. This time, well, it's enough to put a little misery in my daily drudgery. The idea of solid food is daunting. And I like solid food. Sigh.

And my staff cleaned up the office yesterday and tried to throw away my copy of the paper that featured my former instructor. I did dig it out of the trash, but it's nicely crumpled. Grr. Might as well pitch it, I guess.

All this and no good meds. Today sucks loud.

Good to know that the Collegian is treating Snyder's resignation with all due effort for what'll probably be the biggest story of the calendar year. Instead of actually writing a story, they've posted the text of his farewell verbatim on the front page.

Witness the glory of the front page of the print edition. People, it's a big enough story that even if it happens at 9 pm, you scrap the front page and you redo it (yes, this trumps Web site domain confusion and local recycling efforts).

But if you must treat the story as shabbily as possible by exiling it into red-banner-at-top-land, could you at least spell his name correctly?

You'd think that the law of averages would kick in at some point and they'd be mathetmatically obliged to make just one decision in the process correctly, even accidentally. This is a goddamned travesty.

Here's a shred of what they could've written: ...Come to think of it, though, only Alvarez rebuilt. Snyder built something on an empty lot. He has 135 wins in 17 seasons. In the previous 54 seasons, the Wildcats had won 137 games. For that reason alone, I would be stunned if Snyder doesn't arrive at the College Football Hall of Fame in three years.