"Holy crap! Woot has signed an agreement with Amazon - yes, the Amazon - to become an independent subsidiary of the ecommerce colossus. Woot HQ will remain in Carrollton, Texas, and will operate as autonomously as other Amazon companies like Zappos and Audible. More details forthcoming."

Damn, there goes my "underground" tee shirt supplier. :(

Woot To Be Acquired By Amazon

"Secret Russian agents were assigned to live as married couples in the United States, even having children who were apparently unaware of their parents' true identities. A spy swapped identical bags with a Russian official as they brushed past each other in a train station stairwell. Messages were written with invisible ink, hidden in the data of digital pictures, and encoded in messages sent over shortwave radio."

US Disrupts Russian Spy Network

A rare 1939 German sports car commissioned by Adolf Hitler is expected to command the highest price ever paid for any automobile at auction, according to Christie's, which will conduct the auction in Paris in February 2007.

Hitler's Hot Rod! Now if that's not a chick magnet, I don't know what is. Now that Hitler has a really cool custom car to go with his secret underground lair I guess he qualifies for full super-villain status.

Hitler's Race Car

Olivia Wallace just wanted to make her friends laugh Friday morning. But the plucky 11-year-old suddenly found herself in a very painful situation - her tongue firmly frozen to a steel utility light pole.

And here I thought EVERYBODY has seen "A Christmas Story."

A Tongue, A Metal Pole, A Hard Lesson

A 2-month-old baby was hospitalized with a blood-alcohol level more than four times the legal limit for an adult driver, but medical officials said she was expected to recover.

Sad but true. How does one get a baby to digest that much alcohol? I suppose the amount needed would be much less than an adult, but still.

Baby Hospitalized With Blood-Alcohol Level of .364

"A local family's nativity is defaced with a pagan symbol. They found a pentagram on their baby Jesus figure Thursday morning. The words cult of the dead cow were left on a Merry Christmas sign. The phrase is usually tied to a group of Internet hackers."

These little antics are the only things that make me smile during the holiday season.

Baby Jesus Gets Tagged

"A CIA employee for nearly 20 years admitted breaking into 10 homes near the spy agency's headquarters about a year ago and taking valuables and other items." ... "Search warrants list 1,074 pairs of women's undergarments that he stole." ... Quote: "I don't profess to be that knowledgeable about ladies' undergarments," Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ian M. Rodway said after the court hearing.

1074 pairs of panties from 10 houses?! WTF?

Secret Agent Man

"A grandmother found with a trunkful of marijuana was convicted of drug running in what prosecutors said was an attempt to earn cash for a bingo habit." ... "Villareal faces three to 12 years in state prison when she is sentenced Dec. 18."

I believe her! No doubt it was her "first time." Easy to believe mexican granny with a welfare/gambling jones could support herself and her car on $275/mo. It would be easy to trick her into hauling a hundred Kilo/bags of dope across the border - just tell her it's Christmas presents for cousins Lupe, Manuel, Jose, Jesus, Pedro, Maria, Vicente, Carlos...

Bingo-addicted Granny Guilty of Pot Smuggling

WHAT: Pennsylvania man appealed his conviction for knowingly possessing downloaded child pornography, saying he didn't know it was in his Web browser's cache.

WHEN: The Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled on November 2.

OUTCOME: Court threw out conviction, saying state law criminalized only knowingly possessing child pornography, not simply viewing it.

Laws From a Time When Contraband Only Existed in Physical Form

When violent crime strikes a social network, the ghosts of the dead start roaming the machines.

Deanne Bays was worried about her kid brother, Daniel. His girlfriend hadn't heard from him for a day and a half. There was no sign of him online, even though he usually spent hours a day on MySpace. And he'd been hanging out a lot with that drug dealer. Bays hoped that didn't mean young Daniel Varo was back in jail. All day long on February 7, even as Bays crammed for Accounting 211 and Spanish 102 and took her daughter to the dentist, she wondered where he could be. That evening, two hours into her 4-to-10 pm shift at the Norm Thompson catalog company, just outside Portland, Oregon, Bays finally got a chance to check her own MySpace page for messages. There was one from her husband, frantic, telling Bays to phone right away – even though he knew that she wasn't allowed to make personal calls on the job. Bays' inbox also had emails from two of Varo's ex-girlfriends. "What did he do now?" she groaned to herself, clicking on one of the notes: im freekin out i cant stop crying and i dont want to believe its true. he cant be gone … please call me or someone call me please.

Murder on MySpace