"The little beasts are agitated."

Squirrels!

EXTRA: Fiona de Londras spots the hilarious -- and grisly -- misplaced modifier in the BBC news story.

Sexomnia.

A defense to rape that worked in Canada.

[A]t a trial, sleep experts testified that [Jan] Luedecke suffered from sexomnia.

A judge then ruled Wednesday that the landscaper was essentially sleepwalking during sex and was not guilty of the rape....

Four other women testified the Luedecke had previously had "sleep sex" with them as well, according to the report.

We know the Oscar is phallic.

But could you tone it down a little bit?

ADDED: Via Oscar Watch.

"You're talking a lot. But you're not saying anything."

I like the way Martha Stewart shot down her most recent victim (on "The Apprentice") with nearly a verbatim recitation of that line from "Psycho Killer." She encanted a series of things "we know" at Martha Stewart: we know what is right and good and true and beautiful at Martha Stewart. She made an intriguing juxtaposition: "We need substance. That's what make my life interesting." Don't we all feel like saying that sometimes? But it would be pretty rude to say it in real life. Still, it's tempting! Who likes empty yammerers? And shouldn't other people be attending to the project of making my life interesting.

And then there's Jim. Dear, sweet, adorable Jim. Jim, who made me kind of love him last week, when he gave Marcela the pep talk that kept her from crumbling into a little pile of defeat. This week's show begins with Jim gloating about his brilliant strategy of telling the weakest player how to defend herself, so she'd be around and easily defeatable on the next task. Ah, Jim is evil. And Marcela is weak. She survived again this time, but we saw her barely able to hold herself together. Martha chided her for always slouching, and then Marcela couldn't motivate herself to straighten up even for just that moment.

"Internet addiction disorder."

There are therapists who diagnose and treat Internet addiction disorder.

[A] leading expert in the field is Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack, the director of the Computer Addiction Study Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. She opened a clinic for Internet addicts at the hospital in 1996, when, she said, "everybody thought I was crazy."

Dr. Orzack said she got the idea after she discovered she had become addicted to computer solitaire, procrastinating and losing sleep and time with her family.

Well, playing computer solitaire obsessively really is a problem. But just strip it out of your computer and move on. You won't get the shakes or anything. If you're at the point of spending a lot of money or checking into an institution to cure your problem, step back and reason it through. You could simply get rid of your internet connection or your computer and eliminate the problem. The same applies to the "addiction" to watching television. You always have the option to remove the TVs from your house. Then you'll need to find something else to do. Don't plunge into indulgent notions of yourself as weak and diseased.

"I think using the Internet in certain ways can be quite absorbing, but I don't know that it's any different from an addiction to playing the violin and bowling," said Sara Kiesler, professor of computer science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. "There is absolutely no evidence that spending time online, exchanging e-mail with family and friends, is the least bit harmful. We know that people who are depressed or anxious are likely to go online for escape and that doing so helps them."

It was Professor Kiesler who called Internet addiction a fad illness. In her view, she said, television addiction is worse. She added that she was completing a study of heavy Internet users, which showed the majority had sharply reduced their time on the computer over the course of a year, indicating that even problematic use was self-corrective.

She said calling it an addiction "demeans really serious illnesses, which are things like addiction to gambling, where you steal your family's money to pay for your gambling debts, drug addictions, cigarette addictions." She added, "These are physiological addictions."

Yeah, I agree with Kiesler. Or maybe you just think I just haven't gotten to the first step of admitting I have a problem. I think if you find yourself passionately absorbed in something, the question should be whether it is a good thing, not whether you are passionately absorbed.

"'I'm sorry, I was hungry' has become a culturally acceptable way to apologize for brusque behavior."

Oh, yeah? Or is this just another topic the NYT editors discovered by reading blogs and whipped into an article that could seem to be about a new topic and then just happen to have a hip blogging angle?

In an age of electronic navel gazing, when people blog about their every emotion, the hunger-mood connection has been able to be fully expressed and, one might say, feed on itself. Thousands have told their cranky hunger stories online, from a famished driver who admitted to cursing at other motorists, to a woman who wrote that her honeymoon might have been an affair to forget had she not packed snacks.

I mean, I can't complain if this is their methodology. My main methodology is to read the NYT and find things to talk about. And then I can weave in some bloggish critique of the dreaded MSM.

But about this new social trend of adults excusing themselves for the babyish weakness of losing control when hungry:

A new vocabulary has evolved around victual despair, with the afflicted referring to their nasty moods as "food swings." Those who say their hunger frequently morphs into anger describe themselves as "hangry." And the word "hunger" itself seems to have taken on new meaning. No longer merely a physiological state, it is now also thought of as a mood....

Some people use their hunger as a verbal Get Out of Jail Free card. "Maybe I kind of enjoy the excuse to be cranky," said Fernanda Gilligan, a 28-year-old photo editor from Manhattan.

Yet many mercurial eaters do not stop at words. They try to control hunger-provoked dramas by scheduling their lives around their next meal. They stock drawers, purses and briefcases as if they were kitchen cupboards to ensure that sustenance is always within reach. For some, a granola bar has become as essential as a cellphone.

Anna Yarbrough, 26, a teacher in Boston, squirrels away nibble-friendly fare like string cheese, pretzels, apples and trail mix in her purse and desk drawer. If she and her husband have late dinner reservations, she snacks beforehand. A recent trip to a Celtics game required eating before tipoff and again when she got home. On her wedding day in October she was relieved to learn that there would be food at the hair salon.

Oh, lord, these people sound annoying. Do you have a cute slang term for getting cranky when people impose too much information about their private physical needs on you? (And do you have a cute slang term for getting cranky at the gratuitous mention of squirrels?)

Finally, there's the male-female angle:

In general men do not seem to suffer hunger-related moods as frequently as women do, or at least they are not as likely to admit it....

But why would more women than men be afflicted? "Offhand I can't think of any good, sound biological reason," Dr. Saltzman said. He speculated that the people who say they have food swings are eating smaller meals and therefore need to eat more frequently or that "psychologically they may have a lower threshold" for hunger.

Lisa Sasson, a clinical assistant professor in New York University's department of nutrition, food studies and public health, said weight consciousness might explain why more women report hunger-related moodiness.....

Dr. Saltzman said food swings may be harder to conquer if they are based not on physical hunger but on "emotional hunger," which is triggered by stress, sadness, depression or even boredom. Emotional hunger is harder to satisfy, he said, because "you can eat and overeat and still not feel sated."

[Blogger] Cherie Millns [writes] "My mother told my husband before we got married to make sure he always carried a banana with him, in case of a sudden cranky-pants emergency," Ms. Millns wrote. "It might just save his life."

"Cranky-pants"? Banana? I find that imagery distracting. But anyway, what's wrong with these people? It's one thing to get hungry and to deal with it by eating something, but it's quite another to make a conspicuous production out of it or, worse, to let it become a major issue in your love relationships. And to have your mother tell your husband how to care for you in the very way you'd care for a toddler? Is this really what's going on around America in 2005?

Reports on the Ayotte argument.

Here's the NPR story on Ayotte, the abortion case. There are two audio clips from the oral argument. The first is a compelling exchange between Justice Breyer and the lawyer for the state -- with a sharp cut in from Justice O'Connor. In the second, we hear Justice Roberts questioning the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project lawyer about why a preenforcement challenge should be permitted -- again, with assisted needling from Justice O'Connor.

Here's Linda Greenhouse's analysis of the argument:

Justices across the ideological spectrum appeared inclined to send the case back to the federal appeals court that had declared the law unenforceable in all respects, and to instruct that court to render a narrower ruling. Such a ruling would permit the law to take effect except when a doctor had certified that an immediate abortion - without either notifying a parent or seeking approval from a judge, an option known as a judicial bypass - was necessary to preserve a girl's health....

Attorney General Kelly A. Ayotte of New Hampshire, who brought the appeal of the lower court's ruling, asserted in her argument that under New Hampshire's general health law, a doctor performing an emergency abortion would have a legal defense in any event, based on the state's general law regarding medical practice. Ms. Ayotte said she was prepared to issue a formal opinion to that effect if the occasion arose.

The attorney general's position left Justice Ginsburg unsatisfied. "That's the real problem here for the doctor who's on the line," she said. "I think a lawyer who cares about his client would say 'defense' is not what we want, what we want is that there is no claim; not that you have to put up a defense and maybe the attorney general will give us a letter saying that we come under that defense."

Justice John Paul Stevens reminded Ms. Ayotte that the sponsors of the parental notice law in the New Hampshire Legislature had rejected including a medical exception. "When you have legislative history that suggests that the Legislature considered this very defense and rejected it in the statute, would then that give some concern?"

Ms. Ayotte replied that while "there certainly was some indication that the Legislature did not want a general health exception," sponsors did not intend to leave pregnant teenagers unprotected in emergencies.

I consider Stevens's question a devastating one, showing the bad faith of the state legislature, a deliberate hostility to the constitutional right the Supreme Court has recognized.

UPDATE: Listen to the whole oral argument here or download here. I'm surprised at how tempestuous the argument gets with the Solicitor General, who aggressively talks over a Justice more than once.