The Birds re-enacted in a Rochester, MN park

Last night while walking to 300 First in Rochester for dinner, SLP and I were greeted by a disturbing, nay, terrifying sight and sound. Hundreds, nay, thousands of crows, all converging to roost in the tops of the trees of Central Park, home of the mysterious Heritage House.

We asked our server about the crows and she informed us that they arrive every night around 5 or 6 PM. We’re not sure if it’s more scary to think they do this every night, or if we were witnessing (and perhaps somehow implicated in) a one-time occurrence. Or maybe it’s just lame that we were going out to dinner at 5 PM. But we have kids so, enough said.

I managed to snap the following photo of the birds in action, though it fails to convey their staggering numbers or the freight train volume of the cacophony they were producing. But what’s even creepier is that when we left the restaurant around 7 PM, there were dozens, if not hundreds, of these birds perched on the upper branches of every tree in the park… and they were totally silent. Paging Tippi Hedren…

Crows in Central Park, Rochester, MN

Marble Madness… uh… madness

This one’s making the rounds… Daring Fireball and Cabel Sasser at the very least, but it bears sharing.

I’ve had this game on both the PC and the NES, and I’ve tried it in MAME. It’s way cool… way ahead of its time… and way crazy-hard. But I loved it, even though I was never any good at it.

I’ve never actually had the opportunity to play it the way it was meant to be played — with a trackball in an arcade cabinet. But I have a feeling that even if I did it would require years of practice for me to play it this well:

Rick Sanchez lays the smackdown on “Joe” the “Plumber”

There’s one, and only one, thing I like about “Joe” the “Plumber,” and that’s people mocking him.

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez brings the goods in this commentary on “Joe” and his douchebaggery.

I think the stopwatch is reading 14:59 right about now.