I was happily and nerdily gaming away on my new laptop this evening when I heard one of the most awful sounds in the world: The low, throaty growl of the battle-ready housecat.

It went down like this:

1. By way of background, I live on a country road in rural Massachusetts, in an old farmhouse now surrounded by more recently built dwellings. My New York, New York-living landlords put a deck onto the place about 10 years ago in order to take advantage of the babbling (it literally babbles) brook that constitutes the division between my land and the neighbor’s.

2. My sole ward is a zaftig Siamese of a certain age who is a trauma survivor. Lydia, always leery of dogs, was attacked many years ago in her old home by a German shepherd with an irrepressible prey instinct. After about 2 days of desperate searching, my mother finally found Lydia cowering behind the upstairs dryer, bleeding from a deep puncture wound on her right hindquarter.

Australian-American gargoyle and anti-Christ media mogul Rupert Murdoch may have received a bump to his head, as The Guardian reports that the publisher of “The Sunday Times” in the UK is planning to charge for the newspaper’s content on the web.

Some barely literate reasons below as to why this may be incredibly stupid.

In a shock to no-one who’s been living and breathing over the past nine years, evil old man “Dick” Cheney went on CNN today to remind everyone how evil this old man could be by trying to scare everyone all over again by being unsurprisingly evil.

One of these men shot his friend in the face. One of these men made a fortune through war. One of these men sends shivers of fear through the hearts of many with his mere presence.

The other man is Lionel Barrymore, in his role as the evil Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life”.