some links to speed you towards the weekend brought to you by my alternate identity on FB:

-> great 140-character length short stories, as necessitated by twitter [twitter.com]

I explained to the maid that the handcuffs belonged to my 5 year old. When she handcuffed herself to my bed, I knew my Spanish was bad.

-> making marcos stand at the dinner table when he takes too long to eat doesn’t seem so cruel anymore after watching these nominations for parent-of-the-year [artsytime.com]

-> china supplies much of the rare earth metals that help build hybrid auto engines, and they are now looking to hoard it to preserve them for use within their own country. yikes [telegraph.co.uk]

…and

-> new pictures of our favorite wal-mart shoppers [peopleofwalmart.com]