If you enjoy a good, hard laugh and would like to see an example of some excellent visual humor, you could do a lot worse than visit Punditguy . His posts today and yesterday had me rolling. Check him out.

The rent is due in two days and you're fifty bucks short. Ouch. You ordered that Six Dollar Burger with mustard and they gave you mayo instead. Ain't that always the way? The IRS just sent you a letter saying they'd like to get to know you better. I hate when that happens.

So you think you've got problems?

Chances are you are leading an entirely blessed existence and don't even know it. Or if you do happen to understand that factoid maybe you're just too darned busy to take the time to stop and smell the petunias.

So offers some rich guy named Warren Buffet. Chill all you Parrotheads. This is a different guy entirely. Mr Buffet has some ideas on why we need to appreciate the good life most of us live. The wisdom below came to us through a post from Seth Godin (sethgodin.com) by way of Will Samson of willzhead (willzhead.typepad.com). Those of you keeping track at home can score that Buffet to Godin to Samson to GPBlogs for the first triple play of the young blogging season. That is also, quite likely, the correct descending order in today's Net Worth Sweepstakes. But that's another tale for another day.

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Be Grateful

There are roughly 6 Billion people in the world. Imagine the worlds biggest lottery where every one of those 6 Billion people was required to draw a ticket. Printed on each ticket were the circumstances in which they would be required to live for the rest of their lives.

Printed on each ticket were the following items:

* Sex
* Race
* Place of Birth (Country, State, City, etc.)
* Type of Government
* Parents names, income levels & occupations
* IQ (a normal distribution, with a 66% chance of your IQ being 100 & a standard deviation of 20)
* Weight, height, eye color, hair color, etc.
* Personality traits, temperment, wit, sense of humor
* Health risks

If you are reading this blog right now, I'm guessing the ticket you drew when you were born wasn't too bad. The probability of you drawing a ticket that has the favorable circumstances you are in right now is incredibly small (say, 1 in 6 billion). The probability of you being born as your prefereable sex, in the United States, with an average IQ, good health and supportive parents is miniscule.

Warren spent about an hour talking about how grateful we should all be for the circumstances we were born into and for the generous ticket we've been offered in life. He said that we should not take it for granted or think that it is the product of something we did - we just drew a lucky ticket. (He also pointed out that his skill of "allocating capital" would be useless if he would have been born in poverty in Bangladesh.)

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All together now. On the count of three, everybody feeling just a bit sheepish for complaining about your wet newspaper this morning--hit your knees. One . . . two . . .

Like I said, I was chasing Alice down the rabbit hole after leaving the world of all things calm and peaceful, when what do I tumble into but the world of Katy Raymond.

She calls her blog "Fallible", which strikes me as great irony. Everything here is so well appointed. Almost perfect. We see a graphic of a somewhat forlorm turn of the century (1900s) woman in lace. Perhaps she is recalling of an old lover, perhaps she has indegestion. She is an enigma. The site's wallpaper features antique French perfume or poofy bath soap labels. Not sure which.

This quote, positioned below the Fallible logo says it all:

"Je trouve ces verites pour entre evident en soi. Mais, de l'autre cote je porrais avois tort."

Which, loosely translated, I'm pretty sure means "The evidence doesn't lie. O.J. did it."

I didn't suffer through three semesters of Jr. High French for nothing.

OK, yes I did.

Still, if it is the landscape that catches your eye on "Fallible" it is the writing that captures your heart. Ms. Raymond keeps claiming she's not yet published anything on dead tres, but I don't believe her. Katy writes about her children (grown), her husband (nearly grown), and the reflections of a life lived fully as child of God.

I'm sure she writes about other stuff too. She's been blogging since 2000 which I think is before it was legal. I haven't begun to tap the wealth of all those archives, but I'll bet there are more secrets in there than Budweiser has pull tabs.

You'd think when a husband and wife tackle writing on the same quotation there would be a lot of point/counter point discussion. ("Doug, you ignorant slut!") Instead what you often find is a couple with delightfully different ways of painting a very similar picture.

If there is one complaint to be lodged with management, it's that one of these writers (I won't say who) spends too much time designing web sites and not enough producing verbage for an insatiable and relentlessly demanding public.

One can only hope that changes. As a one-two punch this blogging tandem floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. Check 'em out today.

Should you follow your eyes down the left hand margin you are sure to eventually light those baby blues on a couple of bloggers worth remembering.

I can't remember how I stumbled upon the first. Marginal. Probably in some well-categorized directory. It wasn't the writing which first caught my eye. It was the atmosphere. Take a stroll into the world of owner Doug Raymond and you feel as if you wandered into the study of some kindly old professor in a tweed coat with patches on the elbow.

Doug doesn't consider himself a writer. He designs web sites, not sentences. And his study is so inviting with it's blog-in-a-book concept it would be easy just to sit down and share that cup of coffee on the page, missing out on the simple, self-depricating text entirely.

Sticking out from beneath the upper right corner of the book is a charming snapshot of Raymond and some lady. Hey, that's no lady I can hear him retort now . . . that's my wife. Indeed, the curly-haired lass who dove-tails lovingly into Marginal's shoulder is the inimitable Katy Raymond. Thaaaat's niiiice. Doug put a picture of his bride on his desk.

But wait!

Less than an inch below the happy couple is the icon of an open book with the words "His" on the left hand side and "Hers" occupying page right. Then you read the nearby verbage. It reads:

"The His/Hers icon at the end of a post means that Katy and I have attempted to write about the same quote, without discussing the quote before we write. I'm not sure what this will prove, other than being like-minded is apparently not a prerequisite to a happy marriage."

A lightning bolt zaps you up the side of the head and all of a sudden the whole world is crystal. This is a CONCEPT blog. He shares what a quote or passage of Scripture means to him, applying life experience to the topic. Then you click on the book icon at the bottom of the post and get her take.

So I click the icon. Color and feminity abound. Now I know how Alice felt after she dropped through the rabbit hole.

But that, Dear Reader, is another tale for another day. This blog hound has to get up uncharacteristically early in the morning and drive the pups to school. Something about giving a certain "Lady" in my house the day off from everything. And that is something I blame entirely on Katy. Go read some of her recent posts to see what I mean.