Penguin Riddler Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, you fiend!

There's a little more than an hour left, on the East Coast at least, and the world is still turning. The anticipated deadline for Iran's response to the West's aim to stop uranium enrichment in Tehran. Iran responded -- with a hand-delivered response to ambassadors. With all the media/pundit build-up, it kind of felt like the ending of the film version of "The Firm," when Tom Cruise gets out of everything by exposing the firm for overbilling. Not that I'm complaining, of course.

But is that really all? Today we were met with the news the American Idol reject Constantine Maroulis (see his pouty mug above) might be coming to Broadway. The horror! After all, if Iran couldn't attack Israel, I'm sure New York was next on the list.

Before I add Greece to the axis of evil, however, I should note that he would be taking over a throwaway part in a throwaway musical, "The Wedding Singer." If this was the master plan all along, it worked about as well as North Korea's missile.

On an unrelated note: another writing tip. I was going to title this post "Back in Blogness" and make some sort of excuse for my week-long absence blamed on a bout with a dreadful case of strep throat. You see, I thought it would be really cute, especially because I had just listened to the Liza Minnelli version of that particular song.

Then I googled it. Eighty-seven results. While it's no "throw another blog on the fire" (425 results), that's already pretty heavy company.

One final note: Blogger's spell-check doesn't recognize "blog"? Goofy. I'll bet nobody's noticed that, yet.