Hello, Supremes: A Federal court in St. Louis has ruled that videogames aren’t a form of speech and are therefore not protected by the First. Count on an appeal, and look for more on this in or around this space. Bad decision, very bad decision…

Truly pathetic — this group of lottery players, who have “always been real spiritual,” decide that one of their number won the lottery and was cheating them out of their share after calling in sick for work for three days. Real spiritual. Great.

Cintra Wilson gives us yet another reason to loathe the rich. Okay!

I’m pleased to report that this week is off to a more normal start: whereas this time 168 hours ago I was (oh geez) feeling kinship with Steve Jobs, today I’m shoulder-to-shoulder with Bill Gates, certainly a more natural if not less troubling location. I’m with Bill: Don’t apologize if you don’t mean it. You’ll annoy your friends, you won’t placate your enemies, and you’ll give dangerous encouragement to the stupid. (A matter of keeping your job, you say? In that case your ethicist gives you permission to lie, but suggests that you should try to get away from people like your employers ASAP. God knows what they’ll have you doing next.)

User Friendly is the Best Comic EVER today.

A very strange week indeed, as later account will detail. For now, I’m camping out at my friend Arminda’s house, since my apartment building has neither hot water, nor heat, nor light in the public areas. Most disconcerting. If the garbage weren’t being taken away daily, I’d think something was wrong. (Attention non-New Yorkers: Yes, this is how you know. Big city. Stuff goes wrong. Could be worse; I could live in the one that blew up yesterday.)

Dear lord, someone actually thinks this is their right: A nasty little program called Radlight is taking it upon itself to remove software from your computer without your permission so it can show you more ads (oh, goody!).Vile, vile, vile — this company deserves whatever the Geek-American community’s about to unleash on it. (Like the man said, on my signal…)

I can see this is going to be a VERY strange week: First P.Diddy (see below), now S.Jobs. I feel all funny inside.

Not that I have so much love for P.Diddy, but this grousing by a professional clown has to be the most arrogant rant since….um, when did P.Diddy last pipe up? Anyway, this bozo — literally a bozo — argues that children aren’t really afraid of clowns, that children LOVE clowns, and anyone who claims otherwise is not only clown-bashing but probably just some grown-up that’s… afraid of clowns. No word on how the grownups got that way or at what age, but I think I might be able to guess for you. (For the record — oh, come on, like you even have to ask. Of course I don’t like clowns. Did you confuse me with some other blogger?)

Every so often Mondays redeem themselves. For instance, I was just researching this week’s opening feature and found Martin’s Minutes, a very funny and apparently entirely random personal column from one of the folks associated with Hash, which is a very nifty 3D animation package if you didn’t know already. Isn’t that nice?