Many families in the southern part of Oklahoma will start the new year without a home. Wildfires are devouring houses and farms across thousands of acres.

“We saw flames 35 feet high in a wave over the road, then boom it jumped the road and kept going,” said Seminole Fire Chief Ed Lemmings, quoted in the Seminole Producer, a small daily paper that has been covering the conflagration.

The Producer staff has assembled an amazing page of fire photos. You should see them.

(A tip of the hat to E & P.)

Don Danz pays tribute to the Zenith Space Command. This primitive remote control from 1956 used no batteries or laser beams. Instead, it housed a little xylophone. The four buttons struck four tiny aluminum rods, each producing a distinctive note which the TV would hear. (Don doesn’t mention this, but the shows were better then, too.)

A little Santa goes a long way. (Our best was 140.0′)

(Hat tip: Daily Flog.)

The latest yummy, healthy snack food in Quebec is communion wafers. The unconsecrated discs of bread contain no fat, no salt, and no God. Nibblers in the traditionally Catholic but largely secularized province say they like how the wafers “remind us of Mass.” (Wouldn’t Mass remind them of Mass? But they didn’t ask me, did they?)

Found via Curt Jester via Ragemonkey.

When I was growing up, it was unthinkable to let a dog adopt a cow.

Over at JayIsGames.com there’s a ballot to vote for the best online games of 2005. You may select up to 10 games as your favorites, but one of them has to be the one called “Texas Hold ‘Em.” Scroll way, way, down, it’s a long list. There! You see it? “Texas Hold ‘Em,” it says. Vote for it. And up to nine others, if you want.

(By way of full disclosure, the Texas Hold ‘Em game there is really, totally awesome, with great music and wicked graphics. And I made it.)