"Household chore he hates: Making the bed. You make it, and then you have to get in it again."

From the NYT Magazine.

I am "XXX-TRA SPECIAL." So says BaltimoreSun.com's moderately-inappropiate-for-a-family-newspaper Love-O-Meter, a pop-up on the site's V-Day page.

Thanks to the site's weekly e-mail for providing me with that link and many more. As I've said before, the e-mail isn't the greatest, but sometimes they find the right hooks. The introduction of UniSun definitely gets my attention in this week's edition. Joining youth pubs and WomenNews in the specialty section trend is "UniSun, The Sun's publication created especially for African-American readers." The first issue debuted last weekend.

Among the less surprising news in the e-mail, stories about new Oriole Sammy Sosa were nine of the top 10 most-viewed articles on the site last week.

If you're in Washington, you've heard of the story. If you're elsewhere, maybe the iceberg has tipped into news consumption. Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich has canned a longtime associate for spreading infidelity rumors about Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, a Gonzaga graduate and the governor's likely opponent in the next election. O'Malley, his wife, their friends and a variety of other Baltimore folks have angrily denied the rumors.

I've mostly been reading the Post coverage, but I stopped by the Sun the other day and found it had a hometown edge. The Charm City paper has posted their full coverage here.

Related — for anyone who was at lunch with me Saturday — Googling points to H.L. Mencken as the coiner of "Charm City."

In a Boston Globe op-ed, sophomore Conor Boyland proves Northeastern University is not the bizarro Northwestern.

It seems fairly harmless, but it snowballs, and before you know it, you can't stop or you'll go into withdrawal. When you get to the point where you can't take a shower without putting up that witty away message that says, "I'm all hot and steamy," you're officially addicted — welcome to the club. You're also really sick.

Boyland then dives into the slim shady (weird but popular, and obsessively both) world of Facebook and social networking, and he resolves to change. Thanks to Jess for the link.

The Florida State Fair has arrived. Meet the coopie, a cross between a pie and a cookie.

The Canoe Club is opening in Chicago's south suburbs.

Among the eye-catching visuals in architect Jeffrey Cardosi's design are giant palm trees, a two-story waterfall that's flanked by two towering wine racks and a 3,000-gallon tank that will be home to five reef sharks.

What brings lots of questions here is feeding time. Does one want to see sharks eat while one has a plate of one's own? Is that unappetizing?

The subject line is always "Heyz Darling." The spam arrives steadily, with only some variation on the wording. "Would you like to keep me some company? My idiot Husband is out of town and I'm a little lonely." Then there's a link and "P.S. it's me, Nicole f."

In my deleted mail box, the first such items have interesting women's names as the senders, probably due to computers generating most creatively than our parents. There's Pasquale Berry, Christi Dumas and Bridgette Ewing.

But now, the computer has seemingly run out of women's names. The senders this week increasingly have names of the male variety: Louis Jarvis, Otis Moyer and Rico Holcomb among the bunch. I give many of them a pass because they could be Morgan-Jordan-like crossovers, but the last straw is Ralph Dunbar.

When Ralph Dunbar tells me about his idiot husband and signs his letters "Nicole F," my anti-spam program really has to do better.

Especially since your Friday is my Friday for once.

Slate publishes Mary Baine Campbell's "The Vise."

You always wondered how they commuted to that tree.

When will Los Angeles get Smart?

Soon, says Steve Schneider, chief executive officer for Zap, the Santa Rosa company now selling Americanized versions of the adorable European nano-car. None too soon: Keebler elves everywhere are holding their tiny breaths.

More here. How small is this car? You can parallel park it perpendicular to the curb.

(Full disclosure: I became a Nats season ticket owner an hour ago. Twenty-game style. More details later.)

Video game developers apparently had some tense months while the Expos' move to Washington was resolved. The Washington Times had details in Sunday's paper.

Timing dramas aside, the virtual RFK Stadium in both MVP Baseball 2005 and ESPN MLB 2K5 is a reasonable representation of the real thing. Working from old photographs and seating diagrams from the days of the expansion Washington Senators, designers accurately depicted RFK's basic look as the original multi-purpose stadium that spawned copies in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. The famously sloped roof is in the games, as is the lack of lower-level seating beyond the outfield walls.

Missing, however, are the distinctive orange, burgundy and gold seats at RFK, and the EA Sports game curiously shows an electronic out-of-town scoreboard forming part of the right-field wall.

The Post had this story first, in brief form but with a few extra details. EA Sports told reporter Barry Svrluga that Montreal's Olympic Stadium will become "a classic stadium, so anyone who wants to relive the glory days in Montreal can do it."

Svrluga's story also explained how baseball card companies were reacting, and their responses were interesting to this former card collector. Even with all the technology and card-making advances, the companies have pretty much reacted like they always have.