If you’re not watching the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, you are missing the best hour of television in the US. Living outside the US is no excuse; full episodes and clips are available fo’ FREE on the show websites. So whether you need to brighten your Monday morning or practice your English comprehension, click your way over there and enjoy the antics of Jon and Stephen. You’ll be ever so glad you did.

In the spirit of the “25 Random Things” that is currently “sweeping” Facebook and which I will probably feel obligated to do at some point, I offer a teaser:

Random Thing #1. Curling

When I was a small child, I was a member of the Schenectady Curling Club. We trained every weekend and competed in bonspiels all over the Northeast. I collected and traded curling pins.

For years I avoided divulging this information like a good skip shooting for two in the ninth end without the hammer.

Well don’t throw in the hammer on curling just yet. It turns out that there are people all over the world, even in places without purpose-built curling ponds, who want to achieve international glory on the curling sheet. Meet the Jamaican bobsled team – oops, just kidding – the Brazilian curling team.

The Brazilian team is so serious that they have challenged the US team for their berth in the 2009 world championships of the sport. (Read the full article here.)

Who knows – if Brazilians make curling cool again (which I don’t think it’s been since about 1855), I may just have to head over to the Barcelona Skating Club and take a refresher course. Yes, there is curling within a fifteen-minute walk of my apartment in Barcelona.  The similarities between Barcelona and Niskayuna are simply stunning.

Samba bonspiel, anyone?

I don’t know about you all, but the financial crisis has forced me to take a stern look at my personal finances in recent weeks. We all have to tighten our belts. Some of us will have to buy fewer six packs. Others may need to cancel the season’s final aerial wolf hunt in the interest of saving fuel (and bullets). These are extraordinary times, and they call for extraordinary sacrifice.

As for me, I feel like Rosie the Riveter, tending my Victory Garden and salvaging my scrap metals to help get our economy back on track.* And yet I want to do more. So I combed the family budget, line by line, to see how we might save a few precious euros this October. After a deep and careful analysis, I now know what I must do.

I must make all decorations for my upcoming “Haunted Housewarming” Halloween-slash-Housewarming party out of tampons.

Yes, tampons. Something I already have on hand in good supply. These puppies have been languishing in my medicine cabinet for three weeks out of the month for YEARS. No more. This year, I’m putting my tampon investment to work and creating these fluffy fantasms:

If I am feeling especially daring, I may also attempt the tampon bat, although the pipecleaner requirement might put me over budget. (Also, I find these bats inexplicably disturbing. Maybe it’s the tampon applicator head. Even I have to draw the line somewhere.)

For more ideas on how to turn your tampons into Halloween multitaskers, visit MarthaStewart.com (hint: this is actually a link to TamponCrafts.com – I don’t know that it’s actually affiliated with Martha.)

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* These references to World War II civilian efforts may or may not be germane to the subject of this post.