Don’t worry, the image doesn’t relate to anything… I just found it intriguing. And it’s that time of the week again.

* What happens when two snails fight? They slug it out.
* What’s the strongest bird? A crane.
* What wobbles as it flies? A jelly-copter.
* What insect is good at math? An account-ant.
* How do French poodles greet each other? Bone-jour.
* Why was King Tutenkhamen considered the best pharaoh in all of Egypt? Because he always showed up in cuneiform.
* What do you call four matadors in quicksand? Quatro sinko.
* Why do pigs make good spies? They’re excellent at going in-hog-nito.
* What do you get if you cross a dinosaur with a plate? A tyrannosaucer.
* What do you call an earthquake fault? A topographical error.
* What did the Spanish farmer say to his chickens? Oh-lay!

An Indian consulted his medicine man about a pain in his stomach that had persisted for three months. “For something as long as that,” said the Medicine Man, “I have a more drastic remedy than the herbs I normally prescribe. Chew on this leather thong every day. It is 31 inches long: chew one inch every day, and come back at the next moon.” The Indian dutifully did as directed, and at the next moon he returned to the Medicine Man. “How do you feel?” the Medicine Man asked. “The thong is ended, but the malady lingers on.”

Alright, on with the linkage, this week apparently being the “These are a few of [everyone’s] favorite things” edition.

1. Sonja’s list of Best Posts of 2008 is all by women bloggers, while Bill Kinnon compiles kinnon.tv’s Top 13.5 Bloggers List with whom to Begin 2009
2. Paul Fromont’s 2008: Books, Essays and Movies can be paired up with Todd Hiestand’s Books of 2008 – Theology and JR Woodward’s compliation for a list of good reads. Oh, and Trevin Wax reviewed a lot of books as well. I find that some people’s “top” reads are as long as my total reads…
3. Len attempts to sum up the year, and Ed Stetzer looks back
4. MarkO names the best of 2008: music, which made me feel so very out-of-touch. Maybe I’m just old. Cold what? Viva la Who?
5. Kathy Escobar does a characteristically good year-in-review post
6. JR Woodward names his Top 10 Favorite Bloggers of 2008 (I’ll try to do better in 2009, JR!), along with his Top Ten Posts of 2008
7. As he seems to every year, TSK recommends a Bible-in-a-year blog. He calls YouVersion “Very interactive. Very 2.0.”
8. Brad Sargent presents his Overview-Missional Futures Study Group 2009-2010 for those wanting to participate in an extended learning community around missional themes.
9. It’s satirical, so don’t get upset when you find out that The Next BIG Things include the word “post-missional.”
10. Wish I was at Seeding Missional Communities – A Learning Commons today — looking forward to reports following.
11. Where does Bob find stuff like this?
12. Jordon Cooper announces some blogging themes for 2009
13. Out of Ur: Top Ten Theology Stories of 2008 — gotta say I’m pretty ho-hum about most of these.
14. Bill Kinnon claims to have won the Pancake Smackdown Challenge, but I dunno… we ought to disqualify him. But I’m thinking about blueberries this morning….
15. Alan Hirsch on Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, which you should be glad to know partly informs the formation of a Missional Tribe
16. Favorite things from 2008″>Darryl Dash’s favorite things from 2008
17. Scot McKnight On Blurbing Books
18. This is why you should follow David Hayward’s blog: cartoon: money tree. Ouch.
19. Wess Daniels: On Disciples: Forgiving George Bush And/Or the Church