Dickie's Quickies

Kircher's Cat Piano.

In order to raise the spirits of an Italian prince burdened by the cares of his position, a musician created for him a cat piano. The musician selected cats whose natural voices were at different pitches and arranged them in cages side by side, so that when a key on the piano was depressed, a mechanism drove a sharp spike into the appropriate cat’s tail. The result was a melody of meows that became more vigorous as the cats became more desperate. Who could not help but laugh at such music? Thus was the prince raised from his melancholy.

Johnny Weir, American figure skater who placed 5th in the Olympics, is definitely not going to be appearing on a cereal box anytime soon. The man's a loon:

He says he's been obsessed with the Holocaust since he was little and considers himself "a little bit" Jewish, although he isn't, not technically. He says he's had his past lives read and found out that most recently he was a Jewish girl from Poland during World War II.

"I mean, it makes sense if you think about it," he says. "Like, what 4-year-old gets into learning about how 6 million people were exterminated?"

Around his neck, Johnny wears three chains with a knotted mess of pendants, including two Stars of David, an Israeli army dog tag, an Italian horn to protect him from the mal occhio , or evil eye, a miraculous medal of Mary, and the letter D, which stands for the Christina Aguilera song "Dirrty," because Christina Aguilera is his role model.

"I don't take them off ever and I don't untangle them because, like, their powers are all hidden in this knot," he says.

One site/publication is claiming that Dick Cheney had definitely had more than "one beer" while hunting. Cautionary note: this is a web report - no hard cider evidence yet found.

We talked with a number of administration officials who are privy to inside information on the Vice President's shooting "accident" and all admit Secret Service agents and others say they saw Cheney consume far more than the "one beer' he claimed he drank at lunch earlier that day.

"This was a South Texas hunt," says one White House aide. "Of course there was drinking. There's always drinking. Lots of it."

One agent at the scene has been placed on administrative leave and another requested reassignment this week. A memo reportedly written by one agent has been destroyed, sources said Wednesday afternoon.