Hello and welcome to Happy Friday, the weekly blog post that’s got a treat for you if you’ve got the right trick.

Nine months after leaving office, former President George W. Bush made his debut Monday in his latest incarnation: motivational speaker. He spoke for nearly 26 minutes on a variety of subjects, including one of the difficult decisions he was forced to make as President. No, not the war or the economic bailout or homeland security, but something even harder than that — picking the right Oval Office rug to reflect his optimism. That sure explains a lot, doesn’t it?

The former President is writing a book about the 12 hardest decisions he had to make while in office. Me, I’m looking forward to the chapter on “paper or plastic”.

Popular social network Facebook reminded members that it will “memorialize” profiles of the dead if their friends or family request it. These special accounts won’t have friend suggestions and won’t be available to people who weren’t already friends with the deceased, but it will still crank out regular updates on the deceased’s Mafia Wars and Farmville progress, because apparently even death can’t stop those posts.

Two Northwest Airlines pilots were using laptop computers in the cockpit as they flew past their Minneapolis destination last week, according to federal regulators. The pilots claim they flew for 78 minutes without speaking to controllers because they became so engrossed in a new computer program that arranges pilot schedules. Do you understand, they were using their laptops to check pilot schedules, not to look at porn. You can get porn on your computer? Wow, that’s nice to know, but these pilots were engrossed in their schedules. Not porn. Seriously, not porn.

A Paris court convicted the Church of Scientology of fraud and fined it more than $900,000 this week, thus guaranteeing that Tom Cruise will never visit France again, and making me wonder how no one in this country ever thought of this obvious-in-hindsight way of getting us a break from Tom Cruise.

A new study shows that children are more than twice as likely to be killed by a car while walking on Halloween than any other night of the year. And children wearing the controversial new “Johnny Traffic Cone” costume are more than four times as likely to be killed by a car.

In sports news, Mark McGwire is back in baseball, reunited with Tony La Russa as the St. Louis Cardinals’ hitting coach. And also, backup team doctor, based on his skill at delivering injections.

According to a new government report, nearly 650,000 jobs have been saved or created under President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan. Unfortunately for the President, 90% of those jobs are anti-Obama commentators on Fox News, and the rest are really just people who replied to that “Earn $2,000 per week working from home” e-mail that makes the rounds every now and then, and probably shouldn’t even count.

A man was caught by Norwegian customs carrying a tarantula in his bag, while also having 14 royal pythons and 10 albino leopard geckos taped to his body. Customs agents became suspicious when the man’s crotch began incessantly asking if they wanted to save money on their car insurance.

U.S. researchers reported this week that people with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people with a different DNA sequence. That variant? Two X chromosomes.

Hey-oh!

This week in an interview with People magazine, tennis star Andre Agassi admitted that he used crystal meth periodically for “a year or so.” Which finally explains the whole Barbra Streisand relationship.

It’s Halloween as I write this, which means most of you are either out there Trick or Treating, or getting ready to go to a party tonight. For you last-minute costume shoppers, it’s very easy to end up with a really bad costume, as you’ll see when you look at…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Worst Halloween Costumes Still On Sale On Halloween Evening:
10. Bernard Madoff
9. Transexual Mexican Wrestler
8. UFL halfback
7. American Godzilla
6. Vampire from deleted scenes on True Blood DVD set
5. Open-minded Mormon
4. Gay Hitler
3. Narcoleptic cat
2. Mayor of Saskatoon
1. Laid-off GM employee

And that’s all we have time for this week. Last time I mentioned something about Happy Friday taking the month of November off. Is that still happening (after today’s edition I’m sure that idea has a certain charm)? Watch this space for more info starting November 1.

Until next time, don’t eat too much candy, watch out for the apple with the razor blade in it, don’t forget to tip your waitress and, as always, have a Happy Friday!

T “great balls of fire” green