Amazing eBay feedback

I hadn't heard this one, but for those too young to have any idea about Shatner's turn as a Rock Star(tm), here's Rocketman

Also, White Rabbit, Star Trek-style (these two links from WWdN)

Note to the tattoo artists of the world: Don't ever do this. Seriously, WTF?

Poster, every book some guy has ever read: Good lord, that looks like a small number to me. How much do other people read? I have a vague notion that it's "less than I do," but more than that--and there's no way I would ever think of every book I've read for such a project. I'd just keep surfing and clicking. I mean, do you remember every Choose-Your-Own-Adventure you had as a kid? Every book you picked up and read at a friend's house? Of course, I was the kind of kid who'd take the novels of said friends' shelves and have them done by the end of the visit. But still...

"Conditions in Tampa were not favorable for the formation of large balls of ice..."

Danae is my hero.

Also Patti LuPone, I scored a free CD of hers at work today. Yeah!

Attention, lawmakers of South Dakota: go screw yourselves.

"You have to live in Alaska..."

I'm damned tired, and I didn't even work my full shift today, since I had to rescue my sick kid from the panicking caregiver. I guess that makes it bedtime.

42 questions to which we don't know the answers (I love the black hole one; I think Drs. Hawking, Thorne, and Preskill spend time on black hole research more as a very geeky form of gambling than to further the cause of science, and gentlemen, I love you for it)

Also, I'm moving to Virginia just so I can vote for Jim Webb.

Hallelujah, the "Think Method" isn't a joke after all!

I was looking through a ton of links, but it wasn't getting me anything I wanted to blog about. This Friday: new tats!

OK, one more for all you pagans

sex advice for women, c. 1917


I started ranting about doctors on an email group earlier. I'm tired and in pretty significant levels of pain right now. So that's all I have, sorry.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! (via Reddit. Youch.)

A note on piracy

We are the pirates who don't do anything!

No, that wasn't it.

From ArsTechnica, a couple engaging articles on piracy.

Go Tech!

Vanity is stupid

This sounds pretty smart, though. FYI, Professor, people object to always having their birthday on the same day of the week because it might always be a Wednesday. Also, which date would we lose? Suddenly some dude wouldn't have a birthday.

Babe, it's not that I'm never happy where I am. I try to be happy with things as they are. I've been really happy living in certain areas, and I need help to make the best of remote, rural areas, but will live with them and try to be glad of everything we have. I thought we were talking about the best for us both in your stateside list, not just doing it for me. I know I'd pick some of your "not in a million years" bases for my own wants and I respect that you wouldn't like certain areas.

Also, I'm not clear on a couple things: how could you not know it got THIS cold? I can't go outside without real threats to my health and you want to make it my problem because "I'm never happy?" You talked up this area on certain bases when the reality is that (a) you knew nothing about this area and (2) you don't want to go outside and do all the things you talked up the area on, or even walk in the snow with me. And yes, I realize that "I hate it here" is an emotional overreaction, because walking out of work to stare at the Northern Lights oscillating in the sky for an hour is worth a lot, and there are a lot of good points to being up here, including the people as a whole. But there is really not much to do here. I want to learn to ski, to see a glacier with you, go sledding or snow-tubing with you, and I want you to understand why I'm sad when you call to say, "great news! I'm getting out of here to a real city where I can go out to get massages and go enjoy nightlife that it's not worth trying to find with you because I'm a homebody except when I'm somewhere with other options," or at least why that's what I hear when you don't want to leave the house but you're thrilled to go on a trip, even a working trip, that promises to be more entertaining.

I feel like I have to hold my end up, even if my end is only 20% of our income. But then I feel left out and horrible when I think I have to choose between TCB and finding time with you.

I hope you get to go. I do. I just want you to understand why it affects me that you present it as good news that when you build our lives around being at home as a family playing games, you leaving me in one of the coldest places on the planet for the coldest month of the year to go somewhere warm and fun, even potentially, even if you didn't ask for it, hurts some, and I need to talk to you about it, or it will spiral to the point of anger I can't deal with.

Also, if I'm angry and not talking, please, please, talk to me. I know there's better ways than slamming doors, but sometimes I can't figure out how to just say I need to talk to you, any more than you can figure out how to just say "hey, I need some time alone here, please go out to a movie/whatever" since you're apparently having that problem.

Just so you don't think I'm totally being a spoilsport, things I love here:
The snow;
The northern lights;
The people;
The *idea* that we could go out snowmachining, sledding/tubing, "hiking" on a glacier, or visiting the hot springs that are a half-hour up the road, or that just in being together we could go spend a night alone together with a hot tub or a hot spring;
The total lack of bugs, except for those damned fruit fly things;
Being with you, anywhere; I wasn't fond of coastal SC, but I would have lived there as long as Grandma was alive, as I'd live in Antarctica with you, if it came to it. And yeah, I'd cry about it sometimes;
The view, driving into the mountains or around town in places;
The ice sculptures that might as well be granite

There are more things. It's beautiful here, and I honor that and thank you for bringing me to it. I just want to make you understand that it's not true that I'm not happy anywhere. I just need help.

This has been almost exactly my means of dealing with the "whys"--answer all questions until the child reaches information satiation and loses interest. Usually without actually describing the chemical properties of various bonds, but it's still exactly the right way to go about it. (1) It validates their questions and thinking processes. (2) It actually provides them with an answer to the question without making things up (DO NOT make it up, unless you want them laughed at in seven years when you assume that he's forgotten the misinformation you "taught" your toddler). (3) It annoys them as much as any parent has ever been annoyed by the "whys." ("Mom, STOP TALKING NOW!" was a major part of my child's vocabulary until he got over the "whys" and started asking more direct and thoughtful questions).