I've already gotten some pleasing specific-to-my-birthday gifts, but I'm counting my blessings more than usual because the last few days have also coincidentally brought some extra presents I'm inordinately happy with.

Yesterday: The mail brought me my contributor's copy of Space and Time, which features my science fiction poem "Flowers in ( Read more... )

In the past week, I've had two examples of extremists brought to my attention. First there was Pastor Charles Worley fellow whose sermon that would prove lethal to homosexuals if put into practice went viral, along with a 1978 audio clip of him wishing for the good old lynching days. On the flip side, you have tweets from these gay marriage ( Read more... )

I've been writing again finally, after a three-week hiatus, and also spending the last few weeks moving several tens of thousands of books to open room for renovations. Sooner or later I'll post something at least a little substantive, but in the meantime here's a picture of me dancing with a gorilla.


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Lately I've been hearing a lot of variations of the "Things were better in the 1950s" theme. So aside from the arguments about "Better for who?", I thought I would stroll around my library's reference section and see if I could grab some statistics and compare them to today. I grabbed the 1959 editions of the World Almanac and Information Please ( Read more... )

Once upon a time, at least seven or eight years ago, there was a fellow named Hugh D. Layden living in the house where I now live. Occasionally I still get junk mail addressed to him--no big deal. What is a big deal is that I occasionally also get bills for him, like tax bills, and now and again what appear to be demands for payment for parking ( Read more... )

Today in the campus cafeteria there were two British performing artists whose heads were covered in bread--slices stuck together somehow--and who were struggling slowly to find each other. Before finding out what was going on there were various reactions to this:

What I Wanted To DoPhotograph one of them and post the picture online with the ( Read more... )

If you are a call-spammer asking for an employee who left here over a year ago, and I answer that said employee left over a year ago, your best reply is not "When is the best time to call back?"

ODOMOMETER (n.): A device used to track mileage accumulated by mothers chasing their children around the house.

...What I really want is a search-and-destroy engine.

The other day, someone asked me what wish I could make if I could make any wish to change the world ( Read more... )