Waking up to this news story blaring in my ear, and I emphatically remember why I do not set my radio alarm to any station that plays news at that hour. Even worse, I lay there in a post-r.e.m. state and tried to figure out if I had imagined what I heard or not. The more vivid phrases chased themselves around my head for ten minutes ( Read more... )

"I heard where they've got a lot of odd gods," said Nobby.
"Yeah, and mad priests," said Colon. "Foaming at the mouth, half of 'em. Believe all kinds of loony things."
They watched the painter in silence for a moment. Colon was dreading the question that came.
"So how exactly are they different from ours, then?" said Nobby. "I mean, some of our ( Read more... )

Greetings from suddenly ice-covered Missouri, where there is a Panera and therefore civilization and free wifi. This is what happens when the passenger is reading aloud Cold Comfort Farm; sooner or later reality is forced to produce civilization and tidiness.

One of the very awesome points of this trip so far:

• Interstate 10 through Tucson is ( Read more... )

'Bush reclaims powers after colonoscopy.'

1. I do not want to hear about the things growing in his colon. That is called TEA EM EYE, o press secretaries.
2. So therefore it must be a flimsy excuse to say that he was busy reading the Deathly Hallows in medical seclusion so that Karl Rove couldn't burst in on him with spoilers.
3. While everyone was distracted ( Read more... )

• As a child of the Cold War, I've gotta say that watching War Games again is the oddest mix of death-by-thermonuclear-war-induced-paranoia and noglastalgia-for-a-time-when-the scary-people-were-just-the-big-red-chunk-on-the-map. A confusing reaction at the best of times.


• Additionally, Matthew Broderick had really pointy cheekbones in 1983. I'd ( Read more... )

My thoughts upon beginning The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation - Vol. I: The Pox Party by M. T. Anderson (of Boston) were that it was similar in tone to Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, albeit with more engaging writing, fewer footnotes, added racial commentary, and with absolutely no magic in it at all ( Read more... )

So. If a Musilm family owns a speech-imitating bird like a mynah or a parrot, and if they pray at home in a fairly communal manner, as in where the bird would likely be able to hear them - probably not all five times a day, but I would think at least the morning and evening prayers - would the bird eventually learn to intone those same prayers? ( Read more... )

After many, many, many months of protestations that I would gain nothing from the experience because I am already entirely convinced of the points he's trying to make and it would only result in a severe and black depression about the state in which the world has been for the past six years, my mother made me watch Farenheit 9/11 this evening ( Read more... )

::fangirls Hans Blix liek whoa::

( Read more... )