So, for Thanksgiving this year my mom decided to buy a turducken ( Read more... )

The Japanese Giant Hornet mentioned earlier somehow gets even weirder. Yes, even weirder than being the size of a big thumb and spitting acid, due to how the native Asian honey bees deal with them ( Read more... )

By the way, I've pretty much quit NaNo again. I just don't write like that. Or at all anymore.

Rachel and Brian: ever seen one of these (the first one they talk about)? I was a lot cooler with Japan before I knew those existed.

Dear bugs: what the hell.

Air raid sirens and jet engines put out about 140 dB of sound.

Blue whales? 155 to 188 dB.

Whales: what the hell.

Though I have no illusions of success, I'm going to give National Novel Writing Month a shot again this year. I took last year off (and technically, the year before: I signed up and then wrote a grand total of 0 words for it), and have never made it past three or four days of writing. However, this year I don't have any finals to worry about, or ( Read more... )

So, like I said, I've been subbing.

I was going to write about my first couple days here, when I was subbing for my mom, but I guess I didn't. In summary, it did not go very well. The older kids, third through fifth grade, were okay. The kindergartners, surprisingly, were okay. The first graders were completely insane. Screaming and kicking each ( Read more... )

Read, that is.

#1: "Pearls Before Breakfast," by Gene Weingarten. A sociological essay/experiment: what happens if you dress one of the most talented violinists in the world in street clothes and a ball cap and have him stand in a Metro station with his case open. Will anyone stop and listen? It won the Pulitzer last year. It's very long. And ( Read more... )

David Foster Wallace, RIP.

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

(just, you know, in case you wanted to check)

Just started reading this book (by Junot Diaz). It is, as expected, stupidly good. It is stupid, how good this book is. It's only the second book he's published (the first one, the story collection Drown, I read in a day. I couldn't put it down), and his first novel. It won the Pulitzer. And the National Book Critics Circle Award. And was a Time ( Read more... )