please call it a brontosaurus

They've discovered twonew dinosaur species in antartica. Both are as yet unnamed. One of them is a big, plant eating saurapod. I want my bronto back.

some incredibly snooty language pet peeves

• confusing "e.g." and "i.e."

"e.g." stands for "exempli gratia," or "for example;" "i.e." stands for "id est ," or "that is." Both should be followed by a comma, just like the longhand versions of those phrases.
• misuse of the phrase "begging the question"

"to beg the question" means to assume as a premise the thing you are trying to prove. Please don't use it when you mean "the question begs to be asked."
• misuse of "literally."

When you use the word "literally" you are saying that the phrase it modifies is to be taken in its literal, rather than in its metaphorical sense. You cannot, e.g., say, "literally, he was ten feet tall," unless he really was ten feet tall.
• This one really bothers me because I do it often when I'm not paying attention: using "your" when you mean "you're," or vise versa.

One is a possessive pronoun; one is a contraction of "you" and "are."

hee hee

thanks to the good people over at theTroy McClure fan site for running a top notch compilation of all things McClure! there you can get a full listing of all of Mr. McClure's appearance (some with sound clips!).
And you can learn about his (possible) real life antecedents Troy Donahue (his birthday is the same day as mine) and Doug McClure

It's my soapbox...

and I say let's grab a tube of K Y Jelly and lube up that slippery slope!
some people are trying to argue that if we allow same sex marriages, pretty soon we'll be sanctioning unions between men and goldfish or that we'll have hordes of people marrying each other. I say what a consenting adult chooses to do with a consenting toaster is none of the government's concern. Besides, my toaster has a much better health insurance plan than I do.

But seriously, I've yet to come across a good reason to keep same sex marriages from happening. and several good reasons to let them happen. Although I do wonder, if you are a member of the clergy in a state that mandates same sex marriages be allowed to happen, are you legally obligated to perform the marriage, or do you get to choose which ones you want to do? Because I'd be against forcing any non-government official to perform any religious ceremony she didn't want to perform. Also, in the movies they always say, "by the power vested in me by the state of Whatever..." does the power to perform the marriage really come from the state? and if so, does that make a clergyperson performing a marriage a government official?

disney must be stopped

Disney buys Jim Henson's Muppets
"This new and very important relationship will enable our two companies to combine our respective talents and resources in ways that will fully realize the tremendous potential of the Muppet and Bear franchises."
and also turn some of the best characters ever created into soulless patches of fur and plastic.

Jim never would have let this happen.

Movieoke anyone?

I saw this on TV and I can't tell if it's looks fun, or horribly horribly wrong. Movieoke is someone's bright idea to show favorie movies with subtitles and let people act out their favorite scenes. It's at a place called the den of cin in, where else, NYC.

Please don't think less of me

Something must be wrong with me. Not only have I been watching 3 men and a little lady on HBO, but I've been laughing out loud while doing so.
But in my defence, only because of Fiona Shaw who gets lines like
"I find that so charming in a man" (in response to Tom Selleck's "I'm impotent") just right.

more yeti

you all probably already know about this, but part 2 of that yeti penguin club game is out. It's not as fun, but it does involve a baby orca

message left on my voicemail

"hello this is Anna lynn Somebody at Mumble company. I am unavailable to take your call. If you need immediate assistance press star, otherwise leave a message after the tone....*beep*"

How does that even happen?

Not only do I not care...

about the conversation you are having on your cell phone, ("my 9 year old cousin was visiting me at school and she saw two girls kissing on the elevator.") but it's really really NOT ok to stand in the doorway of the grocery store leaning on your shopping cart while you talk on your phone.

chessboxing

yes. it is what it sounds like
chessboxing
I'm still waiting for cage-match dissertation defences though.

one more reason to have a woman dentist

Men inflict greater pain than women

what's it all mean anyway?

I just read Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee, and my initial reaction was that it was a tremendous waste of paper. For anyone not familiar with it, it's full of halting sentences that don't seem to make a whole lot of sense when you read it, but really sort of do if you readjust your expectations. We read articles about it that talked about clarity being a tool of the establishment to dictate linguistic norms, and I kept thinking that anything that relies on non-clarity to make meaning is suspect as far as I'm concerned (which, I assume, makes me part of the anti-opacity establishment). And if you're a critic, relying on an aesthetic of non-clarity is a career threatening position, because if the text really does rely on opacity, any attempt to say anything about it removes that opacity and takes the teeth out of the text, so you're left either not saying anything about it, or saying something and trying to negate its goal of opacity.
But after three hours of talking about it in class, I think i kind of like it. I at least think it deserves a re-reading.

Help science and learn about yourself

You know how you spend hours and hours taking online quizzes while you are supposed to be working? Like "which hippopotomatic actress will you marry?" or, "what type of wool are you?" well here is a chance to goof off at work, and help science in the process, and maybe learn a little something about yourself too. The Implicit Association Test measures your responses to words and images, and suggests which words and images you might have an implicit bias towards or against. take a couple of practice tests, then sign up to take the full scientific battery (60 tests!)

small world.

"Oh my god! You know Jim Berlhe??!!! He does 'can we have our ball back?' right? I've never met him, but everyone always speaks very highly of him! if he's ever coming to town, let me know because I really want to meet him."

wow, my snooze alarm hasn't gone off in a while...

It's one of those amazing little moments when 10 mins of sleep seems like hours. you wake up only partially, and drift off to sleep so it seems like you are experiencing time and sleeping at the same time.......Holy crap! it's 11:44! I have class at 12:00! I'm a five minute walk, a half hour subway ride, a ten minute walk, and a 3 minute wait for the elevator from class. get dressed. stumble downstairs. walk fast. just make train. everything takes much less time than i thought. only 15 mins late for class. and i had forgotten that the prof starts the class at 12:10 so he has time to eat lunch, making me only five mins late.

But like my football coach used to say, "if you're not five minutes early, you're already ten minutes late." which I think means that as far as he's concerned I got to class sometime around thursday.

my newest diversion

I love my commodore 64. I still have it at my parent's house, and I still set it up every once in a while and play all the games i spent a 12 year old's fortune on. This site has lots (all?) the games that were available for it, and links to a c64 emulator you can download. I remember being so happy when I finally figured out and finished Maniac Mansion. That may have been the best game ever, and one of the highlights of my pre-1990 life. I had this printer that, as far as I could tell, was totally useless because it printed on a roll of paper instead of sheets-like a toilet paper roll. I spent lots of hours playing lame Oregon Trail game that came with it. I even used the games my brother had for his commodore 64 that he got 6 years earlier. I don't think much changed in the design of the computer during those 6 years.
long live the commodore!

worst protest ever

100 Men in NYC Seek Right to Wear Skirts
100 men walked "several blocks" so that they will be allowed to wear skirts. Dude, who's stopping you?

two more penguin games

killer Penguins!
panicking penguins!

that's it.
I promise.

heh heh penguins

thanks to laurenzmom for this penguin game link.
here is another version (i think the original), with the promise that part two is coming soon.
Here are some other penguin games you might enjoy:
shuffle the penguin: kind of like penguin golf.
shoot penguins with ice cubes
poke the penguin: that's really all there is to it.
push: really more of a puzzle game than a penguin one.space penguin: a penguin. outer space. a slingshot.

That doesn't sound platonic

In the "strictly platonic" section of philly craigslist:

"Young, beautiful, gentle and sweet. I offer a great massage with a happy ending treat. Please inquire for more info or to make an arrangement"

I know it damaged me

Someone's filing a class action suit against Janet Jackson's tit because it caused her serious damages.article

how dare they

Comcast has taken Bravo off my cable! How will I watch queer eye?

Dream Dream Dream

I was looking at a coffee table book written by piers anthony. Strangew enough, I know, but it just gets weirder from there. THe book has these really high quality photographs of strange japanese foods that Mr. Anthony has tried or encountered, along with a little blurb about how he came into contact with it. The only one I remember was taco soup (influenced by lauren's experience with taco salad). The picture was this bowl of soup with a dark colored broth, and this giant white octopus, with its tentacles flailing out of the bowl (it was still alive, apparantly). Piers wrote that he, much like in lauren's story, had ordered taco soup, because it sounded interesting, and was very surprised to be served a live octopus soup. I know, strange enough, but it gets weirder.
I was then suddenly in a japanese resturant staffed entirely by young americans (in Japan). there was this big bin in the middle of the place that had all these different types of live birds in it, all categorized by type (pigeons all together in one section, parakeets in another, sparrows in another, and so on). I asked a guy if the birds were bread to be unable to fly or if they had their wings clipped, and he told me they were clipped. These birds were killed and cooked to order, one of the waitstaff would pick one up from time to time and snap its neck, and send it off to the kitchen.
Strange enough, but it gets wierder. There were also these dogs running around the place, like pets with collars and names and stuff. This one dog had long tufts of hair on his ears, and one of the waiters was cutting the hair and talking to the dog in a singsongy voice, "you won't be running away anymore, will you? Will you? No you won't!" (apparently the fur on the dog's ears worked like the flight feathers on the birds). It came time to kill one of the dogs for a meal, and all the waitstaff gathered around this dog named Rico while a blonde girl spoon fed Rico some poison, and told Rico she was sorry. Someone took Rico's collar off. then, thankfully, I woke up.

I thought I liked him

My Prof. brought in a picture of Janet Jackson's exposed breast to class so we could "talk about images of Black people in the media." Is it just me or is it funny to hear a teacher read a head line that says "Janet Gives Super Boob Show" in class. It was like I was in 7th grade again, and someone just read a paragraph out loud about a titmouse.

hmmm

As a pc user, I've been thinking about making the switch the next time I buy a computer, and getting a mac. The big reason I like them, is that they actually seem to put a lot of effort into desgining them, inside and out, with an eye to how people actually use them. But this is troubling. They seem to have joined up with that big music industry company to...er....discourage people from stealing music.