The following coversation just took place in the house. Note that housemate ("HM") is a Christian working for a faith-based non-profit, and occassionally does catering on the side (she's an excellent cook and baker). This weekend, the two overlap as she's been contracted to make a lunch spread for a social event involving some of the non-profit's board members.

The array of foods she's making includes a few dozen sugar cookies (from scratch, of course), which she's cut out into various shapes: hearts, flowers, stars, and of course crosses. Because these people are protestants (as was I, when I considered myself a person of faith), and for us protestants kitsch is as important a part of the daily diet as vitamins and minerals. A fifth food group, you might say. So she finishes the cookies and decided to turn in for the night. Realizes that they'll dry out in the "crisp" Colorado fall air (it's hella dry here once the temperatures start coming down). Dilemma: how to keep them from drying out without coming back downstairs? Solution: ask the housemate ("ME") to wrap things up:

So touchy...

(A little light non-Katrina content for a break...)

As it happens, there are more than a couple of those statements I can't really argue with...

I'm a big proponent of standards, especially in regards to web development and related issues. Especially XHTML for web content. Put down that tired old busted HTML 4.01 and get with the new millenium.

Still, I'm more than a little concerned that the XHTML Fist t-shirt features a hand with six fingers. And the left hand, no less. You can't even try to explain it away as being Count Rugen's.

http://www.gertler.com/nat/abusedimages.html

It appears that Amazon encodes significant data into their image URLs. It also appears that this person has way too much time on his hands.

Via LiveJournal, I found my way to the editorials of an American teaching in Japan. Specifically, he teaches the equivalent of 7th through 9th grades. Apparently, according to this entry, Japanese school kids learn to be preverts at an early age:

Any station that punctuates a piece on St. Patrick's Day celebrations with "Scotland the Brave".

I followed a banner-ad link on a SourceForge.net page, and found the ThinkGeek page of Valentine's gifts. The poem alone makes me long for a geek girlfriend:

ROSES ARE #FF0000
VIOLETS ARE #0000FF
ALL MY BASE
ARE BELONG TO YOU

I won't reprint the text that is on the panties here. I won't.

Dear Die-ary,

Today is the Hallowe'en celebration in my office. Many people are dressed up, and there is enough candy floating around to induce diabetic coma into a small but significant percentage of mainland China's populace. Even my manager, who is old-skool-enough to have been coding on Lisp machines before I was born, is dressed for the occassion. I chose not to, as I don't really have much skill or knack for costumes that don't involve large quantities of fake (no, really, I promise it's fake) blood. And I do have to work here after Hallowe'en, after all.

The problem is, there was a calculated, concerted effort among a large number of the female office demographic to dress as devil-girls. That's right, I'm surrounded by literally dozens of women in red, wearing horns, some with pitchforks, even.

My concentration is pretty much crap.

Yours,
rjray

Apparently this morning when she got in, all three fish were pining for the fjords. Witnesses say the water was very murky and the stench was impressive for such small fish.

(I, unfortunately, missed it all because a power-outage this morning killed my alarm clocks and made me later than usual.)

The co-worker who's desk is to my immediate left recently got a Tetra in a glass jar as a "pet". I use the word extremely liberally here. Our boss (we answer to the same manager) got her two more, so that the one would not be lonely.

Understand, first off, that this isn't a very big container. It's a perfect cylinder of heavy glass, with no top. Like an extremely unimaginative drinking glass (if you were, say, André the Giant). Probably holds about a pint and a half or so (judging by my first-hand experience with pints). It's about 3/4 full with water, so we'll call the actual water-area one pint. In this, though, there is about an inch or so of bright blue gravel at the bottom, and a plastic plant of some sort that curves in on itself within the confines of the glass. And the fish. The three fish.

Fish are not pets. You can't take them for a walk, they don't come when you call (of course, neither do my cats, but in their case it's clear from the look in their eyes that I'm being purposefully ignored). You can't play with fish the way you would a reptile, unless the fish are piranha and your idea of a pet reptile is a Komodo Dragon. But this subtle distinction is lost on my co-worker.

She's like a child with its first kitten. She can't leave the poor fish alone. How they must gurgle a watery sigh of relief when she leaves for the day. She'll tap on the glass. She'll spin the jar around one way, then the other (something I compared to her riding out a 5.0 earthquake in her apartment). And once in a while, she'll just pull the jar closer to her and, well, almost hug it, for lack of a better descriptive. I don't think she's really hugging it in the sense you'd hug a puppy, but she's clearly taking some degree of comfort from the presence of the little fishies.

God help all of us within earshot if she comes in one morning to find any one of them floating. I'm just not sure how you explain the cycle of life to a 30-year-old married woman.

In Arizona, horses are still very common-place. Because of this, you might think that this is a sign directing you to a place where you can get your horse a nice meal. You might think that, but you would be wrong. This is a place where you go to eat like a horse. This is a chain in the Phoenix/Mesa metro area. I've seen at least three locations so far this week.

As to whether you actually strap a bag onto your face, I cannot say. I haven't had the courage to actually venture into any of them.

All the cool kids are taking that 20-questions personality quiz thing, the one on the web site of usual name. Since I'm a sheep, I did too. I'd say the results are about 60%-70% accurate, but I'm not inclined to say which 60%-70%.

There. Wonder no more about the mysteries of my psyche.

It's not that I mind my cat cleaning himself in the middle of the bathroom floor while I get ready in the morning, cats do that after all.

I just wish he wouldn't make those slurping noises when he reaches his ass.

At least he doesn't sing.

Today is National Π Day

This post made on 3/14, 1:59