Sensitivity

    Well, it is handy to know how to say "Shut Up" in ASL.

Sunday Sermon

    Cute and funny enough to where we'll overlook the pathetic misspelling of "hourse".

Teachers Strike

    Funny how that works.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    Captain Bly had once been first in his class in the Space Academy, had had all the promise of the best and the brightest.  But he had thrown it all away with one small mistake, one moment’s dallying where he should not have dallied, one moment’s surrender to lust.  Unhappily, his commanding officer had, tragically, returned to his quarters early that same day.  He had found young Bly in bed with his wife.  And his nephew.  Not to mention a sheep, and his favorite hunting dog.  The commander had really loved that dog.

    (from Bill the Galactic Hero, Volume 1 by Harry Harrison)

  5½*/10.  The full review is here.

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Stray Dogs

    This is my wife with any stray dog seen roaming the streets.

Arms

    That which has been seen cannot be unseen.

Proof that the Earth is Flat

    So there, you Round-Earthers!

Monday Pun Day

   Oy.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    Eminent, eminent people, one and all, members of the Society for the Prevention of Fantasy, advocators of the banishment of Halloween and Guy Fawkes, killers of bats, burners of books, bearers of torches, good clean citizens, every one, who had waited until the rough men had come up and built the towns and repaired the highways and made everything safe.  And then with everything well on its way to Safety, the Spoil-Funs, the people with mercurochrome for blood and iodine-colored eyes, came now to set up their Moral Climates and dole out goodness to everyone.

    (from The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury)

  7½*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Art Appreciation Saturday

    Finally, a piece of art that lifts me up!

A Holiday Warning

    Happy 420 day to all!

April Blizzards Bring May Lizards

    This is for all my East coast and upper Midwest friends.  Here in Phoenix, we've already had our first day of 100°F weather.

Quitting Smoking

    Many years ago, my company started a wellness incentive program, where they'd give you $100 if you quit smoking cigarettes for at least 30 days.

    I went in and claimed my reward, but they rejected me, pointing out that I didn't smoke cigarettes in the first place.  I countered by offering to smoke a single cigarette, preferably without inhaling.  Then "quit", never to touch tobacco again.  They STILL rejected my claim.

    This comic strip reminds me of that episode.

Deliver

    English is a funny language.

Monday Pun Day

Science Saturday

    It's a very early photograph of all of us.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    Roen scrambled to his feet and ran.  Omer snarled, and suddenly Roen heard a loud bang, and then a windshield near him exploded into glass shards.

    “Jesus, did he just shoot at me?”  Roen turned the corner and ran north, passing several rows of cars.  Several more bullets hit cars and shattered more windows.  “God, he’s trying to kill me!”

    “Doubtful, he is most likely aiming for a non-vital area.”

    “Every part of me is vital!”

    (from The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu)

  9*/10.  The complete review is here.

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A Sign From God

    Omigod!  I'm betting on the Cavs to go all the way this year!!

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

    In case you're wondering where the book's title comes from.

Punctuation Tuesday

    The classic one, of course, is:  "Let's eat Grandpa!", but this one's good too.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    “You’re saying Peter Solomon comes down here to reflect on death?”

    “I really don’t know,” Langdon said sincerely.  “Maybe he created it as a sanctuary for his Masonic brothers who work in the building, giving them a spiritual sanctuary away from the chaos of the material world … a place for a powerful lawmaker to reflect before making decisions that affect his fellow man.”

    “Lovely sentiment,” Sato said, her tone sarcastic, “but I have a feeling Americans might have a problem with their leaders praying in closets with scythes and skulls.”

    Well, they shouldn’t, Langdon thought, imagining how different a world it might be if more leaders took time to ponder the finality of death before racing off to war.

    (from The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown)

    7*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Mandarin Chinese Sunday

    Hen hao!

Mortal Kombat Saturday

Why I don't like to socialize

   Yep.  That's me.  The one with the yellow post-it note, not the other guy.

Cogito Ergo In-SUM-niac

Goofy Joke Wednesday

Guest Cartoonists

    We are committed to posting any cartoon strip that mentions *both* Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    A man sits in a room, manipulating his kneecaps.  It is 1983, on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles.  The man, a study subject, has been told to do this for four minutes, stop, and then resume for a minute more.  Then he can put his pants back on, collect his payment, and go home with an entertaining story to tell at suppertime.  The study concerns human sexual response.  Kneecap manipulation elicits no sexual response, on this planet anyway, and that is why the man is doing it: It’s the control activity. (The opening paragraph of the book.)

    (from Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach.

  9*/10.  The complete review is here.

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My Kind of Romance

    Call me sentimental, but this type of Romance appeals to me.

Art Appreciation Friday

    Two "Art Appreciation" memes this week.  Yooze are indeed blessed.

Book Excerpt for t he Day

    I sat on the bed abruptly.  Where had that come from?  Was I petty enough to be angry that my boyfriend had been thinking of a dozen different ways to be sure his descendants (the unfriendly and sometimes snooty Bellefleurs) prospered, while I, the love of his afterlife, worried herself to tears about her finances?

    You bet, I was petty enough.

    I should be ashamed of myself.

    But later.  My mind was not through toting up grievances.

    (from Club Dead by Charlaine Harris)

    7*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Take Your Child To Work Day

    Good advice.

Art Appreciation Tuesday

   If you're too young to be familiar with Norman Rockwell's paintings, you don't know what you're missing.

Sawhorse

    Monday Pun Day.

Star Wars Sunday

Book Excerpt for the Day

    Far from having “small Latin and less Greek,” as Ben Jonson famously charged, Shakespeare had a great deal of Latin, for the life of a grammar-school boy was spent almost entirely in reading, writing, and reciting Latin, often in the most mind-numbingly repetitious manner.  One of the principal texts of the day taught pupils 150 different ways of saying, “Thank you for your letter” in Latin.  Through such exercises Shakespeare would have learned every possible rhetorical device and ploy – metaphor and anaphora, epistrophe and hyperbole, synecdoche, epanalepsis, and others equally arcane and taxing to memorize..

    (from Shakespeare: The World As Stage by Bill Bryson)

  9½*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Music Friday - Geezer Edition

    It pains me to call Guns N Roses a geezer band.  But really, their heyday was more than 30 years ago.  Appetite For Destruction, which featured Welcome To The Jungle, came out in 1987.

Chess on Television

    Once upon a time, back in the 80's or 90's, PBS televised a major chess match.  I don't recall now who the two players were, but they had commentators (not at the actual site of the game, of course, but back at the studio) and everything.

    Full Disclosure I've been a chess fanatic all my life.  So believe me when I say, there is NOTHING more boring than watching a chess game on TV.

Monty Python's Holy Grail

    I want this poster!

Only 3 Percent Will Share This...

    Really, people.  Knock it off.