//

This is a BAD-ASS video that posits a Microsoft redesign of Apple's iconic iPod packaging. It's brilliant.

//

I am going to link to the same video that Lars linked to the other day, to do both something Lars did and something Lars did not. Something Lars did: encourage you to watch it. Go watch it. It's worth your time. There are a few funny lines, particularly that thing about the prosperity tit. Something that Lars did not: warn you that it's the most depressing thing I've seen in weeks. Maybe months. Oh, it's upbeat alright, and that's what makes it worse. Oh, god, so depressing.

But then again, I've always been depressed by the whims of global capitalism.

//

Fiona Apple performing--meh, it's not anything that's not on the album--then talking and being interesting with Craig Ferguson last week on The Late, Late Show.

In the interest of completeness, here's Lisa Loeb performing (not her best song ever) on Craig Ferguson on Valentine's Day, but not the portion where she talks to Craig and is interesting. Also, solely in the interest of completeness here is her cute, bethonged butt from her reality show, "#1 Single." In the interest of completeness. God bless YouTube. Also, an interesting (and long) interview with her is up over at TVSquad. (Pt.2) She's interesting, interested and fun. Intelligent. Playful minded. It's quite nice to watch a celebrity (or, perhaps more accurately, semicelebrity) talk and be genuinely candid and longwinded and ask questions back and, shockingly, actually have a conversation with the person she's being interviewed by. Plus, she's just cute as a teenie, tiny little bug.

Watch the video for Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek." It's only vocals, and not, like, she does the instruments with her voice, too, like Petra Hayden's "The Who Sell Out" or that Bjork album, but rather it's just her, or a chorus of her-s, singing with herself (themselves?). Nicely mixed betwixt the non-altered voice and the altered voices. Just watch the thing, and listen to the music. If you weren't convinced by the clip of her on Letterman, then this should do it. Or you've not been paying attention.

Dear Michelle,

My life is sad and empty when you do not post. Please post.

Sincerely,
Me

//

Dear Christina,

What up, girl? Give us a call or post or an email or an IM sometime.
I promise we'll love you forever.

Cordially,
Me

//

Dear my stomach,

Please stop being naseaus. I know, you don't normally but you are now, and it's kind of pissing me off.

Thanks in advace,
Me

//

Dear my brain,

When we gonna get back to writing? It's been four full months, what gives?

Wonderingly,
Me

//

Dear Matt,

Thanks for the Dick Nixon away messages.
Sure he would have been a good pope.

Oh that silly Nixon,
Me

//

Dear Lars,

Please rock the stairwell gallery. Perhaps that will make my brain write and my stomach settle.
A boy can dream, right?

Hopefully,
Me

//

Dear Andy,

Gain some weight.
You seem to be doing well on all other fronts. This is my only area of concern.

Seriously,
Me

//

Dear all others,

Please comment on "Three Stories in Which People Realize Things About Their Lives" or I will be forced to harm these tiny bunnies.

The bunnies thank you,
Me

This is the conclusion of a six part serialization of the story "Three Stories in Which People Realize Things About Thier Lives." This is the back half of of the third and final story, "Because of Something Completely Beyond Her Control."

Read part one.
Read part two.
Read part three.
Read part four.
Read part five.

       Day seven was worse than any of the days before it.
       The first three days there had been nothing. It was not that she could not move, those first three days, it was that she lacked the will to make her thousand mile long limbs do anything. She did not want to move. She had been reduced to a simple numbness. All she was capable of was looking out on a world that changed around her. Her heater kicked on and off all on its own. When she woke from short naps, the sun had moved. It was simple. Day four she had decided that this is what a persistent vegetative state must be like. It was the only full thought that day.
       She had not been traumatized by the event itself. She had not been there. She had not watched it happen. It was not as if she could replay it over and over again and be paralyzed with her inability to change it. She simply could not understand it.
       It was because her mother had said “This must be a hard time for you,” that she had really lost it. As soon as she had hung up the phone, it had begun to worm its way into her.
       Day seven was when the crushing sadness set in. She wept and sobbed until her pillow was soaked. She began to come to terms with the facts: There was nothing she could do about it. Nothing anyone could do about it. Bobby was gone.
       But it still didn’t seem right. How could that be right?
       Her mother came by that afternoon, as she had promised, and brought with her a chicken and cheese casserole in a translucent green dish. The smell made Hannah want to throw up. Her mother said nothing to Hannah except that she shouldn’t keep her key under her mat. She put the casserole in the oven and sat on the edge of Hannah’s bed and said nothing until the egg timer dinged.
       Hannah sat at the table but did not want to eat.
       “I know what you’re going through,” her mother said.
       Hannah could not believe that.
       “It’s true,” her mother said, “I used to watch your cousin Ira. You were too young to remember him.”
       Her mother looked down at the table. Hannah watched her closely.
       “This is the kind of thing you don’t ever get over.”

(Alright, folks, lets hear it: where does the story succeed? Where does it fail? How did the serialization work for you? Might it have worked better / worse on a story that wasn't already so fragmented? And anything else, of course, that you might have to say.)

This work of fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs2.5 License.

So, it turns out I may or may not, as of last night, be a founding member of a band named "Enmann's Pierced Cooter," as in:
"Hey, did you get a chance to see Enmann's Pierced Cooter last night?"
"Yeah, it was a totally great show."

I may or may not think that this is completely retarded.

This is part five of a six part serialization of the story "Three Stories in Which People Realize Things About Thier Lives." This is the front half of of the third and final story, "Because of Something Completely Beyond Her Control."

Read part one.
Read part two.
Read part three.
Read part four.

III. Because of Something Completely Beyond Her Control

       Outside, cars rolled by. It had been three days since she’d left bed. Her mother called and she let it ring through to her voice mail, staring at the phone the entire time, wondering why people would allow such noise into their homes.
       For a while she tried to watch TV, but she could only see the top half of the TV from her bed, so she watched the wall. She became nauseous after a while, just listening to the voices. They were making garlic chicken on TV. She thought she remembered food.
       Her mother stopped by later in the week and pounded on the door for a while. She knew it was her mother from the way she called “Hannah,” and then waited, shuffling her feet, before saying it again, louder: “Hannah!”
       The apartment was a studio. Her mother tried to look in the blinds but they were shut tight. It sounded like she was worried. Hannah pulled the pillow over her head. Eventually, her mother left.
       Hannah managed to take care of herself. On day five she ate three handfuls of prepackaged “BOLD, Party-Blend” Chex mix while sitting in a chair in front of “The Today Show.” The people on the show were excited about arranging flowers. It was spring, apparently. She drank a glass of water and went back to bed.
       She answered the phone the next time her mother called, on day six.
       “Hannah, I came by and your car was in the parking lot but you weren’t home,” her mother said.
       Hannah said nothing.
       “Are you doing alright? Do you need me to bring you something?”
       “No, I am alright.” It came out sounding a little surly.
       “I’m worried about you, Hannah. Are you working? Has the agency called about placing you in a new position?”
       “No,” Hannah said. She hadn’t told them she was no longer at her last position.
       “Let me bring you by some food, at least,” her mother said. “This must be a hard time, for you. Do you want to come home?”
       Hannah did not have the strength to imagine moving home to her green and white checkered bedroom, unchanged since she left for college.
       Her mother promised to bring her something the next day.

(Story three concludes tomorrow.)

This work of fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs2.5 License.

This is part four of a six part serialization of the story "Three Stories in Which People Realize Things About Thier Lives." This is the back half of story two, 'In an Office Decorated Entirely From IKEA.'

Read part one.
Read part two.
Read part three.

       No, that’s not what I mean. I’ve felt that way, but not in that same way. Do you know what I mean?
       Yes, I know what I said, but really, it’s not what I meant. I’ve never felt like that. No, that’s not how I’m meaning to say it. I’ve felt that strongly, and I’ve felt those same emotions, but not in that same way. I’ve never been moved to whisper in my husband’s ear, even when we were still dating. It’s not that I don’t love his eyes the way I loved Tom’s—and I’m comfortable saying that, you know, ‘cause I did love Tom’s eyes, they were so super-green.
       They looked like people are always describing Ireland to look like. I’ve never been, but they at least looked like people describe the green hills of Ireland to look.
       But anyway, I love my husband and I love his body and his heart—he has such a good heart and he’s always there and he helps and—
       Oh god, I’m sounding like one of those women now, aren’t I?
       But I suppose I can’t be one, you know, because I know that that’s what I sound like? And those women, they’re not self aware, about it, right? Like they always say that crazy people don’t know to ask if they’re crazy or not.
       Not that I think that women who sound like that are crazy. Listen to me, I’m all worked up.
       All I am saying is that I was thinking about that, this week.
       And maybe it’s that I don’t need to. I mean, I’m never … removed from my husband the same way I was, then, from Tom. I don’t have to sneak around with him. If we need privacy, we have privacy and there’s just not the same type of immediacy that there was, then, anyway.
       No, I hadn’t noticed that I kept calling him that. I don’t think it means anything, do you? No, I don’t. Not at all. It’s not like I’m defining him by his role rather than his person. That’s just how I talk about him. I’ve never invested that much power in names anyway. I mean, when people call me Gina it always takes me a second for me to figure out that they mean me. I respond better to my husband’s last name than I do my own first name. So, you see what I mean? I don’t think you can wrap someone up entirely in a name. Like, it’s like, object power. The queen doesn’t get her power from the crown or the throne, she gets it because she’s the queen, you know? I don’t think my name has any special power, it’s simply a description. A shorthand.
       Anyway, I don’t think it means anything that I call Jim “my husband” and I call Tom “Tom.”
       But I was just thinking about that. And none of the men between the two of them elicited that kind of spontaneous outpouring from me, either, but really: should I have expected them to? My first love and my most serious. So far.
       That was a joke. Yes, I know, to say it you have to think it first so it’s not really a joke, but it’s a joke. Designed to be funny. Y’know?
       I was just thinking about that, that’s all. About how I don’t do that anymore and how I may never get it back. And how I almost want it back. Just that passion, just that inability to control yourself. Listen to me, I don’t sound like myself at all.

(Story three, "Because of Something Completely Beyond Her Control," begins tomorrow.)

This work of fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs2.5 License.

This is part three of a six part serialization of the story "Three Stories in Which People Realize Things About Thier Lives." This is the front half of story two.
Read part one.
Read part two.

II. In an Office Decorated Entirely From IKEA

       The last week, I’ve been thinking and it was only with Tom that I was ever driven to spontaneous declarations of feeling. And I don’t really know why. For years I just told myself that it was for no other reason than because I was young.
       I’m not saying I haven’t had outbursts of feeling in the time since Tom and I stopped speaking, but just that those declarations that I made to him, the whispering—not dirty talk, or at least not like any dirty talk I’ve ever heard before or since, though, my experience is rather slim. But I would just tell him things. Whisper in his ear, telling him I loved him and describing who he was to me. During sex, afterwards, before, while he stood in front of the window, wanting to go, ready to leave but unable because I was pouring myself out to him.
       Maybe, it was a way for me, a little, to take a hold of him. In the same spirit but a different way than he took a hold of me when he grabbed my upper arms—oh, to have those sticks of arms back, now, but at the time I just thought they were gangly—and pressed his face into mine and I let him take me.
       I shouldn’t say that, I should say “let him take me” because it sounds like I’m in “Vanity Fair” or something, or at the very least some sort of southern belle from, say, the thirties and my interest in ruffles and petticoats is not sufficient to play either part. But the thinking, my thinking, at the time, was—I mean, at least, I was accused of being—Victorian about sex.
       But how can you not be, at that age? How can you not be at least a little Victorian at seventeen, being a woman—a girl!—especially after growing up in south Texas? And it’s not like I was getting off. I mean, we were both virgins and we were young and we had, really, in retrospect, no idea what we were doing. Not to say that it wasn’t fun, it was, but if anything now was half that awkward… I don’t know, I’d just die.
       But it was the declarations, and I don’t know—should I have been worried that I would scare him off?
       I mean, I don’t think so, because I would have noticed the first time I said something that he tensed or held back or left early; I mean, hell, I was seventeen, not stupid. I think it was just the opposite of that, though, really.
       No, not that I was stupid, but that he enjoyed the things I told him. Enjoyed what I whispered in his ear, about his eyes and his arms and thin boy-hips and how his shoulders were wide and how he would just get even more handsome as he grew up, as we grew up, together, together, together.
       And I’ve never felt that way since.

This work of fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs2.5 License.

If you're anything like me, you've been singing to yourself the very, very choice hook from a song called "All Will Be Well" that's been featured in the (constantly on) ads for NBC's yet-to-premire "Conviction" (which, despite my better judgement, is starting to seem like it will be worth watching--and not just for J. August Richards, who might be solely responsible for me having given Gilbert and Sullivan a shot.) Watch NBC's "Conviction" trailer to find out which song I'm talking about, if you've been completely impervious to it's charms.

Anyway, I was pissed, 'cause I decided I liked the song, after days of singing only the hook, and it's usually almost impossible to find out what song and who did it for this kind of thing. That's when I remembered this Dan Wilson (of Semisonic) news item, stating that it was one of the songs he had co-written with Gabe Dixon. Boo-yah. Turns out, this song was exactly my kind of song from the get-go, and having bought the whole song from the iTMS, I've got to tell you, the lyrics are great, and very DW. My favorite part's the pre-chorus/chorus section, where the lyrics... they just defeat me. For your reading pleasure:

"And all the children walking home past the factories
can see the light that's shining in my window as I write this song to you,
and all the cars running fast along the interstate
can feel the love that radiates, illuminating what I know is true:

That all will be well
even after all the promises you've broken to yourself,
all will be well
You can ask me how, but only time will tell."

So check it out for yourself.

Is that enough to make my give "Conviction" a try? Probably.

(This is part 2 of a 6 part series--it's the second half of the first story, called "Upon Watching a Documentary about Hemingway." Read part one first.)

       For years he had been explaining to me how to find a new, fresh voice in fiction and I had been humoring him. I had come on staff five years after he did, I don’t know if he told you that before you left. But five years is an eternity in the life of a young writer. And five years after that, even, he was still telling me how to be young and fresh and vital and how important a routine was to a writer and how we shouldn’t strive any more for imitation but to still reach backwards and recreate, instead of rewriting.
       He had been watching the documentary on Hemingway when Hemingway’s son had come on screen and explained that his father, like all artists, had simply happened.  He wrote this to me in an email, so I can’t vouch for the veracity of the claim, or how it was couched by Hemingway’s son, but I can tell you that this sounds like the belief in inevitability shared by many children of successful parents. There is no way to understand what has come before you, to really understand history and that determination rewarded is different than fate.
       He was nearing thirty, you know. And he made it no secret that he did not imagine he would still be teaching at a public high school at thirty, that he thought that he would have happened by then, to steal the phrase. His idols had all accomplished something by the time they were thirty and usually their best work was behind them, he said. He buried himself in their biographies and reeled off the accomplishments made by Faulkner and Anderson and Williams and Eliot and Pound by the time they were his age every time I went out with him.
       But really, it was the documentary. He saw the way they talked about Hemingway. And then he wrote me a short email and told me that there was nothing left but imitation because it had all been done. All the artistic movements were complete of themselves and nothing was left to be done. It was impossible to be significant, only to be one of the writers he hated, endlessly reprocessing older works. No content was left. And though everyone must feel like they live at the end of history (why else would the Second Coming be such a threat?) that we must, really, be on the brink of it.
       And then he hung himself.
       I watched some of the documentary, too, and was struck by the praise ladled on Hemingway and the way in which he had reinvented American prose, like breathless teen record collectors talk of the way their freshly-discovered, personally-owned Nirvana had reinvented popular music. And maybe because it wasn’t dumbstruck college writing students who had just cracked open “The Sun Also Rises” but rather their professors and the great historians of the genre, that he went, finally, convinced there was nothing left.
       I hope that’s some kind of explanation that works for you. I know if I believed what he wrote me in that email, I would’ve done it, too.

       Nick

(Start of story 2, "In an Office Decorated Entirely From IKEA," to come tomorrow.)

This work of fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs2.5 License.

So, I'm going to do what I threatened to do last semester and serialize one of my stories here. It's called "Three Stories in Which People Realize Things About Their Lives" and many of you have read it. However, those of you who might perhaps be most interested in it (*cough*noah*cough*christina*cough*) I don't think have read it, and this may be the only way to trick you people into it. Plus, I'm curious to see if it will work. So, I'm gonna split it into, say, six parts. Let me know what you think in the comments. I'll try to carve it at the joints, if I can find them. This is one of two stories that every school that I applied to got, and one of three that some of them got. Anyway, without further whathaveyou:

Three Stories In Which People Realize Things About Their Lives

I.  Upon Watching a Documentary about Hemingway

From:    nickdietz@busd.edu
Subj:     RE: Scott
Date:     4 March, 2005 9:49:15 AM CST
To:     lorraineschultz@macallen.net

Lorraine,
        You asked why he did it. This is as why, as far as I know. It was because he decided that there wasn’t anything left but imitation. I don’t know if it’s true, but he believed it.
        It started while he was watching a documentary on Hemingway and he knew that it was a fashionable thing to do, to lionize Hemingway and he didn’t want to do it, but I don’t think he knew why. He explained it once and it had come out sounding like a mishmash of a hundred, separate, wrongheaded reasons. “One shouldn’t write like Hemingway,” he said—this was in the period in which he overused ‘one’ as the editorial ‘you’—“because Hemingway was a misogynist. And because it is fashionable. And because there has to be something new to say. And a new way to say it.”
        Maybe he could tell I didn’t believe him, so he shook his head and went to use the bar’s bright, door-less restroom and when he came back he offered me a cigarette and I bought him a beer and we talked about something else. But that was earlier.
        He watched a lot of television, but because he was always writing in the evening he taped off of PBS all sorts of specials and documentaries about writers and musicians and watched them late at night, probably draped over that armchair there, directly in front of the TV, balancing a glass of water on his stomach, running the tape back and forth over his favorite moments. Worrying them smooth. Maybe.
        He did tell me, though, that he watched the documentaries up until the point when they published the novel of theirs he loved the most and then he turned it off. Or maybe it was until the documentarians had finished with the section of life he was in, then, that he turned them off, knowing he was different than them because he did not yet have a novel and, further more, his novel, if he’d had one, was not “This Side of Paradise” or some similar work.
        He said he turned it off because he always had something to say by that point and so he went back to writing, but with Hemingway it was different. He reached the portion of the documentary after “The Sun Also Rises” was published and he continued on, not because he had nothing else to say, I think, but because he was riveted in horror by his dawning revelation. That’s how he was, sometimes. Surely you must’ve seen it. I watched him grow paralyzed like that, once, just before you left him, and I cuffed him on the shoulder and ordered a round of boilermakers and we laughed it off.

(More to come tomorrow. You hooked yet?)

This work of fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs2.5 License.

//

Impending Julia Louis Dreyfuss trainwreck "The New Adventures of Old Christine" gets a timeslot.

//

Most of the rest of this post via Sploid.

//

Happy Valentine's Day! Want to get matching nose jobs?

//

News for Justin: Foreign Kindergarteners Banned from NASA.

//

Ann Coulter Commits Voter Fraud

It's not treason, per se, but boy, I've seen people labeled treasonous for less.

//

This just in, the idea of Cheney tapping anyone, nay, anything, is upsetting.

//

People hate Mariachi music. Finally.

That's all I have to say about that, "Finally."

//

Kendall: No going in search of a "life" to "have" instead of "wasting away" in "Boerne"?

Me: Well, I honestly have no idea where I would even start.

Kendall: I think San Antonio would be necessary.

Me: Yeah, and then, magically finding people suitable to me and having money that I could afford to do things that cost more than seven dollars.

Kendall: Hmm
I don't know where your people hang out.  Kathy and I have determined that hers are in computer labs and mine are usually in bars.

Me: Mine are all at home wondering where the others hang out.

//

And now, a screencap of Ellen Barkin being very pretty in "Diner."

It's possible that "Diner" is the best movie ever.

It's available for less than ten dollars and hence it's criminal that you don't already own it.

Your results:
You are Will Riker

Will Riker 75% Geordi LaForge 70% James T. Kirk (Captain) 70% Jean-Luc Picard 65% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 65% Chekov 60% Uhura 50% Deanna Troi 45% Worf 40% Mr. Scott 40% Spock 30% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 30% Beverly Crusher 25% Mr. Sulu 25% Data 15%

At times you are self-centered   but you have many friends. You love many women, but the right   woman could get you to settle down.

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz

It occurs to me that were it not for my extreme hatred of waiting in line / waiting to see a doctor, I would be a pretty hardcore hypochondriac. Lets go over the list of things I've been, at one time or another, convinced I had:

Heart Attack
Advanced Coronary Artery Disease
Gangrene
Migraines
Blood Poisoning
Bi-Polar Disorder
Syphilitic Brain Disease, sans Syphilis
Heavy Metal Poisoning
Diabetes
Restless Leg Syndrome
Irritable bowel Syndrome
Inguinal Hernia
That disease where your palms sweat too much*
Prostate Cancer
Lymphatic Cancer
Vitamin K Deficiency
Vitamin C Deficiency
Hanson's Disease
Parkinson's Disease
Pulled Ligament in my Knee
Necrotizing Fasciitis

*Ok, so that one turned out to be true. Mild, but true.

Catalog of things I actually have:
Tinnitus

Updated/Expanded, 12.00PM->AM

//

The Nixbush---it's like looking in to the heart of evil and then coming out of it and having 40 odd percent of the country unwilling to believe you.

//

Keith Richards ax-chops a stage-rusher with his Telecaster, returns to playing 'Satisfaction' like nothing happened.

//

I now understand why everybody digs Bill Evans.

Even though I did before, too.

//

Still don't understand why more people aren't talking about Imogen Heap, whose entire album is as good as "Goodnight and Go" [iTMS]. If you haven't watched the clip of her on Letterman, do yourself a favor and watch it, damnit.

//

Lost was excellent this week. "The Long Con." The "Walkabout" of the second season, I'd say, though, for sure, the ending was a little more predictable than that of "Walkabout."

//

SP reunio---whaaaaaa?

I don't care what the fuck Billy calls it, without either James or Darcy, or, preferably, both, it is no Smashing Pumpkins.

//

italisizy: Phillip Glass gets mashedup with the Beastie Boys.

Sir Turley: That mix is awesome

italisizy: Agreed. The nerdy awesomeness of Phillip Glass meets it's nerdy-awesome opposite in the Beastie Boys.

Sir Turley: and they combined to make a sort of nerdy-awesome goulash

italisizy: Mmm... nerdy goulash.

Sir Turley: where did you find this?  Which blog?

italisizy: It was off a link from Data-What?

The official "Tristram Shandy" website is terrifficly self-referential, as, apparently, is the movie.

I ordered the book today, and, as per Noah's advice to me, I will recommend it to none of you.

The movie opened in NY on 27 Jan, opens in L.A. this Friday, and comes to Tucson, Phoenix and San Antonio the 17th and to Rochester (and other places upstate NY) on the 24th.

You should probably just go see it.

//

An Alaskan ice wall.

You know, for climing.

Continue on to page two and beyond. It gets surreally bad-ass.

//

Man, it's not funny, but Jodi Sweetin was addicted to meth. And her cop husband had no idea.

I said it's not funny, and I want to stand by that.

But man, it's kinda funny.

//

Man, beating up on O'Reilly has gotten to be old hat, but you gotta hand it to Keith Olberman: he does an increadibly good job of it.

via TVSquad

//

Speaking of skwering O'Reilly, it's gotten to the point where if I don't get my daily dose of Stephen Colbert's "The Word" I start to get the shakes. I would link to one on Comedy Central's "Motherload" but they don't like Mac users over there. Bastards.

//

My new TV crush? Montana (Anna Belknap) on CSI: NY.

Let these grainy screencaps be your new grail:

(Don't even make me post again explaining why I like her where I throw these pictures up again with  her mouth-corner-muscles circled, alright?)

And having Melina Kannakaredes on the show doesn't hurt either.

Sploid does what I was too lazy to do, explain what the president (probably) meant with his non-sequiter sounding line calling for the banning of 'human-animal hybrids.' Don't let the ridiculous way it's phrased throw you, this is important.

Scientists are finally figuring out the mechanics of genetic diseases such as Down's Syndrome, and one startling new advance is the creation of "chimeras" -- animal cells that have been genetically modified to have more human traits, such as a pig with human blood that could be used to research cures for human blood diseases.

As with all new genetic research involving human cells of any kind, the Bush Administration is strictly against these "chimeras" because it could interfere with God's ability to kill sick people.

Read the whole (short) article.

//

If this game, where you use four tiny puppies--one for each season; the winter one has a Santa hat, the fall one is wearing a tiny, puppy scarf and the summer one is in a tiny, puppy sailor hat (he's at the beach)--to jump over little balls that then turn into cupcakes doesn't cheer Susan up, then nothing will.

//

If this Dahlia Lithtwick article from Slate doesn't depress the rest of you, I don't know what will.

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Micheal Kinsley is a titan of the written word. A TITAN, I SAY. Read this article and weep at his awesome power to flawlessly explicate the seemingly obvious.

Oh, and it's about how everybody picks on Democrats all the time. Even Democrats.

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Amy's Robot tackles Target's blurring of the line between corporate responsibilty and opening their very own CSI: Minneapolis franchise. Quite interesting. The best, though, is the closing anecdote.

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Airbag does satire on google.cn.

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I ought to do a review of 'Courting Alex' sometime soon, but really, you're not missing anything.

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One quarter of L.A.'s smog comes from China.

That's right, motherfucking CHINA.

Across the Pacific Ocean.

That's right, the biggest of the oceans.

The mind boggles.

A QUARTER!

China!

Damn.

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