Patient sitting is a funny job for many reasons, but one is that it's kind of isolated in terms of co-workers. Not that one doesn't see innumerable nurses, techs, &c, but one only sees other patient sitters when giving the five minute report at beginning and end of shift, and/or in the ER where it's way too busy to talk.
  So it's funny on the rare occasion when there are two sitters in the same room, with two patients who don't really need sitters (ie, not two DT-ers). That is, the unique occasion. Then it's like a grand Meet, in the story-telling sense; for example: "Oh yeah? Well have you ever gotten an entire liter of urine spilled all over you?" or "Gee, when I had that guy he was hitting on everyone and told the black nurse that he thought he must have a huge cock." 

Can't beat useful and potentially funny.

Apparently The Breast Cancer Site is having trouble funding its program of free mammograms for women who can't afford it; if you click the button in the middle it helps donate (or, to be absolutely tasteless, I quote, "click to help the titties").

   There are a great many things I could say about the relationship between (Japanese) jujitsu and (the more external styles of) aikido, so I'll start with this one. Aikido is the next register up from jujitsu in terms of them being linked and used at a similar range, and in that aikido can be used to augment jujitsu techniques. Conversely, jujitsu is not necessarily a register down from aikido, but is rather on a different register in that it is a fall-back for aikido. To elaborate, aikido principles can be relatively easily integrated into jujitsu techniques, even down to techniques as simple as using a basic Tomiki aikido pivot to take someone down from a clinch or pummel. Jujitsu on the other hand is useful to aikido practicioners in that for one, its gross muscle movements are simpler and easier to perform than aikido's finer and more complex techniques, making jujitsu an easily learned alternative for when fatigue or other variables set in. And in another point, when the opponent is able to jam or go to ground, aikido techniques perform on a limited basis at best, while jujitsu techniques excel.
   Some further points which bear more going into later:
-aikido takes a great deal of time to learn to apply, while jujitsu can be picked up very quickly.
-the majority of aikido's techniques are based on techniques while holding a sword - with aikido, sword movements are picked up very quickly, and can be used to augment one's understanding of the empty hand techniques
-interestingly in relation to that, jujitsu was originally for disarming an armored opponent with a weapon such as a sword; while modern Japanese jujitsu is more focused on countering styles akin to Western boxing, the links back to sword techniques are still there to be traced

Couple of really....interesting vids.

Palestinian Arab Folktales

kenken ("sword vs sword") - has a nice wacky ending

best fertility goddess ever

Silvereye, by Guido Argentini

there's bound to be something useful here

phrase of the day! 'verbal pyrotechnics' - kind of like the cliche 'flowery language,' but flammable

Yet again, I need a Japanese translator for these things. (the bottom trailer is short and sweet)

This video's creepy on several levels, methinks.

Trippy flash demos, to alleviate creepyness.

The first one's the best.

After reading Windhaven by George Martin and Lisa Tuttle a while ago, I've still thinking about one aspect of it. It was admittedly more of a background facet of the plot/setting (which was interesting because it was kind of a biography, fable, and commentary all at once but anyway...), but it still played an important part in the narrative. Bracketing off that plot (to avoid unneeded synopsis) the idea is that we often forget about the dynamics of other kinds of matter besides the solid kind, because we can't influence them directly. But what if you stop in the middle of, say, the UA mall with all the palm trees whipping around in the breeze, and look up? In the atmosphere, there are jet streams, updrafts, downdrafts, clouds being sailed in different directions, &c; hell, just look at a bird and try to imagine being able to move and use something you can't even see. Imagine if you could look up and see all those things happening in some way - it would dwarf the mountains, and be moving all at the same time. Same with water, of course. I dunno, I think it's kind of trippy - I mean, figuratively, that is (that, or maybe the new headache medicine is getting to me...)

+ sounds a bit uppity but seems to make sense: "We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution."

+ "The fastest draw is when the sword never leaves the scabbard."

Requires no brain power.

Induces head-noddin'.

had to get the example of "plutonic" in:
Arizona Angel says:
the president and COO of Harley was at Kettering yesterday
SonoraJinn says:
that's cool
SonoraJinn says:
is he hot?
Arizona Angel says:
plutonically ;)
SonoraJinn says:
lol

One in three women are assaulted at some point in their lives.
Three out of four women who have some training in martial arts come out of it fine.
Hm.

Aikido manuals are great because they use words like "whilst" while describing smacking people in the face.

"...a point in space in which all other points are contained..."

Hrmm....rumors of Blade III? December? This bears jumping up and down and looking into.....

To be honest I thought it was a bit silly, but yeah I can see underwater jj being used to restrain panicking divers.

"I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely mechanical object." - Roland Barthes, "The New Citroen"
+ writers --> "...the specialists of the human soul..."

"Most of the time we breathe in air without being conscious of it: like language, it is the very medium in which we move. But if the air is suddenly thickened or infected we are forced to attend to our breathing with new vigilance, and the effect of this may be a heightened experience of our daily life. We read a scribbled note from a friend without paying much attention to its narrative structure; but if a story breaks off and begins again, switches constantly from one narrative level to another and delays its climax to keep us in suspense, we become freshly conscious of how it is constructed at the same time as our engagement with it may be intensified." -Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory

(via Wyatt) Rocket Man Blog - "Politics is not rocket science, but all the rocket scientists I know are conservatives."

So, if one were to mute any of the morning shows on the big networks, and take a gander at the people moshing in the street behind the anchors, waving their arms around, screaming and caterwauling...anyway, does anyone else get Resident Evil or Dawn of the Dead vibes?

A whole bunch of shecoonery.

There's this little bit of a hill when I'm driving up to my family's house where there is often a 'whoa' moment for me when the Catalinas come into view. This time the cloud shadows were moving at such a rate that I saw them flowing over the mountains even as I was speeding along, so I a paused my car to watch them shift. It was like some kind of liquid made out of different kinds of light, and it made everything seem so big because it accented the clefts and folds what often seems like a flat painting. I like that hill.

It's like a koan, but not.

Apparently, according to the world's first crossword puzzle, a "nard" is an "aromatic plant." (there're also Latin and Arabic for more fun times)

There's this bird that's taken up residence in the neighborhood that sings incessantly at night. For three straight hours so far tonight, for example. It's a pretty song it sings, it's just its omnipresent quality that annoys us. And its volume. Which is why Phil is going to do a quick walkabout at 1.15 AM; to what end? Having just watched Kill Bill Phil's katana comes to mind. But (not to extend dippy melodrama), we could always make another good chicken marsala. Or whatever the hell kind of bird that is marsala.

Okeyday, in lieu of doing a close reading on some of the scenes from Kill Bill, Vol II (which would be fun), I'll just go with this (first impressional) analogy: the first one was the sex, and this was the post-coital cuddle.

+clever commercial. You can't beat Funky Town.

Actually, kind of came across this fun list of recipes after being confused by something in Elf Only Inn

Random artist plug

You can really confuse people in other rooms if you turn your volume up and start clicking around on this

This uses the annoyingness that is Realplayer, but it's kind of fun to hear Old English aloud

What I'm wondering is where they get origami paper like that

Kill Bill Vol. 3, even in theory, makes me do a happy happy dance.

So my fiction writing teacher's main thought on sex scenes was that they probably shouldn't be included unless they serve some specific function in advancing the story, or you can come up with some new way of doing it (no pun intended). Granting the fact that it would difficult to really think of something "new," as it were, I agree with his logic, but am also inclined to think (admittedly without much thought put into it) that if a story had an appropriate tone/atmosphere/ 'tude that a sex scene could be added as a kind of arabesque.

.............yes, that was a pun on my genes. And my jeans. As it were.

Corporate Etymologies - kind of semiotic and kind of not, but funny.

This and this might be a little too into yoga for most people, but the exercises for one's eyes in and of themselves don't hurt anything, and I actually noticed immediate difference after the 'palming' one.

(courtesy of Ms. Robyn)
Melt Wizard
...well, I'll let their tagline say it: "fantasy/emo from Tuscaloosa, AL". On several levels, it's hard to beat that; that, and their CD is only $5. Though, I think their songs might be a weeee bit....esoteric for most folks...

"You and I should never part
We would be a work of art
Like a short story by Sartre
Or an unlit fart."

"I wonder how you never knew
You're the Margaret Weis to my Tracy Hickman
All the worlds we've made
All we've been through
You're the Margaret Weis to my Tracy Hickman"

Ah, the perhaps the Governator just saved the person who will defeat the evil robots in the future....but the real question here, I believe, is how is vacation time for governors really decided? And is it paid vacation? I want to be governor of a sunny state going on vacation to a sunnier state.

time for the periodic conservative plug, I suppose...
---Article on Kerry

---Day by Day: probably the only conservative cartoon I've ever seen, though politics is not always its focus. Plus, there are regular moments where the author points out that conservative views in turn are sometimes ludicrous, which is definite bonus points to the comic's value. And, of course, it's subtle and witty, to boot.

Well, I could say I like Soul Caliber II for a number of reasons, not least of all its usefulness for procrastinating (thank you Scott for making my life much more stressful until I subletted your Xbox to my brother. bastard =). ) But its footwork is its greatest aspect in my opinion. No other fighting game that I know of emphasizes that aspect at all - in Soul Caliber, however, it is the most important thing. Some people make great claims about the game's mostly realistic martial arts techniques, but they usually miss that the most important part of the game - moving one's feet, whether to evade or advance - is also one of the most important things in real martial arts (I think so, anyway, just to keep from making an overarching presumptuous statement).

Oh, and, um, (despite Phil's eagle eye noticing the gun Jennifer Garner was packing changing from an H&K to a Glock midscene) Alias fucking rules.

A tai chi/bagua instructor I met the other day made a really interesting point, ironically about yoga: something like "You go to the point in the pose that you can get to, and don't try to strain for more, but just learn how to relax at that point." One of those obvious-as-a-zebra-on-a-golf-course things that doesn't actually seem so until it's bluntly pointed out, but one would wish more people would hear it before they get turned off to yoga by trying to kill themselves by overstretching everything.

Oh man...I almost feel sorry for these people, except that they're a bunch of hoyty-toyty Continentalists...
I don't actually mean that.
No...yes, yes I do. Damn Frenchies.
But brie cheese is so good...hmm...

Eating an apple while burning sandalwood incense leads to interesting flavor.

Half-remembered posit from essay+story by David Brin:
   Are aliens the new fae? If you look at the ubiquitous "Gray" archetype that one generally takes to represent the concept of the extraterrestrial, it certainly has the slender-to-the-point-of-emaciated body, the slight stature, the strange tilted eyes, &c. But to go a little bit deeper, are they the new monster-as-representation-of-unknown? That is, as the rule of thumb of fearing that which one does not understand is applied, and combined with science generally discounting many effects that rule might have, what if those little gray dudes are just the newest thing that is just beyond the firelight? Are they what we just might have seen out in the dark forest beyond the light that our embers of technology and modern society give off, coming to abduct us and cause capricious mischief?

New Word Proposal: In the grand tradition of Dr. Hayot forcing his Lit. Analysis class to use "strong" instead of "cool" and "hard" instead of "much," Scott made up the word "plutonic" - ie, as Pluto was associated with wealth, to love someone plutonically would be to love them for their money.

I hope this ends up at Catalina or the Loft or what - on the surface looks like one of those indy movies that's a series of conversations, but it also has Bill Murray, Iggy Pop, the White Stripes, Steve Buscemi, Cate Blanchett...well, I could go on - Coffee and Cigarettes

There's a funny kind of logic to it, I suppose. Let's just say it kept me up at night.

Bug Portraits

"Still confining ourselves to spoken utterance." - Austin, How to Do Things with Words

Xuemei's Seaweed Tomato Soup

seaweed - nonclumpy kind if possible

tomatoes - diced large

eggs (like egg flower soup)

chicken broth (or water, as preferred)

A rant on an example of a silly borrowed word:
"While we're at it, could we please fix the word ginkgo, which is not only difficult and irregular, but doesn't reflect any proper Japanese word? The Japanese characters ([i/gin][cho:/nan/kyo:]) can be read two ways: as icho:, they refer to the tree; as ginnan, to the fruit. The second character can be read kyo: in other words, so someone misread the combination as ginkyo:, and someone else mangled this into ginkgo."

Fun Hellboy mini-comic - yes I know it's on Playboy.com, but I knew if I drove to the comic book store to get it for 25c I'd end up spending $50.
(and he says "Oop. Damn." at one point! you can't beat that!)

A liiitle bit esoteric, but I suppose Latinate puns can be funny...no, I refuse to work a pun into this.