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.