Monthly Archives: November 2005

Cruel shoes

I think we can all agree that taste in shoes differs and that what one person thinks is fabulous another thinks looks like what the dog barfed up on the sofa last night. Sometimes, however, there comes a shoe ugliness so profound that we can all rally around it and bask in the warmth that [...]

This won’t mean anything to you unless you’ve read Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books

And really … you should read them. They’re wonderfully funny and intelligent. My personal favorite is Hogfather. Anyhoo… Which Discworld Character are you like? You scored as Lord Havelock Vetinari. You are Lord Vetinari! Supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork! Cool, calculated, and always in control. You graduated from the assassins guild, but failed a course on [...]

No, actually, I think you are an idiot

The Language Guy has written another compelling post about Sexism in Language (part 1). Avoiding some form of sexism in writing and speaking is nearly impossible. I worry about it a bit but not much because it is just too much work. It is also makes me weary to think about describing myself as a [...]

The past is another hemisphere

I’m reading a really interesting book right now: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. What I like about it is that the author’s approach to all of the data and various bits of evidence, pet theories, dogma, and obsessions is inherently fair. I do not think he is trying [...]

The Ears of Exasperation

The cold has moved into the hacking cough phase so last night was spent mostly not sleeping. The cats, who were piled on me nonetheless, had the nerve to look put out that I was coughing and, it seems, inconveniencing them. This from Mr. Howls Wake the Dead and Ms. Crushes My Sternum. The both [...]

Human kindness, it’s overflowing

The sun has set on Thanksgiving. After a relatively balmy day (high of 50 or so) the temperature has already dropped 20 degrees and the wind is gearing up for a long night of sweeping leaves into great piles and flinging small branches onto rooftops. I have spent Thanksgiving at home nursing a cold. I [...]

Giving thanks for Extruded Americans

My friend pointed me to this wonderful collection of images and captions at Lileks.com’s Gallery of Regrettable Food and I found myself inspired by one of the images, namely, the Thanksgiving Party Cake House complete with Extruded American. There is cake for every month but the November cake is special to me because of the [...]