Weave a circle round him thrice

  1. I’m as big a fan of biotech against disease as the next guy, but I get this nervous twitch in my eye when they talk about using genetically modified chickens to fight the bird flu.
  2. ANTI MONKEY BUTT POWDER!
  3. We’re going to be using Roombas to find snipers now? Well, not exactly.
  4. Due to bird flu, the Croatian government has quarantined the late Marshal Tito’s parrot. Sometimes life just presents us with this great condensed symbols we don’t need to improve.
  5. We have beautiful desert wildflowers in California; they’re surprising to see in what people think is a wasteland. Feral Flowers is a wonderful site about the weird habits of these plants and their periodic appearance and disappearance.

If the fact of death were to be admitted the American Dream would be revealed as a lie

Holidays bring out a weird split personality in the U.S. We are instructed to enjoy each holiday, and the quarter of the year we call the “holiday season”. It’s our liturgical calendar. Everything from Christmas to Superbowl Sunday is celebrated with deadly serious intensity. It isn’t just that advertisers push us to buy stuff. We get into this shit really deep and want to do each holiday perfectly. We will be joyful, or patriotic, or “spooky”, or whatever the occasion calls for, and we will demonstrate this with decorations and special foods and events and and and.

At the same time the holidays scare the hell out of us. Partly because of public service campaigns over the years by anti-drunk-driving organizations, we have a national obsession with the hazards of holidays that’s just as strong as our desire to celebrate the hell out of them. “Enjoy your Memorial Day barbecue” or “Have a Merry Christmas” has acquired the suffix “safely” in the last 30 years. It’s understandable that we’d want to reduce the body count from New Year’s drunk driving or poorly cooked turkeys, but we put way more effort into it than the actual numbers warrant.

Sentimentality makes us frightened. Each holiday must be perfect — the Christmas Carol Christmas, the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving — or it will be a terrible tragedy. Not only must the snacks be perfect and every child rosy-cheeked and laughing, but no one may die during the special happy time.

I’m on the record as disliking the new Halloween for other reasons, but the safety bit is hilarious here. Folks! Let’s make sure that while celebrating the Day of the Dead, All Hallows’ Eve, the terrifying Pandemonium in which the gates between Hell and Earth swing open and the dead walk the earth and Satan Himself tests the faithful with the terrors of the grave, that we’re all super safe and stuff!

And now a piece of found poetry received from my HR Department today on this very subject: SAFE HORROR

None of us want fruit rollups now, ever

The day was a usual work day, which lately means trying to find out what’s going on mostly, or what I should be doing. This is less fun than actual work, but unfortunately it’s just as important.

I had an unexpected nap at 5 or so and didn’t wake up until 7:30. Groggle groggle. Staggered into the shower and out the door. Saw people at D’s. They had some dead guy playing classic rock as usual. Further performances by any artist of James Taylor or Cat Stevens songs may result in over-the-top violence of the kind seen only in imported Japanese DVDs. You have been warned.

It was good to introduce djfntstque to some more people, so he can see the freak show that is the patio.

Just in time I remembered not to go to Ruba and feel left out and old and ugly and pathetic, and instead went for a drive to clear my head and then home. Tamales + margaritas = pleasure.

I want to get lost in something and come out a year from now.

tiresome

Dear LJ: I already changed my password once to make it much more obscure. Now I’m getting the warning that it’s too easy to guess, again. Obviously you’re monkeying around with the definition of “too easy”. You’re a big, grown-up company now, and it’s time to stop testing everything out in production. This is FUCKING ANNOYING.

Please stop using “uber” as an adjective meaning “best”, people.

  1. Kansas City teen finds FIFTY SIX POUND MUSHROOM.
  2. The LAPD is looking for a very dangerous Bond Girl. Via LA Observed.
  3. Rosa Parks is the first woman in U.S. history to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda.
  4. The AIDS corpse pile grows, West Nile is scaring the shit out of us, and we may soon all die of bird flu. So we’re all pretty stoked that the CDC is spending $60 million on a visitors center including a formal Japanese garden.
  5. Feeling a little light in the loafers? Take a Hetracil.
  6. Shitty fantasy writers, which is to say all of them, should be forced to follow these guidelines on pain of death. Are you listening, Mr. McKiernan?

Well, it’s that time of year.

angelThere’s a touch of frost in the air, it isn’t quite Halloween, and we’re all flat broke. Therefore it’s Christmas Season, and I’m delighted to be the first to inaugurate it here on the LJ. I know some of you are going to say it’s too soon, but if you really thought about it, you’d realize you want it to be Christmas all the time. Sure you do. Anyway, that magical time of year has come in which Santas on TV sell you subprime mortgages and inflatable pools, out-of-work actors in Dickensian clothing serenade you with faith-neutral carols outside the Chick Fil-A in the food court, and HR emails you jingly-bell clipart that blows up Windows.

To kick things off properly, I’d like to remind everyone that He knows when you are Good or Bad, so be Good for Goodness Sakes. (Crude Flash, ~9 meg) Or you will suffer beyond your wildest imaginings.

Wassail, wassail!