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The illustration with the girl rubbing the paws against her face reminds me of those catalogues for seniors that have pictures of middle-aged women giving themselves a "relaxing neck massage" with the... er, battery operated marital aids. They always have some sort of line about the "quiet and discrete" massager "soothing that stress away." Didn't that used to be touted as a cure for female "hysteria" back in Ye Olden Days?

Kind of like that deal a few years ago when Starbucks sued a gal in Astoria named Sam Buck for trying to use her own name on her coffee shop...

How arrogant.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of my favorites. I read it about every year. The perfect perfect example of perfect perfect character-driven wonderfulness. It's not like I'm a John Irving freak or anything -- I've really liked some of his books and others have just been okay airplane-reading -- but Owen is such a marvel. I also read Angela's Ashes about every year. Despite the subject matter being so sqalorous and depressing, it is tremendously uplifting. And my Dirty Little Secret read?... When I'm depressed, I will re-read Anne's House of Dreams, my favorite from the Green Gables series. It always makes me feel better.

I so rarely read fiction anymore that is seems like when I get the jones for it, I just want to fall back into one I've already read, like hanging out with old friends.

This reminds me of a quote from a book I like, "Society loves confession and painful reminiscence." I will never understand the weird mixture of puritanical and ghoulish in Americans. I just spent a week with my grandmother and for the first time in years, saw those TV talk shows. It's like witnessing a public pants-wetting, it makes me cringe.

It seems like people used to watch movies and TV shows about rich and clever people to make themselves feel better; now they want to watch "reality" about people who behave badly -- who are cruel, stupid, whose lives are disintegrating -- to feel better about their own lives. Can anyone with a background in sociology or psychology shed a little light on this shift for me? I have often wondered.  And for that matter, what is the deal with people who are super-into reading about "true crime"? Is it just a cheap thrill?

Where did the passenger list come from? I would like to follow up on the whole thing. Have there been comments/explanations from engineers and scientists about how those holes might have ended up looking like that, and where the wings went, and other fishy-sounding stuff? And if so, for whom do the quoted experts work? (Consider the source -- ALWAYS consider the source! -- when listening to the arguments from BOTH sides, I always say...) I am not trying to ask either pointed or rhetorical questions on this subject, I am just very very curious at this point.

And props to James Randi! He is one of my top-ten HEROES!

Yeah, you know... I had never really thought about it until I saw this stuff. I generally pay little mind to anything that sounds "conspiracy theory"-esque, because I am a big supporter of skepticism and critical thinking, and so often conspiracy theories and paranormal theories take the approach of saying, "Well, since we don't know what this phenomenon IS, it MUST have a magical/fantastical/sinister explanation," which is misguided. But then after reading this Pentagon bit, I realized that we all heard a LOT about the sad victims of the other plane crashes, and heard their relatives talk about the tragedies. We heard about the recoveries of even the tiniest fragments of flesh, teeth, wedding rings. But on the Pentagon crash? Nada. Does anyone know if there is a list of the passengers? Because if there is, it seems it would be fairly easy to check out whether or not they are real people.

...Well, the Real Deal behind my firing is that Boss Goblin has a little woody for the New Girl, this aging Southern Belle who is gossipy, fake, makes terrible drinks, sits down to "rest" any time there isn't a customer, and has a screechy Wicked Witch of the West laugh that makes people flinch and wince in pain (and she's a nervous laugher, so you have to hear it all day). She has had it in for the barista veterans (myself and one other person -- it's a small shop) from Day One, and in a few short months has managed to snag all the sweet schedules and has even grabbed the bookkeeper position from a real bookkeeper who used to come in once a week. Now the Southern Princess, with no experience and her horrible organization skills, is doing the books. And during the Goblin's rant, he said a couple of "I heard..." and "Someone tells me that..." statements that made it clear, about halfway through the conversation (not much of a conversation, just mostly me crying) that the minute I went out of town, the Belle spent the entire week dripping poison in the Goblin's ear. I think if they are not already sleeping together, he hopes that they soon will be. He is unhappily married, in his 50s. And she is manipulating him, and she's a tease and dishonest, and in probably no more than a few months my former boss will go, "What was I thinking??" but it will be too late. I wouldn't go back for $20 an hour.  

If you HAD to eat one of the Monty Python special chocolates, which one would you endure? Ram's Bladder Cup, Anthrax Ripple, Crunchy Frog, or Spring Surprise? I'm guessing Ram's Bladder would be the easiest one to swallow quickly.

Just re-read the Narnia books with my kids. Some of them are great, others just okay. I didn't want to pollute the story for my kids by telling them that it's secretly a Christian thing. To me it's always been just a fun story. I haven't been able to read the last two Harry Potter books, because the author went totally nuts and I guess no one is allowed to edit her and it's gotten flabby. I tried! I read about a third of the second-to-most-recent, and couldn't maintain enough give-a-crap to finish! I haven't seen any of the movies, so it's not that I just decided to go that route.

My favorite kids' books are the Moomin books by Tove Jansson. Absolutely brilliant.  For my own reading, I have come to read non-fiction almost exclusively, not because of some snooty-pants "I Am an Intellectual" reason, but because it is one of the ways I have come to deal with my aging-Reagan-80s-goth-girl angst about my mortality. I feel panicky about stuffing as much into my head as possibly before I croak. But sometimes I wish there were two of me, and the other one just sat in bed and ate chocolate and read novels all day.

OMG, this song gets SOOOO lodged in my head! You can read about the Cuppycake Girl on cuppycake.com; apparently she went on to do TV, appearing as Ally McBeal's childhood self a bunch of times, and lots of other stuff. She's in her teens now.

This song is terrifyingly cute. *shiver*

I know everyone's got one, and having just been fired by a creepy little goblin-man to whom I gave two-and-a-half-years of butt-kicking performance and faultless loyalty, I would find it soothing to read other people's stories. My tale of woe, crammed into a nutshell, is that I just returned from a week's leave, in which I went to California to take care of my grandmother. When I left, I was golden, the rockstar barista who hung the moon, according to the Goblin. When I returned, I swear this is not a joke, he told me that the way I go above and beyond is "undermining" him. He says the little things I do (like cutting people's bagels in half if requested, asking "How is your drink? Let me know if you need anything," taking the drink to the tables of elderly customers instead of making them pick it up, keeping the steam pitcher in the fridge so the milk foams better, bringing in Hershey's Kisses to put on top of the cups in the week before holidays, the list goes on...), these "extra" things make customers "expect too much." He even said that it really annoyed him how I learned on the internet how to make latte art with the foam. He said that was "just doing my own thing." Silly me, I thought it was customer service or something. So, I thought this all sounded funny, because why after years would this suddenly become a problem? Then I figured out what the real reason behind my firing was. If people will help me to exorcise my anger and betrayal by supplying some stories, I will tell you in my next post what the reason was. (And I swear, it will be a much shorter post!)

Is anyone interested in discussing math or science topics? News, questions, puzzles, stuff like that? Does anyone have a good math/science biography? One friend of mine is OBSESSED with Tesla (dear God, not the band!). Her answering machine message asserts that he is "hotter than a centipede." I recently enjoyed The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, about uber-weirdo Paul Erdos. He is the one who said, "A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems." Mmm... coffee.