Upon waking this morning, I glanced at my watch. '07:15am'. Oh, gevalt! I overslept by more than an HOUR!

So I quickly, got dressed, grabbed a bag of banana and a cereal for breakfast and lunch, and ran out to the bus stop, where I brushed my hair and ate a banana as I waited for the bus.

Where's the bus? Glance my watch: 07:15am. I should call them to say I might be late, but there's no payphone and I haven't a Handy.

Glance my watch: 07:20am. Ah, good, it's supposed to be here in three minutes. Some people from work drive by and shout my name. 'Hey, I could use a ride!' But they're gone. Curses!

Glance my watch: 7:25am. Where's the bus? It's late. Pace. The Night Owl bus shows up. Strange that it's running at 7:30am, but it goes where I need to go, so I board. The clock up front is flashing '1:30'. Ha, I wish. No one there from whom I can borrow a Handy to say I'm going to be late. Just two homeless guys.

Glance at my watch: 7:40am. Wait...for the past six years I've had my watch set to UTC (essentially Greenwich Mean Time). 7:40am in England is 1:40am here. It suddenly dawns on me what a colossal idiot I am.

So I get off the bus and walk thirteen blocks home. I'm not going back to bed and oversleeping for real. At least I went to bed early, so I got half a night's sleep.

Good thing I didn't have a Handy. Would've left some interesting messages.

I just finished clean up for dinner at Seneca Falls.

I'd been sceptical about the claim that dinner clean up is a four hour job (two people for two hours), and usually it wouldn't be--yesterday's I think would have been about one hour total. But today they made a mess. I've helped do dinner clean up for groups of 70+ people, and this meal for ~20 impressed me. There just kept being more stuff.

Two pots still have burnt stuff on the bottom. One is mostly clean, and the other Michael suggests leaving for the person who burnt whatever it was.

Huckabee is getting popular. As governor, Huckabee increased spending over 60%. CATO (libertarian think tank) gives him an F. Huckabee wants to double PEFAR (AIDS funding), but in the past, he suggested isolating people with AIDS (though doesn't any more). Huckabee seems to be a Creationist. He says homosexuality is aberrant, unnatural, sinful, and poses a dangerous public health risk.

But he's suddenly a viable candidate to stop Giuliani. And with the current political climate, I'm more concerned about dictators, even ones with happy liberal policies on domestic issues.

Of course, I may change my tune very quickly when he starts sending gays to the gas chambers. (Hey, if he can make absurd holocaust comparisons, why can't I?)

Problem: I have no idea whether Huckabee is also a dictator.

One night after falling asleep, I dreamt about the Death Star from Star Wars. Looked just like it.

What's amazing is that I'm not alone. Dozens, nay, thousands of people have had similar dreams. They lose consciousness and then have vivid perceptions of large, spherical space stations of similar size and design, and often it's called a 'Death Star' by people in the vision.

This is an amazing coincidence, and I think we can take it as proof positive that the Death Star truly exists.

NO, WAIT. That's stupid. The Death Star appears in a very widely-known piece of fiction. It's an established piece of culture. People think about such things, go to sleep, and then dream about them. This doesn't even begin to suggest that any such entity actually exists. That's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

Now try this one on for size:
'Lots of people in near-death situations, upon losing consciousness, see angels or a bright light telling them it's not their time yet, as can be found in numerous works of popular culture. Therefore, such things really exist.'.

Dreaming about something does not prove it exists, kid!

Over by the office furniture in Office Depot, they have nice big pictures on the wall, seemingly advertising the chairs and desks. Nice, shiny expensive chairs and fancy wooden desk.

...on top of which rest 20-year-old computers. An old Apple, complete with the ugly mouse, an old IBM-Compat. with a green monochrome CRT displaying a text terminal...

Maybe they're just really old pictures for decoration,not modelling any current merchandise.

Person how are the people in antartica not upside down?
Person [States his name because multiple people use the account.]
Luca Consider the definitionof 'down'.
Luca We use a spherical coordinate system.
Person but the people are on the bottom of the earth.
Luca Now consider the definition of 'bottom'.
Luca You've switched frames of reference.
Luca Down is toward the centre of the Earth, not toward the South Pole. Do you consider yourself to be sideways?
Person and why arent we sliding off the earth?
Luca Because there isn't a super-massive black hole just south of the Earth pulling on us but not the Earth.
Luca See, here's the thing: the Earth has mass. zOMG!
Person no. but looking at a globe makes it confusing.
Luca Yeah, if you're from the middle ages.
Person i still dont get it.
Luca How old are you?
Person 16. im just a bit... slow. besides no teacher has ever explained this. they just tell us that the worlds not flat.
Luca You've heard of gravity?
Person nevermind i get it now.
Luca And I was just about to draw you an illustration.
Person yeah. i get it now. since gravijy is from the center of the earth everything works out.
Person awww man. i want to see an illustration. i dont get it anymore
Luca http://lkbm.ecritters.biz/blog/gravity.png
Luca Down is defined as the direction the arrows point.

The dogwood tree out my window is apparently home to a black bird with white-tipped wings.

A somewhat territorial bird.

It also seems to be a popular resting space for the passing flocks of migrating birds, much to his distress.

According to the wrapper of the fortune cookie I had at lunch today: Serving Size: 1 Package (43g/6 Cookies)

Who eats six fortune cookies?

Brian Regan does. (Autoplaying video)

(Front: :-) You believe in the goodness of mankind. :-)
Back: Daily Numbers 2 2 1
Lotto Six #'s 43 24 31 20 27 38)

(Potentially relevant link)

When you look up a word that 'may be inappropriate for children' ('cunt' and 'shit'. Not 'bitch'), Webster's Online Dictionary: Rosetta Edition requires that you enter a 'password':

The answer to any of these questions is a valid password for this page:


1. Cher's former partner's last name (4 letters)

2. The cube root of twenty seven (5 letters)

3. The "incident" before the Vietnam War (6 letters)

4. The theory that physiology and physics are drivers of economics (15 letters)

5. A good mustard (5 letters)

Because no child can figure out the cube root of 27, right?

By the way, if you can't figure out any of the answers, don't worry. Doing so simply forwards you to the definition of the word followed by '1', so you can circumvent it by looking up 'cunt1', 'shit1', 'cock1'...

'What is sauerkraut, anyway? Is it like it's own vegetable?' -- Girl working at the Swiss Chalet. Where they have sauerkraut.

Unfortunately I didn't hear Tom's reaction.

My point--or not really, but I'll make one up just now--is that she could still be smarter and more general-knowledgeable than you or me. Everyone has missing bits of general knowledge, and sauerkraut is hardly the most significant any of us have. Last week I was surprised to discover that American College football isn't played only on Sundays, but also on Saturdays. (Oh, I'm sure I knew that. They kick good TV off for football every day of the week, but I don't really think about football.)

I'm too lazy to go on and on about it.

(Liberty cabbage!)