What is this "too geeky" you speak of?

So I went through and copypasted...most of my entries from GJ, for a total of maybe 300. They're the ones with (helpfully enough) "[GJ]" appended to the beginning of their subject lines. (Just to explain why they look so lonely and commentless.)

All of which has led to a ton of new tags. I'm pretty sure nobody's going to bother browsing this entire backlog, but it might be worth glancing down the list for fandoms you like, or perusing the lol tag, or maybe the links on the copyright tag. And the general highlights of those three years are collected under the label hey this is kind neat.

...I used to do a lot more excited, detailed recaps of shows I had just seen. I wonder what happened to that.

Also, new layout! Lifted from andthatstheword, which will be officially moved to DW some time next week, once (a) I've made it home and done some other catching up, and (b) people currently swept up in the Christmas rush start trickling back onto the Internets.

Last one.

For when you need to crank up the volume on something, and you've already had "A Mad Russian's Christmas" on repeat for the past six hours. (...it's just me who does that? Okay then.)



( Joyful and triumphant! )

You've heard of Frosty, you know about the Grinch, and, yes, you do recall the most famous reindeer of all. But did you hear the one where Rudolph got kidnapped by Osama bin Laden?

No? Perfect.

Grab your eggnog and curl up on the couch with some Christmas stories you haven't already heard a million times.



( The Mounties reached the North Pole; they found it was outside their jurisdiction. They called up Interpol, the Finnish police, to facilitate the suspect's extradition )

Music time again.

It's all well and good to have a merry Christmas, a white Christmas, or a last Christmas. But let's mix it up a little.

Within Temptation, for example, wishes you a gothic Christmas. And Twisted Sister invites you to have a heavy metal Christmas. From a punk rock Christmas to an atheist Christmas to a Christmas in July, there's something here for everyone.



( 'It's just that I've never heard of an action sequence in a Christmas carol.' 'Well, then, grab hold of your socks and read on, Joel Robinson!' )

HAH.

All ten pages, knocked out!

Turns out what I needed was a change of scenery. There's a room in the science center that only astronomy students can use (it's the one with the computers that are hooked up to the telescopes), so I put my paper and my notes on my flash drive and spent a few hours there. It did the trick.

In journaling news, the icon limit has actually been enforced. I can only use ten. I'm very glad this is one of them, because it would suck to lose my sexy sexy Integra.

Now I just need to finish a Powerpoint presentation, a French exam (which is take-home, but you're not allowed to use notes), and next week's comics. And get through half a dozen library books. And organize. And pack.

But by golly, the paper is done.

I finally went through my New York Times emails from the past week, and have spent the afternoon clicking through them, reading articles, and attempting to construct an amusing simile involving digesting news and digesting Christmas dinner. No such luck. You'll have to take the news ungarnished by metaphor, though I will divide it into courses.

Appetizer: The Top 13 Worst Slogan Translations Ever

First course: National politics.

Another issue is swinging forward: Republicans are adopting what used to be purely Democratic views on prisoners, abandoning the knee-jerk "lock 'em all up and throw away the key" for data-driven approaches. The issue of criminals and jail has fallen off of the emotional radar; without the threat of the gut reactions of scared constituents, politicians can follow their brains.

Washington is complicated: first-term Democratic senators are being carefully nurtured. The Republicans have been militarily data-driven (in matters related to keeping offices, at least) since 1994; it's a relief to see the Democrats organizing this way, because good positions are, sadly, not enough to win elections.

A whole bunch of documents are about to turn 25 and become automatically declassified, and the Bush administration hasn't sprung to stop it. I really hope they don't pull a fast one on us here.

Second course: Kids. From three to twenty-three. We use loose definitions here.

College campuses lean liberal as a matter of course, but in Iran that takes serious courage, and these kids have it in spades.

I'm a big fan of medicating kids as little as possible, which is not to say that I think medication is inherently bad or never necessary, but it's certainly not an all-or-nothing question, and this article really explains my views better than I could, with examples, so you should just read it.

I'm also a big fan of gender equality in the field of toys, not that girls won't spring for the pink naturally, but at least let them choose it, and this article ties historical princess worship in with contemporary Disney marketing and it's really cool. And by the end you will realize that the author's daughter is awesome.

Finally, just because kids believe in Santa doesn't mean they're gullible. Just the opposite.

Dessert: an article on diabetes. Apparently it's on the rise, and the result in the workplace is that people have to confront it and it's new and weird and causing lots of problems, and if only some of these supervisors had read the first Babysitters Club book when they were younger maybe it wouldn't be such an issue.

Enjoy the half-price Christmas candy while it lasts!

Scientists bashed by religion are mad, and they're not gonna take it any more. (Full text is copied here.) The difference between these scientists and the religions they're sick and tired of? The scientists are still scientists, which means they're okay with - and even glad for - being proved wrong.

YouTube is coming to cellphones, which sounds like a great idea, except that Verizon, the company bringing it to you, is going to vet all the videos that get shared. That's bad. YouTube works because of the wisdom of groups, not the filtering ability of an overhead source.

The cost of the gifts in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is up again, to $18,920 - even if you bargain-hunt online for the ladies dancing. Hopefully it'll be up again next year, as the maids-a-milking get their minimum wage raised.

Did I link any articles about the plane crash in Brazil two months ago? (A Brazilian airliner clipped an American executive jet.) The American pilots are still being held there despite mounting evidence that they had nothing to do with it. Imagine being stuck in a foreign country, unable to leave and with no job to do, for two months. Yikes.

In more personal news, hooray for the standard audio format, and boo to custom company-specific ones. Windows Media Player rips CDs to WMA format, which my Sony Walkman doesn't understand. So now I have to go convert a stack of WMAs to MP3s before I can take a walk and listen to Christmas music. (Unless I want to settle for Lite FM, which is playing it constantly, but usually not a variety energetic enough to exercise to.)