so you think i can't write?

You know how sometimes there are those holidays where just absolutely everything goes wrong? You find your teeth chattering in what you’d been told was going to be epic heat, you get covered in ant bites, you drown in heat the rest of the time you’re not freezing, you get a shower that squirts all over the ceiling instead of all over you, your pajamas mysteriously disappear point blank, you get sick to your stomach, you’re fed nothing but half a bag of nuts for dinner – twice, your only form of sustenance –chocolate – melts into uneatable form, your host abandons you for theatre rehearsals three times in one week and you spend a quarter of your trip not-so-patiently waiting for a guy to get up the guts to finally kiss you?

And then he has the gall to insinuate you’d be incapable of writing a cranky blog post about it?!

Shut up yourself.

review: stranger in a strange land

It's called sci-fi and I guess it must be because the protagonist is from Mars, but really Stranger in a Strange Land is just bit strange.

It's an odd mix of sci-fi and thinly veiled social commentary that loses the storyline in the diatribe.

I was reasonably intruiged by the first half, but found the second unnecessarily indulgent and annoyingly morally suspect.  Gratitous sex is one thing, but gratituous group human-snake orgies masquerading as moral superiority strikes me as somewhat overkill.

If pressed, I'd probably label it agnostic folklore; in sci-fi, though, it's just displaced entirely.  I hear they're meant to have plot there.

From what I gather, Stranger is supposed to be some sort of sci-fi classic, but I'd call it a cult classic at best.

I just hope it doesn't offend the Martians.

foods i don't like

Foods I Really Don't Like

Cheese, except in pizza, quiche, cheesecake or if it's so utterly disguised I don't realize it's there ... but generally I do!!
Bananas
Olives


Foods I'm Not Crazy About but Will Tolerate

Lamb
Walnuts
Lasagna (it'd be okay if there weren't cheese in it)

christian humor ...

"I don't have the page numbers, but it's definitely near the middle."

--guy at church, of Psalm 103

Maybe you had to be there ... and be me ... but it was hysterical!

a good rule of life

Don't wear more make-up than you can comfortably touch up in an elevator ride.

the oddities of life

The other day I found myself seated snugly between two very different conversations at Max Brenner. One was a young couple obviously on a first date, desperately trying to impress each other and making sure they laughed at exactly the same things. The other was a group ranging in size from two to four who seemed to be advancing an oddly corrupt business scheme onto others. I, however, didn't fall for either conversation.

there's a word for these words ...

What is the word for words that have two opposite meanings? Like cleave or sanction(s)? Whatever it is, I thought of another expression that doesn't quite fit, but I think deserves a mention in the same category: give it up. It can mean "to quit," or also to clap frenetically, as in, "give it up for your Cincinnati Reds!"

And then there's words (I know there's a different word for them) that just have two utterly and completely different meanings that aren't opposites -- like peer (n., person of a similar age or rank vs. v., to look intently) or lap (n., what happens to your legs when you sit down vs. v., to drink like a dog).

Don't you just love letters??