(no subject)

Have joined deleterius in horrified fascination after reading a great discussion of over-used phrases. I doubt I'll stay, though. As funny and true as the critiques are, there's a certain mean-spiritedness about it all; besides, we are all lucky my adolescence predates the great flowering of the Internet, oh yes we are.

An odd side-effect of this has been (a) reading lots of complaints about something called "Hot Topic" (b) finally working out this is a shop (c) discovering they have a "mudblood" tee (d) discovering they don't have it in my size. Fuckers.

ETA: All right, I forgive 'em, they've got a sexy size sixteen-ish model showing off their Slytherin tee.

ETA: Wry amusement as an aggrieved Mary Sue author hurls increasingly outraged gibberish at the reviewers, and some react with apparently genuine offence. Is this a dish it out / can't take it sitch? Or is the Suethor a troll and the reviewers ironic? Am I watching a group of bitter thirty-somethings trading quips with a bitter fifteen-year-old? Or is it like the end of Brimstone and Treacle? Who can say. I feel the urge to quote Sir Walter Scott myself now.

For those who are wondering, I've stopped not swearing in my public postings. Apologies to anyone who is offended - I don't mean to annoy, but IRL every second word out of my mouth is a curse so I may as well be true to mine own self etc

(no subject)

Slept in my nice warm soft bed with my nice warm soft husband. I will never take these things for granted again.

Genesis 29

Careful exegesis reveals that I skipped a whole chapter! No wonder I found chapter 30 slightly puzzling. *facepalm* Anyway, I haven't got much to say about Chapter 29, except to note with interest the complex sort of fairytale sort of Taming of the Shrew business about the older sister marrying first. No probs, marry 'em both! :-)

Recs-o-matic

A rather sweet young Snape who looks about ready to chuck in this DE lark.

Doctor Who and the Boardgame of Death by edithmatilda and teh Nos omg aka nostalgia_lj. This is funny, especially after numerous authorial frank view exchanges on Anji's career. "The Doctor... looked at them despairingly with his much-described eyes." So guilty.

ETA: The other Nos story I wanted to rec: Matriarch.

GMonkey has committed heaps of great Snapey artwork! I bookmarked half of it, but let me restrain myself to a couple of my favourites: the Mary Sue comic and Snape on a romance novel cover.

ETA: I would like to clarify that "Snapey" is an adjective and not a nickname.

(no subject)

Could that be DWM peeking out of the mailbox? It is! Now I can

read the comic
ego scan
hide it from Jon

catch up on the latest about the new series!

Holy cow, my first New Scientist!!! Thanks everyone who chipped in!!!!2.71828!!

Natural History

Why not continue this flood of useless messages? I'm on a roll today. First let's do a little review.

Now when I was growing up we didn't have four phyla of Mesozoans, oh no, we had one phylum and they were all crammed into that. So the Animal Kingdom looked like this:

Kingdom Animalia

Subkingdom Parazoa - PORIFERA, the sponges
Subkingdom Mesozoa - various scum and villainy
Subkingdom Metazoa - everything else


Grzimek, whom I am using a reference for this nostalgic fit of taxonomy, uses this arrangement (I think):

Kingdom Metazoa

Subkingdom Parazoa - PORIFERA, the sponges
Subkingdom Mesozoa - PLACOZOA, some scum; MONOBLASTOZOA, which one guy thinks he saw one of once; RHOMBOZOA and ORTHONECTIDA, some parasites
Subkingdom, erm, something - everything else

(I have to check this when I crawl back into work. I'm only going by my photocopy of the contents page of volume 1.)

The point I am struggling feverishly to make is that we are heading into the territory of more complex and familiar animals. Although we all know what a bloody sponge is. Anyway.

Today's phylum is the CNIDARIA. Which was called the Coelenterata when I was growing up, but anyway, it's jelly blubbers and stuff. There are four classes:

Phylum CNIDARIA

Class ANTHOZOA - corals, sea anemones (the name means "flower animals")
Class HYDROZOA - hydras
Class CUBOZOA - stingers, or box jellyfish! A shadow comes over the sun!
Class SCYPHOZOA - jellyfish

That is all. I think I need a lie down now. Coming soon; the Portuguese Man O' War. [ETA: Oh no it isn't. I thought it was a Ctenophore and it's a jellyfish.]

(no subject)

I CAN'T STAND IT ANY MORE! Where did everyone get those photofit cartoon ikons of themselves holding kitties or whatever????????

ETA:



Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

It gets worse

I have plunged headfirst into the Uncanny Valley!

Best efforts

The horror. The horror.

Today's deluge of rubbish continues

I stumbled across the genre of books answering the knotty theological question of whether animals have souls and go to heaven in the affirmative, basing their argument on scripture. There are dozens of them (Best title: "Cold Noses at the Pearly Gates". Aw.), obviously addressing a deeply felt concern. It must be said that Zen Buddhism deals with the same question a little more concisely.

(no subject)

New Scientist subscriber archive access. *drools on monitor*

ETA: Gosh there's some interesting stuff going on in biology these days. Just as they cracked the Mayan hieroglyphs in my lifetime, I reckon they'll crack the junk DNA. (I can vividly remember first reading about the mystery in Discover twenty years ago.) Looks like it's made of regulatory elements - it doesn't code for what, as a gene does when it codes for a protein, but fine-tunes where, and when, and how much. So you can have chimps and humans sharing heaps of genes, but using them to build different bodies and brains.

Tell you another thing, I reckon prions are going to turn out to be the missing link in abiogenesis. Mark my words, kids.

(no subject)

International team to monitor presidential election

Bwah ahahaha ahahahahahahahaa hahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!6x10^23!!!!!!!!

This is not a joke!

ETA: "the United States does not have any details on the size and composition of the observers". They will each be ten feet in diameter and made of Nerf.