Cross at Your Own Risk

I'm waiting for the pedestrian fatality in which the driver claims he should not be held liable for hitting the person in the crosswalk because the walker didn't wave.

As seen in Williamstown MA
March 18, 2012

Polly Wants a Cracker?

It seems like these things don't go together:

- It is January.
- I am in Vermont.
- I went for a bike ride.
- I bought crackers.

But they do ...

Near the AT&T East Monument
(Or something like that)
Vermont
January 7, 2011

Yes, We Have No Bananas

The grocery store shelves were looking a bit bare in the Boston area this evening as folks spazzed over the impending arrival of Hurricane Irene.

As seen in Cambridge, MA
August 26, 2011

Cock-a-Doodle-Doo

As seen in Arlington, VT
August 6, 2011

Tweeting From the Grave

I've been waiting and waiting for a tweet from Amy ever since I created my Twitter account yesterday, and got these 'helpful' little suggestions from Twitter about who I should follow, but nothing yet.

Apocalypse Now

~~ Postdated May 21st, 6:00 pm ~~
( Just in case I am raptured up )


As seen in New York City on May 13, 2011

Child's Play

Saw this while hiking in the woods. I have been having nightmares ever since.



Trust me, you'd have nightmares, too, if you were a city girl whose boyfriend convinced her to accompany him far, far off the beaten path into the wilderness where you can walk for miles and miles and see hardly any other living creatures. Except ticks. Lots and lots of ticks. Yikes!

Only kidding. The hike in the woods was awesome. Except for the tick part, that is.

Almost Heaven, West Virginia

Actually it's Vermont. But 'Almost heaven, Vermont' just didn't have the same ring to it.

Girl Eats Juicy Cock

Not only does my boyfriend have a big, juicy cock, he said I might get to eat it soon.

Purple Mountain Majesty

Vermont ~ May 2011

Nature waits for no one. After noticing the setting sun was casting a purplish shadow on the surrounding mountains, there was hardly time to dig out the camera and snap a few shots before the effect was gone.

I Challenge You to a Duel

As seen on opposite sides of Main Street
Northampton, MA
April 30, 2011

The woman carrying the second sign got a tad bit paranoid when I whipped out my camera because she thought I was a Beck follower. (As if.) Apparently the 9/12 Project folks harass her when she's out and about expressing her disdain with their movement. Perhaps they need a refresher on their own principles.

Principle #8: "It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion." ~9/12 Project

I'm a Poet and Do Not Know It

He touched me, so I live to know
That such a day, permitted so,
I groped upon his breast.
It was a boundless place to me,
And silenced, as the awful sea
Puts minor streams to rest.

And now, I ’m different from before,
As if I breathed superior air,
Or brushed a royal gown;
My feet, too, that had wandered so,
My gypsy face transfigured now
To tenderer renown.

~Emily Dickinson~



Emily Dickinson Museum
Amherst, MA
April 29, 2011

~~~
Emily, I grasp thy work not.
The man of mine, he is hot.
To get to him, I must drive.
To rest midway, I do strive.
Your house, right there is stuck.
So pass it I do, on my way to fuck.

~Parlancheq~

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

All the other people in the neighborhood have a Madonna on their lawns. These people must be atheists.

Somerville, MA
March 6, 2011

Pretty in Pink

Japanese cosmetic company ICE GIRL makes a lip gel that not only helps prevent dryness, it can also reportedly lighten your lips to cherry blossom pink in just 10 seconds! And not just the lips on your face. You can use it on your pussy lips, too. Really. Just bear in mind this important tip:

"Suggest to get 2 tubes if you wanna use for lips and private parts. This is for hygienic purpose."

Spell Check

Researchers say text messaging does not negatively impact children's ability to spell. But signs like this do.

Williamstown, MA
February 26, 2011

Goodwill Hunting #5

My boyfriend and I scored this old-school vibrator at Goodwill for $2.50. He wants to sell it on eBay. As if. I mean, what if we break up? I'm gonna need that thing.

Ho, Ho, Ho

Usually I don't drink before noon, but today I might make an exception. Did I mention that I hate Christmas?

Somerville, MA
December 2010

Santa's Other Sleigh

~~ Merry Xmas ~~


Williamstown, MA
December 2010

Off to the parental unit's house for Christmas, then the significant other's for New Year's. Perhaps in between I'll update this blog with all the pictures and exploits I've accumulated over the past several months of not posting a damn thing. Don't hold your breath, though.

Grammar Lesson

Not sure when to use the word 'less' versus the word 'fewer'? Never fear, for Grammar Girl has a tip to help you remember which of these similar words to use....

Just think of those signs at grocery store express lanes that read, '10 items or less,' she says. And then remember that the people who drafted those signs are dumb fucks who have shitty jobs, no doubt because of their inability to grasp complex English grammar rules. Thus, you should not copy the signs and should instead use fewer in this situation, because groceries are countable. Less is only to be used when individual items can not be counted.

Confused? Apparently, you're not alone.

Near the defunct St. Vincent's Hospital
New York City, July 17, 2010

While in New York City in July I also hit the Guggenheim (which I shall remember for the overpriced bite-size brownie purchased in the cafe rather than for the art) and the Museum of Sex (greatly enlarged since my last visit, suggesting size does matter) and walked Manhattan up and down. You'll have to take my word for all that, though, because the above pic is the only one I've deemed worthy of posting at the moment seeing as how I've covered NYC in pics before and have a backlog of other photos to post from post-NYC visits to DC and Vermont, as well as forays around Boston. Stay tuned for all that.

Porn: Good for Your Love Life

My lack of postings of late does not mean that I have fallen off the face of the earth. It means I've been busy with other things. Like achieving orgasm through the use of porn. Though perhaps not in the way you might assume.

See, back in April I made a porn video. Wait, don't get too excited; I mean I made a video about porn. Said video caught the eye of two YouTubers. One sent me a message telling me I'm a slut. The other sent me a message inviting me to his house. I figured, if I'm a slut, there should be no harm in going to the house of a random guy encountered over the Internet, so off I went. (After conducting an extensive background check of the guy, of course. I may be a slut but I'm not an idiot.)

To make a long story short, we are now dating. I think. Or maybe we're more like activity/fuck buddies. Hard to say. But whatever, it feels great. And I'm not referring just to the sex part. The hanging out and talking moments are awesome, too. I've never felt so totally in sync and comfortable with a member of the male species.

I'm tempted to give him a blog pseudonym so I can sprinkle references to him in future posts. But he might not even like that I've said this much, so I'll hold off for now. After all, I don't want to jeopardize the chances he and I will have future intimate encounters. Because then I may have to start watching porn again. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just pales in comparison to the real deal.

As seen in the Ville, August 15, 2010

Riots, Rights and Rain

None of the gay people I know go the Pride Festival so I felt obligated to go yesterday and show pride on their behalf. It was a wet, nasty day so the queens were not out in force. (Mind you, if I spent hours in front of the mirror making myself beautiful, I wouldn't go out in the rain either.) Nevertheless, plenty of others came out to show their pride. Video proof here and here.

Boston Pride Festival
June 12, 2010

The theme of Boston Pride 2010 was 'Riots to rights: Celebrating 40 years of progress.' It was intended to recognize the Stonewall Riots as the start of the modern gay rights movement, as well as the rights that movement has helped secure to date.

Love Is Not An Abomination

Love trumps Leviticus button: $1
Propagating the message it carries: Priceless



I coulda sworn I bought this at PFLAG's booth at Boston Pride 2010, but maybe not since the button doesn't seem to be available for sale online from the national organization or the Boston chapter. Someone should market it, cuz it's awesome.

Cowabunga, Dude

In the US, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - characters that started as a comic and later morphed to TV, movies, video games and plastic action figures - are primarily popular among young kids. In Serbia, however, it seems the characters caught on with middle-age men. Or at least I think the chorus to the song this music group is singing is something like, "Ninja, Ninja Turtles. We love it!'

Light the Lamp, Not the Rat

This lamp would be a classy addition to any home but may be especially appropriate for homes in rat-infested neighborhoods since rodents that find their way inside will blend right into the decor rather than be cause for alarm.

Rat lamp, made from stuffed rats, by Alex Randall

(Other designs by the artist here)

Credit where credit is due: Lamp found via TreeHugger's slide show on the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. Title compliments of Rizzo the Rat.

The Bathroom Bandit

Returning home from a night of partying, a Somerville, MA man had an urgent need to pee. So urgent, in fact, that he popped into a stranger's home to use the bathroom. No worries, though, as the man was a considerate house guest. Indeed, not a single drop of urine was left on the toilet seat nor was the seat left up when the man finished his business.

I know, I know, it's hard to believe a guy would do something like that - I mean, a man not pissing on the seat? Unheard of! - but the local newspaper reported that when police arrived on the scene and found the man on the toilet, he said,"What's the problem, I'm not shitting. I'm just pissing, I sit down when I piss!"

The moral of this story is guys who pee sitting down should be sure to not get so drunk they wander into a random home to pee, because then their names are sure be predominantly displayed in the police blotter for everyone in town to see.

Migra, Migra, Pinche Migra

If your last name is Hernandez, you better watch out for US Border Patrol agents. They want you dead. Or at least it would appear that way.

Anastasio Hernández died on May 31st, after suffering cardiac arrest when Border Patrol agents in San Ysidrio, CA beat him and then subdued him with a stun gun. It has been reported that perhaps as many as 20 Border Patrol officers took part in the beating. High blood pressure and methamphetamine use may have played a role in the 42-year-old man's death but, nevertheless, the San Diego coroner has labeled the case a homicide. Mr. Hernandez, although undocumented, had lived in California for 26 years and had five US-born children, the youngest of which are four-year-old twins.

Sergio Hernández was shot in the head on June 7th by US Border Patrol from El Paso, Texas. Sergio, just 14 years old, died on Mexican soil under the bridge that separates Juarez, Mexico from El Paso. News media north of the border says the shooting resulted from a rock-throwing assault on a Border Patrol agent. The story south of the border is that Sergio was goofing off with his friends in the shallow riverbed of the Rio Grande and took a bullet a US agent shot across the border. Sergio, a secondary school student in Juarez, was the youngest of seven children.

The two deaths are under investigation, the first by the San Diego Police and the second by the FBI. Meanwhile all you folks with a Hernandez surname, watch out. Might even be a good idea to exercise caution if you're a Dominguez or a Martinez or a Rodriguez or a ... well, you get the idea.

Anastasio Hernández Rojas
(Photo: San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium)

The body of Sergio Adrián Hernández Huereca
(Photo: Univision)

Beyond Pollution

Here's a thought ... How about striving to reduce the miles you drive, so you don't have to fill up your tank as often. That'll show 'em.

'Boycott BP' on a sidewalk in Union Square

Somerville, Mass

May 31, 2010

War is Costly, Peace is Priceless

Each of these flags represents a fallen service member with Massachusetts ties...

Boston Common
Memorial Day Weekend
(Display created by Mass Military Heroes Fund)

In case you were wondering, there are nearly 20,000 flags. I know because, after happening upon this display Memorial Day weekend, I counted them l looked it up on the Internet.

Artsy Fartsy

Saw the Dr. Lakra (aka Jerónimo López Ramírez) exhibit today at ICA ... quite intriguing.

Also saw the Roni Horn exhibit ... WTF? The exhibit included such works as 'Paired Gold Mats', which is - surprise, surprise - a pair of gold mats laying on the floor, and 'Asphere X,' which is - surprise, surprise - a sphere (i.e., steel ball) laying on the ground. Lame! Or perhaps I was just absent the day they covered that kind of crap in art appreciation class.





Much better video about Dr. Lakra here. I just couldn't get the &#%% thing to embed in Blogger.

Abercrombie & Bitch

For the bourgeoisie bitch on the go, a shopping bag from an upscale retailer is a must-have accessory. Not only does it exude style, placing it upon the adjacent seat on a crowded subway train reduces one’s likelihood of brushing shoulders with the masses.

Boston MBTA Red Line
May 28, 2010

(Although it almost appears the bag belongs to the woman in the white skirt, the other woman was revealed as the true [seat hogging] bitch when she detrained, bag in hand.)

Pleh Me Get Oral Sex

According to Urban Dictionary, 'pleh' is either an adjective used to signal disinterest or a verb denoting the act of giving oral sex. As if anyone would ever be disinterested in oral sex. Seriously.

Congress Street, near Thomson Place

Boston, MA

May 28, 2010

Boston Classifieds

For sale: Set of 4 hubcaps in super-shiny, like-new condition, only $24.99! If interested, pick up the item in front of the Bank of America Pavilion and mail the payment to Box 350, Boston, MA 02134.

Northern Avenue, Boston, MA

May 28, 2010

Toilet Humor

Proof that not all slurs are offensive...

Ladies room at Bloc 11 Cafe, Somerville, MA

May 2010

Get Laid Tonight

I was trolling the Internet when, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a tiny, naked woman in the lower, right hand corner of my screen. Now, it isn't every day that a woman pops up on my screen shaking her tits and ass (when I'm not surfing for porn, that is), so, out of pure curiosity, I had to hear more.



Turns out her name is Shea, she has great boobs (I know because she showed me), and she wants to fuck me tonight.



This is total crap advertising, Adult Friend Finder. I don't even go for girls! So, please never let this ad pop up on my screen again.

Xing Ba Ke Ka Fei

I'm on yet another work trip. Can you guess where this time?

Chinatown
Washington, DC

Signed, Lady "G"

I used to think that I was a normal child and my, well, eccentricities, if you will, developed as I aged. However, evidence has recently been unearthed that suggests otherwise.

When cleaning out his parents' attic, an old (platonic male) friend I first met way back in 6th grade found some letters I wrote him during the summer between 8th and 9th grade. For the sake of all the young'uns, I should explain that way back before there were such things as texting and tweets and Facebook, people wrote letters to their school friends. On paper! Via snail mail!

Well perhaps not all school friends exchanged letters during the summer. But those of us who grew up in the boonies, and attended multi-town regional school districts, and didn't yet have driver's licenses, and had parents too cheap to allow long-distance calls did. Why letters about opening up a nudist colony, however, I can not explain.

June 20, 1979 - "...I tried to put the colony at Warde's house, but he (Warde) was getting horny with all the colony members. I moved the colony to California. It was in a small town on the coast called Carmel. I had to get it as far away from Warde as possible. I am going to open up an east coast branch next month. Would you like to join (fig leaves are available)?" [Note: I have absolutely no idea who the horny little bastard named Warde is.]


June 25, 1979 - "P.S. My nudist colony is opening soon ?! Would you like to sign up?!?"


August 28, 1979 - Signed "Lady 'G,' President and Owner of Lady 'G' Nudist Camps (a world-wide organization)"

So Over You

I recently found out that my ex-husband #1 (He was the drunk one. The abusive one was hubby #2. Yes, I do certainly know how to pick 'em.) had a stroke and is in the hospital. What exactly is the appropriate emotion for an ex-wife of something like 20 years to feel in such a situation?

This Is the [Cool] New Shit

Turns out Marilyn Manson's music is way better with the volume set to mute. Who knew?

[The actual song follows a one-minute disclaimer about the song's foul language. It's worth the wait, trust me.]


Other ASL music videos by stormFX:
Crazy
Pump It

(I don't know a word of sign language. I just think the way these videos completely capture the music is amazingly cool.)

Generation Y, Not

How much do you have in common with Generation Y? Take this quiz and find out.

Based on data from a recent Pew Research Foundation telephone survey of US adults, the quiz gauges just how close your values, attitudes and behaviors are to those of a typical Gen Yer, a generation also known as Millennials because they came of age in the new millennium. Scores range from 0-100, with higher scores more indicative of Generation Y.

Turns out I am not a member of Generation Y (my score: 38). However, after playing around with the quiz, I determined that if I get a tramp stamp, pierce my clit, and hang out on MySpace, I could be an honorary member (resulting score: 73).



Among the most defining trademarks of Generation Y, a.k.a. Milenials, according to the research:

Tattoos
- GenY/Milenials (18-29) 38%
- GenX (30-45) 32%
- Boomers (46-64) 15%
- Silent (65+) 6%

Body piercings
- GenY/Milenials (18-29) 23%
- GenX (30-45) 9%
- Boomers (46-64) 1%
- Silent (65+) 0%

Online social network profile
- GenY/Milenials (18-29) 75%
- GenX (30-45) 50%
- Boomers (46-64) 30%
- Silent (65+) 6%



Picture credit: mental3pal, on deviantART

Trash Talking

Dear DOWNSTAIRS Neighbor,

You make way too much trash. Seriously. My household has three inhabitants (well, actually, two and a half since Rock Star is hardly ever home), compared to your one, yet you make double the trash we do. And it's really stinky shit, too. Just WTF are you throwing out? I know not recyclables since you fill your recycle bin, too. It's completely gross the way you don't rinse out any of the cans or jars, though. And, pizza boxes? Totally not recyclable round these here parts, dude.

You might wonder how I am so familiar with your trash habits. Well, you know how, once a week, you see your trash barrel and recycle bin move from the driveway to the curb in the evening, then back to the driveway the next morning after trash pick-up? You might have thought it was the trash fairy who was taking care of your barrel and bin rather than let your nasty rubbish accumulate right by the side of our triple decker but, no, it was me.

Several times now I have attempted to inspire you to attend to your own trash by simply ignoring your barrel on trash day. I figured you'd eventually realize trash doesn't just magically disappear if you don't put it curbside on trash day. But you didn't seem to get the message. I am, thus, hoping that you will read this blog post. If not, I fear I might have to trash talk you. And that wouldn't be very neighborly.

Kind regards,
Parlancheq

---

Dear UPSTAIRS Neighbor,

You make way too much trash. Seriously. My household has three inhabitants (well, actually, two and a half since Rock Star is hardly ever home), compared to your two, yet you make double the trash we do. And it's really stinky shit, too. Just WTF are you throwing out? I know not recyclables since you fill your recycle bin, too. It's completely gross the way you don't rinse out any of the cans or jars, though. And, pizza boxes? Totally not recyclable round these here parts, dude.

You might wonder how I am so familiar with your trash habits. Well, you know how, once a week, you see your trash barrel and recycle bin move from the driveway to the curb in the evening, then back to the driveway the next morning after trash pick-up? You might have thought it was the trash fairy who was taking care of your barrel and bin rather than let your nasty rubbish accumulate right by the side of our triple decker but, no, it was me.

Several times now I have attempted to inspire you to attend to your own trash by simply ignoring your barrel on trash day. I figured you'd eventually realize trash doesn't just magically disappear if you don't put it curbside on trash day. But you didn't seem to get the message. I am, thus, hoping that you will read this blog post. If not, I fear I might have to trash talk you. And that wouldn't be very neighborly.

Kind regards,
Parlancheq

---

TRASH: anycoloryoulike

Conservative Fundamentalists Are Stupid

"Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on [political, religious and sexual behaviors] with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women." ~CNN, February 26, 2010

Don't you just love when scientific research proves that everything you always thought to be true is, in fact, true? Liberals, atheists and gay men ARE super smart. Oh wait, 'sexual exclusivity in men' doesn't mean men who have sex with men, like I imagined at first glance. It means men who are monogamous. Guess that counts out the gays because everyone knows all gay men live their lives in sexual overdrive. So, let me rephrase: Liberals, atheists and the three men in America who never have and never will sleep around are super smart.

Now, seeing as I am both liberal AND atheist (and, therefore, if CNN is to be believed, super, super smart by definition), I was tempted to just post the CNN news blurb and leave it at that. However, being super, super smart, I know when it comes to reporting research results, mainstream media gets the story half wrong half of the time. (The other half of the time mainstream media gets the story completely wrong.)

So I pulled the actual research manuscript behind CNN's story -- a paper entitled 'Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent' from the scholarly journal Social Psychology Quarterly. (Or at least the 'online first' version [subscription required for full text] of the paper that will appear in print in the March 2010 issue.) And then I read all 20+ pages of it. Twice. (No, I am not kidding. I actually did this. Which means that I AM super, super smart. Or that I have no life. Or both.)

And here's what you should know about CNN's news story. It's half wrong. (Ah-ha. I believe I predicted that would be the case. My super, super smartness pays off again.)

Of course my unbiased (liberal, atheist) opinion is that the conclusion suggested by the work's title -- that liberals and atheists are super smart -- is true. And if all that were required were a highfalutin hypothesis and some sophisticated statistical manipulation, the study mentioned by CNN could, indeed, be cited as proof. Using multivariate analysis the study found that, though the absolute difference in intelligence between, for example, fundies and the non-religious was minimal, it was enough to be statistically significant. Thus, the suggestion in CNN's report that atheists are smart.

As an aside, that conclusion is a stretch since this type of analysis can't prove any particular group IS smart; it can only identify an association between the group and intelligence. Plus, the study was designed to see if being liberal and atheist is dependent on intelligence, not if intelligence is dependent on being liberal or atheist. I.e., it didn't directly assess how intelligent liberals and atheists are, but rather looked at how likely intelligent people are to be liberal and atheist. But because this is a blog and not a statistics class, I won't get hung up on these points.

What I would like to bring to light instead, is that a study's merits depend not only on how the data were manipulated, but also on the underlying data itself. And the data used in the study don't accurately measure IQ or liberalism (at least not as described by the study's author) or atheism. The overall study involved secondary analyses of two different data sets but, since the CNN story focuses on results from only one, let me review that one in more detail than CNN bothered with, and show you exactly what I mean.

The data come from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a.k.a. Add Health, which interviewed a bunch of high school and junior high school students, then re-interviewed them later when they were young adults. The students were selected from a representative sample of US schools so, though I could quibble over the representativeness of survey respondents themselves, especially after 25% were lost to follow up, and harp on the fact the sample included only a single age cohort, for the sake of moving on to more important things, I'll just concede the generalizability of the data to every man, woman and child in the entire US of A.

Add Health assessed the smarts of participating adolescents not with a battery of IQ tests, but with a verbal acuity test, primarily utilized with pre-schoolers. CNN doesn't bother to mention this, but the study's author (Kanazawa) does, noting the test used was "properly a measure of verbal intelligence, not general intelligence." He then wrote half a page on the association between verbal and general intelligence, blah, blah, blah, making me think he was trying too hard to convince readers that the two concepts, while not the same, are similar enough for use when lying with statistics. But, rather than nitpick this point, I'm willing to grant that the study measures something close enough to IQ for government work.

Given the study's conclusion, you might assume Add Health asked about liberalism. It did. But Kanazawa has a rather narrow definition of liberalism, saying it's "genuine concern for the welfare of genetically unrelated others and the willingness to contribute larger proportions of private resources for the welfare of such others." In other words, by liberal, he does NOT mean supporting things like the right to choose and gay rights. (CNN, in a rare moment of reporting research accurately, actually pointed this out.)

When Add Health asked, "In terms of politics, do you consider yourself conservative, liberal, or middle-of-the-road?" and respondents said 'very liberal,' however, they likely had a more all-encompassing definition of liberalism than Kanazawa's in mind, something conveniently ignored in the research report. I am tempted to belabor this point, but am getting really tired of writing this post and figure if anyone is still even reading this they probably are tired of it as well, so nuff said.

Going by the CNN report, or even by the research report's title, you might also assume Add Health asked about religion. It did. However, the data used by Kanazawa do not - let me repeat that - do not measure atheism. I know, I know. My smart, smart self finds that hard to believe, too. I mean, how preposterous is it to draw a conclusion about atheism if you do not even measure atheism? So, you might be wondering, what exactly was measured, if it wasn't atheism. Well, here's the Add Health question used in the current analysis:

"To what extent are you a religious person?’"
- Not religious at all
- Slightly religious
- Moderately religious
- Very religious

A response of 'not religious at all' was apparently taken to be synonymous with atheism. Which means all those folks who say they're spiritual but not religious were tagged as atheists. Not to mention all those folks who are on the fence -- unsure that there is a god but not wanting to say definitively that there's no evidence of him, just in case he exists and they end up in hell for eternity -- also got pegged as atheists. Call me crazy, but I just don't buy that self-classifying as 'not religious at all' is equivalent to being an atheist.

But, come to think of it, if the study found so-called atheists to be of superior intelligence compared to Jesus-freaks, but the atheist group was actually tainted by a bunch of folks not quite smart enough to reason out the fact there is no evidence of god, removing them from the mix could only make the true atheist group even smarter. Which just goes to show, you can't believe everything you read in the news. But you can believe that atheists are smart. Or something like that.

"Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid." Satoshi Kanazawa, quoted in Science Daily

Given that most awesome quote, I almost feel bad for saying anything negative about the dude's study. As reparation I'll toss out a link to his blog.

Family Ties

This duo didn't win the open mic contest at Bloc 11 (which, by the way, is a totally happening little spot, albeit a tad bit too far from my house for frequent visits) last week, but I think they should have. Of course I might be a little biased.




Meanwhile, Sneaker Dude has up and joined the National Guard. I thought they would turn down his application once they found out his mother is a pacifist, but turns out they're not that fussy. Damn.

Who's Laughing Now?

This was the US Today that was delivered to my sleeping car on February 11th, as my return-trip train chugged through the snow-ravaged mid-Atlantic states basically right on schedule. So, to all those folks who teased me about my plans to take Amtrak (rather than a plane) all the way to San Antonio and back, I say, who's laughing now?

Storm Paralyzes Air Travel - USA Today

I Hate Drunk People

I know you're probably tired of posts about my trip, but no review of a New Orleans vacation would be complete without mentioning the alcoholic excesses of the city. Unlike in most cities, the bars in New Orleans can (and many do) stay open and serve alcohol open 24-7. In addition, unlike in most cities, drinking is allowed in the streets in New Orleans (so long as the drinks are in plastic cups), giving rise to numerous hole-in-the-wall (literally) 'to-go' bars along Bourbon Street.

That would all be well and good, except it would appear far too many people who visit New Orleans don't know how to control their alcoholic intake and, thus, end up spending their entire visit drunk off their assess. And I'm not talking about only 20-somethings either. I'm talking about 30-somethings, 40-somethings, 50-somethings and beyond, as well. Why, why, why? I'm afraid I just don't get how that would make for a fun vacation.







P.S. I am not a teetotaler. I just know how to drink responsibly.