Odds and Ends

• Sorry I had to turn off anonymous blogging - the spammers found me. It was either go non-anonymous, or turn on that annoying little "can you read this and retype it?" safeguard. I hate that, so I went for option one. I could have just flopped over to Haloscan, but I'm just not there yet.
• In case you think looting is the low point of the New Orleans/Katrina disaster, you might want to think again - you could always offer shelter to refugees in exchange for sex.
• Klund's right, the Ankh-Morpork City Guard themed books are the best in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. The whole business involving three guards trying to guarantee that the odds they're faced with are a million to one, because those are usually the odds that win - genius. The philosophy of library physics, downright Jorge Luis Borges.
• I finally started reading the Tom Robbins book TallBrad gave me almost a year ago, "Another Roadside Attraction". I'm enjoying it quite a bit, although I question whether all the commentary about the smell of women's bits and pieces after various days of unwash is absolutely necessary. Good technique and just an amusing sense of wordplay, he reminds me slightly of David Foster Wallace. My favorite line so far, "Consider the peaceful repose of the sausage compared with the aggressiveness and violence of bacon."
• Much as Klund suspects, if I could get Wikipedia to partner with Blogger and provide a "wiki me" link in the editing box, I'd be ecstatic. But the elephant man link to Wikipedia was unnecessary, I've already seen the Discovery Channel special.
• Snopes has already published an article about the picture of the gas prices cresting $6 (includes picture) after Katrina and come down on the side of "true", with the caveat that the perps better not be caught by the governor after today.
• I started a new project today at work that's actually my old project, prior to the one I was one until today, which is now my old project. The spinning gyre doesn't take 2000 years, just 10 months.
• A story about my daughter that my wife doesn't think should necessarily be shared: Pooteewheet took Eryn to the liquor store to find some Tequila to use in a Texas Chili recipe. As they were going down the aisle, they encountered a Summit (oh yeah, Kevin, you can Wiki "Summit Brewing Company" - that's why I love 'em) beer display at which point Eryn abruptly stopped and announced loudly, "Hey! That's Dad's beer!" Then she started to gyrate to the 80's music on the store speaker, all the while singing, "Dad drinks a lot of stuff. Dad drinks a lot of stuff." Much to the amusement of the stockboy. During the same trip they stopped at Target to buy supplies, including some super glue to fix the toy motorcycle I viciously crushed with my bare foot. Eryn pointed at it and demanded, "Want to sniff that!" She doesn't want to sniff anything else other than the entire contents of the spice drawer, but this was apparently an exception and she repeated her demand loudly several times, "Want to sniff that!" I hope the stockboy from the liquor store wasn't there to draw any correlations.