That's the kind of thing that can ruin your whole weekend. Glad it worked out ok for you.

Sorry to hear it. Our cat turns 15 in May and is still healthy, but I know he's running down.

He does look vaguely like a Nazi, but I prefer that to the Sith Lord image that the previous guy had going.

When we replaced our 20-year-old basic fridge with a new basic fridge a couple of years ago, we paid a little more to get an Energy Star model. It made a huge difference in the electric bill -- at least $20/month. Very pleased with the new one. I don't know what brand it is, but it's black.

"Passing gas" sounds like an achievement.

"Wanting Memories" is a standard for a cappella groups. This one's my favorite. Here's one with lyrics.

You can't hear this with a dry eye if you've lost a parent. I've probalby heard it 100 times and it chokes me up every time.

Yeah, until that little tidbit came out I had hoped that the Republicans were getting serious this time. About governing, I mean, not just maneuvering. Silly me.

Between the trailer and the ads and the reviews, I don't think this is worth enduring a trip to the theater. Will probably add it to the netflix queue and see it in a year or two.

Forsooth, I'm in.

How about Falling Skies?

Well, that was kind of pointless. Tense and entertaining, and I was tickled that they tied up that old loose thread. Disappointed that they left the story arc to do it, though. Looks like next week's episode will be the one I was expecting to see tonight.

Particularly the murder channel,

Fox News?

I don't know what the channel is called. The logo in the corner is "ID" (Investigative Drama? something like that.) Whatever it stands for, it's all true crime sagas all the time. I'm told that women love that kind of programming. I'm also sure that my wife is now an expert on all the nuances of killing a spouse.

Please remember this post if I unexpectedly stop posting.

We might be married to the same woman...

If so then we are both doomed. See Izzy's link.

Particularly the murder channel,

Fox News?

I don't know what the channel is called. The logo in the corner is "ID" (Investigative Drama? something like that.) Whatever it stands for, it's all true crime sagas all the time. I'm told that women love that kind of programming. I'm also sure that my wife is now an expert on all the nuances of killing a spouse.

Please remember this post if I unexpectedly stop posting.

were politics like this when we were all young? 

Well, some of us were young a lot longer ago than others. Remember the Clintons' "vast right-wing conspiracy"? We rolled our eyes then, but they were on to something. That's when civil opposition started to turn into scorched-earth hostility.

My wife gets very quiet and glares at me whenever I broach this possibility. I only watch a few shows and only after recording them, but she really gets our money's worth out of "live" cable. Particularly the murder channel, which makes me that much more reluctant to take her on. 

If we ever buy an internet-capable tv I might revisit the subject, but for now inertia plus overall satisfaction with our cable company is on her side.

Another one of these crossed my path tonight. It doesnt surprise me that 338,000 people were duped into making a comment so that the picture would do something amazing. But what's up with the 49,000 who Liked the page? WHAT DID THEY SEE?!?!?!?

I like cigarettes and food.

I guess it depends on your workplace. The link takes you to a short movie in which Jesus creates and battles zombies. I watched about 10 minutes before it got too silly for me, but I don't remember seeing anything offensive.

The Warbling Dead?

Kid has a nice voice and my wife informed me that the actress is indeed a singer. OK, that's nice. But it felt like they were just filling a couple of leftover minutes.

Haven't watched the second episode yet. The pilot was promising It was a stretch how quickly they hooked up the Mulder and Scully characters, and Baldycop was a thin stereotype, but those are just nitpicks in a plot-driven show. If it lasts long enough the characters will eventually acquire personalities.

Is a 2.4% reduction really the end of the world? Besides all they're going to do is kick the can down the road and borrow more money from the Chinese.

Looks like we're likely to find out -- there does not appear to be any serious effort to forestall the cuts.

Rather than knocking congressional heads together, Obama spent the past 10 days selling hysteria to the public. That tactic could blow up in his face when next Monday dawns without an apocalypse.

Andrea's conflict finally seems grounded now that she's seen how grim life is at the prison and how crazy Rick has gone. It's the first time this season that I've found her sympathetic. So of course she must die. 

They say that MA will lose 60,000 private-sector jobs by the end of this year. As a medical and scientific hub, Boston gets more federal R&D money than just about anybody else does, especially from the NIH and the DoD. These are not minimum-wage whopper-flopper jobs we're talking about.

I don't have a direct personal stake, but indirectly it's going to hurt everybody if this game of chicken drags on for too long. Washington's main focus right now is on which side gets blamed.

The worst part of it is that these budget cuts won't even save money after recession-related outlays skyrocket and tax receipts drop again.

"2 Send"

How old is your phone? 2? Send?

I dunno, a few years. It's one of those radio phones that doesn't have a cord -- a "sell phone" as the kids say. Speed dial is easy because I only have to remember 2 numbers. 1-Send is voicemail and 2-Send is the wife.

Or maybe it's just a typo and he didn't say that at all.

I only fill the gas can in my garage once a year, so it lasts at least that long. Why would it degrade any faster in a car's gas tank than in an underground storage tank?

I don't even know my wife's number and she's had it for 10 years. To me, she's "2 Send". When I give somebody my own number I often get it wrong if I don't look at a business card. If I don't want them calling me I give them the landline # that we canceled a year ago.

Yet I still remember the first phone # we had when I was a small child: Cherry 53757.

Herman Cain doesn't surprise me because he was always part of the crazy. I suppose he represents progress at Fox because he's 37% less crazy than Sarah Palin. Scott Brown, OTOH, made a big mistake. He's expected to run for governor in '14 and his Fox taint will be a big negative among MA moderates. I realize he's just trying to make as much money as possible between now and the gov. campaign, but this is probably a career ender for him.

Despite all their hatred of the US and SK, NK is China's problem. The Chinese keep NK's regime alive to avoid an epic refugee migration and as a buffer, but they aren't happy about it.

I just won this cool lifestraw from entering into a 'caption this' contest on facebook. Now I don't have to worry about getting sick from a water source after the zombie apocalypse

I said earlier that I'm a pretty good speller, but the word "diarrhea" has always tripped me up. And now you just hit me with "diarrhoea."

I found a really nice pair of gloves in a parking lot a couple of weeks ago. They're practically new and look kind of expensive.

When I was a little tyke I crawled into our house's attic crawlspace and found an antique gun. It was some kind of small-bore rifle with side-by-side octagonal barrels and twin hammers and triggers. It probably dated to the early 1900s. Unfortunately that heavy shootin' iron was rusted beyond redemption and I think my parents ultimately threw it away.

I was always on the lookout for fossils and arrowheads and I found a few, but I don't remember any specifically.

The first thing I ever won was a spelling bee in elementary school. The prize was a copy of the Disney picture-book version of The Sword In the Stone. It was my first encounter with Arthurian legend and I loved that book so much that I still remember it 50 years later. (And, teachers take note, it made me so proud of my mad spelling skilz that I became an excellent speller for the rest of my life. Unfortunately all the kids who didn't win dropped out and became junkies.)

The nicest thing I ever won was an iPod Touch at a whiskey tasting a little over a year ago. It was a random drawing; you had to have pre-entered online and you had to be present to win. Since there were only a dozen people there I liked my odds.

Back in the Good Old Days, before the economy went to hell, companies used to throw lavish holiday parties with generous prizes. My wife won a cruise (which was the second-place prize, if you can believe that). Neither of us are the cruise type so we were less than enthused until she found out she could use the cash equivalent for any travel. We ended up taking 2 weeks in Italy -- one of our best vacations ever.

I need to teach my DVR about this. A review that I read today said that the pilot is overplotted the same way that The Last Resort was overplotted. To me, that's a good thing.

[Spoiler]

Spoiler for Hiden:

It was a nice surprise moment, but I liked that guy and felt like we hadn't even begun to scratch the surface of what his deal was. I thought there might be a good twist about why he was in prison in the first place.

Sympathetic backstory + tender moment = dead. I should've seen that coming, but it caught me unawares anyway.

My wife has to tell her graduate students that wikipedia is not a valid reference. You'd think they'd know that by the time they get to the graduate level...but it's news to many of them.

I can see lumping Fox News, the Onion, and the Daily Show together as news-based entertainment channels.

These are baffling to me.

Teggy's explanation is correct. They're creating high-ranked pages that they can sell to businesses. The same principle is behind all those "repost this picture if you care about humanity/love jesus/believe in america"-type pics. I have one "friend" who posts every one of those that comes along. In fact, I probably ought to put him on ignore; 99% of his posts are garbage.

I'll admit that I fell for the first one of those "comment on this pic" posts that I ever saw. Couldn't imagine that anything would happen but a million other viewers had already done it and I didn't see any potential harm. Nothing happened, exactly as expected. I felt sheepish and never fell for that again.

I'm not baffled by the reason behind or even that some people fall for it. It's that sooo many people fall for it and keep posting new ones.  Baffling.

In my friend's case, it's because he identifies with the "share this" pictures. As in "Hey, I like dogs too!" and "I hate cancer too!" and "I'm patriotic!" Even if I explained the motive behind those pages, he wouldn't care. He's not falling for anything, he just supports our troops! If somebody else gets rich off it, who cares? He supports capitalism!

But I do share your bewilderment about the pictures that are supposed to do something amazing. You'd think people would catch on.

I grew up in MI, where hunting is ingrained in the culture. My dad collected guns. Got my first BB gun when I was 8 years old and was firing a shotgun by the time I was 12. Used to go small-game hunting (mostly pheasants) regularly and went deer hunting a few times.

I eventually grew up and moved away and none of my new friends hunted, so I fell out of the hobby. When my dad died I sold most of his guns to the sporting goods store where he'd bought them. Gave a couple to my BIL for handling the logistics for me and kept a couple for myself -- my old 20-gauge Ithaca over-and-under, my mom's .3006 deer rifle, and .22 long-barrel target pistol. They haven't been fired in decades and I don't have any ammunition. Since I'm not licensed to own a gun, I suppose they're illegal...not that that arsenal poses much of a thread to anybody.

and of course there's my nap.

Of course!

I started taking an hour-long afternoon nap when I turned 55, and now my body craves it. It's a benefit (or curse, depending on how you look at it) of working at home.

[just woke up dead]

I do have to go to a wake today for a casual acquaintance who died unexpectedly in her sleep -- she had no known health problems, just woke up dead for no apparent reason. She was one year to the day older than me. That's a bit disturbing.

Sorry to hear about your friends death, but if she's walking around...  I think the human race has other problems


Seriously, my condolences

I've used the phrase "wake up dead" for many years because I would like to believe that one's soul "wakes up" to find that one's body has died. Everybody wakes up dead sooner or later. I don't actually believe that because I don't believe in souls or life after death...but I'd like to. And it amuses me to say it.

I'm rooting for "crystal brain fungus" because it sounds alarming.