As of today, I am just going to pretend to be a Lapplander or a Csango or some other rareified National Geographically detailed Eurasian. (No reason. Well, okay. A reason, but it isn't really all that pertinent.)

Instead of pollution and littering, I can talk about the polar ice caps and the Balkans melting. (And become famous, like Eagle Eyes Cody? Real nice Cree disguise, compadre. You definitely don't look Ojibwe or Comanche or anything.)

Thanks to global warming, I can no longer feed my reindeer. Think of my reindeer. *sobs*

(Yeah, I knew about Cody, it just pissed me off again...I mean, being native is just so romantic, you know? We're so connected to the land. It's not a dead thing you can claim, after all! Think of the microbes in the soil and the plants and the lichens and lumbricus terrestes!

Csangos seem like they'd be pretty fun to impersonate. And hey--at least someone's already impersonated a Ukranian, so, it's just a few mountain chains over...)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081224/ts_alt_afp/usfinancefraudwieselfoundation_081224163605

In a nutshell, some arse (kind of like the one in UNICEF a few years back) has just proven that there is no such thing as humanity. That he managed to raise bail is another contention. (The only way this could get worse is if he paid with the illegal funds...) 

Go read 'Night', you shmucks. (I have no idea who I'm talking to either, but do read it at some point. Probably not during the holidays, unless you're trying to guarantee a seasonal depression.) 

In the spirit of things jolly and ending with 'olly, here is a link to the Death of Rats. (Can't really offer an opinion on SkyOne's Pratchett movies, save that the first is actually better than the one based on his first book. Although, they did Cohen up really well...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnQh6QoRuBM

All I want for Hogswatch is a Burleigh and Stronginthearm crossbow. For...ballistic stuff.

(Go read Hogfather. IT IS JOLLY.)

Last but not least...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6JURRsVRxM&feature=related

If it ever happens, it will likely a) contain vulgarities to make earwax run freely from the ears and b) be most likely intended for me. I've a knack for pissing people off.

Apparently Martin Van Buren decided to be born on my birthday, which is kind of like saying that I've wound up sharing a birthday with a man so evil that Hell itself spat him back out. (Or so blindly obedient to said man.)

According to Wikipedia, I also share my birthday with a ton of physicists and Joan Didion. That improves matters greatly. (Although there is also Doctor Dre and Frankie Muniz. My birthday should be banned, maybe, just to prevent more consequences.)

It always seemed to me that Lenny and Carl were mostly underrated.

 

( Surprised no mention of thetan levels was involved... )In short: Bitch has got a whole lot of issues if she believes there's one person in the world that doesn't, in fact, have issues. (Double that if that one person is, in fact, her.)

The kind that needs both citrus fruit and the posterior end of a chicken (or approximate bird) to make something remotely even flavorful. The kind that is better off dropping fruit pieces in molten Jell-o.

Happy Thanksgiving, whoever might be reading this.

Think of squamous cell cancers. (On the other hand; it's not betel nut or whiffing gasoline, and honestly, long-term exposure to any chemical/level of radiation--including heat--is going to be carcinogenic.

The old adage of pick your poison, if you will.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081109/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_brawling_monks


Check out the elderly Greek Orthodox fellow who doesn't take any guff. (It's nice to know that some things never change. However, this does leave me wondering what it must be like to be a member of the Zoroastrian minority in Israel...

...or makes me glad to be American. I'm not really sure which.)


Olmert is currently in. This makes for a curious foreign policy re Israel, I would think. (Of course, there is enough sectarian bull crap between Jewish Israelis alone for someone to try and suggest a peace process. Also: the Hezbollah. Before I continue this train of thought, I think I'll just go and get some asprin.)

Heinlein. Heinlein. More Heinlein. I could be Heinlein'd out, and still not have heard enough. Ben Bova and Philip K. Dick. (I would mention Card, but then I'd probably just wind up crying.)

Clark, mostly for sentimental reasons. (Most writers that aren't in my specific niche would be too many to try and account for.)

Ursula K. LeGuin is another. (Particularly for her brilliant short stories, but The Telling is one of those pieces of hers that is elegantly short, good, and masterful and leaves you following the footpaths of a futuristic Margaret Mead with very human life problems.) 

Then there's A.S. Byatt, who I had to track down after reading her foreword in a collection of rubai by Omar Khayyam. Her vast erudition and analyses are something that would be magical to hear in person.

Salman Rushdie and Neil Gaiman would fall somewhere on there, along with Sturgeon and Herbert. (Still undecided on Zelasny; though I detested him when I was younger, all the same Lafferty would be a good choice.)

Too many; too tired. This is why interviews exist.

Today has made my week--short of an anvil falling on me, I don't think I could come down from this delight. (Universal health care! Ahaha!)

See? We're not entirely stupid or suicidal. (We as in the United States as a nation, of course. On the other hand, Arkansas can bite my arse. There is nothing harmful about gay parents.)

Cheesy movies, old poetry (often written by Pre-Raphaelites or Goethe) hare-brained ideas, riddles, puzzles and cocoa.

It may be banal. On the other hand, I'm just wondering; why can't fantasy be real? (Yes, escapism is the barrier between the humdrum, boring, occasional tortuous lives we all lead, but wouldn't it be nice to truly escape into another life?

Unless you're content with your life as-is, at any rate.)

Unlimited access (for the most part) to the thoughts and opinions of other people. (It is also its greatest blessing. Kind of like how you can't have a good crop without a heap of manure.)

You're dead, which means you can't feel, which implies that; no, you can't suffer. That, and zombies are too stupid to experience existential depression.

Hey look--more commentary on people of common Outer Mongolian origin. Don't ask me how, (it involved looking for ways to try and make myself presentable for an interview on a style site, if you really must know) but I came across an article on the increasing number of Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans who are getting rhinoplasty and eyelid surgery done (so far, every article presumes it's in order to look more Caucasian. Probably true.)

Personally, I'm going to own looking like a zombie that just woke up in a pile of cold, half-dried brain meal, thank you. (Because I do--not representative of the myriad people who are more attractive. On the other hand, it is representative of a lot of really pathetic epithets the lead paint chip eating crowd in this part of Maryland used to fling at me. No love for the assholes who thought I had Downs syndrome. One day, I'd like to force-feed them reams of printout from the Human Genome Project until they're just about fit to burst.)  I'm Eastern Cherokee. My face is supposed to be round, my eyes are supposed to be sort of thin (way back in middle school I kept pulling on the top lids and feigning surprise so that they'd look bigger--got over that when I decided my classmates were evil little fuckers and didn't care what size my eyes were--they were still going to harass me. That, and this horrible school picture where I went in for this deer-in-the-headlights look so I didn't have to hear about Lithuanian aunts complaining that I blinked in their picture. They started calling me 'bug eyes' for a bit.), and my nose is supposed to have a small bump lodged in it somewhere.

Besides, I hear Johnny Depp is still hot. (This is a brilliant salvo, in spite of the fact that he'd probably make a cuter woman than I do.) Honestly, why are you going to become alien to everything that you are just to make the asshole hurling insults at you happy? (For the record, confused guy at Faire who thought I was a Laplander last year--that's one far stretch, but I see what you mean. Unfortunately, it means that I can't hold him up as an example of a guy who passes for white without deflating this argument--goddamn Pyrhhic victories...)

Besides, I hear Johnny Depp  Rain is still hot. (He kind of looks Native American? But he's Corean. Who cares?)

Off to feed the pack of rabid animals.

Funny thing, though--it seems the predominantly Scot-Irish people that inhabited Georgia thought the Cherokee were leprechauns. See: American History, for more details.

"Yer hill folk, ye are, and ye must have gold!"

(Yes, yes I want gold, so feel free to help me live up to Celtic assumptions.)