I’m amazed how good your relationship is with your mother considering how much you talk back.

Perhaps I’m full of shit when I say this, but talking back is a form of respect for me. It means I feel comfortable speaking my mind around that person.

(To clarify, if I’m not talking back, it just means I’m not comfortable speaking freely. It usually means I don’t know what to make of them.)

Also, especially in the case of my mother, often what others see as “talking back” I see as “setting clear boundaries”.

Schools banning hugs

Another serious article that could be straight from The Onion. I… I just don’t know anymore.

“Maybe it’s because all these kids do is text and go on Facebook so they don’t even have human contact anymore,” said Dona Eichner, the mother of freshman and junior girls at the high school in Montvale.

She added: “I hug people I’m close to. But now you’re hugging people you don’t even know. Hugging used to mean something.”

I suppose I’ll have a different opinion when I’m fifty and high schoolers are routinely greeting each other by feeling each other’s crotches. Oh no wait, I won’t because this is a ridiculous article.

At our local coffee shop, Loud Guy is as much a fixture as the despicable feet-styled desk lamps.

He annoys the crap out of Beth. I do not particularly have a problem with him. I mean, he seems nice. Other people (at least pretend to) enjoy him. But he is loud. All he ever does is meander around, talking to people, loudly, or singing, loudly.

The thing is, we only see him at night. And only ever at that shop. And he is never studying quietly or anything. Why would he? He is Loud Guy. Naturally, Beth and I have speculated on his story.

A brief, but important, digression: put your forefinger and thumb together in an ‘O’. Once at this shop, I saw a bug of that size skitter across the floor. I could not find it again.

Beth has decided that Loud Guy’s day form is that bug. Feeding off of the cookie crumbs by day, annoying people by night. Or, you know, vice-versa.

Orci: It sort of reflects where we are when Spock reflects at the end and kind of says, “I’ve kind of left you in a dark world, keep your chin up.” The destruction of Vulcan in Trek lore to us is kind of the equivalent to a September 11th and the Holocaust all rolled into one. How does this crew deal with that? Is it a cynical decision that leads to a war with Romulus? Or is it a singular problem problem solving situation, with the person who really did it?
Star Trek’s writers confuse their own movie with Battlestar Galactica.
Presented without comment (cough), this is what my boss made last night. It’s filled with sausage. They’ve already finished most of it.

Presented without comment (cough), this is what my boss made last night. It’s filled with sausage.

They’ve already finished most of it.

Here’s an incontrovertible fact: every one of your ancestors survived to reproductive age and got it on at least once with a member of the opposite sex. All the way back to Homo erectus. And even further back to Australopithecus. And even further back to monkeys, to lizards, to the first amphibian that crawled out of the slime, the fish that preceded that amphibian, the worm before the fish and the amoeba that preceded the worm.

And you, YOU, in the year 2009 C.E., the culmination of that miraculously unbroken line of succession, you, Homo sapiens sapiens, not just thinking man but thinking thinking man or woman, are the only one smart enough to SCREW THE WHOLE THING UP.

Why Being Smart Won’t Get You Laid

I’m reading this for a friend.

Slow-motion cheerleading, jello, fire breathing, and others.

I could watch this all day. Fullscreen is worth it.

[…] conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements.

um, whut.

Seriously? I mean, really? How often do people pretend to joke? Is that a thing now?

via Ars Technica

benjaminstein: Heh heh. New Pepsi logo (via jonathan-deamer)

benjaminstein:

Heh heh. New Pepsi logo (via jonathan-deamer)

via marco

Herein is the perfect brightness on my 2nd-gen iPod touch. Compared with 2 weeks of constantly nudging it brighter or darker, it has remained here for a week without me once wanting to change it.
Herein is the perfect brightness on my 2nd-gen iPod touch. Compared with 2 weeks of constantly nudging it brighter or darker, it has remained here for a week without me once wanting to change it.

The True Story of the Telephone

As a result, Gray is forgotten and Bell is remembered as one of history’s great inventors — not as he should be: a hobbyist and a fraud, forced by love into stealing one of the greatest inventions of all time.

One of my first school reports, in 4th grade, was on Alexander Graham Bell. I feel kinda dirty now.

The Long Decline of Reading

Well-written and thorough, Adrian Hon convinces me to add “Read more, dammit” to my New Year’s Resolutions.

Steve Jobs and the Portal to the Invisible

Engrossing article. I only wish I had read it sooner.

“Prop 8 - The Musical” starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, Neil Patrick Harris and others.

Hillarious. I’ve watched it 6 10 times already. Gah! I just can’t stop!

“Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies.” — Demetri Martin

Copyright © 2008-2009 Daniel Shusta