http://vegetableassassin.blogspot.com/2011/10/eff-you-eff-bee.html

I like Facebook! It helps me "get" all these Facebook jokes.

http://outofbevshead.blogspot.com/2009/12/wrap-it-up-wrap-it-in-let-me-begin.html

That's one damn interesting situation you describe. Huh.

Damn interesting.

Stolen underwear, huh.

I guess I probably would have noticed if it happened. I'm not prone to commando raids, so. Probably I've never had my undies swiped out from under me. I know I definitely haven't stolen any panties as a trophy, although, all this talk of panty trophies gives me an idea what I'd do if I did luck into a pair. Let's say they'd been left behind accidentally, such as some have proposed happened with yours, Bev!

If that happened, I would have them bronzed in a pleasing, lightly billowing pose, (or would it be brassed? Trophies seem shinier than mere bronze) and mounted on a slim, tall pedestal with a commemorative plaque of some kind.

"ALL-STATE PANTY CHAMP '10."

http://asurfaceofinfiniteshallowness.blogspot.com/2011/01/menstrual-cramps-outrage.html

Jen. I love when one of my far-gone ad absurdum libs provokes a serious, thoughtful response like this, that so nails the sad and tragic aspect of reality I was either running away with, or possibly from. So often I see something wrong and run with it. The truth is, it is not so funny. There is deep bitterness infusing the sick-sweet broth I stew my barbed skewers in, and that lip-smack tang of salt is all tears.

Life is hard, bitter; a sore trial and an unfair one at that. It does not seem like it should be so hard to see better, to know better - to reach out with hands not fists! If we could only take our common humanity as a starting point to work from and to rejoice in. But it is so easy to believe in life as a fight, and that means the enemy must be all around. We embrace hate and divisiveness because if we can make our enemy so damn strong, then maybe it can make some sense how hard life is.

I am truly a committed feminist. There is no joke, there. But as a friend of mine pointed out, too many feminists do not have equality at their heart's core for the cause, but enmity.

Thank you for making me look closer.

http://vegetableassassin.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-to-be-unpopular-part-two-denounce.html

Heck, I believe in God. And I agree with the Vegetable Assassin.

In pretty much everything but the insignificant details - people are too hung up on those! I mean, come on.

"God does not exist."

"God exists."

Two unprovable assertions! Pure leaps of faith - both of them. Irrational, to take it that far. And frankly, a waste of time to debate the irrational person who has overinvested so much personal stake in an unprovable assertion. Anybody who thinks that what they believe about the fundamental state of reality alters the fundamental state of reality - in either direction! - whoa. Those people are the mean kind of fun to have at parties.

"Proof of God does not exist." Now there's a sweeter statement. One I'd make every day, and I'm pretty confident no one can gainsay me. See, the reason I get along so great with atheists is because neither of our personal leaps of faith away from pure skepticism conflicts with observable reality. And ultimately, observable reality is where I interact with people. It's the best place I know!

And that's why I say I agree with you, Veg: because the realities you point out here are far from insignificant, and all too readily observable. They matter a great deal. We need to be banging out danger and warning. Because those who interpret religion as primarily a means to make this life unlivable (or less livable) use it as a wedge and a weapon against those who don't. Those for whom religion's main use is as a hittin'-stick to control others' lives don't limit themselves to true believers when they swing that stick around. That's not near a big enough stick for who they want to hit. They want the religion stick swung by government, and aimed at everybody. They want to enforce a moral order, where God is Caesar and heretics be not only damned, but prosecuted.

Of course, not all theists want that. Comparatively rational theists who value secular liberty make common cause with agnostics and atheists. We have all made a good bit of progress away from theocracy, but the hollering from certain quarters is still all in favor. Those opposed need to band together and pull together against that kind of impulse. It's us vs. them, and I know where I stand.

But let's be clear about the problem: the common root of all intolerance-based misery in the world isn't religion. Ultimately, it's xenophobia. The need to feel secure in one's chosen camp and demonize the other. To come up with some aspect that you can judge the book by - any aspect will do, but some are more obvious, others more powerful - draw the line on that aspect and say: this person is not like us. We cannot trust this person, we do not know them, we should not try to know them. This person is not worth knowing, is dangerous to get to know. The stranger who is not like us is less worthy of human consideration than we are. They might as well be called inhuman - devil, animal. Slave. Not a person. In the end the one not like us is the enemy, and this attitude makes compassion for the enemy an offense.

The human map has lines drawn all over. Religion. Patriotism/nationalism. Ethnicity, race. Gender, class, region - even neighborhood. To use any of these aspects to draw lines of hate and enmity is to misuse them. And we must be wary, for misuse of religion is particularly powerful, particularly dangerous. More powerful I'd say than any of those others - and that holds true whether it is being misused or merely used.

Even people who believe in God badly need to beware of religion's misuse. I'd say people who believe in God ought to feel that much more a duty and an obligation to confront their coreligionists, on religion's misuse.

http://frumptonshire.blogspot.com/2009/06/melons-are-best.html

I love Wise Blood! Hazel Motes is the coolest. I mean. Hm. Hard to put it. He's like my role model of people I don't want to be like?

I mean, he's kind of nuts, but he's sure got soul. It's a beautiful book with roots in the wormy dirt, and a reach to the top of the sky's dimly lit dome. Love it. Love the book; love O'Connor.

Now her other novel is also good (The Violent Bear It Away), and very much worth reading, but for me it is not nearly as good as Wise Blood.

http://wildthymeunseen.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-do-you-think.html

It takes a weak woman to need a man who pretends to be her superior. But it takes a weaker man to do it. Sick, sick. Sick.


Of course, it takes a weak man to need a woman to be his inferior as well.

What I don't get is, surely men need wives more than women need husbands right? WOMEN! GET TOGETHER ON THIS.

Don't settle for men who are too intimidated to function in an equal partnership.

http://friendlyocelot.blogspot.com/2011/05/science-pie.html

This is a triumphant story. This story makes me feel like we can get BACK TO THE MOON.

As a species, I mean.

Wait, that's dumb, we've been to the moon. Insert similar but less "played" accomplishment.

http://www.cynicism101.com/2011/05/experiment-in-self-discovery.html

There's something wrong with that Venn diagram. There's something wrong with that Venn diagram! I'm sorry, I don't mean to get all hung up on the Venn diagram; I realize it's just a totally random diagram meant to humorously and none-to-rigorously illustrate the many ways in which school bathrooms fail us! But...there's something wrong with it. I can't put my finger on it; the finger slips - as if from a missing latch.

Okay, I think it's this: the two sections that say "Doesn't latch" and "No toilet paper." For everything outside the set "Has a working latch," we have to be able to assume "Doesn't latch" applies. That's just a consequence of falling outside that set. Just as everything outside the set"Has Toilet Paper" should logically have "No Toilet Paper."

In other words, "Doesn't latch" can't apply just to that small section marked "Doesn't latch" - it applies to everything outside the latch set. The entire circle representing the set "Has Toilet Paper" and the entire circle representing the set "Doesn't smell horrible" do not latch - except for the small portion of each set where there is intersection with "Has a working latch."

The section that says "Smells REALLY bad" of course poses no problem. Even if everything outside the set "Doesn't smell horrible" must therefore smell horrible, we can suppose the "Smells REALLY bad" intersection smells even worse than its horrible-smelling near neighbors. True, one might logically question why the intersection of "Has toilet paper" and "Has a working latch" must necessarily produce a worse smell, but we're talking about restrooms, here. I think we need to make some allowances for Murphy's Law were diagrammatic convention and the sets-as-defined don't specifically exclude the possibility.

All of that is by way of irrelevant aside. I'm interested in cynicism, and I look forward to learning more about it!

http://facecrooks.com/safety-center/scam-watch/item/1269-scam-alert-omg-i-cant-believe-justin-bieber-did-this-to-a-girl

You know, I appreciate you trying to warn people away from this scam, but if you're serious about that goal then you should at least tell us what he did to that girl. Now I still have to go through all those steps to find out! Kill it with spoilers next time.

And if it turns out there's no juicy Bieber scandal at all waiting at the end if this scam rainbow, then that ought to have been the FIRST thing you put under "why it's a scam." Because "why it's a scam" in that case would not be oh, malware, hijack etc. - "why it's a scam" would be THERE IS NO "OMG! I Can't believe JUSTIN Bieber did THIS to a girl" at the end of it. I'm making a serious point, here. Is the promised content there or not?

Because if not, then that's the real #1 scam, here. But if that payoff was really there, then all that other clicky survey bunk is just the price paid for prime Bieber dish.

http://100days100ways.blogspot.com/2011/03/day-77.html

The first video is a neat illustration of the double-split experiment, but it's a little funny to me how our host makes such a mysterious lips-smacking deal over how mere observation causes the particle to change its behavior "as if it were aware of being watched!" This can only be deliberate silliness. The people putting this thing together know full well that at a quantum scale, detection = direct interaction with the particle.

It is as if some gigantic quantum physicist wanted to observe me walking down my street, and to do so, threw a bean-bag chair at me at a high rate of speed. As I stagger along recovering from the impact, the physicist, in jubilant wonder, cries: "why, he changed how he was walking - just as if he knew he had been observed...!" Bugger off you prat - you just threw a bean bag chair at me! Of course the electron changes how it acts after the process of being measured. The first time, it passed unmolested through the slit. The second time - from the electron's teensy tiny standpoint, it got mugged.

The detector isn't an eye standing to the side. The detector is any device placed directly in the slit that interacts directly with the passing electron and is physically changed by the interaction. The electron is physically changed by the interaction as well.

Or to put a finer point on it: it isn't observation (a conscious process) that changes what is being measured at the quantum level. It is the process of measurement itself. A physical process.

We trigger the physical process, so we can use the result it will generate to make an observation. But our tools are so big and clumsy (relative to tiny, quantum-scale phenomenon) that we change what we seek to observe - not by observing it, but by measuring it.

http://willowmanor.blogspot.com/2011/03/salley.html

Ah, to be young, and bid by one's love to take love easy! And to spurn such advice as that!

To be young in all ages, is to be foolish - and to be old in all ages is regret.

http://www.skyblue-pink.com/?p=4903

The pack of wolves running down the highway, okay, pretty wild. But am interpreting this right? In Russia, a cop can pull you over...by standing at the side of the road and sticking his arm out?

Wow.

If a society can train people to do that...heck, those wolves ought to be juggling balls and tooting horns as they swarm by, no problem.

http://seanibus.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-tie-clips.html

I love ties!

I don't have a single tie clip. If I weren't so suddenly jealous of your smooth tie clip collection, I'd paint my lack of tie clips as a personal preference. I'd say, "I like my tie flapping in the blurred breeze of my forward progress."

Which, hey, that's probably true, but where the hell do I get me some tie clips.

http://theflattire.blogspot.com/2010/06/its-wash.html

I hate laundry.

I looooove cream soda.

Kids aren't the generation that can change it all! They're just the generation that's going to be told they can change it all, and then 10 years later they'll look down along to the next set of kids and tell them hey, kids. You can change it all.

It's a sort of benevolent hazing ritual.

Semi-benevolent.

http://www.skyblue-pink.com/?p=2672#content

I just remembered what it was that first led me to stumble across your blog! It was your photography - and specifically, your glittering icicle shots!

I love your love of snow. How can people ever lose the joy of that! Just because they have to shovel it, or drive in it? So what! Adulthood's responsibilities bring far greater blessings than inconveniences. Why lose your joy in something wonderful, just because it carries with it a corresponding chore? Do these snow grinches lose their joy of food just because they have to cook it now?

Criminey Jickets. Of course, I may be the wrong one to offer perspective. I still play with my food to this day.

http://thegrimburrito.blogspot.com/2010/08/i-am-goddess.html

"Nice ass!" is one of those exclamations that is almost never employed sarcastically. Despite the fact that with many similar constructions, it can be a real toss up. "Nice hat!" can be hard to know how to take. But "Nice ass!" is pretty much always on the level.

Of course, the way it is employed can often intimidate and marginalize the recipient. Can leave her feeling depersonalized, as if her worth can be summed up in her nice ass, as if a human being's manifold beauty can be reduced to a cute booty.

Anyway. I think the real concern with me telling people "Nice ass!" is intent. If I know the woman to know how she'd likely take it, and I believe she's going to like hearing that from me, that's one thing. But if the only thing I know about a woman is the first thing I can see, and if I don't have the first notion how she'd take it when I yell that out, then I can't say my intent is good. My intent isn't good, if I do that. I'm not concerned with her at all. She's just an opportunity for me to offer to the world a loud declaration of heterosexuality.

Man. All this sexy typing always gets me kind of hot and bothered. Sorry.

Anyway, I don't have any basis to gauge your ass on merit, Ko'K'halla, but I will say that I feel pretty confident telling you just based on what I do know: your mind has a nice ass.

http://www.skyblue-pink.com/?p=Nicolas_Cage_Loses_His_Shit

Operatic.

The crazy thing is, this self-evidently must have been assembled by a Nic Cage fan.

I mean, I have no idea what any of these movies are. Not one.

Did Nic Cage not lose his shit in Moonstruck? Apparently, not enough to make the cut!

http://vegetableassassin.blogspot.com/2010/11/hard-drive-stories.html

Scarlett Johansson's ass. Let me tell you something about Scarlett Johansson's ass! No wait, what the fuck.

Cancel that, what could I possibly say about Scarlett Johansson's ass but that people would assume that - heck, even the preamble in the first paragraph above in this comment, it has "Perv." - written all over it! And bitter irony of ironies, I'm (all my life, almost) primarily into older women. By which you can infer: I am no perv. I paid my dues. You have no idea how much older, or at least oldish, semi-decrepit...uh. Sorry, tangent.

Yet!! After all that time put in on the non-juvenile side of things, here I am at this late date and one slip of an almost-remark about some youthful actress's ostensibly-beautiful tush and here I am, tarred for life in the permanent record of the comments queue of the Vegetable Assassin!

Well, I guess there are worse fates.

Wait. No. I think you're mistaken, there V.A. ScarJo was not underage at the time of the making of that film. She was not. She was born...look, I'm not going to look it up, I'm not that invested and I have nothing to prove here!! I am not the one on the stand!! But I think you're mistaken. She had to have been greater than at least the age of technical majority. At that point. To say the least! I mean, Bill Murray. Come on. They practically kissed. Whatever you think about him after the recent disclosures, he's not going to...come on.

He's no perv.

http://theflattire.blogspot.com/2010/08/sunday-final.html

LOVE that kettle! Industrial, whimsical, it looks like it belongs as a prop in the kitchen workshop laboratory of Sad Scientist, a minor character in some fantastic adaptation of a beloved kids book wherein wizards wear business suits, black bears are policemen and poor Unicorn Duck Child dreams unhappy dreams of what he's going to have to do for a living when he grows up.

http://asurfaceofinfiniteshallowness.blogspot.com/2010/01/take-deep-breath-for-gratitude.html

Although really, all of the other piggies besides #3 had no roast beef either. Still, I feel bad for #4, because at least all the others had their own thing going on.

What a disturbing nursery rhyme! It appears to be about a dismembered foot. How do all these toes go their separate ways like that? Grisly doings!

I'm sure there's some grim event at the heart of it, lost to us now, lost to time. Some psychopath lopping off toes, back in the days of hay wains and villagers, and this charming little bit of frippery was concocted to explain it away, reassure the kids about the sort of world in which they live. That's how all these nursery tales and nursery rhymes start: something very nasty at the center. Turn it all into a joke. Wee-wee-wee all the way home and everyone collapse into giggles!

That's all well and good, but I prefer the nursery tales with the grim moral lesson.

http://bringinghomebeck.blogspot.com/2010/07/i-come-by-it-honestly.html

Ooooo I am never doing that. No sky-diving.

The only way I would ever do that is if I could tandem-jump with a tattoo artist who would tattoo a picture of us skydiving (while he tattoos me) onto my back.

See, that's how I chicken out of it. Because no tattoo artist is going to pull a stunt like that!

http://vegetableassassin.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-to-be-unpopular-part-two-denounce.html

When I think of God, I picture a big infinite alien being capable of holding every infinitesimal speck of rotating space dust, every fluctuating quantum state of quasi-particle blinking in and then out and then in, every past, present, and possible future state of every atom of every star of every galaxy in its mind at once, with full and relaxed concentration, simultaneously and forever.

It's monstrous. All I can say is: Thank God It's On America's Side.

And Canada! God doesn't draw these petty distinctions like we do.

http://www.skyblue-pink.com/?p=3564

On a more serious note, the marginalization-for-life of a human being to a purely domestic function is atrocious, but there's no denying the power of the iconography! The graphic designers knew their work, but how knowing were they at it?

Were they truly the self-aware, sinister architects of the patriarchy? "We must gild the shit deal we have inflicted upon these women, and lionize them for playing the role so well!"

Were they simply being pragmatic? "Somebody's got to cook and clean. Might as well make it seem enjoyable!"

Or did they perhaps, truly respect and uphold the role of housespouse? Is it possible that they were sincere and devout worshippers at the cute wife altar?