Bookworm Room

This is what happens when a tortoise makes its escape.

No Comments »

DQ sent me this. He laughed, his wife laughed, and I laughed. I’m betting you’ll laugh too:
22 WAYS TO BE A GOOD DEMOCRAT
IT’S NOT SO HARD, EVEN A CAVEMAN CAN DO IT….
1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand.
2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and [...]

11 Comments »

I am in the grips of some serious lust.  This cute little thing is the object of my desire.
I first saw the iPhone last year, when a couple of people I met in passing were showing it to anyone within a 50 foot radius.  They were in raptures, and I was jealous.  Since then, though, [...]

6 Comments »

Many years ago, a medical student friend of mine told me a story that he swore was true. As you may or may not know, blank prescription pads are a hot commodity amongst drug users and drug dealers, because they can use them to obtain controlled substances. One enterprising individual got a hold [...]

3 Comments »

I don’t remember how the conversation started, but a few days ago I found myself explaining to my children that, amongst all human beings, regardless of their race or culture, there is one common denominator for beauty: symmetry. This means that whether a culture measures beauty by fair or dark skin, light or [...]

7 Comments »

It’s nice to know that my blog is every bit as pure in tone as I had hoped:

Created by OnePlusYou
I’m perplexed as to what the cussing standards are that I actually scored something above 0%, but but what can you do?  It’s enough to know that you should feel safe bringing your children here.
Hat tip: [...]

9 Comments »

This afternoon, my daughter went around the house singing “Can I get a napkin, please?”  Now I know why:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkYZ6rbPU2M

No Comments »

I don’t know why, but I found this a tremendously amusing and rather charming story.

1 Comment »

It’s amazing how your brain freezes up when you do these things — although, in my defense, there were countries I knew, but the computer wouldn’t accept the way in which I typed them:
68
By the way, that’s 68 out of 270.
Hat tip:  The Anchoress

Sphere: Related Content

4 Comments »

I was disappointed to read that he’s an Obama man, but in his heyday, there were few like Tom Lehrer.  Here are a couple of my favorites.  The first is the The Elements:

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

And here is one of the lesser known songs, but one of my favorites, Oedipus Rex:

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

Sphere: Related Content

4 Comments »

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve returned to martial arts after a ten year hiatus.  I wasn’t good then, and I’m worse now (and definitely more rickety), but oh! how I love it.
One of the things I’m learning at this dojo, which I didn’t learn in my last go round at martial arts (since it was [...]

6 Comments »

When I was in 9th grade, I had to memorize the prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and I can still numb my children’s brains by reciting the first 20 lines or so, complete with awful 9th grade California, Ye Olde English accent.  I’m going to have to clear out that space in my brain, though, [...]

3 Comments »

Both of the following jokes come from an anthology published in 1950, the last year of Truman’s presidency.
First:
It was a day late in 1980, when socialized medicine had become the law of the land.  A man was seized with a violent cramp in his stomach and sought relief at the modern white structure erected for [...]

No Comments »

It appears that Toledo, Ohio — or, at least, the mayor in Toledo, Ohio — is giving Berkeley a run for its money:
Mayor Carty Finkbeiner on Friday ordered some 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines from Grand Rapids, Michigan, out of Toledo just before the unit was suppose to start a [...]

5 Comments »

You’ve probably received this as an email before, but I hadn’t seen it and it startled a great Saturday morning laugh out of me. Here’s the email text:
Jennifer and Jim kept getting huge water bills. They knew beyond a doubt that the bills weren’t representative of their actual usage, and no matter how they [...]

8 Comments »

Do you look at carrots and see hummingbirds?  Or mentally transform eggplants into penguins?  If you don’t, you’re probably like most people, including me.  But now you can discover what kind of magic happens when you do look at ordinary fruits and vegetables and see more.

Sphere: Related Content

4 Comments »

I’m working, so I can’t write. I therefore thought I’d give you another old Abba video, Head over Heels. It appeals to me on three levels: I like the 80s Abba disco beat; I like how frantic it is, which seems to catch the pulse of my own life (although the only [...]

1 Comment »

I saw this headline: “New material pushes the boundary of blackness.” Was it naive for me to assume that it was yet another story about which candidate on the Democratic side has better black bona fides, the one who is half black or the one married to the first white/black president?
As to that [...]

3 Comments »

You remember Robert Reich, don’t you? He was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, serving during the first administration. He’s now a Berkeley prof and a blogger. Turns out he’s also a playwright, and his play “Public Exposure: An Indecent Political Farce,” is being performed in Santa Rosa, about an hour’s drive north [...]

13 Comments »

I’d never heard of Tim Slagle before this afternoon. However, because it was raining and I was certain to get lost, I took my husband’s car which has a navigation system and a better steering and stopping mechanism than my car. It also has XM radio. That’s why, at 4:00 this afternoon, [...]

4 Comments »

Self-dealing, platinum parachutes, obscene profits — all these corporate acts inflame people, but I’ve now read a story that shows corporate executives sinking to a new low, engaging in an act that only the most depraved minds could imagine, let alone put into effect. Hold on to something tight because this story, out of [...]

16 Comments »

The military apparently knows exactly what’s going to happen if the Dems take the White House and control Congress, and they’re already brainstorming solutions.

15 Comments »

When I still lived in San Francisco, I lived near a bus stop that had the most dilatory buses you’ve ever seen.  Although they were theoretically supposed to come to that stop every 20 minutes or so, people could find themselves waiting for a bus for 45 or 50 minutes.  If you were coming out [...]

4 Comments »

Hardcore stuff for real women.
And two jokes:
Joke, the first:
A man comes home from work one day to find the house in complete chaos.  The kitchen is piled high with dirty dishes, food is strewn across the floor, the living room looks like a bomb hit it, and two filthy, fighting children are sitting in front [...]

32 Comments »

I was one of those kids who had mice and hamsters and guinea pigs, so I have to admit to a bias in favor of rodent cuteness.  This rodent, however, is such an eccentric blend of over-sized ears, tail and feet that I think most people, even those less favorably disposed than I to rodent [...]

11 Comments »