December 2004

There’s a professor who’s done a study about the origins and use of the word “dude”: the interesting part? Kiesling says in the fall edition of American Speech that the word derives its power from something he calls cool solidarity — an effortless kinship that’s not too intimate. Cool solidarity is especially important to young […]

So, yesterday I was doing my daily lunchtime walk at the Wildlife Preserve across the street from where I work. This is a low-crime suburb area (I have a long train commute out of Chicago), so I don’t carry much trepidation with me. But yesterday I passed a questionable character – you know, you just

Here’s a great compilation from the Mahablog of all the bits and pieces we’ve been throwing around the last couple weeks (divorce and teenage birth rates in red vs. blue states, the education of women, etc) and some sly commentary to boot.

OK, I’m back to working on some writing projects. Unless something really pisses me off again, I’ll see you all tomorrow. “We Americans, we’re a simple people… but piss us off, and we’ll bomb your cities.” – Robin Williams, “Good Morning Vietnam” “We’ve got a generation now who were born with semi-equality. They don’t know

And… here’s the fire in the Chicago Loop that was blocking traffic last night as I tried to get home from kickboxing. I’d never seen so many firetrucks and so many diverted taxi cabs in one place before. This is the second highrise fire they’ve had in the year I’ve been here (that one also

Contraception Museum opens (via boingboing). In Ohio, of all places. They’ve also got a flash presentation of “Obstetric Literature and the Changing Character of Childbirth.” If the coils don’t make you cringe… And I snickered when I read the intro to their collection: “Birthing is a normal, yet extraordinary event that has been with us

I don’t care if people write conservative SF, but when they start trying to make a “movement” out of a masturbatory molehill, and start writing up frickin “manifestos” I get really frickin’ irked. You need a manifesto in order to write fiction? Shit, why didn’t anyone ever tell me sooner! I better start writing my

This is an old joke, actually. The first Euro trip I did was with a bunch of kids from our high school theatre, and we teamed up with a group of rowdy Canadians for much of the trip, meaning we shared transport and rooms with them. And let me tell you, everything you suspect about

Had a good MA class tonight. 2 min kicking techniques, 1 minute jump roping, repeat for 45 minutes. Great fun, actually. I had a good partner. Also, always inspiring, Ray is now 6 months pregnant, and still jumping, kicking, punching and just basically kicking ass. It’s totally cool. I’ve been hard on myself, as I

More proof that war-obsessed children will become war-obsessed adults. If not, perhaps, in the way that you’d think. I stumbled across the site Yo Joe, which is an awesome database of GI Joe figures from 1982-2004, complete with pics and accessories. I was a gleeful 80s child, who combined My Little Pony play with GI