De el mundo, con amor.

Today at subway, I actually had to step in and speak spanish to a customer who didn't understand my supervisor, whose strategy was apparently to repeat what she had said in sequentially slower english, as if somehow he was going to understand what she meant as long as she said it at snail speeds.

For a little bit, I actually felt bilingual, and that's an odd feeling. It's a nice one.

Spontaneous Nerditude

Let's take a look at that spiffy picture to my left.





















I found that on my friend Kriss' collection of cool modern/futuristic art. This particular piece of art was located in the "Somebody Badass" folder, implying they had not yet been assigned a character. I took this opportunity to call official dibs on the character, and am planning on making my next d20 Modern/Future/Planeshift character her.

Nerd Videos:

Drugs: My Anti-WoW
Be glad you don't have this much time.

The House on Somber Way

We here at the House on Somber Way would like to take this time to announce that we had no idea how much stuff was in our parent's respective kitchens until we'd like to use it, assume we have it, and consequentially fail when we don't. We don't have Black Pepper. We don't have a Spatula, a Strainer, or any cooking knives, much less steak ones. As we have begun the process of actually preparing our own food, this is becoming more and more of a problem.

We do, however, have Bay Leaves.

And Mr. Meyer does indeed make scrumptious white chili. Mmm.

Religion

As a long-standing advocate of not using religion to justify completely irrational hatreds, I present to you a funny list: Why Can't I Own a Canadian?

Lev 18:22 states "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.", which is one of the big bible phrases used to debunk homosexuality. On her radio show, Dr. Laura Schlessinger mentioned the phrase, and the above link is an open letter sent to her by one of her listeners. It's a satirical, sarcastic letter asking for "advice" on how to deal with other violations of Levitican law, such as:

"Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?"

The best part about the whole section of Leviticus is that it really is undefendable. People are taking this small part of the bible and saying, "Look here, the bible says so!" but half of them don't even know that the same part of the bible outlines rules for selling your daughter, buying slaves from Mexico, forbidding intergender contact between women on their period, and how if anybody works on sunday they are to be put to death. I'm not taking things out of context here, or interpreting anything. It is very clear on these parts.

The very worst part about this sort of thing is that people have somehow inherited the notion that any attempt to disprove something they've learned in their religious education is clearly a lack of faith and can be overcome by showing the nonbeliever the strength of their own conviction by ignoring any evidence placed in front of them. I myself am not an Athiest - I fully believe in the existence of God, and this does not permit me in any way to ignore reasoning.

Look up Deism for more information.

Family, Friends and Girl

I am officially an uncle, by means of my Half-Sister Alyssa's new baby girl. Venus Mira DeRonne was born on January 22nd at 12:58 AM. She weighed 8 pounds and 15 ounces at birth, and is just over 21 inches long.

Who wants to come play with Uncle Mikey? :D