OMFG, Damn Cat!

Yeah. I'm up right now... though I've actually been awake since 3:30 AM when my cat woke me up with his "Meow? Meow? Can I come and cuddle? Meow? I might be hungry... Meow? Cuddle? Meow?" Needless to say this is my long day; first class is at 8 AM and the last class gets out at 4:45 PM, and then there is the homework group - even though as you all know from last night I got it all done already.

At least I won't be scrambling to get out the door today - I even packed up all my stuff last night and layed out today's clothing selection and accoutrements/electronics.

Good times.

Early Morning Reading

For ginmar:

Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility

By Dana Priest and Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 18, 2007; A01

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
( Read more... )

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A new version of Marmite flavoured with Guinness is to launch in the UK. Say What?! Not that I had, up until today, ever heard of Marmite... but I have readers over on the other side of the pond.
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WordSpy's WOTD:
social networking fatigue n. Mental exhaustion and stress caused by creating and maintaining an excessive number of accounts on social networking sites.

Does this apply to all the other forms of networking out there, i.e. the IRL brand of it perchance?
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Pandagon Giving it up for Lent and reminding us lapsed and retired Catholics that this Wednesday is Ash Wednesday... I can see it now, unable to resist I wander into one of the many on-campus churches and subsequently walk around for the rest of the day with a dark smudge on my forehead.
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"Experiments have found that ordinary people tell about two lies every 10 minutes, with some people getting in as many as a dozen falsehoods in that period." Source.

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When Prudishness Costs Lives
New York Times - excerpt from here
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: December 19, 2006

"Here in Poipet, I met a 27-year-old woman with AIDS, Tem Phok. She had been a prostitute in a brothel, so I assumed that that was how she contracted AIDS. "Oh, no" she said. "I got AIDS later, from my husband," who has already died.

"In the brothel, I always used condoms," she said. "But when I was married, I didn't use a condom. ... A woman with a husband is in much more danger than a girl in a brothel."

That's an exaggeration, but she has a point: It doesn't do much good for American officials to preach abstinence and fidelity in places where the big risk of contracting H.I.V. comes with marriage. In countries with a high prevalence of AIDS, just about the most dangerous thing a woman can do is to marry."

--- Wow, although once I think about it, it makes perfect sense...
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"Sweet mother of Bob!"

A kind note about skin care in this horrid dry, cold, windy weather from This Fish.
( Read more... )

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More on The Scroat as crabbyolbastard called it. Follow the link to a list of children's books that contain the word scrotum. Note the context of each. Gelf called them "scrotalicious books", which made me laugh, but he also said that all the books on his list are for tweens... Tweens are not elementary school aged children, they're middle school aged children. Yeesh. Besides, all mention of scroats in the quotes are scientific - barring the Indian folktale about the crab - and none of them have a hint of prurience. Pointed out by Marginal Revolution.
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Definitely kooky. Some proposed legislation in Tennessee would issue death certificates to aborted blastocysts...
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For densaer who mentioned he wanted some Green home improvement ideas.
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This is one neat bike.
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Check out The Big Corporate Motherhood Conspiracy over on alternet.
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That's it for now folks, time to jet off to school now. Finally. Have a great day.