Oh, and to go waaay back:

I'm guessing not much Xhosa representation in bubbly pop, huh?

You've forgotten Johnny Clegg and Savuka! Complete 1980s pop, with Zulu words and lots of !Click!, combined with synth drum kits. Loads of fun.

Quesadillas.

I think I'll be having cereal for dinner tonight. But at least I get leftover shrimp curry for lunch now.

Quesadillas cause everything is better with cheese.

ita, have you solved your bench-for-dining-table dilemma?

Nevertheless, my answer was going to be, "I think this means I need to buy beer on the way home and make sure to watch House," which isn't all that interesting.

Sure it is. I still haven't seen last week's House, and I'm getting increasingly grumpy about it.

In fact, I was standing in front of a pillar looking harried when they took the picture, so now I have a godawful security badge picture for the next year.

Isn't that inevitable? Last time I took a picture for this place, when they still allowed me to have a building card, it was right in the middle of a deadline. I looked frazzled and displeased.

Speaking of me and all the things that have to do with mepathological lying, today I saw a blurb about someone who always lied about what they had for lunch. For some reason that seems like a fun thing to do AND it will train you to lie better. Does that make me a bad person?

For some reason that seems like a fun thing to do AND it will train you to lie better. Does that make me a bad person?

Do you want the truth?

What did you have for lunch, bon bon?

lisah, will you autograph my CD the next time I see you? Pretty please?

OH OF COURSE!!! And thank you so much for getting one! I hope you like it.

have you solved your bench-for-dining-table dilemma?

No, not yet. I've looked around a little, but right now I'm worrying that I may have to move, so not thinking about furniture.

Whitefonted because it really is kinda violent and creepy, and not fun like the Ballroom Riot:

John Miller was born in a smallish town just outside NOLA sometime in the 1820s-30s, and gravitated to the scummier and more lawless neighborhoods of the big city almost immediately, as he was big and burly and bad-tempered.

He Thunderdomed himself at the age of 26, when a sub-legal entertainment promoter paid him and another big burly bad-tempered guy some ungodly sum of money to beat the holy shit out of each other in front of a mob of paying customers. During said mutual shit-beating, the other guy fucked up Miller's left arm something awful -- so awful, in fact, that a few weeks later it had to be amputated.

As soon as the stump was healed, he (how? Don't ask me; the scribe of this tale was interested in tales, not facts) attached to it an iron chain with an iron ball, about the size of a baseball and weighing around 10-15 lbs., at the end of it, and for the rest of his life was able to use his left arm as a sort of protocyborgian flail/mace; he spent almost a decade terrorizing the NOLA underworld by charging at people, knife in his right hand, left stump raised and iron ball spinning overhead, strewing his opponents' guts and brain matter all up and down the city.

Eventually he was arrested for something or other, and after a short stint in the city jail was released and given a job as turnkey. Which is where he was, using his ball and chain to terrify the prison population, when he met the beautiful and vicious Bricktop Jackson, who was in jail pending trial for murder (she and her gang of four had knifed a concert-saloon owner to death in the courtyard of a fancy restaurant in broad daylight). They fell in love, the true and abiding love of the violent and depraved.

And when she was released (her girl gang's lawyers tampered with the jury and the witnesses and threw money all over the place, and the court eventually concluded that although knives may have been involved in some undetermined capacity, the man's official cause of death was simple heart failure) they moved in together and lived in wild love. And loud sex. And endless fights. And more fights, and more, until one day Miller came home in a rage carrying a huge leather bullwhip, all riled up on alcohol and testosterone and determined to beat Jackson into docility.

He started to beat her. Instead of cringing, she ran right at him, wrenched the whip out of his hand, and started beating him with it. He raised his stump and swung the iron ball at her head, and she dropped the whip, grabbed the ball, and started hauling him in to her with the chain. Out came his knife just as she yanked him right up to her, and she wrenched the knife away from him, rammed him into the wall, and stabbed him up. Just a big horrific Thunderdome Meets Grand Guignol and is Crushed by Buffy Summers death, and all happened in probably about ninety seconds.

And when the (relatively) decent (relatively) law-abiding folk of New Orleans found out about the murder, they all ran around high-fiving each other. Crazy Thunderdome Guy was dead and gone forever, plus they could finally lock up Bricktop and throw away the key! Best gift with purchase EVAH!