I think we have new candidates for the Darwin Awards. Also, people who never tried to dry sneakers in the dryer, or else they'd know that some things do not belong in a dryer whether or not they are dripping with gasoline. Hello! (Reason #375 it's a good thing suburban moms have not yet been recruited en masse into the drug trade.)

P.s. How cute is it that erika coins the verb "Klaused" without needing to explain it? Very cute. And it is exactly what L&O would do.

Timelies. WELCOME MALLORY JAMES!

I haven't been able to find the text of the law this morning, do we have any idea how it was worded, or how far reaching it is? Is it specific to the Schiavo case, or can federal judges now reach into all our lives and decide any important decision by fiat?

A not-very-interesting article about people who investigate car fires:

Did any of the investigators say something to the effect of "on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for eveyone drops to zero"?

The pay ones I've used certainly do.

The one in my apartment does, too. Read that one while looking for a model number when it wasn't working. I'm pretty sure I read a similar warning on my mom's dryer, as well, though I don't recall the circumstances.

"Cute" is gonna be my new favorite way of describing "aberrant" from now on Nutty. But it's true, I trusted y'all to follow me in it.(We all know Klaus did it, don't we?! Although maybe those guys are in the wind with OJ's real killers. Uh huh.)

Sure, there's not enough money in the world to get me to hit middle C, but it's a foot! Can't you at least tell it's not pivoting? It's right there -- if your kinaesthetics are off, how about your vision?

I was behind the door when they were handing out proprioception. I CONSTANTLY bump my appendages into walls because I'm walking and I don't realize that my hip/shoulder/hand is about to be in the same space as the doorframe/doorknob/etc.

<wince>

A week or so ago I pulled my darks out of the dryer and discovered that the thing that had been making that rattling noise was not a popped button, as I'd assumed. It was a lighter that I'd stuck in a trouser pocket and forgotten about. Not a pleasant discovery, although I could have found out in a much more dramatic way.

As an aside to Betsy's note above, I am the worst parker of cars in the world. I am so bad at it, I finally realized, because I cannot judge distances for shit. 6 feet looks like 3 feet to me, or vice versa, with no rhyme or reason.

I like to blame this failure on my having astygmatism in one eye, but it's only one eye, and it's corrected with glasses. I am just a visual-spatial dummkopf.

When I'm clumsy, it does tend to be the kind of clumsy Betsy is describing -- walking into doorframes, thumping sideways against a wall, like that. I opened a door right into my foot once, cutting through the cloth of my shoe and well into my big toe (blood everywhere).

(But I do know when my foot is moving and when it's not. I may not remember to move my foot at the right moment, or may not make it all the way down my internal checklist of moves to make in a given maneuver, but if queried, I can say both what I've done and what I was supposed to do.)

reason #568 that I love launch.com

LL Cool J followed by the Dixie Chicks.

6 pages of database updates today. I'm just closing my door and turning the volume up.

I CONSTANTLY bump my appendages into walls because I'm walking and I don't realize that my hip/shoulder/hand is about to be in the same space as the doorframe/doorknob/etc.

It took me a while to realize that my "court vision" (or sense of my body in space and in relation to other moving bodies) was a particular sensitivity of mine and not common. It's on the plus side for me with sensitivity to language and rhythm. On the negative side: sensitivity to design, smell, color...

I was behind the door when they were handing out proprioception

But surely if you look at your foot, you can tell what position it's in, right? I don't understand people who can look and then look back and me and assert they're in whatever position. I totally get missing the position in the heat of motion or repetition or exhaustion, or not being able to read the feel right away, but seeing? That I don't get.

Unrelatedly, I've told my TiVo to record suggestions. Whee! Magnum PI, Maverick, X-Files, an assload of Buffy and Angel ... there's TV all the time.

Except I don't have the time. Still, it's a sweet gesture of Steve.