My mother gave my brother an african statue for christmas. She told him that it was a fertility doll. A few months later, he and his "friend" had a pregnancy scare (not that my mother knows this). He got rid of it. He tried to give it to me, but I was having none of it.

Very wise - next thing you know it will be chasing you around with a knife.

I remember doing a research paper on cryonics back in highschool. I don't recall the "acoustic fracturing events" bit, though. Yuck. But even back then, it seemed pretty out there.

I mean, regardless of if science eventually figures out how to cure what killed you, they also have to figure out how to cure death too. I mean, there's plenty of lethal things we currently have a cure for, but they don't mean squat if you die before you can be treated.

And of course, if it's somehow even possible someday, it brings up questions about the soul and whatnot (if you believe in such things.)

Just a mess all around, really.

I've been wearing an ankh since I was 8 (used to be on and off, but since the tattoo, always on). My mother gave me my first. I think she also gave me Ghanaian fertility earrings. Also before puberty.

It seems to be a thing -- who knows? I could be as fecund as the fertile crescent. Just not up to testing that theory.

I wonder if the sub was just really crappy? and/or she'd never been trained as a goalie?

Could be, or they took their best defender, and stuck her in goal, weakening two positions.

My MiL started an IM conversation with me while I was at work to mention that if we had any problems, it might have been similar to my FiL's "issues". Talk about a conversation I was never meant to have. EVER. Poking my eyes out at work wasn't an option.

How funny would it have been to ask "Oh, [FiL's] issues involved not wanting children in order to spite all the relatives over their intrusive hints and comments on the subject?"

My co-worker's on the phone talking about how he's "clean now."

I'm admittedly draconian about avoiding personal calls at work, and I refuse to talk about my actual life during the calls I take. This guy? Addictions (past), relationships (future) and just everything is fair game.

Don't wanna know!

Is there a slaughter rule in regular baseball?

No, and that is why there is such a thing as a "laugher" -- it is such an unevenly-won game that you have to laugh: 22-0, or 17-1. Not that either of these has happened (one of them twice) to the Yankees in the last calendar year.

I have not yet figured out what the losing side of a laugher is called (I mean, besides massacre). "Crier" doesn't have the same connotation, you know?

I suppose it is possible to literally have no more players and have to give up. In that case, though, the game would either be called (if both teams were in the same boat) or the giving-up team would forfeit. But baseball is the game where two teams once played a 33-inning game. 32 of those innings were in a single night, and when they called the game on account of it was 4 in the morning, they scheduled a time weeks later for the resumption of play.

Ugh. At least my two co-workers with whom I can't finish a short conversation without being interrupted by a cell phone call only talk about vague, bland life details rather than Things I'd Prefer Not to Know.

I remember slaughter rules in Little League baseball. Yeah, it's basically to keep the losers' feelings from being hurt more than they had to be.

Isn't there anybody else who could have filled in?

At minimum, somebody who could say, "I've never done it before, but I'll at least try."

I have over the years acquired various carvings that turn out are also fertility whosits. (I have a shona version of the Ghanaian fertility figure .) It sometimes give me pause, but really, it's the design that gets me. And besides, fertility/trickster gods are usually pretty funky or strange. Goats, beetles, random humpbacks.