Okay, on ER, Luka is impossibly hot. And not a woobie. In fact, when he's in pain, I don't want to comfort him. I want to do terribly self-destructive things with him.

There is a whole grab bag of natural disasters south of the border. [link]

Kee-rist.

Huh, and huh ... from the Seattle Times:

The Indian Ocean tsunami caused the global death toll from natural disasters in 2004 to triple from the year before to about a quarter of a million — the highest total in almost 30 years, the international Red Cross said today.

Discounting the devastating effects of the Dec. 26 tsunami, however, the 2004 total would have been about 25,000 — one of the lowest figures on record, the agency said.

Huh, and huh

I second that. I guess we're getting all our natural disaster deaths in big chunks. Maybe they have to happen in showboaty ways because we've developed protections against the minor accidents.

Speaking of massive death tolls, did you guys see that they've re-animated the Spanish Influenza virus? They got it from lung tissue from a body of the time, and now they have a living lab culture.

Aside from the scary/cool Jurassic-Park quotient, one of the things the researchers said was that they are trying to determine why some people were resistant and some weren't...and that if you are alive today, you are most likely resistant because your progenitors survived.

My granduncle Bonnie had a story about that. He came down with the '18 flu when he was in the army at Camp Robinson Pike near Little Rock. He passed out, and when he came to he found he was in the camp morgue. He staggered out the door and scared the hell out of the clerks and orderlies in the office outside. Said it served them right for having given up on him.

Alas, again in a skipping-lots-ignoring-ongoing-conversations-and-poking-my-head-for-a-short-time manner, but still, it's that time of year again, and, yeah, still in a risk of sounding a bit strange:...

On Wednesday evening (as most of you clever people probably already know) starts the Jewish holiday of 'Yom Kippur', which means 'Day of Atonement'.

This is a day of soul searching, of trying to better define to ourselves our faults, and try to accept it upon ourselves to become, at least a little, better people. A day of repenting past wrongs we did, looking and finding it in our hearts to forgive wrongs done to us, and trying to remember to learn from this process in the rest of the days of the year. The holiest day of the year for practicing Jews.

On a rough division, there are two kinds of wrongs people can do: against G-d, and hurting their fellow human beings. In Jewish tradition, if the person committing a sin against G-d is truly sorry for what they did, repenting and taking it upon themselves to try and avoid repeating it, G-d forgives those sins. The deeds which hurt other people, though, are not so 'easily' and personally forgiven. If somebody did anything to harm another person, they would not be able to cleanse themselves from that deed, no matter how much they'd pray and be sorry and repent and try to do good in the future, unless they make amends with the person who was hurt by that deed. As long as peace between people is not achieved, the 'sin', so to speak, is not 'erased from the books'.

Regardless of the date in the year, I'd hate to think I'd offended somebody here (or everywhere else, for that matter). I don't think that the attempts of becoming a better person than one already is, is something that needs a date or a certain holiday for it, of course. It's just that, for me, having a certain day in the year to stop my daily runnings around, and think of nothing else but the really important things, is a good reminder of the order of priorities I'd like to have in my life.

So, since Thursday will be, for me, this day of soul-searching, of trying to create a new start in my on-going effort of 'becoming a good human being, or at least a slightly better one', I would like to ask all of you here, if I ever offended anybody, or hurt any of you lovely people, to tell me about it, and give me the opportunity to apologize, fix it if possible, and also learn from my mistakes, and try to not repeat them (there are so many new ones to practice, why repeat old ones?...).

In case I offended anybody, and can't communicate directly with them about it (for whatever reason), I can already say that I'm truly sorry. I can honestly say that I didn't mean to - you're all so considerate and thoughtful and generally all-around foamy, that there's absolutely no room for such a thing here. However, I might have had a slip of a keyboard, or mistaken somebody's intentions, or many other possible so forths. Especially now, after meeting some of you in face-space, and having somewhat less computer (and online playing) time, there are so many more opportunities for mistakes and misunderstandings and hurt. Y'all are so understanding, you probably didn't take offense anyway, but I want to make sure, all the same.

Please don't get me wrong - I'm definitely not trying to go around in a 'holier-than-thou' show off, or force my personal beliefs on others, or make statements which may be understood as criticizing anybody else's beliefs and way of living. If anything, being around here, among such a rich versatile group of kind and clever people, exposed me to a lot more ways of choosing to lead one's life than I've ever had a chance to see before, and showed me much more of the beauty and richness that is the world we live in.

{{Buffistas}}

[Edit: each year I hope I'll be able to make it less long and less ramble-y, and each year I realize once again that I completely lack the ability to write anything concise]

Good story, dcp.

Hi Nilly! As always, your sincerity and devotion shines through. I can truly say that you have never wronged me, and in fact I can only aspire to be like you.

Nilly, you are forgiven for being so darn cute.

Nilly, I love your Yom Kippur posts so very much. I can honestly and easily say you have never done one thing to offend me. How was your Rosh Hashanah?

Ha HA! I found a topic for my paper that EVERYONE's been on about. Now I just have to pick two groups. Have you people heard of the American Center for Law and Justice? I have, but I don't know if they're actually well-known. What about Concerned Women for America?

Go spaghetti. Choose spaghetti. Yeah, I've heard of the ACLJ. I don't know how well heard of they are, though. I think maybe I've heard of CWA from links here, but not otherwise.

I am wearing the best dress ever. I'm not sure precisely what it looks like (though over half the people I spoke with volunteered their like of it), but it feels pretty and glamourous and la! If I could stride better in those heels ... but the quasi striding I did had the dress trailing me in the air (it's very light) in the funnest of ways. And I spilled a cosmo down it, and you totally couldn't tell.

You mean, it's beautiful and well behaved, too? I love clothes like that. Pretty pretty. It's very wrong that you didn't get pictures.

Yup. It was just such fun to wear. Shame about the need for delicate heels.

The dress is so lovely, I think you should go on a quest for delicate shoes that are more comfortable. I think you can get delicate shoes with less heel. It'll probably happen by accident, when you're looking for something else, though.

I had enough fun tonight that I think we should do a post Day of the Dead, Day of the Dead party. Not the 29 or the 30 but Nov. 5

That's Guy Fawkes Day, though. [link]

Remember, remember the fifth of November.
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.

Better than this [link]?

Oh, so that's the dress the Serenity viewers have been talking about. Wow. GT is a marvel, isn't she?

Oh, she looks marvellous here too.

I want to start seeing pictures where she doesn't look marvellous. I don't believe they exist.

Ugh, trying to psyche myself up for yoga meant a half-hour of napping this morning, but at least the ibuprofen has started to kick in.

Conversely, once I get yoga-ing, I'll feel much better. It's just the run-up that really really sucks.

Nilly, you've never caused me any offence, inadvertantly or otherwise. If there's anybody here on the board that I've offended in the past year (or past years) without apology or comprehension that I've done so, I hope they'll contact me privately or publicly to let me know so I can attempt to atone, or failing that, at least understand where a difference arises.