so I can store the current New Yorker right alongside it on the Shelf of Bile.

Ooh, do you have it yet? I have to wait until after work to pick up my copy.

I'm about to run off on a late lunch/errand break, so I'm'a check the magazine racks on my way to and fro. Then spend the rest of the afternoon fending off my boss to keep him from stealing it. Possibly I should just buy him a copy too and save myself the irritation.

the fear that all my atheist and agnostic friends are just being polite and secretly they think I'm a dipshit and an intellectual fraud.

Nope.

Those pants have made a natter hatrick.

Oops. I saw it mentioned on my fl today but I didn't see it in here. I guess it was older than I thought.

The text for the pants is too funny. Bitter much?

My favorite part is his reasoning for why he will never wear a pair of leather pants. Starting with, "I am not a member of Queen."

Hivemind survey: have you turned on your heat yet? How do you decide when to turn on the heat? What do you set the thermostat to? (Assuming you are lucky enough to control your heat. Of course, that "luck" generally means you pay the bill, too, which this year - owie.)

I'm trying to hold off until November. This is the first week we've been tempted. I like it at 72, but when we don't have an infant in the house I feel like I ought to have it at 68.

Though that rant pokes me in hard in one of my secret insecurity painful places, the fear that all my atheist and agnostic friends are just being polite and secretly they think I'm a dipshit and an intellectual fraud. Which I know is most likely not so, but guys like that ranter make me paranoid that it actually is.

Is not. I can only speak for myself, but whatever my personal religious (or nonreligious) beliefs may be, I've got nothing but respect and admiration for my friends who are religious. That rant made me want to throw things at that person for being such a smug, insufferable asshole. He's made it clear that he'd respond about as well to a cluesticking as to a nuclear bomb, but I still want to shake him and yell, "You're missing the fucking point!" I ask you: between that dude and JZ, who's the idiot?

The only religious friends of mine that I occasionally think are idiots are the ones who keep trying to convert me. Or the ones who actually are idiots. For reasons not pertaining to their chosen brand of religion.

I ask you: between that dude and JZ, who's the idiot?

I want to say "that dude by a long way, in the way that travelling to the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is a long way compared to travelling to the coffee cart upstairs," but I'm afraid I'm just an idiot religious type whose opinion doesn't matter.

Hivemind survey: have you turned on your heat yet?

Nope, though I'm sensing that we may be this weekend. And I was hoping to make it through October without turning on the heat.

What do you set the thermostat to?

I would like to set it at 68 during the day, 58 at night. But Susan is closer to the thermostat 40 hours a week.

ETC: my idiot transposition.

Hivemind survey: have you turned on your heat yet? How do you decide when to turn on the heat? What do you set the thermostat to?

The furnace has kicked on a few times. It's set to 68.