George bugs me - I guess he would be an okay roommate, but I would never be interested in him. His spine is too far hidden.

As for dogs, until this summer I've always maintained all dogs start out good. My brother had a pit mix they got as a puppy from a shelter. She was always a little hyper, but he worked hard with her to socialize/train her. Then, several months ago, she attacked their other larger dog late at night. My dad and SIL were there, but brother was at a party. The two dogs fought for over 20 minutes and there was blood everywhere. The non-pit started out fighting for fun (as dogs do) but it quickly became obvious that the pit was aiming to kill him. After trying to separate them several times, my dad (who was waiting for heart surgery) finally managed to kick the pit hard enough in the ribs to separate them momentarily and drag her out of the room. When my brother got home, he took her to the emergency vet that night and had her put down. Both my brother and SIL loved her but they couldn't live in a house with a dog who had both the means and the will to kill. I don't know where that will came from. Yes she was adopted and yes she had shown warning signs before, but my brother loved her, took care of her, and trained her.

Yes, Aurelia, he is.

Also, Jimmy Smits keeps tripping over his tonguie and saying not quite what the closed captioning does.

And, so some reason, on Cold Case, Lily Rush does not have a messy upodo, but a neatish long style. It is weird.

The trouble with dog breeds is that they are breeds. They haven't only been bred for looks and shape, but for behaviors. Just as you can expect a herding dog to go bonkers with OCD if it doesn't have any herding jobs to do, you kind of have to expect a fighting dog to have a pretty strong fighting instinct.

I do think it's a bit much to outlaw a whole dog breed based on an inbred trait -- Dade County outlws pits, IIRC -- but I can see as how not just anybody should be allowed to adopt a dog famously able to turn on people in potentially fatal fashion.

Flatmate and Other Flatmate are watching Alan Alda and Hot Jimmy Smits, rapt. I am not allowed in the room because I keep striking up a debate about the lines being recited (Head Start, and then universal health care) and they just care about the characters.

DH is watching football so I'm recording the live debate on WW. And Rome. And L&O:CI next. I'm never going to have time to watch it all.

The sad thing about the live debate WW is that I would rather vote for either of them than the person we have now...

West Wing is reminding me why I dislike unstructured debates.

I bet Smits is smoother in the west coast performance.

Just as you can expect a herding dog to go bonkers with OCD if it doesn't have any herding jobs to do, you kind of have to expect a fighting dog to have a pretty strong fighting instinct.

Yeah, pretty much. My Australian Shepherd used to try to herd anything he could - bugs, mice, toddlers...

That West Wing was interesting.

I am also now obsessed with that Amazon Mechanical Turk thing ita linked to earlier. I am making many $.03s for looking at photos for A9. It satisfies my annoyance over when the pictures are bad.

Damn, Kristen -- shall we start a group home for the intermittently able?

I wonder if ita is contagious with the fainting? Kristen, I hope you're feeling better!

George is George. I like him when he's competent otherwise I kinda want to walk all over him, which isn't an appeal factor for me.

So, what I really should have done earlier was ask Nilly for her help with my graphs.... Is there any good/easy way to draw super simple graphs with regular MS Office? I literally just need x and y axis and one straight line, and excel wants me to be doing something different than I am, apparently.