A speller reinstated! Imagine if she wins.

Shocking!

Oh, Cindy, I can only imagine what was going through your mind. I know I scared the beejesus out of my folks when I was around 3-4 by swallowing something I found in one of my mother's unused purses. I thought it was an M'n'M, but it tasted too nasty and when I told my mother? Oy. Very fast visit to the doctor's office. Thank heavens my kids never did that to me.

As for teachers expressing their opinions, I'm all for it as long as they make clear it is an opinion and not a fact. There are times, though, when an opinion is well worth being fired for. I saw a judge here in Wisconsin get recalled for expressing opinions from the bench that were so sexist he was lucky he wasn't lynched in situ by the gallery. When he let a couple of 15-year-old rapists off because the young lady was wearing "provocative clothing" and expressed the belief that any woman who didn't wear sleeves down to the wrist and skirts down to the ankles deserved what she got he was nearly instantly recalled. It was great, they elected a female judge!

Christopher. In the lav. On the lav, actually. [link]

Not!Linking!!!

I can't help giggling at the post-elimination interview with the spellers -- "What was going through your mind as you tried to spell that last word?"

"Well, Larry, I was actually thinking 'Son of a BITCH!'"

t edit Danm, these words are really fucking hard!

I know!

But I'm happy that there were words I could get like paillon or towhee.

I've broken in the top 100 of new Natter, time for bed. No storms here yet. Wish they'd come through, it's HOT.

We didn't get our predicted storms (they all went south or north of here) but the weather still broke.

The Anti-Dominionists are fast approaching Tinfoil hat time.

I was coming here to take issue with this point, because I find the Dominionists (and the Pre-Millennialists, yes I know the difference) to be incredibly terrifying and so beyond tinfoil hat-land that little said in response to them can, IMO, be considered tinfoil-hatty.

However, I see that beth took up the issue, and that Cindy clarified, and I also know that Cindy (and other Christians around here) can sometimes feel piled upon in these discussions.

Still, I'm so thankful for any and every voice that speaks up against these movements that I get a little knee-jerky about accusations of tinfoil hattiness.

Really, I think more Christians like you, Cindy, need to speak up about this stuff, because I and others like me are automatically ruled out as any kind of valid voice on this topic. Yes, I know that many of these people would lump you in with me, just because you do not share their beliefs, but other, less conviced Christians, might just be swayed by a fellow Christian voice, where they would probably not even listen to anything I had to say.

Okay, done now. I'm sorry, Cindy. I hope you don't feel piled upon.

Clearly you need to know Hebrew, French and Persian (Farsi) to get far in this spelling bee.