Betsy, on sperm donors:

If you had a catalog, you'd certainly shop as if it were Crate and Barrel.

Now I'm imagining the fathers you'd get from catalogs.

Ikea: Schmööpy. High-grade veneers, superficially flashy, cheap. You will give birth to a collection of body parts, which you will then assemble into a baby. Two years down the pike, your baby will lose an important screw and fall apart.

Restoration Hardware: Bradley Adams Cabot. Tall, slim, blue-eyed. Wears a smoking jacket and waves a martini as he talks, slopping gin everywhere. Very, very expensive. Your baby will be by far the handsomest in the nursery, but will be the only toddler in Pre-Harvard Preschool, who complains to his teacher that things used to be much better run. At adolescence, your baby will hate you for not being Nick and Nora Charles.

Pottery Barn: Jeremy Ryan. Tall, athletic, with warm brown eyes and an inviting smile. Probably gay. Not as expensive as Bradley, but definitely not cheap. Your baby will have a hint of the post-modern; later in life, there will be fights over the inadequate color-coordination of the mother, father, and child.

Gudanov, in Natter, asking for clarification on a discussion of The Office:

I was just going to ask "What is The Office?", but then that made me think about the promos for the first Matrix movie. You know, "What is The Matrix?", and that seemed like a silly comparison. What does being put into a small pod, having the energy sucked out of you, and living in an unreal world have to do with working in an office?

Cass: the baby panda are dead

Phill: But soon it shall rise! An unholy but adorable creature, shambling through the night in quest of bwaiiiiinnnns.

Jesse , on deciphering the sperm donor catalog codes.

"Wholesome looking" to me just reads as code for white. Not that helpful, unless you were afraid he might be purple, due to being Welch.

Matt, on certain un-alluded-to plot developments on Angel:

That mismatch makes it very difficult to immerse myself in the show, whereas the other fantastic elements (demons, vampires, the notion that everyone falls in love with Fred) don't. OK, maybe one of those is likewise off-putting.

ita: Is the Porgy and Bess story any more alien than Oklahoma?

Trudy: Well, the farmer and the cow man should be friends...

Cashmere: I've always thought the immaculate conception was religious retcon.

Trudy Booth: There was no television, they had very little to do.

DX Machina: So, the gospels were fanfic? :)

Trudy Booth: Are they slashy enough to be fic?

DX Machina: Mostly a male cast. IJS...

Trudy Booth:

Steph, how was Mary's conception immaculate? Were her parents, I dunno, virgins on a snowfield during a full moon when they conceived her? Or did G-d hit them with some sort of whammy? OR maybe the glitter twins made it never happen?

Steph L:

*I* don't know. I'm not a Catholic theologian. It's a lot of handwaving, much like the suspension of disbelief one must undergo for parts of Farscape.

Shawn in Natter:

I know people who are off-the-charts well-read, intuitive, gifted, curious, have huge vocabularies and breathtaking abilities in understanding and creating ideas but don't have the common sense or life skills God gave a box of hair because they were so coddled as a youth. And I love my BF anyway.

Betsy in Angel because it's just so true:

Stalking is only attractive and adorable when performed by (A) vampires (B) baby pandas.