Rick:

We sometimes play a drinking game at banquets on the final day of scientific conferences. Based on the anticipated topics of the featured speaker, each person at the table chooses a word that the speaker is likely to say frequently. Every time the distinguished visitor says your word you have to drink.

At one of these dinners where the speaker was a well-known statistician one of my friends choose the word "variance." The speaker never said variance, but she kept saying 'standard deviation.' We held a quick conference and decided that our friend had to drink every time we heard 'standard deviation,' but she only had to drink the square root of the amount the rest of us were drinking.

Can we get through the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere without immortalizing Tom Scola's tagline?

Stupid Earth! Start tilting towards the Sun! [Kicks Earth]

(ETA: Obviously not....)

TomW:

There's an American Pie Council? Promoting pie must be the easiest job in the world! I want that job!

Me: "For our next campaign, I'm thinking... a picture of a pie, with the slogan: PIE!"

Representative of 'Big Pie': "I love it! Here's a large sack of money and the first of many complimentary pies!"

Me: "Mmm, blueberry caramel..."

Big Pie, hee!

Ah, Christmas carols in Natter:

Betsy HP

I like the really old English songs, the ones about getting blotto on cider and holly trees and suchlike.

TomW

We are a simple folk. We sing, we dance, we drink, we puke in a holly bush.

UTTAD, in Natter:

Two of my mates had a kid last year, so this was my first time I've watched a baby grow up close at hand. The first time he said "apple" I couldn't've been more surprised if my cat said it.

Rio: Um, I've already mentioned this in Music and Natter, so I may as well make a big fucking thing about it. I'm getting married.

In bigger news: still cute.

...

(new COMM)

Nora: I was under the impression that if you 3 (+dogs) weren't going she'd be all by herself, alone in a dark room, listening to Leonard Coen, bourbon bottle in one hand, whisky bottle in the other.

brenda: Now that's Christmas.

Deena, in Goodbye and Good Riddance: My secret santa gift is going to be delayed going out because Kara stole part of it yesterday and I have yet to find it.

Cashmere:

Allyson, every cat deserves a theme song like that. My cat's would go something like this:

Oooooooswald, the evil little kitty
Oooooooswald, he likes to bite my toes and trip me
What the fuck ever possessed me to get another cat

ita, in Natter:

I understand now I will never be the homemaker that my mother is. Which is fair, since she can't kick people in the head.