Critical commentary from Natter:

Cashmere: Anne Rice sold her Garden District mansion in NO.

AmyLiz: That's actually kind of disappointing.

msbelle: disappointing is her middle name.

Topic!Cindy: Actually, her middle name is dissapointing, but she wouldn't let anyone point that out to her.

Corwood Industries in Music:

This was easily the geekiest rock crowd I've ever seen. Outside, we looked like we were waiting in line for free 20-sided dice.

Plei in F2F, context be damned:

Magic 8 Ball also sez that sez is too easily typed as sex.

Steph L., in Bitches:

Jen, I'm honestly not making light of your statement, but it made me giggle b/c I remembered my rant about commercials with anthropomorphized food -- I mean, take Charlie the Tuna from Starkist Tuna. Here we have a sentient fish that talks and wears a little hat and eyeglasses that call to mind Charles Nelson Reilly. But he talks, and hangs out, and knows other fish -- he's involved in the undersea community. BUT HE'S GOING TO BE LUNCH. And the thing is, he seems really happy to be Starkist tuna, which in turn makes him happy to be someone's future lunch, which would involve, one assumes, his death at the end of a hook. This is really disturbing.

Or the "Get Popcorn With REAL BUTTER!" clip that runs before movies -- these commando droplets of butter are going to great lengths to fling themselves onto a bucket of popcorn, to ensure that the viewer has REAL BUTTER, rather than whatever butter-flavored grease product other movie theaters use. But in doing so, they're GOING TO BE EATEN, which means they're going to die! And they seem really happy about it.

I don't like knowing that my food is (1) sentient, (2) suicidal, and (3) happy about its impending death. It feels too much like cannibalism.

And to illustrate how freaky anthropomorphized food is, I offer you this picture, which is an actual watermelon box at my local grocery store: [link]

I mean, look how happy they are! And they're holding slices of watermelon! That would be like me holding up a human leg, and smacking my lips. Freaky, y'all.

Tom Scola: If you should happen to read a news story of someone beating a coworker to death, shouting "INDOOR VOICE! INDOOR VOICE!", that would be me.

In Natter:

Perkins: Quick, tell me the first thing that comes to mind that you like about yourself.

bon bon: The first thing that came to mind was facility with arguing, and then my brain tried to talk me out of it. I made some excellent points against myself.

In Natter:

Cashmere

I read where Heath Ledger said making out with Jake Gyllenhal wasn't that much fun.

Maybe for HIM. But I'M certainly going to enjoy it.

shrift: I got up early enough this morning that I didn't understand the function of my alarm clock. And it was dark. And there was fog. And other people were out there, driving around, and I hated them a whole lot. The highway made me hate them more. And I had to drive to work really, really fast, because they had coffee there, and oh my god, coffeeeeeeee.

I'm avoiding the desks of certain morning people coworkers, because I seem to be all id, and I think my id has kung fu grip today.

Allyson's suggestion for a new color-coding system to be used for (I think) natural disaster assessment:

A brown alert will mean the shit has hit the fan. Blue will be water up to our eyeballs, red will be the oceans turning to blood, green will be the locusts and frogs, yellow will be, "the POTUS just pissed himself when he heard the news."

Maria, September 1, 2005: In somewhat happier news, today is exactly ONE month before I marry the only man in the world who could possibly love me enough to think my neuroses are cute.