Oh, I know - he reshapes himself into the shape of one of the things that goes through the pneumatic tubes, and shoots rapidly towards his foe! while he makes cool pneumatic tube noises!

The NPR link on online communities offering condolences. [link]

Also, I need both a cabana boy and multiple pnematic tubes.

(Today, it was some sort of support thing that goes around your waist to relieve some of the strain of holding the baby? )

Before birth or after? Cause I have a binder that I was given post birth. I used to have a maternity belt but that got given away.

I eagerly await the first major metropolitan area brave enough to institute a Futurama-style public transit by pneumatic tube system.

NY did that about 15 years or so before they started building the subway system. The one-block length that was constructed was only partly successful, and ended up being abandoned after only being a curiosity. When they were expanding the subway system some 40 years later, they discovered the pneumatic-tube prototype, still with the beautiful waiting area and first-class car. You can read about it here.

I heard on NPR this morning how Facebook communities are being set up.

Yeah. This was kind of about how online friends do provide comfort and support even without ever having met. It's pretty much the exact opposite of what this person says in the DMN Blog.

Please don't indulge in godless modern paganism and set up homely, self-indulgent makeshift memorials with cheap flowers and teddy bears. Don't hold hands and sing bad pop songs.

I'm not sure how makeshift memorials are any more self-indulgant than any other kind of expression of grief. And I'd prefer we didn't hold hands and sing bad pop songs, but that has more to do with my dislike of public displays of affection and (most) bad pop songs than what I think is an appropriate response to a tragedy like this. Also, shut up Kathy Shaidle! Who are you to tell people how to grieve.

Go to church. That's what it's for. For centuries, people smarter than you and with more finely honed aesthetics worked on rituals that actually do what they're supposed to do.

Ah. I see. Greiving is only appropriate for the religious, expressed in religious ways.

Asshole.

I eagerly await the first major metropolitan area brave enough to institute a Futurama-style public transit by pneumatic tube system.

[link]

In 1869, Alfred Ely Beach and his Beach Pneumatic Transit Company of New York secretly began constructing a pneumatic subway line beneath Broadway. Its single tunnel, 312 feet long, 8 feet in diameter, was completed in 1870 and ran under Broadway from Warren Street to Murray Street.[1] The line was built as a demonstration of a pneumatic transit system, open to the public with fares donated to charity. It remained little more than a curiosity, running only a single car on its one-block-long track to a dead-end at its terminus.

Have we discussed Amber Benson's upcoming movie that seems to be about keeping cabana boys?

I know one of the leads and saw a test screening. I think the final cut is much like what I saw (which means the director ignored my very perceptive feedback). I did enjoy it, although Tara has been wiped from my mind and replaced with something more...different.

Subway restaurants often have wallpaper depicting the pneumatic tube subway on its demonstration to the public.

Before birth or after? Cause I have a binder that I was given post birth. I used to have a maternity belt but that got given away.

I think it's an after thing that supports some of the weight of the baby.

Can there be any more beautiful sight than a Buffista pneumatic tube subway crosspost? Not this minute, anyway. None more beautiful.