Seriously, I will, Vortex. She's a great kid.

This was all a lead-in to the announcement that, at the next conference, they would schecht (ritually slaughter) a goat, which led to controversy in the Jewish/progressive/environmental blogsphere for MONTHS.

Maybe it would have been less controversial if they'd let ita kill it.

I've caught fish that I've eaten - I just never killed and gutted them. (I don't think I've kept a fish I've caught since high school.)

There was a Jewish sustainable food conference about a year ago where one of the speakers asked "How many of you are vegetarian, but would eat meat if you had personally killed the animal?" and "How many of you eat meat, but wouldn't if you had to see the animal die?" and got a pretty decent number of hands raised for both.

I've been thinking recently that as a meat eater, I should become more familiar with the way the animals I eat are slaughtered. (A common vegetarian critique of meat-eating is most meat-eaters are only familiar with the meat as it comes prepared or packaged for them.) So it's sort of a "If I'm going to be responsible for the deaths of animals, I should be more familiar with what goes into their killing, so I can make an educated decision on whether it's OK...." But so far, I haven't done much along these lines. (Other than watch my dad kill and gut fish.)

my current tivo doesn't communicate well with the cable box, and I often miss shows because the channel doesn't change.

If you read the fine print on that email, it says that the Tivo HD boxes have CableCARD built-in, so you wouldn't need a set-top box anymore.

(Yes, I'm tempted to spend my tax refund on this instead of paying off credit cards.)

Tivo just sent me an email about a special deal -- HD tivo, lifetime subscription, $700, free wireless adapter. great deal, I shoudn't do it, it don't need it.

Oh man oh man.

If you read the fine print on that email, it says that the Tivo HD boxes have CableCARD built-in, so you wouldn't need a set-top box anymore.

yes, this is why I want it, and not my current one. I would keep the old one because it has a DVD burner.

T. Rex discusses how tattoos are made of awesome: [link]

I need to find a way to support programs like this because for so many kids like her and her peers here in city schools, college is so much not even an option they don't even dream about it. And she's one of the lucky ones because she's got a dad who is determined she'll go to college because he didn't.

I've worked for places that do college prep stuff like this, and the way I always explained it to people is it's all the stuff that middle-class college educated parents would do as a matter of course, but these kids don't have those parents, so they need these programs.

ION, I keep meaning to go to my local live chicken place, but I never think of it when I want to cook a whole chicken!

Judy Heiblum, a literary agent at Sterling Lord Literistic, shudders at the memory of some attempted date-talk about Robert Pirsig’s 1974 cult classic “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” beloved of searching young men. “When a guy tells me it changed his life, I wish he’d saved us both the embarrassment,” Heiblum said, adding that “life-changing experiences” are a “tedious conversational topic at best.”

I hear her. I think I retroactively bitchslapped someone when I finally read that book.

Break up? I think if I really liked him, and liked him basically on topics the book might have to do with, it would be strange to break up with him over one. If he thought The Da Vinci Code was 42, how did I not notice this until just now?

In which case, he must be very good in bed, so I might have to keep him around.

As for food, oh that would be hard. I'd like to think that if they could take care of their own food that would be just fine--don't let their choices cut into my social life.

Practically it would never work with a vegan, but probably could with a vegetarian. Raw foodists need not even consider applying.

If you DIDN'T like the Beatles and found some fellow freak that didn't like the Beatles that might be something.

This is how I'll know.

it would have been less controversial if they'd let ita kill it.

I like to help where I can. I'll never be Nelson Mandela, but I'll do my bit.

Polgara! I have to cook and eat now and then go to bed for the night. It's way too late other way round.

T. Rex discusses how tattoos are made of awesome: [link]

That one is awesome! The last panel especially cracked me up....

I need to find a way to support programs like this because for so many kids like her and her peers here in city schools, college is so much not even an option they don't even dream about it. And she's one of the lucky ones because she's got a dad who is determined she'll go to college because he didn't.

That just about killed me when I taught high school in the East Village (Ukranian and Polish immigrants, or kids of) and they had no idea that college was even a possibility. I was so happy when I ran into one of them working years later in one of the research rooms at the NYPL.