Frank, I'm SO sorry. And I totally respect his decision - smart guy. If he'd not be freaked out by the six degrees of separation thing, I'd totally be up for showing him around Bangkok if he comes out here.

vw, honey, I'm sorry for what you're going through right now. And I'm all admiration for the way you're dealing with it. I think the date sounds lovely.

Shir, my first thought was Jilli - but since the conference was in the UK, probably not. Sounds like a fab conference, though.

So a friend of mine is pushing me to read Twilight. Thoughts anyone?

Um. It's about friendly vampires that glitter and play baseball. In the daylight. And the protagonist is a teenage girl with all the spunk, wit and personality of a dishcloth, and the self-preservation instincts of a kamikaze lemming in a minefield. Her name is Bella Swan. Because Meyer is good at subtlety.

On a kinder note, Meyer does an effective job of pushing various teengirl buttons; it's worth reading to be able to have an educated opinion on the SparkleFang Fandom phenomenon. And, hell, I don't think it's worse than the Sookie Stackhouse books, and yet I seem to have ploughed through most (maybe all?) of those.

It's pretty much the antithesis of BtVS in terms of character and mythos, though.

(Although, Jesus, suddenly I'm longing for crossover fic where Faith stakes Edward.)

(Although, Jesus, suddenly I'm longing for crossover fic where Faith stakes Edward.)

And then makes out with Bella?

(Although, Jesus, suddenly I'm longing for crossover fic where Faith stakes Edward.)

And then makes out with Bella?

Oh, I'd rather see her stake Wonder!Bella! from Breaking Dawn and then teach Edward a thing or two. Then probably stake him as well.

Then again, I'm not known for my subtlety either.

Just had a weird phone call with my mother about video games. The rabbi at her synagogue gave a sermon about them yesterday. He mostly talked about Grand Theft Auto, and said that the games shouldn't be forbidden, since that just makes them more attractive, but that they should be regarded as some Yiddish word that I just forgot, which pretty much means, "so far beneath you that it's not even worth discussing."

She wanted to know what sorts of video games I played now, and what I played when I was a kid. I informed her that now, my usual games are Super Mario Galaxy and Dance Dance Revolution, neither of which involve violence or prostitutes. When I was a teenager, I did play Wolfenstein 3D, and I described that game to her. The violence seemed to disturb her, but the fact that it was violence against Nazis seemed to make it a little better. Also, no prostitutes. Also, I think she's about to have a Talk with my dad about why he let me buy that game in the first place. (I'm sure he doesn't remember why -- it was about 15 years ago.)

I don't know, Hil. Dance Dance Revolution, nah I got nothing. The violence level in the video games bothers me personally so I don't play them. It just isn't my idea of fun to shoot people, but the boys play a number of them. I didn't let them buy GTA or most of the MA rated games. I'm just a big old square. They get plenty of bloodthirsty action in WoW and other games. Without a doubt they play all of them at various friend's houses, but at least they know my feelings on the subject. Mom = killjoy.

Yeah, some of the violent ones are really icky. DW plays Resident Evil - I totally don't have the stomach for it. Give me Mario! Though I do have a game called Bully that is totally not for kids but fun for me!

I don't like the overt violent ones. I say it that way, because I play Civilization, where my general strategy is to crush all the other civilizations before I send my spaceship to Alpha Centauri. Sometimes, I go the diplomatic route by building the United Nations and being uber fertile and the cultural heavyweight, so I always have majority vote. Eventually, I win because I'm so overwhelmingly patronizing nice to everyone. Depends on the mood I'm in.

I could tell that the "those games are beneath you" concept appealed to my mom. A pretty frequent refrain in my childhood was "we don't do that." If I used a swear word, the response from her was "We don't use that word." Table manners were taught with things like "We don't talk with our mouths full" or "We don't read at the table." With the clear implication that there might be some other, low-class people who did that stuff, but we didn't. (Which kind of backfired on her when I was about seven, and we were in a store around Christmas time, and a clerk finished up the sale and said, "Merry Christmas." I replied, in that exact some tone, "We don't celebrate Christmas. Happy Chanukah.")

Morning/timelies everyone. I woke up with an incredibly stuffed up nose and sore throat. Again. The doctor had given me an antibiotic prescription last week just in case, and I've been avoiding filling it because I don't want to take unnecessary antibiotics, but I'm seriously considering filling it at this point since this ick will not die. It's possible this is an infection, isn't it? I'm wondering if the pneumona earlier this year has just shot my immune system to hell, because this is ridiculous.

Kristin, have they determined if it is strep or not? I remember that it was going to take some time to get the test results back, but I didn't recall if that had happened yet or not.