Thanks for the birthday wishes!

Oh Java classloader issues, how I hate thee.

For those who don't want government interfering in their lives.

Hee. I really, really need to keep myself from emailing tommyrot's link to my Libertarian nephew, who seems to assume that because his grandmother [on the other side of the family] left him enough money for a great start in life, everyone else will get their college, first car, first few years of health insurance, and first house automatically paid for from family funds. So those people on welfare and unemployment are just, you know, lazy and stuff.

Your nephew sounds like Rush Limbaugh, who gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation over the weekend and basically said that, since he's set with his multi-million dollar contract, everyone else impacted by the recession isn't trying hard enough. I'm guessing he's talking about those 20 percent of Clear Channel employees who were laid off to accommodate their shrinking profit margin--I'm sure that margin is down due in part to that multi-million dollar contract.

Michelle Obama's Sesame Street PSA: "You're Your Child's Best Role Model" (VIDEO)

The First Lady explains:

"If you want your child to have healthy habits, practice healthy habits, too. Because you're your child's best role model."

Sesame Street is certainly making good use of Michelle Obama's influence; as Elmo himself says:

"Well, if Mrs. Obama wants to exercise, Elmo wants to exercise too! Yay exercise!!"

I was tempted to tag Elmo, but decided not to risk causing heads to explode....

Owen got the Scotty Burger King toy and now I am constantly hearing "I'M GIVIN' 'ER ALL SHE'S GOT, CAPTAIN!" in Simon Pegg's voice over and over.

I've got the song "Star Trekkin'" in my head right now:

I canna break the laws of physics
Laws of physics
Laws of physics
I canna break the laws of physics
Laws of physics, Capt'n

We come in peace
Shoot to kill
Shoot to kill...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GLAMCOOKIE!! Pretty lady, have a great day!

I am constantly hearing "I'M GIVIN' 'ER ALL SHE'S GOT, CAPTAIN!" in Simon Pegg's voice over and over.

Does that sound deliciously dirty to anyone else?

It's an alien life form,
But not as we know it,
Not as we know it,
Not as we know it.

It's an alien life form,
But not as we know it,
Not as we know it, Jim.

There's No Klingon Word for Hello

...

Despite the fact that more than 250,000 copies of Okrand's Klingon dictionary have been sold, very few people know how the language really works. There are maybe 20 or 30 people who can hold their own in a live, unscripted Klingon conversation and a few hundred or so who are pretty good with written Klingon.

...

Klingon sentence structure is about as complex as it gets. Most people are familiar with the idea that verb endings can indicate person and number. In Spanish, the -o suffix on a verb like hablar (to speak) indicates a first-person singular subject (hablo—I speak) while the -amos suffix indicates a first-person plural subject (hablamos—we speak). But Klingon uses prefixes rather than suffixes, and instead of having six or seven of them, like most romance languages, it has 29. There are so many because they indicate not only the person and number of the subject (who is doing) but also of the object (whom it is being done to). In the "Live long and prosper" translation above, for example, the Da- on SIQ indicates a second-person subject and a third-person object ("You endure it"), and the bI- on the verb chep indicates a second-person subject and no object ("You prosper").

As if that weren't complicated enough, Klingon also has a large set of suffixes. Attached to the end of the verbs SIQ and chep is the ending -jaj, which expresses "a desire or wish on the part of the speaker that something take place in the future." Klingon has 36 verb suffixes and 26 noun suffixes that express everything from negation to causality to possession to how willing a speaker is to vouch for the accuracy of what he says. By piling on these suffixes, one after the other, you can pack a lot of meaning on to a single word in Klingon—words like nuHegh'eghrupqa'moHlaHbe'law'lI'neS, which translates roughly to: They are apparently unable to cause us to prepare to resume honorable suicide (in progress).

I'm too lazy to italicize all the Klingon here.