So hey, you know who's crazy? Kirk Cameron.

That is one dude I so hope doesn't get Left Behind.

My God, Kirk Cameron looks freakishly like CFerg in that picture.

In college my sister had one of those sitcom "no one loves me! Why isn't anyone celebrating my birthday????" days and then bang! Surprise party! Not that I was invited, but it seemed to cheer her up.

You know what b.org needs? A satellite! We can get one put into Earth orbit for only $8000 - we'd have to build it first, but I'd volunteer to do that....

The 8k Personal Satellite (and Other Space Adventures)

But I read somewhere else that these satellites would only remain in orbit for about 30 days. If that's the case, I say forget it; I'd expect a Buffista satellite to remain in orbit for years....

Not that I was invited

Are/were you bitter?

When my sibs and I threw a surprise 60th for Mom, Dad looked at all of us and warned us on with the glare of "damnit, I mean it!" to not even consider doing the same for him the following year.

Mom's party went really well--not only did she have no clue about the party itself, she had no clue that Sis was flying in from Seattle and that Bro and his family of five were driving in from New Jersey not only for the party, but also to spend the week with her afterwards. She was ecstatic to have everyone together for the first time in years (she had retired by then, so didn't have to worry about work that week), and saw family and friends at the party she hadn't seen in forever.

Are/were you bitter?

Nah, it was her college friends. To this day she's probably more bitter some of them were friendlier with me than with her (well, at least one guy). I'm not sure if I'd known about it if I would have been able to manage her better.

She did have the decency to be very embarrassed with me when she told me about the party.

I was supposed to be the surprise guest to my father's 70th--he insists it was good, I was a surprise, just that I wasn't there when he found out--he had to be told ahead of time in order for him to make the trip for the weekend getaway--he wanted to cancel because of the weather.

Weather was lovely, as things turned out.

Aims, just an aside, I wasn't criticizing your sister at all. Middle school kids deserve a harsh smackdown on a pretty regular basis. I say things in class all the time that are almost at the edge of over the top because sometimes it's the only way to get a reaction. I just know that when I've done the make a hard and fast rule on the fly, it occasionally comes around and bites me in the ass (last year I gave the same quiz 18 days in a row until everyone in the class had a 70% or higher (hideous typo fixed). That's what I got for saying we'd take it until everyone passed).

is is a young teacher - only in her third year - and maybe it wasn't the best way to handle the situation. She's still learning her ropes. But she's a damn good teacher.

Best or not, it was the way she handled it and, from what you said, it works for her. Like all relationships seen from the outside, you can't know what is really going on unless you are in it and even then you might not know.

Today a 12th grader showed up in a "I heart Hot Moms" shirt and I gave him a hard time about it. I said it was inappropriate and he wondered why. I pointed out he probably didn't want people looking at his mom and thinking about whether or not she was hot enough to have sex with so he probably shouldn't do the same to other kids' moms. He took the shirt off, turned it inside out and put it back on.

I probably would handle it differently if I had to do it again. But it was effective.

Uh-oh. National Punctuation Day: Take The Huffington Post Punctuation Quiz!

I call bullshit on the Comma question. I see nothing wrong with the first one, and the second one has the comma outside the quotation marks.

Passive voice lets you point the finger without actually saying your boss didn't do his job.

This is an excellent use of the passive voice. I'm forced to use the passive voice in some articles because no one remembers who did something; everyone remembers who did it, but they don't want to embarrass him in a national magazine; or they want the mythical "team" to get the credit. This results in such sentences as: "The valve was not closed in time."