Off the Map is sounding more and more like a great choice for when I'm sitting around drinking wine tonight and trying not to think about the black hole of work I'm about to drop into starting next week. Thanks guys!

I mean, who doesn't know the word "gringo?" NB: there are other annoying things, I'm just stuck on the language right now. I've never taken Spanish, but I recognize the words for "thirteen," "whitey," and "wife." (Okay, I have learned three other Romance languages, but still.)

Off The Map might turn out to be the sort of cheese that irritates me so strongly that I can't keep going, even though I like a couple of the cast members a fair amount.

Maybe if I'd grown up poorer or richer it wouldn't be so bad, but I feel kinda oddly fetishised right now.

serial: I found it interesting what they didn't translate. The male patient's speech at the end went untranslated. Was the assumption that we all know what "Ayude a mi familia" (errors because my Spanish was a long time ago) means?

Well, I did my nails, and with the quick-dry coat, I can now do laundry and treadmill and still get ready for work at 1p. Still annoyed with work people, except for the one who is being flexible and accommodating. Love that. I just need to be more of a hardass, probably. But that's so exhausting. People just need to behave, is what.

I mean, who doesn't know the word "gringo?" NB: there are other annoying things, I'm just stuck on the language right now. I've never taken Spanish, but I recognize the words for "thirteen," "whitey," and "wife." (Okay, I have learned three other Romance languages, but still.)

Seriously that's just stuff you should know from living in the world.

My niece speaks Spanish and Portuguese (and English), and the Peace Corps keeps trying to send her to Francophone countries, and she's all 0.o -- whyfor make her learn a new language? But if they have too many Spanish speakers, that explains it.

I have decided today will be a better day than yesterday. I have started it off with cake.

Also, NPR had an interesting report about a study of failed assassins, and the conclusion of the study was that these guys are just like the kids who shoot up schools: they do it to be famous. They are depressed and feel like nonentities, assassins are famous, ergo be an assassin! There's almost no real political content to the act at all, apparently.

So the answer is to stop publicizing the names of assassins and mass murderers. That's my solution, anyway.

And stop paying attention to Sarah Palin, because she's just a troll.

I'm so a Cancer that there's no way I'm now a Gemini. I call shenanigans.

Besides, when people working with the BCE/AD calendar switched from Julian to Gregorian, didn't they go back 10 days? So that would account for over a third of the alleged zodiac sign slippage right there.

The switch made dates skip forward, not backward. In the UK it was September 2nd, and the next day was September 14th. And then Faction Paradox purchased those missing days from George III and gave him a woolly mammoth, of course.

...I might be learning history from unreliable sources.

Sarameg, if your trunk line goes out, keep an eye out for Hardison. I bet he'd love Charm City anyway.