I've been known to drag in a couple small rugs, some pillows and a comforter and make a nest next to the toilet when it looks like it's going to be a siege. Also a book, to try to distract myself from thinking about how awful I feel.

It doesn't make the process go any faster, but at least it eases some of the discomfort of the situation....

Consuela, sounds like a virus or food poisoning -- nothing you did!

Cosigned.

Consuela, sounds like what I had a few weeks back. Feel better.

We have arrived at the point in doing taxes where we stare at numbers in befuddlement and I wonder, again, why we didn't pay someone to do this.

Tom Cruise scares me. I know this is more of a reaction than I should have to a movie star, but he does. His sincerity is so...sincere. And there is just so much force behind everything, like this is going to be the handshake where everyone strips naked and pledges their eternal servitude to him. Nothing is casual. "No one has a house that big!" [in order to hang a certificate of Irishness] "I do..." whispers Cruise in a voice that's technically quiet, but blows the top off sotto voce and blasts every consciousness. I'm kinda glad my Graham Norton recording was interrupted.

Apparently Justin Bieber visited the Anne Frank House and wrote in the guest book, "Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a believer."

Not Belieber?

Hey, people who are up to date in British schools--when did "college" become a term for sixth form? I don't know how I could have managed 6 years of schooling (two of which in sixth form) and not be aware of it, so I'm trying to see if I was clueless, or this is a relatively recent term.

"We use sex to communicate more than any other medium," sez Larry Flynt.

Uh, no?

You're right, it was "belieber."

A headhunting firm whose emails I get is having a twitter contest -- most retweets wins. Is it just me, or is that TERRIBLE? I would be so pissed if my friends started retweeting these people incessantly.