folks outside of The Box don't understand why this is so upsetting

Yeah, I was trying to explain to my sister this morning about the damage done by pseudicides (like Lennay Kekua or the weremonkey), and she didn't really get it.

So, Vortex, let me say that I'm sorry. Cancer sucks.

I had astigmatism--identically shaped in each eye, I learned, the least useful unique talent to have-- and got LASIK five years ago. So I just want to point out that it's not a complete bar, if anyone thinks it is. But I imagine most of us are too old for it now anyway.

I'm in one of those meetings where I need to explain what the effect of a site map that doesn't match the site has on the user (there are screenshots to show a place where the site map is missing pages on teh site).

Why does anyone need that explained to them? You don't have to be technical to understand that, right? The site map is wrong. Fix the fucking site map. Why do I need to write down "the user cannot use the site map to navigate the site"?

I think people need to relax, breathe deeply, and pretend that things aren't complicated. The problem with flinching is that you can't investigate during a flinch. You can't collect information during a flinch. You're not learning during a flinch.

There is definitely a degree to which being unashamed of not knowing is a good thing--but it's good if it helps you know. If it instead bolsters your lack of knowledge by making sure you never have to think, it's a negative. You will not catch up.

And it's not that people are stupid--they clearly know complex things, and not such alien things that a site map is way outside their zone of comprehension. They work on web applications for a living. They just hear one or two keywords and boom! Interpretation shuts down.

None of that was what I came here to type.

I'm desperately trying to draw a shippy pornish picture and there isn't room for all the arms. Which, clearly, is like life, but I can't work out how to solve the appendage issues.

That wasn't it either. What...right!

I don't get the point of this up-goer five text editor other than as an exercise is semi-pointless simplicity, but I'm finding it more interesting to read than to write. Premise being: explain something using a vocab of the thousand most common English words. So, apparently, this results:

EVEN MORE SPACE FIGHTS

Remember how the space driving guy got sent to the other bad guy in a really cold box? When he woke up, he was at the bad guy's house and there were bad guys ALL AROUND. But soon, the kid and the lady and the computer guys showed up to save him, and the kid had got so good at SPACE POWERS that soon all the bad guys were falling down into a mouth in the ground. He'd even got a new hand! Everyone got away, but they learned that the man in black had made a new big space house with big space guns, and even with all their best space fighting cars they couldn't make it go on fire because it had a space bag around it. The kid went back to the little old green man to learn more about SPACE POWERS, and everyone else tried to break the space bag so they could make the big space house go on fire. The kid came back and let his dad catch him and take him to his crazy old friend, who said it was okay to be sad or mad or angry because it made you better at SPACE POWERS. But the kid didn't believe him, and they had a big fight. But just when it looked like the kid was losing, his dad picked up the crazy old man and threw him away. Then the dad died. The kid escaped just before the big space house went on fire, and there was a big party. You would think that the kid and the lady would get married, but it turned out she was his sister, so she married the space driving guy instead, even though he was kind of a jerk to her sometimes.

What we can learn from this story is that being happy is the best SPACE POWER.

That is kinda cute.

xkcd is unsurprisingly adept at this. He is a poster boy for stripping things down. Is he really just one guy? How can he turn out pretty consistent quality for so long? I mean, I don't think I hate anything I've read of his--not all of it is the best, but most of it's not the worst. Impressive.

Now, back to the hand job logistics.

ita !, this [link] is a distributor for the U.S., including California.

That is kinda cute.

It really is, and now I have a mental image of Pope Benedict XVI Emperor Palpatine being hurled to his doom by Johnny Cash.

Thanks, Ginger. Unfortunately their store locator doesn't seem product-aware, so I will email. This I will do for the tropical sweet potato, because it's so fucking delicious. I can't believe I'm under the spell of that and the plantain tart at the same time. Apparently Sandy hit crops of both foods, but I still had at least 2 plantain tarts a day, and sweet potato in whatever form I could find it (one store in the airport didn't have enough US$ change, so I took it in sweet potato pudding instead).

I had a vague idea that I'd knuckle down and learn to cook Jamaican food properly, but I don't cook any food regularly right now. However, baking sweet potatoes is nice and simple and just about my spoonage.

she married the space driving guy instead, even though he was kind of a jerk to her sometimes

Doesn't it just look like Firefly curtain fic? That's no archetype!

bt, did you click on the solo link I posted a few back? I think you'll either like it the most, or find it the most boring and redundant. I hope the spirit in which it's given helps a little.

Vortex,

I'm so sorry. I remember him too. Man.

Re: contact lenses

I used to wear them when I was a teenager, but around my mid-20s, my astigmatism became so bad that contacts don't work. This became disastrous when I went for a fitting at my optometrist and leaving his office, a contact lens slipped and tore and came out of my eye. A piece was left in! I couldn't get it after eye flushing and an ophthalmologist thought I was crazy when I said something was in my eye and thought I just needed to clean my eyelids more (!!).

2 weeks after that appointment, the other piece fell out of my eye.

The optometrist was using contact lens samples that were expired and I think that may have contributed to the contact lens behavior.

Was Mike a MoBeefer? The name sounds familiar, but it's been so long since I was in those parts.

Randomly, pretty much, I stumbled upon a fan-suggested new WW costume (in light of the really stupid Jim Lee rework, and ... whoa. I don't go around pissing in people's cereal, but part of me wants to tell him that women don't voluntarily do that, and Wonder Woman is more autonomous than most.

bt, did you click on the solo link I posted a few back? I think you'll either like it the most, or find it the most boring and redundant. I hope the spirit in which it's given helps a little.

I had not, but I have now, and I like it. "Go home, evolution, you are drunk." However, it does feel redundant. There are plenty of sites devoted to odd-looking animals (such as my sister's wedding photos on flickr). This really needs an additional reason to justify its existence. The humour, for the most part, isn't sharp enough to do so.

My preference would be for more detail. The anole entry, for instance, was interesting because it wasn't obvious. That's unlikely on a site being played for laughs, though. Another option is given by the pelican picture, which has some photographic interest. (Contrast with the blobfish, which is - in the way of blobfish everywhere - just sitting there.)

I will use this as a segue to spruik Nature's Best Magazine, which publishes some of the best wildlife and nature photography I've ever seen. [link] I feel the latest edition (Fall/Winter - it comes out only twice yearly) exceeded even its usual standards. It also has (which is what brought it to mind) a particularly striking photo of pelicans, which you can find by browsing in the gallery here: [link]

Does anyone else watch Parenthood?

is there going to be no mention of Drew and the pregnancy/abortion? So weird to have this huge issue and no mention of it.