Tetris Shelves. I LOVE THAT. How pathetic is it that upon looking at the unit on the left, I immediately started planning the next moves to fix the “hole”? Very. (Link courtesy of John.)

Oh Snookums… This is for you.

US Robot Builds Copies of Itself. Does this completely blow anyone else’s mind?

Is your monitor a little dusty? Try this. (Cutest link EVER courtesy of John.)

Huh? Rolf friggin’ Harris is going to be painting Queen Elizabeth’s 80th birthday portrait. That’s right, the guy who invented the wobble board and sang “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport.” (The Snook informs me that he thankfully no longer sings the “Let me Abos go loose, Bruce” stanza.)

Like Kevin, I’m hopeful that I’ve grown up enough that the forthcoming Dark Crystal sequel wouldn’t scare the bejeezus out of me the way the original did… but who are we kidding, right? The sight of that poor little Podling in the Skeksis torture machine will HAUNT MY NIGHTMARES FOREVER.

More Sew Fast, Sew Evil bitchery. The pseudo-anonymous Karen, who’s been running around leaving identical nonsense comments in support of SFSE (on blogs like mine, Amy’s, bitter girl‘s, and girl from auntie‘s, among others), has started her own blog in an attempt to discredit the critics. Whatever. I love that she’s already deleting comments too.

All day I’ve been following this Ask MetaFilter thread about whether most women change or keep their names upon getting married. My own contribution is in there, but just in case any of you didn’t get the memo, I kept my name. We toyed with the idea of combining our names into some SuperSurname, but “Snook” and “Howard” don’t really form anything cool. Besides, I can’t imagine changing something so fundamental about my identity. It’s not a genealogy thing so much; there’s lots of Howard boys to carry on the line. It’s just that I’ve been Kristy Howard for so long that it would be too weird to be anything else. I’m willing to concede that my feelings might be different if my surname were difficult to pronounce or spell, but Howard is just about perfect: everybody recognizes it yet it isn’t as boring or ubiquitous as Smith or Jones. (Apologies to any offended Joneses.) Anyway, I was intrigued by this comment from the thread:

Data point: in Korea all women keep their family surnames. This seems paradoxical, given the low status of women in Korean society, but it’s all about bloodlines here. Paternal ones.

How about that? I was following ancient Korean tradition without even realizing it!

Ebert finally panned a Jennifer Lopez movie! And there was much rejoicing.

Wow. What an Amazing Race. (Look away, Andrew!) Finale reaction to follow.As I said over in the comments at TMFT, it was a pretty satisfying conclusion to the season. Hooray for Uchenna and Joyce! Yet even amidst our celebrations, the Snook and I were like, “CBS TOTALLY HELD THAT PLANE.” There’s just no way. I didn’t want to see Rob and Amber run away with it, but I don’t like seeing them screwed over either. They hustled their asses off for that flight. WHO ROLLS BACK THE JETWAY? Nobody. Yeah, the “pilot” okayed it. That’s only because Phil was in the Control Tower asking him to over the intercom. (Mmm, sexy Phil the air traffic controller!)

And besides, it was never going to be as thrilling as Chip and Kim’s victory because there weren’t any real villains (other than Ray) this season. Colin and Christie were worthy opponents who really, really deserved to win but THANK GOD THEY DIDN’T. I never got that worked up about Rob and Amber. I mostly just didn’t want them to win because they already had a million. (The Snook figures they might have donated it to charity.) If I hadn’t seen them before ever, I totally would’ve been rooting for them to take it out the whole time.

In conclusion, I can only say that I really, really hope they get rid of the whole “take your money away” non-elimination thing next season. Watching Joyce and Uchenne’s hopes fade as they had to beg cash was really difficult. It’s not fun or Amazing. Get rid of it, Phil!