Hmm. It turns out my experiment this morning might not have been entirely scientifically accurate.

Cruel irony. Tara D, who’s been defending Valentine’s Day to me all week, just had the shittiest one EVER. Some jerk stole her wallet at the grocery store and then went on a spending spree. I’d explain more, but you really should read her version of it. I mean, she’s a professional comedian, so despite the suckiness of what happened, her re-telling of it is still the funniest thing I’ve read in a while.

Slashdot’s Commander Taco proposed to his girlfriend yesterday via the website! That’s the cutest thing ever.

On a related note, Channel 7 here has a new show called “Marry Me” where they film outrageous public marriage proposals. Snook astutely predicted that I’d love it. It’s not that I have a thing for weddings or anything. It’s just that these poor guys do the most embarrassing things, and they’re so nervous, and you just have to laugh.

In case you didn’t see it, my friend Stefanie came up with a great link about why Jennifer Connelly’s up for Best Supporting Actress instead of Best Actress. I still think she was scared of the competition, though.

Are you a music loser? How many of these albums do you have? If you’ve got twelve or more, you might be a Dido fan. (I have six, but if you count mp3’s of the bands mentioned, it goes much higher. Thus I’m probably a loser.)

Oscar nominees are out. A few thoughts:

• Good for Will Smith and Denzel Washington! For the first time ever, two black men are nominated in the “Best Actor” category.
• Renee Zellweger? Please. (I’m so over my pro-her phase.) All she did was put on a few pounds. Her accent was actually terrible, we discovered (when we didn’t watch the screen). Whoever thought that both Renee Zellweger and Ethan Hawke would be nominated for Oscars??
• I haven’t seen the movie, but doesn’t Jennifer Connelly have, like, the leading female role in A Beautiful Mind? Did they call it a supporting role just so she wouldn’t have to go up against Sissy Spacek?
• Personally, I think the artistic categories are the really difficult ones to call this year. I mean, the costumes in Moulin Rouge and Lord of the Rings were used for completely different purposes, and both brilliantly. How do you pick one over the other??
• It’s nice to see Amelie picked up a few. It’s a shoo-in for Best Foreign Film, I think, seeing as how I’ve never heard of any of the others.
• Wow. They caved to the critics and threw David Lynch a bone. My sister hated that movie.

I expect my friend Kel’s annual “Oscar Pick ‘Em Contest” e-mail to be arriving soon. Anybody got any hot tips?

Did you ever look for the star on a Tootsie Roll Wrapper? I was always told that if you found one, you could send it in for a prize (or make a wish on it or something). Turns out it’s just another urban legend.

“The World of the Laid-Off Techie.” Oh god. Sometimes stuff like this comes along, and it just makes me so scared that we made the wrong decision in leaving our jobs in London. It wasn’t, right?

A question for you English-teacher writer types: is there a word that means to put things in order numerically? Kind of like “alphabetize”, but with numbers? Because that’s what I just did with about a bazillion Harry Potter trading cards. 🙂