Wow. I was poking around at The Leaky Cauldron trying to lift my spirits with some Harry Potter-related goodness, when I came across this quote:

“I say to you all, once again – in the light of Lord Voldemort’s return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Lord Voldemort’s gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust. Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.” – Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

That’s a wonderful quote, and I applaud whoever thought to apply it. And, of course, many thanks to J.K. Rowling for penning it in the first place.

A couple weeks ago I mentioned a breakthrough in “parasitic computing” at my alma mater. I predicted that a lot of people at the university would have moral qualms about using such technology. I was right.

Not feeling very bloggy today.

I did fix a few things on the Perverts page though. I’ve modified my robots.txt file to keep Google from indexing that page and continuing the positive-porn-feedback loop. I also deleted a few of the fake entries that various people had put in (not that they weren’t funny, but it looks better when they’re all real). And check out the one where the guy starts defending his sexuality! Weird, man.

From Salon:

“I’m proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have,” said 19-year-old Colin Zaremba who marched with the group from Oak Lawn.

Fuck you, Colin. This sort of thing makes me so, so ashamed. I think it’s time to sew a maple leaf on my backpack and start saying “aboot”. I don’t want anyone to lump me in with people like this.

My sister, who is home sick today, called me to say she just watched a special Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace on television. Apparently for the first time ever they altered the ceremony and played the U.S. national anthem. A lot of people have been gathered there and at the U.S. embassy to mourn. Books of condolence have been set up. I wish I were out there instead of in here.

(On a more light-hearted note, that picture of Brendan Fraser is pretty funny. I mean, he’s looking right at the photographer like, “Don’t take a picture of me. I look like hell. Don’t take a picture of me.” I mean, I’m not laughing at him, but rather at the fact that the BBC used it anyway.)

I just got the Nostradamas e-mail forward again. Thank God for Snopes.

Giuliani’s the man. I couldn’t agree more. While I’ve never been a big fan of the guy, he’s holding the city together right now and he’s encouraging a lot of people to get on with their lives. He’s a lot more reassuring than Bush, anyway.

The dinner went well. Snookums settled the menu question by asking for chili, since he likes it a lot. So I made chili and corn bread. The Americans were both from the South and the tragedy didn’t seem to affect them much. As for Jann’s “getting hammered” idea… Ugh. I’m hungover. I hate the world. Thanks, buddy.

Choire has pictures from today. Go there now.

Nice to see that even during an international crisis, there are still those determined to get their daily share of porn. Ugh.