Dog Toy or Marital Aid? I’m rather surprised to announce that I got 11 out of 14 correct! I swear it’s just because of all the time I’ve spent in the pet store getting things for the cat. Really. (Link courtesy of John.)

Notre Dame vs. the KKK. Fascinating stuff. Like Brigita, I’m wondering why I never heard this story while I was a student…

Amy! Check it out: Lynn Truss, who wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves, is coming to Sydney! She’s appearing at a Literary Lunch on the 31st. Can you make it? Total grammar geek fest!

Inappropriate…

… Umbrellas. We had two days of rain this week and each morning I hate to fight my way to work through a sea of self-important wankers carrying golf umbrellas on the sidewalk. Look, people, it’s raining. Accept that your feet are going to get a little wet and give the rest of us a break. This whole umbrella-size arms race is just ridiculous. I started envisioning a sketch (for the little comedy show that plays in my head, of course) involving a person carrying a patio table umbrella down George Street in Sydney. You know, like the guy with the big phone on Trigger Happy TV. That cheered me up a little.

… Children. I understand that the shop appeals to mostly female customers, and that many of those customers spend their days at home taking care of their kids. I understand that coming to a beautiful shop to indulge in their hobby must feel like a wonderful little vacation. I just wish they’d leave the damn kids at home. Every single day some mother comes in dragging her offspring, only to park them in the corner and ignore them while she shops. If it’s a baby, it will inevitably start to scream and cry (while blocking traffic in it’s inevitably Inappropriate Large Stroller). If they’re ambulatory, they’ll run up and down the length of the store while yelling. I’m not exaggerating. Our shop has lots of beautiful, shiny, colorful, expensive things that the young dears just love to run their sticky hands over and pull off the shelves into a heap. If anything, these experiences only serve to dampen yet further the nearly-inaudible tickings of my own biological clock.

… Old Ladies. Look, I like being appreciated. I go out of my way to help customers and it’s nice when they thank me. There’s a line, though, and occasionally it gets crossed. Like today, when a 70-year-old woman kissed me and then – I swear – propositioned me. Seriously. All because I put some wool on hold for her and promised that I’d keep it til she came back for her next knitting class. She thanked me profusely while grasping my hand and I tried to leave it at that, but she had a grip of steel and I surrendered to the inevitable cheek smooch, thinking that’d be the end of it. “Oh, you are just so special! What would we do without this girl? Isn’t she the greatest! I just wish I could take you home with me! Not only will you be kept, you’ll be fed and watered too!” *double take* What, what, what? Creepy old lady.

I’m a hometrotter.

My sister’s been adding some more photos to her wedding website, if you’re interested. Thank GOD she hasn’t put one of me up yet. I can only imagine the photographic horrors she could unleash upon the world. (This is where my forethought in offering her webspace on my server – to which I have the password! – is an outright godsend.)

How did you decided what you wanted to do with your life? I’m weighing in on the big questions over at MetaFilter.

64=65? I was a little wigged at first til I discovered how it cheats.

Congratulations to my old college friend Hoey and his wife Brigid, who’re expecting their first child any day now! Hoey used my sock monkey tutorial to make a monkey for the nipper. He’s gonna be a cool dad.

*Dark Tower Spoiler Warning!*
So I finished Song of Susannah. She didn’t die, yet. Man, that one really sucked though. As I explained it to Snookums this morning, it’s like in the middle of The Lord of the Rings, if Sauron suddenly realized that a man named JRR Tolkien was writing his story on another plane of existence and decided to keep the good guys from winning by arranging for a van to, you know, run Tolkien over when he was out on his morning constitutional in Oxford one day. It sucks. Mostly I’m pissed off because about halfway through the book it became glaringly apparent to me how heavily the conclusion was going to draw upon actual, real world events of the past five years. Not only is this cheesy – I actually groaned when the World Trade Center made its appearance – but it just draws attention to the fact that King had no goddamn clue how this was going to end when he started it. I mean, sure, I accept that he didn’t know the exact details, but I figure that an author should have a pretty good idea when he starts out whether the good guys are going to win in the end. Now I’m just cringing. It’s just such a sad, non-Romantic ending for our beloved ka-tet. (As I said to the Snook, “This book just got so meta I think my brain’s going to fall out.”) And good grief, the whole revelation of who Susannah’s baby’s father is? I could’ve puked. Really. He had to put Mordred in the story? Mordred??? I really, really hope King can pull out a satisfying conclusion to this series because right now book 6 out of 7 has left me incredibly frustrated. I didn’t realize how attached I’d become to the characters until he left them all up to their necks in cheesy, meta, cliffhanger crap.