web-goddess

So you’ve been deposed from office, extradited to The Hague in the Netherlands, and now you’re standing trial for atrocities your forces committed in Kosovo. What’s the icing on the cake? The airline loses your damn luggage.

Just looking through my comments and discovered a new blog: magician.org.uk. I like the design a lot, and the content is unique. It’s all about magic!

Henmania continues.

Nicole Appleton and Liam Gallagher have named their newborn son “Gene”. Not a very rock and roll name, is it? (Well, except for Gene Simmons, but Liam’s given no indication that he’s a big KISS fan.) As further indication that she’s an idiot, Appleton declared that giving birth was “easier than having a tattoo”. Gallagher, as expected, headed to the pub immediately after the birth. I don’t envy that kid his parents. Oh, and look at his full name: Gene Appleton Gallagher. His initials spell “Gag”!

The EIC report on the world’s most expensive cities is out again. As I mentioned back in January, it costs a friggin’ LOT to live in London. We’ve actually moved up the list a couple of spots and overtaken New York. Interestingly, we’re now #2 in Europe thanks to Oslo jumping five spaces. I had no idea it was so expensive to live in Norway.

Everybody’s been linking to this list of Conversational Terrorism Tactics, which also happens to be a guide to every argument that takes place in our house. Our favorites are “Lunatic Fringe”, “Selective Quotation”, and “Studies Have Shown.” (In fact, we have our own name for that last one. It’s called “Pulling a Woodroffe.”) I’ve also come up with a few additions to the list based on arguments we’ve actually had in the last week:

GEOGRAPHISM:
If a person is making a good argument that you cannot refute by any other means, make reference to some incident in their country of origin’s history that has nothing to do with the point and that they cannot refute.
• “I understand [your point about space travel], but what about when the Americans killed all the Indians?”
• “Of course you’d think that [about the weather], you thieving Aussie bastard. Your ancestors were all criminals!”

VISUAL AID:
Try to deflect the person from the real argument by constantly jumping up to physically demonstrate side points that have very little to do with the issue at hand.

• “I know you think that [women are psychologically predisposed to avoid fighting], but check out this move I once used on a huge bloke in a karate match in 1994. Okay, now I grab you ’round the neck like this…”

In fact, Snookums has suggested that the very concept of “Conversational Terrorism” should be renamed “Condie Baiting”. Heh.

“So you want to be an online pornographer?” Actually, Snookums and I joke about this kind of thing all the time. A guy we used to work with actually had experience working for an online porn site. Everybody in the industry knows that that’s where the real money and innovation are. I mean, porn sites were turning a profit before Jeff Bezos even knew what the Internet was. Now that the dotcom boom is over, it’s looking like a more and more attractive option for folks worried about falling stock options and layoffs. Unfortunately for me, I don’t think I could do it. I mean, skim through that Salon story. The guy sounds like a real asshole! I wouldn’t want a job that I’d be embarrassed to tell my parents about. I wouldn’t want to participate in the continued public degradation of women. This guy thinks he’s hit the jackpot because he can buy a new car with two days’ salary and gets invited to porn-picture-taking parties. *shudder* Like I said, it’s a funny thing to joke about, but the reality looks quite different. I’d sooner become a farmer and do something real than sell my soul serving up digital excrement to the masses.

Can you juggle? I can. I had to learn to do it for a one-act play. Luckily my co-star was a jugglin’ freak, so he taught me pretty much all of it. He was also a contact juggler, which always makes me think of David Bowie in Labyrinth. (My co-star also told me that Bowie didn’t do his own juggling for the film; an expert simply stuck his arms around from behind.) Anyway, here’s an excellent juggling site that even includes cool animated gifs demonstrating tricks. (Link courtesy of Zannah.)

Brigita found a cool toy at the PBS site: Surname Popularity Index. You enter your last name and it tells you how popular it is in the U.S. based on Social Security records. “Howard” is #62 out of, like, 50,000! Yeah, baby! I got more relatives than you can shake a stick at.

AICN is running an interview with Peter Billingsley, otherwise known as Ralphie from A Christmas Story. He’s working as a producer now and seems like a well-adjusted guy. (Did you know he was on “Punky Brewster”?!) Still, it’s gotta be kinda weird to see yourself on TV for 24 hours straight at Christmas.