Holy schnikes!!! They just sent a video of a Christmas tree catching fire (really fast!). Don't water your tree with napalm! Here are some other holiday safety videos:

Christmas tree fire (the bunny! so tragic!)
Good old turkey fryer

And another thing I got in the mail, and article about writing sessions at Battlestar Galactica. It makes me feel queasy inside, but I've read it three times now.

Another use of the word literally, that is annoying though correct We all know people who use the word 'literally' as if it just intensifies the meaning of what they're saying rather than assures you they're not talking metaphorically (eg "I literally exploded with rage at that grammer mistake!"). And that's annoying. But I just heard someone say "if I have cable, I literally..... watch way too much TV." Not necessary to use 'literally' in that sentence!! Maybe she had been going to say "I literally watch TV 25 hours a day" but realized that was wrong, and the long pause after 'literally' was really her just thinking of what she would do, literally, if she had cable.

And finally, a story: two little girls, sitting on a bed reading Cosmogirl. One reads:
1: "What feature on your body are you most self-conscious about?"
2: Hmm..... I'm not really sure.
1: [appraises 2] Is it your big ears?

I like my video store 1/2 of the time. It's the 1/2 of the time when Peter Cropes (nice pete) isn't working there. Seriously, Chris Onstad must have been inspired by this guy. When he's there, I don't even want to get my frequent renter card punched, literally for fear that it's what will tip him over the edge and claim me as the first victim of his rampage.

VS

dad says the only people who don't have the proper respect* for his car are Mustang GT drivers. One more reason for me to get a Mustang!

*read "have the proper respect" as "abjectly kowtow"

My brother and I played video games, even though we couldn't find any of the good ones that involve shooting each other. So we played good old Tenchu, stealth assassins, for old time's sake. We played 2-player co-op, and got to the level that took us months to beat last time. The level is a source of the ever-funny (to us) phrase: "OK, sis, you stay up top, feed 'em the rice." We tried that twice before remembering "stay up top, feed em the rice" had NEVER worked as a plan, and that's why we'd stopped playing it years ago. FYI: poison rice is basically useless in the Tenchu game, as it likely would be in a real-life ninja scenario. Who just picks up rice off the ground and eats it?

Friday's "impulse buy" (pictured previous update) has this additional story: Our old TV would take between 30-1200 minutes to warm up, and also it would not tell you for sure if it was on-and-warming-up, off-but-on-standby, or completely off. So if you turned it "on" but lost faith in yourself after an hour or so of staring at the blank screen and pressed the power button again, you might be turning it off for real this time--but you won't know for sure until 30-1200 minutes have passed. Anyway, Thursday night we all as a family sat and stared at the TV for about 3 hours, talking mainly about whether or not we thought it was going to come on. Friday, dad got a new TV.

I had dad hold up a quarter next to the tv to show the relative size of friday.s impulse buy.

'we'broke a plate, so we tried 2 fix it b4 mom wakes up. Brother, on incident:'this is the best thing we've ever done.'

There is no way 2 describe the terror this tableau fills me with. The bear is eyeless.

please confirm

this is really stupid. i feel really stupid for asking this. i'm taking macroeconomics, and i was like 99% sure, but someone was arguing with me so confidently, I'm not sure anymore.

US money isn't backed by any precious metals anymore, right? Most money in the world universe is off any gold or silver or gold-pressed latinum standards, isn't it??

i keep thinking "why do i want burritos so much today?" but the real question is "why am i thinking about burritos so much today?" because if i'm honest with myself, i ALWAYS want burritos, i just spend most of each day forgetting about that fact. i think that's why i irrationally found this SNL skit funny whenever it was I saw it. I am thrilled I am able to link to that so people know what I'm talking about, if they like. re-reading the skit, i am surprised at how short it is, and how it completely relates to my current condition.

Main Street is pretty depressing! Remind me never to get married, especially if it's the 1920s, and Illinois.

Today, I got to see an episode of Cleopatra 2525. No, I'd never heard of it, and now I know why! But it had Gina Torres.

(burrito).

baby steps

somewhat related to the last update's comment about phish vs radiohead being a potential dealbreaker (for the record, it's really radiohead vs. anything), the other night i was very proud of myself for not yelling "ARE YOU ON CRACK?" in the parking lot to someone who said that my Beatles bumper sticker should be superceded by my The Who bumper sticker. I told this story to my brother gingerly, knowing he likes The Who a lot (but, I mean, so do I; I have their bumper sticker after all). My brother's reaction? "WAS HE ON CRACK?" I was relieved; we can continue being siblings.