TMcG

Illumination has come out in German. Yay! I got copies today, and family members who can actually read German snarfed them up, so I had only a moment to savor. But I'm psyched.

The weird thing is: On German Amazon, I've acquired a middle initial W. On U.S. Amazon until they fixed it, and still on BarnesandNoble.com, for Illumination I've been listed with a middle initial M. Neither W nor M is my middle initial, and I've never used my middle initial in my byline (although I think some magazine printed it once, for some reason I never got to the bottom of).

I can kind of see the M; it's the sort of typo you'd make when you start typing the last name, get distracted, then come back and type the last name in from scratch, leaving the first letter of the aborted attempt as a vestigial middle initial. But the W is a mystery to me.

It's the constellation Cassiopeia of middle initials.

I've been twmed.

Making this was fun--you type in names and Condemn them, Redeem some if you change your mind, then run through deciding who's more evil--but I think some of my Condemned got maybe a little too serious. I also had too many of them, so I had to Squish the theatre talkers and Domino's drivers.

Hey, this journal is three years old today. :)

The sky's putting on a fireworks display for the next couple of nights. Around here the best viewing will be after 11pm. If we go out to watch tonight, I'll be in chat on the pretty late side.

Apropos of nothing but how much I suck at geography and how I avoid the G category in Trivial Pursuit as if it were a little blue oval of ebola-anthrax blotter, the drag-and-drop European Geography Level 3.

Apropos of nothing but delight, my blooming spiraea plants continue to attract big, fat, fuzzy, wonderful bumblebees, who go patiently about their work, perturbed by nothing, and make me happy.

I want to say that Savage Love is particularly worth reading this week. But it's particularly worth reading every week. So I'll just say that after it's about activism, it's about the beauty and (one can always hope) power of language. There's more along the latter lines in an older column here.

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Rail Gun of Compassion.

Get yours.

Via Electrolite.

I had a link for Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video remade entirely with Lego figures. I lost it. That may be for the best.

fastfwd posted this link. It's better. Go there.

Via planetalyx, who got it from jaylake: this. Especially for akaspeedo (note the head-to-head comparison with a video card).

Some secret diary entries from beth_bernobich.

Via lindajdunn:

( fencing quiz )

Oh, and these pictures (link Googled) came in email, and maybe it was funnier when I opened them up one at a time because my mailreader won't open anything I don't expressly tell it to, but I admit it, they made me laugh pretty hard.

One of thirdstreet's skits is a regional finalist in the Stand and Deliver Comedy Contest on CBC Radio One. Way to go! You can listen to "Gay Marriage--A Year Later" (and vote) here. Voting deadline is midnight Eastern on Thursday, March 17th.

Dan Persons has some more interviews up at IFC.com:

Bob Balaban on his role in Mamet's Romance

The directors of the mockumentary Mail-Order Wife

This post from pnh.