This is the truth.

Especially the bit about whiskey.

(for more information, see here.)

And today’s spam winner is:

Mr. Watson! Come here! I need you!

Doctor: So do you ever have thoughts about hurting other people?
Me: I did mention that I do software support, didn’t it?

It was a people watching extravaganza this evening in Morgantown.

As I was walking to meet my co-workers for dinner we passed two intoxicated white trash guys having a yelling match in a parking lot off High Street (Townies: Daniel’s parking lot near where the “Steppin’ Out” mural used to be). I say intoxicated because not only was there a significant slurring of words, but the only coherent phrase I heard uttered (yelled) was, “I ain’t yer bitch!”

And to further the excitement, apparently soon after we turned the corner, fisticuffs broke out, and there may have been body parts slammed into a car. (One of the people we were meeting missed the yelling but caught the brawling.)

But still, to see an almost aggressively heterosexual guy yelling, “I ain’t yer bitch!” leads me to wonder what lead up to that argument.

Probably just drugs and alcohol. But still, one can imagine a fascinating (and sordid) story.

A gladiator graveyard was discovered at Ephesus.

The Ephesus graves containing thousands of bones were found along with three gravestones, clearly depicting gladiators.

Two pathologists at the Medical University of Vienna – Professor Karl Grossschmidt and Professor Fabian Kanz – have spent much of the past five years painstakingly cataloguing and forensically analysing every single bone for age, injury and cause of death.

They found at least 67 individuals, nearly all aged 20 to 30.

What’s even more interesting is that they discovered signs of gladiators’ lives being taken (as opposed to death by combat) in two different ways: one evidence of death in the ring where “a kneeling man (had) a sword rammed through down his throat into the heart” and the other was death after a fight out of the ring because “a number of the skulls showed rectangular holes that could not have been made by any of the known gladiator weapons. Instead, they suggest the use of a heavy hammer…”‘One possible explanation, which is supported by a number of archaeologists, is that there must have been an assistant in the arena who basically gave the gladiator the coup de grace'”

I find it pretty fascinating how much sociological detail can be gleaned from a graveyard.

As anyone whose perused the book portion of my website has noticed, I’m a big fan of storytelling. I love a well-written book, where the story pulls me and it’s nearly impossible for me to put the book down. (Okay, I like the stories, although not the consequences of staying up too late reading.) I love stories that stick with me long after I’ve put the book down. Stories with characters I think about long afterwards.

And although I’ve never been a huge fan of the medium, there are also TV shows with good storytelling.

The funny thing, however, is that even I can’t predict what stories will stick with me.

But following a long virtual discussion with Jedi Jawa (no offense, but I have a hard time writing that and taking it seriously.) I started thinking about what–to me–makes a good story, and what are the stories that stick with me long after I’m done watching them.

There are two shows that are at the top of my list of all time favorites: Deep Space Nine and Firefly. I can watch these shows time and again and still they thrill me–hell, sometimes they’re even more enjoyable the better I get to know them (to paraphrase Michael, “would you stop laughing in advance!”)

What surprised me, however, was that Farscape stuck with me far more than Babylon 5 did. Now I have to admit that some of this was coming up with ways to fix some of the more problematic episodes (Take the mini-series, Peacekeeper Wars. I decided that if I ignore the entire Arin pregnancy thing, I quite liked the story.), but that’s not all of it. There’s something about the characters, the way they were written, and they way they were portrayed that crawled into my brain and took up residence.

But as much as I loved the storytelling of Babylon 5, for the most part it just didn’t stick with me in the same way. As much as I wanted to find out what happened, as much as I loved the twists and turns and the way everything tied back upon itself, I didn’t give the characters much thought once I was done watching. (With the notable exceptions of Ivonava, Marcus, and Vir.)

Which makes me wonder, what is more important in a show? Good writing or good acting? Or is it an individual thing? Obviously, when both come together (such as in Firefly) it is a wonder and a joy.

Which is a really long way of saying, holy crap I really love Six Feet Under and how come no one told me it was this good? I mean, there are no space ships, nothing gets blown up, and there’s lots of boinking… I should be hating it, but I’m not. And boy do I hope that there’s not some point where everything goes off in some direction that just pisses me off (i.e. the first half of season 6 of Buffy).

For a variety of reasons, mostly to do with the fact that we have new furniture, Kit (the small, evil, secondary cat )was sent to get declawed this week. We tried the kitty nail covers, we tried double sided tape… nothing.

So before she destroyed the new furniture, we got her declawed. She came through fine–better that I had expected actually–and was gone for a day and a half, but now that she’s back Kat (the large, not extremely friendly, primary cat) no longer recognizes her.

Never mind the fact that the whole time she was gone he moped around the house. Now she’s back, she smells like the vet and so every time Kat sees her he hisses and gets a big fat bushy tail.

Of course, now that I think about it, he WAS freaked out by a doorstop.

We’ve made sure she spent lots of time lying in the window seat, where the two of them would cuddle together. No dice.

Hopefully he gets over it soon.

A toy black leopard left lying in a footpath sparked panic in a Chinese city.

(via my brother)

So what have I made with my time off?

Apple pie
Bittersweet brownies
Chocolate biscotti

So I’m feeling better than I did last week, but I could still stand a little more relaxation.

Because you can never have too many chocolate baked goods.

I set down the book I’d finished and was thinking about the review I was write when I suddenly woke up and realized that it was 3:30. “Oh man,” I thought, “I just wasted the afternoon napping.”

Guess maybe I’m not really clear about the idea of taking time off from work to relax.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already 21 April and this is the first time I’ve gone out to look at my plants and flowers, but it’s true. This is the first weekend that we were home that was nice weather (the previous nice weekend was when we were in Cincinnati, which was probably more than a month ago).

I knew that the cold and freezing weather coming so late were going to cause problems, but I was still surprised to see the amount of damage. My bleeding hearts look horrible, most of the roses needed pruned back hard, and the two hybrid tea roses are dead. The Japanese maple looks rough, as it was just coming into leaf when the snow came. But it looks like it is putting out new buds, so it may come through okay. Several other shrubs–including my favorite, the broom–took damage, with most having several inches of dead branches or stems.

Combine this with the fact that in order for my grandmother to fit into the house, I gave away or composted a lot of plants in the fall, and things are looking pretty barren.

On the bright side, however, this means that I can get all *kinds* of annuals this year.

Just to fill in the bare spots, you know.

After all, it’s not like we had anything else planned for our disposable income.

Except books.

Is it just me, or does the teen on the cover of the Garth Nix “Keys to the Kingdom” series look eerily like a younger Neil Gaiman?

(click through to find a larger image on the Amazon website.)

See also Mister Monday, Grim Tuesday, Drowned Wednesday, and Lady Friday

“Let’s sit down and discuss finances.”

In case you haven’t yet seen this:

Go to Google.com

Click on Maps.

Click on get Directions.

From New York, New York

To Paris,France.

Make sure to read line # 23.