"Henrietta sometimes stages ambushes from atop a donkey"

Check out this Slate article about a cool chicken and her paying-attention owner. It's absolutely one of the primary things I believe about animals.

(And that has to be one of the best sentences ever written, the one I quoted up there)

Letter to the level-headed extry-religious parents of Texas and other places

(Not Texas' actual birth parents; I think we all know those were a whore and a lonesome cowboy)

If your daughters get the vaccine against human papilloma virus, they will so totally think it's a license to have sex! Because if they don't get it, they'll absolutely stop their hormone-driven boyfriends in their tracks with a well-informed "No, I will not have sex with you, because I might get genital warts if I do, and then in 20-40 years I might get cervical cancer as a result." That's exactly how 13-year-old girls think. Yes, Texas parents, you have your fingers on the pulse of a generation!

And by all means, please don't worry about instead developing your daughter's self-confidence and self-image to the point where she won't be afraid of losing her boyfriend's love if she doesn't have sex with him. Oh no. I'm sure you're doing just fine, and it's only the knowledge that she won't get genital warts that will set her free on the highway of youthful lustyness.

(Aimed, of course, only at those with the attitude addressed above. There are probably plenty of Texas parents who are miffed the requirement got nixed.)

*set on PORTRAIT*

Common photos you find among guys on online dating sites:

• The Rugged Outdoorsman: on a bike, on top of a mountain, or in front of a canyon or waterfall, ready to lead you through the wilds of Tibet or Pennsylvania
  
• Father Material: posing with some child or baby (hopefully a relative)
• The Jack Hanna/Mr. Sensitive: snorgling a cat
  
• Variations on a Theme, which must go something like this: "Brother Sammy, take some photos of me for the ladies," where Sammy's idea of "some" is moving slightly to the left after #6
• The Reached-Out-With-a-Camera self-shot
• Its saucy sibling, the Taken-in-a-Mirror-With-the-Camera-Clearly-Visible shot
  
• The Clearly-From-10-Years-Ago shot, just so you know what he CAN look like
  
• And the Platinum: the Cropped-Out-My-Ex-So-You-Can-See-Me-in-a-Suit deluxe grand slam.

Bleh

There's something about smokers here where you can tell they're smokers just by looking at them, particularly those who are probably 40 and older. They're very pinched and wrinkled. Their skin has a grey tinge. Their eyes are hollow. Their hair even seems stiff and parched. The spectre of death hovers above them. Children weep as they pass.

I never noticed this among people in Orlando. I wonder if the sun plumps them up somehow, or if it's simply that fewer people there continue to smoke as they get older. It definitely seems like more people smoke here.

(Note to those smokers who think that being outside means other people can't smell it: It doesn't. We can.)

(That is not directed at people who merely smoke outside. I know Amy knows. AMY KNOWS ALL.)

See ...

See, first I said, in essence, "I bet we get no snow." Then we got FEET of it. So the next post I titled, basically, "I couldn't POSSIBLY meet my guy by March 29!"

Sorry for the confusion. Carry on.

Your local on the 8s

Fathom meets snow

BTW, if it didn't come across, the title of the previous post was a reference to the post before it.

I bet I'll never be dating the man I'm going to marry by my birthday this year or be married in 2008 and have 50+ happy years with him

They're saying 20-30 inches by the time it's over

But I bet we don't get 6 even. Dangit.

NEW! Guilt-free!

I'm a sucker for a good romance movie, and I am no longer afraid to admit it. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Under the Tuscan Sun, French Kiss especially, and even You've Got Mail (based on an old Jimmy Stewart movie, don'tcha know). French Kiss might be my favorite, all because of Kevin Kline. How did he not get more romantic leading roles? Was it that Phoebe Cates, or that damned piano? Could it have been the Muppets?

I get in the mood to watch them quite often lately (though I have worn out the Austen films). They're good brain-needs-downtime fillers, and probably help supply the emotion my life is lacking. There are so many crap ones out there, though, that make the good ones look bad, since they're ridiculously lumped into the same category. I have tried to wait out movies like Raising Helen and My Best Friend's Wedding and, most recently, Little Black Book, hoping for some kind of redemption moment, and all I get is my skin separating into its individual layers.

Today I watched, for the first time ever, The Cutting Edge. For some reason I totally love D.B. Sweeney now (just today!), yet didn't back in the day. This movie screams, however, NO ONE INVOLVED WITH THIS FILM HAS EVER SEEN SKATING IN REAL LIFE, AND THEY ARE NOT CERTAIN IT TRULY EXISTS. But DeeBee definitely had it going on, and he made the cheesy edits worthwhile.

13 Going on 30 I liked for real. And I want to see Music and Lyrics because it's so clearly a take on Duran Duran.

And I won't call them chick flicks, either, because I think that's silly. If women ran the entertainment business, there would be no such moniker. I'm not going to start insisting people spell women "womyn" or anything. But still.

Jack Frost, out of hand

Today's the kind of back-biting, toe-eating cold that makes people who are out in it become their smallest selves inside their bodies, huddled and bent from the effort of existing. The kind of day where you want to soak your feet in hot chocolate.

How do those tiny little birds stay warm out there? They're not wearing socks!