Like Cutting Butter with a Chainsaw

Nilonka: Blog this.
Ill Mo: Now that's someone I can get behind. He's got a goal and he's seeing it through.
Nilonka: THAT is perserverance.
Ill Mo: Damn straight.
Nilonka: He's got an outline, a few note cards, and even cited his damn sources with receipts. He gets an A.
Ill Mo: Said goal could have been accomplished in any number of much less complicated ways but still, he stuck with it.
Nilonka: He did it his way. Fuck guns.
Ill Mo: At some point, I'm sure he said to himself, "Sure, guns, poison, razor blades, pills, carbon monoxide poisoning--these are all relatively simple and painless ways of doing myself in. But there's no poetry in that. No, by God, I'm going out on my own terms, if I have to buy out the local hardware store to do it."
Ill Mo: You've really got to admire the man who's completely given up on life yet manages to turn self-annihilation into a long-term project.
Nilonka: Right. Like a summer project. Some reroof the house, some build a porch. Others construct mass instruments of death and try them out.
Ill Mo: Everyone needs a hobby.
Ill Mo: It's a good thing he built this contraption to do himself in rather than trying to lure his arch-nemesis into such an elaborate death trap, because that never goes well.
Ill Mo: What exactly is the purpose of a "swing arm" on a guillotine, anyway?
Ill Mo: I mean, as I understand it, it's basically a big damn knife on a rope that falls down, right?
Nilonka: Well, I guess the kind that fall straight down wasn't chic enough.
Nilonka: So his knife was on a large arm, like an axe, that swung down and lopped off the offending body part.
Ill Mo: Thus making an already needlessly complicated project even more convoluted...
Nilonka: Right. What would be awesome is if FOREST ANIMALS built it like in Cinderella and killed him.
Ill Mo: The kind of forest animals who visit the hardware store for supplies and then leave the receipts laying around?
Ill Mo: I have to say, if I'm working in a hardware store and a deer walks in looking to buy guillotine-building materials, I'm kicking his ass right out.
Ill Mo: Antlers or no.
Nilonka: Well, first, I'd see him use a hammer with no opposable digits, then I'm shooting his ass.

Good(?) News

Apparently, someone in New York City has taken it upon himself to keep the metro area safe from vampires. Now if only someone can keep the city safe from that guy.

Thought for the Day

Too Much Free Time

I have been very slothful this week since there's really nothing for me to do. There's only so much Supernatural I can watch. YouTube to the rescue! I found this video on The Ferrett's Blog and I think it's great.

Here are the answers, although Jennifer and I knew a terrifying number of them as we watched it.
And then, just for fun, there's this:

R.I.P. Veronica Mars

So the CW, as expected, dropped the hammer on my favorite show. Tim Goodman's column in the San Francisco Column is probably the best take on the move that I've seen. Best line:

The network plans to keep an emphasis on women and younger viewers, African Americans, wrestling fans and, with the return of the "Pussycat Dolls" series, people who like skanks.

I'm not sure what kind of logic there is in dropping a show that was a cult hit and a critical darling from a network that's struggling for viewers, but that's the way it goes, I guess. Apparently, me liking a show is the kiss of death for it.
There was some good news from the upfronts. CBS is bringing back Numb3rs for a fourth go-round in the fall, so all is not lost. Also, there's a new CBS show called Moonlight, about a vampire detective who protects the living. I liked that show a lot when it was called Angel. Also, Kevin Smith has a pilot that's going to be on the CW called Reaper which is apparently about a 21-year-old slacker named Sam who becomes Satan's bounty hunter because his parents sold his soul to the devil before he was born and now he must walk the earth, you know, like Kane in kung fu, meeting people and sending them to Hell. And apparently this is a funny show. No idea how that's going to work, but if anybody can pull it off, it's Kevin Smith. However, there's no indication how much he'll actually be involved with the show past the pilot, so I'm dubious at best.

Random Notes

The Quick-Thinking Award goes to Jennie Sherman of Lincroft, N.J.. When her local cable network temporarily replaced the Disney Channel with hardcore porn, Ms. Sherman turned off the TV so her kids wouldn't see too much. However, she had the presence of mind to TiVo the lurid spectacle so her husband could watch later. I'm pretty sure he'd have been pissed had he come home to find out that their house had access to free porn but he missed it.

Meanwhile, a new study indicates that lesbians are more likely to be obese than straight women. I have no idea what possible use there is for this information, but I certainly feel better knowing that if ever the need arises, someone's got it.

And, finally, the Award for Excellence in Trivial News Reporting goes to Katherine Glover of Salon.com who three days ago tackled the burning question "Why can't gay dwarves get married in Middle Earth?" Apparently, the Middle Earth on-line video game designers are not recognizing civil unions. Thank god someone's getting to the bottom of that. I know the idea of those fictional gay dwarves having to live their lengthy fictional lives in sadness, separated from their fictional chosen companions simply because of anatomy and the ignorant, uncaring attitudes of others, was keeping me up nights. (While I'm on the subject, I have to say that "gay dwarves" is a phrase I never thought I'd have occasion to use in my entire life.)

Science Comes Through Again

So it seems that while the University of Florida's basketball team is hard at work trying to repeat as national champions, scientists at that same institution are toiling with equal zeal to (I almost can't believe it myself) reconstruct the evolutionary history of lice. I know I've been staying awake at night puzzling over it.
To make the story even better, apparently pubic lice might have passed to humans from gorillas in some sort of prehistoric interspecies hanky-panky. Which gives rise to a whole host of other thoughts that can keep me up at night now that that whole evolutionary history of lice mystery is close to being solved.