Peppermint Tea

I've seen it about fifty times, so I guess I'll finally give in and show my results. In a list of 100 classic books that every high schooler should be required to read, I've bolded the ones I personally have read before:

Beowulf -- translated a couple sections in Old English
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice -- about 10 times
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening -- see my rant below
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities -- so *romantic*. ::swoons::
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers -- and his others. Very fun.
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays -- only two or three
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms -- Blech. Can't stand him.
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales -- some of them
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac -- seen the movie, failed to read the original
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion -- the best play in the world!
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels -- only the first half or so. I need to finish it.
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth -- does seeing the movie count?
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

I have two thoughts: one, why haven't I hear of about a fourth of the titles on this list? What other injustices have I suffered at the hands of incompetent English teachers?

Two, why is "Ceremony" on this list and not any Plato? Or Machiavelli? Or any of a dozen other superior authors I could mention? Silko spends most of the novel describing how the major character drinks. She occasionally takes breaks from that to talk about how he has drug-induced hallucinations, or has sex, or urinates. How is *that* better than "The Prince"?

I don't get a lot of modern writing, just like I think most modern 'art' is a good excuse for a charlatan to pass off a pile of garbage as a ten million dollar masterpiece. There are exceptions (I LOVED "Brave New World") but most of the stuff repulses me.

(The list comes from Joanne Jacobs and many, many others.)
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... but at least this time in a rather amusing way. In this article, Dr. Justin Kruger and Dr. David Dunning prove that stupid people don't realize they're stupid and attempt to prove why. It's an entertaining, if obvious, paper.

During their research they discover that high-scoring test-takers consistently *underrate* their performance, as opposed to low-scoring test takers, who don't seem to realize how poorly they did.

There's only one theory I disagree with, and I only have one small nitpick. Kruger and Dunning believe that smart and/or talented people constantly underrate their performance because they assume that the logic problems are so completely obvious that everyone else sees the solution, and thus think that they just scored average when they really scored very well. I do admit that this may be one factor in a talented person's underrating his performance, but I think another factor is much more important.

Let me give an example. Take, say, Sarah McLachlan, a singer with a very beautiful voice. If she watched 100 people on American Idol and rated their performance, she would probably very accurately rank their singing ability, right? She would know who could sing well and who was completely tone deaf, because she herself understands singing. But if asked to evaluate one of her own performances, she would probably ALSO underrate herself - "I was a bit flat on this note" or "My voice was too breathy here" or somethine like that, even on a song that everyone else in the world thought she performed beautifully.

So a talented person tends to underrate him/herself not because he assumes that the people around him are just as talented as he is, but because he is much, much more aware of his faults (and maybe even imaginary, perceived faults) than everyone else around him. He knows what 'perfection' would look like, and how he falls short of that perfection, even when no one else notices.

As evidence, a talented person typically is very good at rating *everyone else*, but fails miserably at rating himself. He knows how to tell a bad singer from an average singer from a terrific singer, but holds himself to a higher standard than everyone else around him.

Am I right? Or are you with Kruger and Dunning? Let me know!

(Via .clue.)
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Just got back from Operation Enduring Support, a big pro-Bush and pro-military rally in Dallas. It was my first rally, so I didn't go entirely prepared. I forgot my camera, my lounge chair, and, most importantly, my sunscreen. So no pictures, but if you want me to photo my huge red sunburn I'd be happy to oblige.

The weather was fairly nice, somewhere in the 80s and sunny. I was relieved, because yesterday it was rainy and *cold*, somewhere down in the 50s (which is unheard of in Texas in May).

I don't really know how many people there were; I'm not good at guesstimating at large numbers of people like that. But there were less than ten thousand and WAY more than one hundred. I'll put up links to the Dallas Morning News and any other source I can find that covered the rally later on.

Most of the people there were either young couples with small children or older veterans and their wives. I'm not sure, but is that not somewhat unusual for a rally? Most of the liberal protests I see in, say, San Francisco are primarily teens or young professional men and women. And, being Texas, there were lots of dogs.

A lot of soldiers took the microphone to describe their wonderful experiences in Iraq: how they felt they had made a difference in the Iraqis' lives, their love for the Iraqi people, etc. Several expressed the shock they felt upon coming back to America to find the media preaching that the situation in Iraq was a complete disaster, as that's not at all the impression *they* got over there. Also, several soldiers' wives and children took the microphone to thank us for our support.

The local radio station that sponsored the event (570 AM KLIV or something like that) had brought in several musicians. We sang "God Bless America" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "God Bless the U.S.A." and other patriotic songs. Everyone waved flags and shouted "USA" at the good parts. I cried twice.

Everyone had been asked to bring one flag for each soldier they knew currently fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq. People like me who didn't have a flag were given little plastic ones courtesy of the radio station and Moms of Marines. Then we prayed and planted the flags across Flagpole Hill. After that, the host had us step aside and look at the ocean of little flags waving in the air, a very touching moment.

Next an honor guard gave a twenty-one gun salute. I've always wondered, seeing that "what comes up must come down", where do the bullets go? They didn't seem to hit anywhere.

I left after that, about five minutes early, because I didn't want to get caught in the crush of traffic out of the parking lot. Went to Starbucks, where I met a couple of cops from the rally who apparently had had the same idea. I realized that cops are a lot nicer to teenagers wearing "United We Stand" buttons than teenagers without.

So, all in all, I'm glad to have had the opportunity to go and show support for my country. I'm happy that this will be shown to the soldiers in Iraq to help them see that we're still proud of them. I hope this will get a good deal of media coverage (but I'm not holding my breath). And I'm proud to be an American.

UPDATE: I found the official webpage for Operation Enduring Support. Also, as of 7:02 p.m., an hour after the rally ended, the home page of The Dallas Morning News is about some stupid golf tournament, and USA Today apparently thinks Gwenyth Paltrow's new baby girl is more important.

UPDATE: Okay, this is getting to be sad. Channel 5 News mentions the gay marriage rally being held in Dallas at the same time, but not the pro-war rally. It then goes on to talk about a cute and fuzzy puppy that helped save someone's life, or something, because of *course* a puppy is more important than a pro-Bush rally...
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I just stumbled across The Gallery of "Misused" Quotation Marks. Quite amusing. My favorite:

My mother sent my husband and me a Valentine's Day card. Printed on the front was:
To a special daughter and "son."
I'm sure my husband really felt like one of the family after that.

The author links to The Home for Abused Apostrophes, which I shall have to explore.
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Ask Yahoo!.

You have to wonder why the spammers bother. My Baynesian search filter gets them all without breaking a sweat. The ones that get through all the time are, I think, viruses. They have messages like, "Here's your credit card statement" and a .doc attachment. But those don't trouble me either, because I have a Mac.
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The BBC reports that a group of archeologists believe that they've found the Library of Alexandria. How cool would that be? I'm not quite sure to what degree it was destroyed by fire, but if they could find even *fragments* of a lost text by Plato or Archimedes or Euclid...

Stuff like that makes me wish I'd gone into archeology instead of history.

This reminds me of another article in Parade, a local Dallas/Fort Worth magazine, by an archeologist talking about how for the first time in 40 years Western scientists are allowed into Iraq. He has pictures of Ur (Abraham's homeland) and Babylon and even a small park known as "The Garden of Eden" (which, ironically enough, has recently been paved over. They paved the Garden of Eden! Heh.) although no one really has any proof that it's *that* Garden of Eden.

My Greek history professor says that Middle Eastern studies are probably going to *explode* in the near future, and that if I learned Arabic I'd be able to set my salary at whatever level I chose. I must say the idea's tempting, because goodness knows the field of British history is saturated enough...

My friend Erin's going into Egyptology. That's another career I'd want if it didn't involve spending months trying to glue broken 4,000-year-old pots back together.
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I'm not kidding. David Deutsch has written a book Fabric of Reality explaining how you can see evidence of parallel universes right in your own home. And all you need is a red laser light, a piece of paper, and a dark room.

Dude.

(Via Slashdot:science.)
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Has you visited Buttafly? If not, you should. She has lots of interesting conservative articles and a ton of links to funny websites. My two favorites: The Bush Conspiracy Theory Generator and The Oracle of Starbucks.

Actually, my favorite was the Liberal Magic 8-Ball and its companion the Hate Mail Generator, but she seems to have taken those down. Pity.
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Dean Esmay has created a War Wiki for people to write essays to clear up misunderstandings about the Iraq war.

It's based on Wikipedia, so if you know how that works it should provide a very good idea of what the War Wiki looks like. If you're not familiar with the Wikipedia, it's an online encyclopedia, entirely created by ordinary readers like you and me. Open any article and it'll have an edit button at the bottom that will allow anyone who wants to to change the contents of the page. Of course, if you make a nuisance of yourself and delete an article or fill it with swear words or something, your work will be destroyed, but as long as you write well it'll last until someone comes up with even more information.

The Wikis are cool because they have all the information you could ever want about just about anything. And they're free, which is always a plus. See Wikiquotes for even more fun Wiki goodness.
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Just finished my last final. Yay! Kacie is free!

It was on Old English, which is a very fun subject. We had to translate two passages, describe one more we'd read in class, and write a short essay. Being Old English, all the literature we read in class somehow involved people dying in progressively more painful and bloody ways.

One of them was about the martyrdom of King Edward. He was captured by an unnamed group of 'heathens' who tied him up, whipped him with rods, whipped him with whips, moved up to stabbing him with spears until "he bristled like a hedgehog", then got so mad that he wouldn't renounce his faith that they beheaded him.

We also studied the story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard. Everyone is offered a chance to escape with their lives, but *nooo*, they're brave, manly warrior men and they don't fear death! So they all die.

My personal favorite was the story of a certain abbottess who got a strange growth on her neck. Instead of freaking out like a reasonable person would, she praised God. Something like, "For in my youth I was excessively vain and wore many glittering necklaces about this neck. But now God is purifying my neck with this wound." Then a doctor lances the wound, and the author gleefully describes the pus that oozes out. Then the abbottess dies. The End.

Morbid people, weren't they?

P.S. Fixed a couple grammar mistakes.
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Buttafly.com tackles the tought questions: Why Isn't Anyone Offering to Clean My Oven for AIDS?. I've always wondered about that myself.
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Just to let everyone know, according to As the Apple Turns the very first virus for Mac OS X has been discovered.

Technically, it's a 'trojan', not a 'virus'. People have been downloading off of Limewire and other filesharing programs a file that *looks* like a demo of Word 2004 for Mac, but is actually a program that, when executed, will wipe all the files out of your home directory. So if you see it, don't download it. If you download it, for heaven's sake, don't open it!
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I still don't see why being a trophy wife would be such a bad thing.

Take, for example, Kate Chopin's "The Awakening", which annoyed the stuffing out of me. The major character's a middle-class woman. Her sole responsibility in life seems to consist of looking pretty and acting the charming hostess whenever her husband brings company home for dinner. A nanny cares for the kids; servants clean the household; her husband gives her a generous allowance. Except for making an appearance at dinner, and occasionally tucking the kids in to bed, she can spend her time doing whatever she pleases.

Think of all the good she could have done! She could have worked for a charity, or her church. She could have helped out the poor in her neighborhood or, God forbid, actually *raised* her own children. Instead, what does she do all throughout the novel? Whine about how her husband 'oppresses' her, and how bored she is, and how she wishes she could work 16-hours days at the factory like her fellow women.

::gags::

Her life was next to *perfect*. True, her marriage wasn't that ideal. It was not by any stretch of the imagination a marriage of equals (because every time she opens her mouth she confirms her husband's belief that women are simply big whiny children), but her husband is kind to her and doesn't, say, *beat* her or anything. So except for that one bad area, she is living a life of luxury, one in which she could have made a positive impact in people's lives had she chosen to.

Instead, she nags incessantly until her husband agrees to a separation, and she wastes the rest of the novel in frivolous pursuits, never satisfied with anything she has. Blech.

So, yeah, being a trophy wife doesn't sound like the worst of all fates to me. Of course, I'd LOVE to have a husband that's also my best friend. I'd LOVE for us to be "equal partners in the gift of life". But being rich and powerful and having no demands on your time is certainly better than ending up like, say, Andrea Yates.

P.S. It's been years and years since I read "The Awakening", so I may get a plot point or two confused. But I remember very clearly my objections to the story.
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Just read this article on stupidity in the workforce. It bothers me that I'm not more surprised that something like this happened. I guess I've been reading Tongue Tied too often.

Thanks to Physics Geek.

Sometimes I really worry about the future of this country. These are the future leaders of America, after all. I want to get mad at my parents for eventually dying someday and leaving me in charge of this mess.
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I just nearly wrote 'Thursday' up there. I am so ready for summer. Only one more exam!

Here's the interesting and fun sites I discovered today:

No Watermelons Allowed. I, personally, have nothing against watermelons, but the author's a member of Capitalist Chicks, who're cool.

Brandywine Books gives thoughtful commentary on books from a Christian perspective.

I was so excited to discover Phillip Johnson had a blog! I own two or three of his books.

Anyone who has ever been within fifty feet of me upon sight of a cat knows that I like them a lot. The squeals of, "Kitty! Can I pet the kitty?!" and the jumping up and down like a five-year-old probably give it away. So I was very happy to learn of Amish Tech Support's Carnival of the Cats. Kitties!

I dreadfully miss my own cat ever since we had to put him down. Sebastian lived to be 21 years old, which is ancient in cat terms, until we couldn't watch him suffer any more. He was actually older than I am, and I'd never lived without him before.

Right now Physics Geek's top post ruthlessly bashes Michael Moore. I think I'm going to end up liking this page.
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The Physics Geek presents Things You Wish Your Computer Had. My personal favorite: the 'Read Boss's Mind' option.

I need a 'Write My Paper' option. Actually, I'm kind of proud of the paper I wrote on Socrates for my Greek history class. If I posted it up here and showed it off some, would anyone read it? Or does the very thought of Plato give people rashes?

One reason to switch to Macintosh: Word doesn't have the annoying paperclip. Instead it has the annoying computer with feet, which pops up much more rarely but is, if possible, even more irritating.

P.S. I fixed the link so that it works now. Sorry!
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Just found this joke from No Watermelons Allowed. Check it out; it's pretty cute.
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Cause there's a new AI that'll play it with you. It's surprisingly intelligent, although I managed to stump it with 'tuning fork'.

Courtesy of User Friendly
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I won't be posting much today because my right arm feels like it's about to fall off. Just got out of Palmer's two-and-a-half-hour History of England essay exam. Owie! The participants in the bake sale outside saw us all walking out shaking our arms with pained expressions on our faces and said, "Let me guess. Palmer's class, huh?"

In other news, I'm wearing the cool shirt that my brother bought me for my birthday. Thank you, Brett! It reads:

I ALWAYS GIVE 100% AT SCHOOL.
11% on MONDAY
24% on TUESDAY
40% on WEDNESDAY
20% on THURSDAY
5% on FRIDAY

That's about what I feel like now. I *love* my classes this semester, and I'm going to miss them when they're gone, and I'll miss my friends and professors... but I want out NOW!

P.S. Okay, you know my brain's fried when I confused 'their' with 'they're'.
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First off, Bookslut is an awful lot of fun. I wish I were able to write good book reviews.

I love pet blogging, and Tazaret has lots of it.

Random Thoughts: she has a Terry Pratchett book as the subtitle. Need I say any more?

I think Canada's really cool. Only been up there once (spent a week in Vancouver when I was ten or so) and nearly froze to death... but that's another post. Anyway, Daimnation has interesting posts about affairs national and international, and some pictures of gorgeous Canadian scenery.

Oorgo's Dave has learned the lesson taught by Bill at Bloviating Inanities: compliment me and I'll give you more links that you can shake a stick at! :P

And last but not least, The Iron Blog! It's like "The Iron Chef", but with politics instead of sea cucumber. Rosemary Esmay is going head-to-head with Ara Rubyan over Rumsfeld.

You know, building my blogroll is fun. I'm stumbling across all sorts of interesting new sites.
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Apparently, this has been circulating the Democratic Underground so Kerry's showing up way ahead. Go vote for Bush!

Thanks to Dizzy Girl.
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Earl Grey: Classy and smooth.


What kind of tea are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I love Earl Grey with loads of creme and sugar, but it isn't my favorite kind of tea. Green tea's always wonderful, especially with Asian food. (Now I want sushi. Blasted blog.) Chamomile is great, particularly when I'm in need of 'comfort tea'. Starbuck's Tazo Chai is wonderful; it's one of the few iced teas I really enjoy.

But my lifelong preference will always be peppermint tea. ::sighs happily:: Wonderful peppermint tea...

I don't like coffee much, or at all, really. It does odd things to my digestive system, too, so it's probably good that I don't drink it on a daily basis like most of my acquaintance. But add in chocolate and whipped cream and sprinkles and I'll guzzle it by the gallon. Starbucks rules the universe.

Sunday I had the most delicious drink there. It was a 'strawberry and cream frappacino'. Basically a glorified and overpriced strawberry milkshake, but not too thick like most milkshakes are. Had little strawberry pieces in it, too. Yum.

P.S. I forgot to mention fruit teas. I think fruit teas, especially citrus ones like orange or lemon, are disgusting. They're really sour and acidic and not at all soothing like normal black or green teas.
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Why is it, whenever you see a show like "Extreme Makeover" they always want to cut and straighten the person's hair? I watched an episode of "What Not to Wear" two days ago where they took a woman who hadn't cut her hair for thirty years -- THIRTY YEARS! -- and chopped it all off. The woman cried, and I was left bewildered. She had such *beautiful* hair, long and straight and a light blonde, and they chopped it all off?!

What really gets to me are the episodes where they straighten the woman's hair, then *curl* it. What's the point, really? Why not just leave it curly to begin with? And they always add those terrible broad stripes of highlights, a fashion that I think looks *terrible*. And they always dye the women's hair: the blondes become redheads; the brunettes, blondes; etc. None of these women have an 'unacceptable' natural hair color.

I don't get it. I've been growing out my hair for the past eight years, and I'm not sure even a $5,000 shopping spree could convince me to cut it. All my long-haired friends and I get *daily* compliments about how pretty long hair looks, how beautiful it is, how the complimenter wishes *she* could grow long hair...

Somehow I doubt the fashion designers on that show know what they're talking about. But then again, I think 90% of modern fashion looks hideous. Anyone want to help me bring long, pretty dresses back into style?
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As I see it, the public school system's got about 10 years to straighten itself out. Assuming I meet the Man of my Dreams within the next few years, marry him, and have kids, 10 years is about how long I'll have to decide whether to put them in public school or homeschool them.

I went to a private elementary school myself, and while the education I received was stellar, the other kids were about fifty times richer than I was and terribly snobbish to boot. I didn't really fit it, and I'd be hesitant to put my children through that.

I find that I'm one of the few people that enjoyed public school more than private. I went to the science magnet, so I got to take all kinds of nifty advanced-level courses. In tenth grade I practiced DNA fingerprinting with fake blue dye. In eleventh grade I started Japanese. That class had really spiffy teleconferencing equipment donated by a local Japanese-owned company, so we could meet with actual Japanese students. In twelfth grade I took anatomy and physiology, then spent two hours a day three times a week working at a local hospital. Every year we'd have a Homecoming Parade and all of the clubs would build floats.

If you were a responsible student, the teachers would let you get away with *murder*. The counselors would write me excuse notes so I could skip class and come talk with them at any time. (Mrs. Thomas, the senior counselor, said I reminded her of her daughter.) Bill (he let us call him 'Bill') would help us sneak out the back and get Chinese for lunch. The lesson was clear: get good grades and be respectful, and you get special priviledges.

So, yeah, I *loved* public school. I'm in a public school right now, at UTA, and it's great too. BUT I've heard such horror stories about them that I'd be hesitant to put my child into one without a lot of research.

So, ten years. Which is why posts like this are so encouraging. (This article showed up nearly simultaneously here.) I'm *definitely* pro-voucher -- I want my children to get the best education available... enough to homeschool them myself, if I have to.

P.S. Can I see this as a victory for capitalism? As proof that competition, not cooperation, builds a better product? Cause I really, really want to.
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I just read this interview with Madeleine L'Engle (courtesy of Bookslut). Highly amusing. She must be a great old lady. I can't say that I agree with her theologically, but I have loved her books since about third grade.
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Since one of my kind readers (forgive me, but I've forgotten who) suggested I try out World Magazine's blog I've stumbled across a couple of good Christian blogs I'd like to draw to your attention:

Blogs4God
Proverbial Wife

I can't believe I forgot to put up a link to Mike Adams's columns before now. Go read him; he's hilarious!

Also, Truth Laid Bear has been kind enough to allow me to join the TLB Ecosystem. Let's have a round applause for TLB!
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"God will not suffer man to have the knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity he would be careless; and understanding of his adversity he would be senseless."

You are Augustine! You love to study tough issues and don't mind it if you lose sleep over them. Everyone loves you and wants to talk to you and hear your views, you even get things like "nice debating with you." Yep, you are super smart, even if you are still trying to figure it all out. You're also very honest, something people admire, even when you do stupid things.

What theologian are you?

A creation of Henderson
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I was just reading this post on atrocities committed by Sudan and feeling a little proud to live in the best country in the world.

Here's my problem: I have an acquaintance from Sudan whose father's apparently freaking rich on Sudanese terms (able to afford eight wives, anyways). Said acquaintance (let's call him Ali) is forever bringing up how wonderful his country is, how the women there aren't outrageously immodest, how great sharia law is... It's kinda annoying. Not the least because I'm giving him *free* help editing his English papers, and the least he could do is not insult my country while I'm at it, ne?

The best part is when he talks about how American men don't respect women and treat them like sex toys, whereas in his great country men know how to treat women properly. ::snickers::

So, other than this article the Emperor's fisking, what other news is out there that I could pull out and show to him next time he starts extolling the virtues of that hellhole? Is there anything out there that proves that Sudanese men treat women like dirt?

Not that I'm imagining any success at this venture. After all, his English is so bad I still haven't managed to explain to him why he shouldn't call women 'easy'.
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Why does everything feel softer to the touch when you first wake up in the morning? You would think it would work the opposite way: your fingers would become adjusted overnight to the softness of the sheets and the pillows, and everything else would seem very hard by comparison. But, no, everything feels really soft and comfortable. Odd, ne?

But the *best* sensation in the world is taking a nice, hot shower, then putting on nice, clean pyjamas, then lying down on nice, clean sheets. I'm a bit of a fanatic about clean bed linens. A lot of college guys, apparently, have never had a woman flip out on them before for putting their tennis shoes up on the furniture. I've had a couple guys do that to me (my nice clean sheets!) and I think I'm quite justified in going postal. But I'm really picky about what gets on my pillow. I think that makes sense, cause I'm going to spend eight hours with my face crammed into it later that evening! So when David-kun-tachi grease up their hair and then lie on my pillows... ::shudders:: All I can do is think about what that'll do to my acne.

Supposedly Blogger has comments now. Will they pop up when I publish this post?

P.S. They did, but the trackback didn't. I'm quite fond of trackback, so I guess I'm staying with Haloscan for the time being. Thank you, Haloscan!
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It's kinda sad. Just check out the Truth Laid Bare Ecosystem and I'm about twentieth from the end of the list... of 11,000 blogs.

Ouch.

You know that forest ranger bear? The 'only you can prevent forest fires' guy? Well, only *you* can prevent Peppermint Tea from languishing in obscurity, dear readers.

I noticed that most of the top blogs deal with politics. Which makes sense, because the political discussions are one of the biggest reasons I enjoy blogs. I wonder if I should talk about politics more? I don't know if my talents really lie that way, though. I *do* know that there's nothing I could say about the Iraqi prisoners scandal that ten bazillion other people haven't already said. There aren't many blogs that deal with local politics... but then again, how many people would care about Dallas politics?

Hmmm... ::ponders::
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