I found a picture of my girlfriend on a Japanese fetish site the other day.

I'm not sure why, but this article left me feeling vaguely disturbed.

Cat Blogging a little early this week:

Is this Sweet Pea?


Or is it Nicodemus from The Secret of NIMH?

Yesterday a sign stood where the coffee pot once stood:

The coffee pot has been realigned to the BFM cubicle. We have doughnuts!

This is good news on many levels.
1) Michael and Brandi are the BFM people. Michael is the one who realigned the coffee pot. Happily, I sit in the same cubicle as them.
2) Brandi brought doughnuts (from Krispy Kreme!) so that if anyone protested the realignment of the coffee pot, they could just say, we have doughnuts! It worked very well.
3) Now I need only cross my cubicle, where I am comfortable, to get coffee. No more walking across the office and risking running into people with whom I am not comfortable and having to talk to them.
4) Also, I can keep an eye on how full the coffee pot is, and thus avoid taking the last cup and having to refill it.
5) Yesterday, I think 2 people not from my cubicle came and got coffee. Today it was maybe 3. When Kelley gets back from vacation, we will have 4 coffee drinkers residing in this cubicle, 100% of us, and thus I feel that we deserve to claim ownership of the coffee pot.
6) This may, in fact, result in me filling the coffee pot more often, because I do feel guilty about never doing it. But this way when I can't figure out how the damn thing works, I'll only look stupid in front of Michael, Brandi, and Kelley, who are all friendly and have done their share of looking stupid in front of me, rather than in front of my boss and a bunch of people I don't know.
7) I'm happy about this development.

Yesterday I discovered a new flavor of Starburst, so I had to try it. The best package is, obviously, the California fruits, both in terms of taste and colors of the wrappers (important when you're, say, making a bracelet out of folded wrappers). This new package is a similar blue of the California fruits, but it is, in fact, *Baja* California fruits. Oooh. The new flavors are as follows:

Limon: Rather similar to lemon flavored Starburst, but a bit punchier. The wrapper is a nice bright green. Just as I tend to avoid the lemon Starburst but will eat them if pressed, I do not savor the taste of the limon.

Strawberry Watermelon: Quite good. Again, kind of like the pink ones in the original Starburst pack, but with some punch. It starts off mild but when you bite into it there's a good burst of flavor. The wrapper is a very satisfying pink. Not quite hot pink, but a lot more punk-rock than the original Starburst pink.

Baja Dragonfruit: It definitely gets points for its exotic sounding name. The wrapper is a very nice deep sky blue, and the candy itself is that beautiful blue with just a tinge of turquoise that only substances consisting largely of corn syrup can achieve. The taste is a bit strange, and there's something I can't put my finger on (the dragonfruit, I suppose). It's fairly off-putting, but does provide a change from the other flavors. It's definitely worth a try.

Aztec Punch: I wonder whether the Aztecs ever settled in Baja California. The red one is usually my favorite in a Starburst pack, but this flavor disappoints. It's not far off from the traditional cherry chew, but with a lasting acidic flavor, like Kool-aid with not enough sugar. The picture on the package indicates that this punch contains cherries and mango. I don't taste the mango, for what it's worth. The color, too, is disappointing, a washed-out, slightly pinkish red. It's not a bad chew; it's probably better than the Dragonfruit, definitely better than Limon, but it gets surpassed by the pink and doesn't live up to its status as the red one.

In all, this is not a bad package of Starburst. It does not live up to the Alto California pack, either in color or taste, but, really, what could? On both counts, overall, it is superior to both the original flavors and that green one, tropical, I think. I actually really like the wrapper colors in this one. They're not as bold as California, but they're so nice and bright, they would make a lovely bracelet. I give the package a B.

Friday Night Cat Blogging:

She actually shoots lasers from her eyes. (Click on the picture to get the full effect.)

OMG, this site makes me so happy.

In his review of the new Robert Rodriguez film The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl, Roger Ebert includes the main credits of the film, some of which I found interesting.

Sharkboy (age 5): Rebel Rodriguez
Sharkboy (age 7): Racer Rodriguez
Lug: Rocket Rodriguez
Written by Racer and Robert Rodriguez

Apparently, Robert Rodriguez's children are named Rebel, Racer, and Rocket. That is almost as cool as Moxie CrimeFighter.

Okay, now that I'm a day removed from it, now maybe I can share the newest reason why I hate Mark Morford. For telling anorexic girls they're ugly. Among other things. Dude.

It's more than just the usual bizarre admixture of magazine ads and media spectacle and celebrity whoredom that makes them want, at all costs, to appear completely bedraggled and curveless and perpetually expressionless and completely unsexy and looking like meth-addicted mannequins with bleached teeth and flat-ironed eyelashes and stapled stomachs and dry, brittle spines and totally cute shoes.

In the new issue of Bookslut, one of the features is a Translator's Roundtable, that begins,

Most of us English speakers are too lazy, busy or stultified to read Goethe, Gogol, Kafka, and Mishima in their original languages.

I'd just like to point out that I have read Goethe and Kafka in their original languages, and I haven't even disdained to read Gogol or Mishima in English, so that's pretty cool. I also like that the Austrian translator's name is Wortsman.

This is the cutest picture of Sweet Pea that has ever been taken. 


Well, okay, this one is close. 

Does anyone else have a hard time wrapping their head aroud the idea that Anne Bancroft was married to Mel Brooks?

The excitement here never ends. Lunchtime brought me to the fourth annual PMW 160 Chili Cook-off. I'd never been to a chili cook-off, so it was quite a thing. The cook-off was organized by the sister of the girl who sits in the next corner of this cubicle, and her mother won. I only tried two of the chilis, but the mother's was really quite exceptional. There was also a cornbread cookoff, and again, I only tried two, but the sister's blueberry stuff was pretty good, but it only won second place. I also snagged a couple of peanut butter cups for later, so I'm excited about that.

In other news, I hate Mark Morford (oh wait, that's not news, but I still hate him). But what I do like in the chronicle today is this story, and especially the little picture that goes along with it.

This from a NYT article today about Post-Partum Depression:

Ten to 20 percent of women experience a serious depression within weeks or months of giving birth, but fewer than one woman in five is treated for it.

Having studied mathematics at Berkeley, I can tell you that ten to 20 percent is, in fact, fewer (or equal to) than one in five. So that seems good.

Excitement! The fire alarm just went off, so we all got to go stand outside and muster. It was a bit cold, because it's overcast and breezy, and because of that I didn't bring a jacket or sweater because the temperature inside my office is inversely proportional to the temperature outside. But now I'm back in the comfortably warm office, with a nice big cup of coffee with the Special Edition Toffee Nut creamer, courtesy of Brandi, who sits over there, and the creamer is really quite tasty.

For all of you who pay taxes to the U.S. government, I am now blogging on your dime. Thank you.

Isn't this guy adorable?