If I were a right-wing conspiracy theorist, I would think that the reason the Democrats are allowing the Trump presidency farce to play out is so that all the white supremacists and misogynists feel comfortable identifying themselves on social media, in order to compile a registry of such people for use after Clinton takes office. Because otherwise I would have to admit that I was totally dead wrong about Obama's motives for the last 8 years, and that would be awkward.Mining ever closer to the present...

• Muff the tragic pagan / sieved by the lee / and mollicked in the autumn frist / in a hand-lolled Connolly.
• Dear Capital One, when you send me a fancy "exclusive invitation" to apply for the same damn credit card you've previously sent me ordinary mass mailings about, it makes me think you think I'm stupid.
  
  Also, when you send it in an oversized midnight blue envelope, it makes me think the Doctor is inviting me to attend his death, so ya might want to do your homework. Unless you did, and you guessed that would get my attention, in which case you were right.
• Dear Capital One. This is the second open letter I have passive-aggressively written to everyone but you this week, so you should be ashamed. When you send me an email saying that "we knuckled down so we can have your tax forms ready as soon as possible. By February 11, most 1099s will be available online," it makes me think you do not know how to use computers. Seriously, all the information you need to generate end of year reports should have been ready on January 1. How could it not have been, unless your records were not in order in December? Explain this to me so I know why "knuckling down" is necessary to accomplish a mindless task that happens every single year and should be automated by now.
• That awkward moment when you realize an app you've been using on your computer for hours every day for two years has no Print command, and you've never noticed before.
• Looking back at my photos of the Black Lives Matter march we attended in St. Louis last August, it looks like at least 2/3 of the protestors were white. The TV coverage of the event showed almost all black people. Maybe our cameras had different filters?
• Where's the petition to name Obama's new anti-cancer initiative Grabthar's Hammer? Alan Rickman must be avenged!
• It's sad to have to tell people, "If the state of Kansas becomes financially solvent again, here is the form you're looking for. If they continue to not pay their Web hosting bills, here's a cached copy of the form."
• Why would you name an airline "OneJet"? Is that like the moving company "Two Men and a Truck?" Or like "There is only one Jeep?" How about a restaurant called "The Empty Cupboard" while we're at it?
• A completely unofficial paraphrase of an exchange early in tonight's debate:
  
  Clinton: "Just because I've received huge amounts of money from Wall Street and other corporate interests doesn't mean I'm in their pocket. No candidate has ever had so much money spent to oppose them by these same corporations."
  
  Sanders: "I didn't mean to imply you were their first choice."
• You might be an energy geek if... you fondly remember the background rumble noise of the USS Enterprise in every onboard scene of ST:TNG, but you mentally relabel it from "engine noise" to "continuous ventilation system." They're evidently serious about indoor air quality in the 24th century.
• A few nagging questions I have after watching Deadpool last night:
  
  Which major metropolitan area with a dock big enough for an aircraft carrier is within taxi distance of Salem Center, NY?
  
  Is that a real brass instrument that makes those foghorn blast noises during action scenes? Or is the composer just pressing the key labeled "BWAAAAMMMPP" on a keyboard?
  
  If Ajax doesn't feel anything, what's his motivation?
  
  Do physics teachers have to take a drink every time a character survives a human-scale egg drop with no injury worse than a skinned knee?
  
  Do chemistry teachers have to take a drink every time oxygen spontaneously explodes without fuel?
• If I understand the commercials correctly, "Daytona Day" involves doing pretty much anything but watching the race. Which is good, because that's what I have planned. It's nice when these things work out.
• If I had to take a drink every time country music glorifies drinking, I still would not drink as much as the singers claim to.
• Bernie's last name has been misspelled all this time. It's actually Cassandra.
• I would like to slap whomever thought it would be clever to call the latitude/longitude format in the software I'm using, "ICBM." Granted, no one has ever actually been killed by an ICBM. It's still tacky to imply that the only reason you're collecting geographical data is to bomb people.
• The dogs are SO EXCITED that garlic chives have started to grow throughout the neighborhood. If you eat garlic chives, remember to rinse them thoroughly...
• Do British musicians sing about how warm their beer is?
• Whenever the Castor clones on Orphan Black are described as "glitching," I expect them to teleport a few feet to one side like Vanellope von Schweetz does when she's "glitching." Because that would be awesome, that is why.
• If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, then what's the punch line?
• I just realized that the reason piña coladas are served with those tiny umbrellas is because people like them to get caught in the rain.
• I really like ValuNet's Internet service, but I think it's funny when they describe it in ads as "fiber to the home." It's like they don't know the other connotations of that word. Is your Internet service regular and dependable? Get some fiber!
• I do not believe that Hillary won [the nomination] fair and square. However I also don't believe that Trump will fight fair. It would be foolish to bring a sword to a gunfight just because the sword is the more honorable weapon. That's the closest you'll get to a concession from me.
• There is one squeaky spot in our dining room floor that, if I step on it just right, sounds exactly like a TIE Fighter shooting.
• I want to see a shirt that says,
  
  NO PAIN, NO GAIN*
  
  * some exclusions apply. void where prohibited by law.
• When Apple gave customers iMusic and iCal, did they ask for iRhythm?
• Happy 240th Anniversary of #AmExit!  I think I can speak for all former British colonies when I say that we're all very impressed with the EU - we had to fight wars to get England to leave!  🙂
• If you want to make a Hamlet, you gotta break a few legs.
• I bet Homeland Security wish *they* had had the idea to make a smartphone game that compels children of all ages to turn on their cameras and GPS and walk around places they wouldn't ordinarily go. It's a surveillance goldmine.
• Why don't weather forecasts come with confidence intervals?
• "The children are playing with twenty-seven wet cats." Thanks, Duolingo, I'm sure I'll need to say that in Dutch.
• Occasionally when someone rings our doorbell, the cover of the doorbell goes flying off the wall and onto the floor. It's like something out of a cartoon.
• During some downtime at Barnes & Noble today I read "The Call of Cthulhu." It's good to put current events (not least tonight's debut of Sharknado 4) into perspective. No matter how bad we think things are, it won't matter anymore when cyclopean elder things roam the non-euclidean wastes and even death may die. Or alternatively, when methane hydrates rise from the sea after their millennia-long slumber.
• People keep asking me how RAGBRAI compares to solo bike touring, and since I had the chance to do both in the past week and have had time to think about it, here is my in-depth answer.

  In conclusion, I think the "party on wheels" concept is great for those who like to party in a crowd, but make no mistake, that is the attraction. If you like a crowd, by all means ride with a crowd. But IMO spreading out would be more beneficial and is more enjoyable. I had a good time, but I don't plan to do it again.

  1. It's considerably more expensive. For what I paid for my charter (which carried my camping gear from town to town) I could have stayed in hotels every night (assuming I visited towns that weren't swamped with other tourists), and then I wouldn't have needed camping gear.
  2. It's not as good for the economy. A handful of towns each year get about 20,000 extra visitors, and if each one spends an average of $1 at local businesses, that's $20K for the local economy of those towns. But because the local businesses can't handle the demand, there's a fleet of non-local vendors, entertainers, service providers, and so on that set down in front of the local businesses and take their profit with them when they leave. If the 20K visitors spread their business out across the state, they would have a more authentic experience of what the towns have to offer, and more money would stay in each town.
  3. It's not as good for the environment. Virtually every rider had a gas-powered vehicle drop them off at the start and pick them up at the end (which means that vehicle drove at least as many miles as they biked, more likely twice as many!), and at least one vehicle carrying their luggage from town to town and picking up groceries, etc. When I got off the official route, I saw some of the support vehicles, and there are thousands. We would have burned far less gas if we'd left our bikes behind and just toured the state in cars! Or better yet, left the cars behind and spread out on our bikes.
  4. It is arguably safer, because there are officers keeping most car & truck traffic off the official route, and there are ambulances standing by to help in the event of an injury, and the chances of ever being alone on the road (the horror!) are close to nil. But on the other hand, there are way more opportunities for bike-on-bike collisions when riding in dense traffic at varying speeds. Plus (god forbid), one drunk/distracted driver or Nice-style terrorist could mow down hundreds of cyclists in under a minute. So IMO it's a toss-up.
  5. What's with all the drinking? The whole RAGBRAI route is basically one big beer garden, with the normal laws pertaining to open consumption and intoxicated cycling suspended and all authorities turning a blind eye. If that's your scene, great. I guess it demonstrates that most people can behave responsibly under those conditions, and so maybe the laws are not as necessary as we usually think, for what that's worth.
• Nobody ever says, "the priestess with the leastest."
• Judging by the fact that "International Phonetic Alphabet" is abbreviated IPA, I'm guessing the linguist who abbreviated it must have had an accent from somewhere in the West Indies.
• Favorite quote so far from the commentary track on the original Ghostbusters: "You've got to have funny props, I'm telling you; that's the key to great acting. Olivier understood that."
• [headline: Raccoon climbs 700 foot tall Toronto crane, poops at the top] Approached for comment, his accomplice said, "I am Groot."
• The magic spells in Harry Potter should have been written in regex instead of fake Latin, because then they would have actually worked.
  
  Harry turned to face Malfoy and raised his wand. "\b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@ [A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,}\b!" he commanded.
  
  "That's not the proper way to match an email address," Malfoy sneered. "I can come up with a dozen valid addresses it won't match."
  
  "It was good enough for yours," said Harry. He slipped it into the pocket of his robe and caught up with his friends.
• Overhearing a Bible study group at a coffeeshop reminds me of some of the wacky conversations I overheard during my time in Fairfield. Faith healing by proxy over the telephone, that kind of thing. I guess when you're down in it and surrounded by it, it doesn't sound wacky, but one table away you might as well be doing an improv sketch.
• Musée d'Orsay sounds like Pig Latin.
• Just saw Star Trek: Beyond. I'm feeling very satisfied that, for once, somebody acknowledged that you can't take out the leader of a swarm of ships because swarms don't have leaders. It would have been way more satisfying, though, if the character who grew up in a forest had had to point this out to the Enterprise crew who grew up watching Independence Day and Ender's Game. And The Phantom Menace. And Battlestar Galactica.
• I'm sure it's just coincidental that Duolingo likes my French pronunciation better when I talk with my mouth full.
• Now that the local supercluster of the universe has been named Laniakea, I think we should rename "the Great Attractor" Justice. You know, because "the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward Justice." Alternatively, we could name it Karma, because it's going to get us eventually, but it's in no hurry.
• I've learned something on the Internet this morning. Ping pong balls are extremely flammable. Which makes me think someone, at some point, probably tried to play... FIRE PONG.
• We're in Belgium! Pardon my French.
• I remember one of my first encounters with French pronunciation. Mom said, "It's pronounced pa da doo, not pass de ducks."
• I wonder if the pseudo-Latin sung by choirs during the dramatic scenes in movies is auto-generated Lorem ipsum, or if the composer actually sounds out a bunch of nonsense syllables to see which sound best. Or maybe it's not meant to be Latin at all: maybe it's Furbish.
• If there's a sports team made up of financial planners, I hope all of their jerseys say, "past performance does not guarantee future results."
• So Sunday night, our last night in France, we stayed in a suburb near Charles de Gaulle airport that is mostly Muslim. I went to one of the two halal restaurants for take out. While I was waiting in line and reading the menu, a guy came in in very good spirits and was greeting everyone with "As-salāmu ʿalaykum." When he said it to me, I replied "Waʿalaykumu s-salām," because that's what you say. He lit up and asked me (in English, because pretty much everybody in France could tell we were English speakers) if I was a convert. I said no, but I have friends who are Muslim. He looked a little confused and asked if I was from England. I said no, America. Now he was really confused. "You have friends who are Muslim?" Then it was my turn to order, and by the time I was done ordering he had left.
• A few things Jessie Stallings and I will miss about France: amazing food and coffee at every corner cafe; gorgeous buildings and artworks that were completed hundreds of years before anyone in North America had a written language; trains that mostly run on time and are affordable. A few things we won't miss: cigarette smoke; having to climb 3-5 flights of stairs without warning; the unapologetic shrug when things are out of order or missing or otherwise not as advertised.
• What I missed most about the United States while in Europe: drinking fountains. What I missed least: the presidential campaign.
• Remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger was running for governor of California and everyone thought he was a joke and a bunch of women came forward to say he had groped them and Gary Trudeau depicted him in Doonesbury as a gigantic disembodied groping hand for months and people elected him anyway but he apparently had outgrown that phase or stopped taking steroids or something because he turned out to be a halfway decent governor? Remember that? We [the electorate] really dodged a bullet that time.
• Every time Facebook suggests I follow Mark Zuckerberg I just think of the final scene in The Social Network and imagine him sitting alone, reloading the page, waiting to see if I will validate him.
• What exactly is Storm Trooper armor designed to protect them from? It doesn't seem to do any good.
• Various people have tried to sum up Trump's views, so let me give the smart-alec answer: -𝑖𝜋
  
  That is to say, negative, imaginary, and irrational.
• It just occurred to me that Jessie and I have seen Jehovah's Witnesses in every country we've visited this year (not including Belgium, which we just passed through), with the same little stand saying "What does the Bible really teach?" translated into the appropriate language. In no case did anyone stop to talk with them. Maybe there's some nuance to their strategy that I'm missing.
• I normally have the Privacy Badger plugin enabled on my browser, but every once in a while I visit a site that won't work unless it thinks it knows who I am. So I open an incognito window and -- holy crap, the Web can be annoying! So many popups and flashy ads and ... Who knew? It's like the department store scene in Minority Report. Why do people put up with that?
• Here is a sentence in Russian that sounds like a recording played backward: Мухи не любят хлеб. (Moohi nye lyubyat hlyeb) Good times.
• The fact that breakfast in Russian is pronounced "zavtrak" makes me wonder if the "second breakfast" scene from the Lord of the Rings, translated into Russian, sounds like the scene from Babylon 5 where Zathras talks about his brother, Zathras. "What about second Zathras?" "I don't think she knows about second Zathras..."
• Along the lines of that meme that says citizens are expected to remain calm with a gun in our faces while police can panic, there should be one about how the audience at a debate has to sit quietly and not react, but the candidate(s) who might be president can interrupt with any outburst that comes to mind.
• Whenever I see a roadside pulpit that says "our god is an awesome god," it makes me curious to see the rest of the rankings.
• [regarding an inscription on the national WWI memorial, "THEN SHALL THE EARTH YIELD HER INCREASE AND GOD EVEN OUR OWN GOD SHALL BLESS US":] Yea, verily, perhaps even our own God! But maybe somebody else's. Don't quote me on that. You're not taking this down, are you?
• Because Unitarians (notably Charles Dickens and Clement Moore) are primarily responsible for Christmas being such a whopping big deal today instead of the footnote to the calendar it was in Victorian times, I feel kind of guilty about the other winter holidays not getting the attention they deserve. If it weren't for Dickens blowing Christmas out of all proportion, we wouldn't have to say "all holidays matter."
• The cookies were taking up too much room in the freezer. The door wasn't staying closed reliably! They had to come out, I'm telling you. It's a public service, what I done.
• Is it wrong to take comfort in the fact that the people who are plotting violence if the election doesn't go their way apparently think they can do so on social media? Have they not been watching the FBI smack down ISIS recruiters on Facebook and Twitter? Or do they think they can get away with openly plotting rebellion because they're white?
• When the flag flies on a double standard, that's the signal to stand up *and* kneel.
• You know how everybody claims to hate Circus Peanuts? Well, guess what? That's what the Lucky Charms "marshmallows" are.
  
  I can just imagine how this meeting went.
  
  coworker: "Are you crazy? Parents won't feed their kids stale marshmallows for breakfast!"
  
  Holahan: "I bet you they will if we sell it to them. We're General F-ing Mills. They trust us."
  
  Boss: "Well, I can't be seen to bet against the company, so I guess I'll bet against the consumer!"
  
  Later, coworker: "I told you it wouldn't sell. Can we please pull this product?"
  
  Boss: "I'll look foolish if I lose a bet. Let's coat the cereal in sugar and see if that improves sales."
• Whenever I see Jennifer Lawrence's natural hair color, I think, why is Katniss Everdeen wearing that unconvincing blond wig?
• If Jesus loved us before we were born, does that make Him a hipster?
• Isn't it interesting that "smart TV" means a TV that doesn't need cable/satellite service? It's like the industry decided to call its own flagship product "dumb."
• I just realized why characters in TV shows always seem to be able to afford family vacations to Disneyland or Hawaii. They live in places where the cost of living is so high, the vacation only costs them about a month's income, whereas for those of us in flyover country it would be more like 6 months' to a year's. (My previous explanation was that the cast and crew really wanted to go to Disneyland/Hawaii, and filming the show there made it a business expense. Also: sponsorships.)
• Poisoning people should not be considered a viable business plan. I'm not sure why this is controversial.
• For some reason it just struck me as odd that Tazo sells a tea called Zen. What would other world religions be like, reduced to flavors of tea?
  • Protestantism, with the flavor of lamb's blood, or is it grape juice, makes you feel your sins are forgiven and you are personal friends with God.
  • Unitarianism, the tea that tastes like coffee, makes you question authority. Works best on white people.
  • Scientology tastes like Kool-Aid, and we're not allowed to talk about it.
  • Episcopalianism tastes a lot like Catholicism, but less expensive, and you can quit anytime. Imported from England.
  • With your first sip of Buddhism, you realize that everything about life sucks. By the time you've had your fourth sip, you realize you're going to have to change literally everything about your life.
  • Mormonism isn't in the tea cupboard. It's in the pantry, with about a year's worth of supplies. It's caffeine free and tastes like white bread.
  • Hinduism tastes fantastic, but it has so many ingredients you're afraid to try to make it at home.
  • Jehovah's Witness tea has no idolatrous flavors. It's just straight up caffeine. Comes with a copy of Awake! magazine in your choice of language, delivered to your door at an inconvenient time.
  • Taoism tastes like everything and nothing, but the tea you can drink is not the true tea.
  • Baptism is not a tea for drinking alone. You make a tub full, and you and your family and friends take turns dunking in it, and it makes you see in black and white.
  • Atheism is just tea. Seriously, it's all just tea. Why are we even having this conversation?
  • Agnosticism might be decaf, sorry.
  • Druidry is a wildcrafted herbal brew, which varies considerably with location. It has an oak tannic quality to it, and is cold brewed in a stone basin of collected rainwater. Best served at the first ray of the rising sun.
  • Judaism tea tastes just like your mom made it, and your grandma, and so on, provided they were all Jewish. If you want to try it, of course you're welcome, but it won't be the same.
  • Catholicism tastes horrible, but drinking it will make you a better person, according to the manufacturer. Goes best with a box of wine.
• If the plumbing in your school of witchcraft and wizardry is big enough for an enormous basilisk to travel through, your pipes might be just a tad too large. I mean, I'm assuming we're talking sewer pipes and not pressurized tap water, because the basilisk has to breathe, but even so, there is no need for such big pipes. Three out of four school founders agree.
• It's kind of disappointing how few words in Russian are cognates. For example, детский дом is a children's home, not the jetski dome it sounds like. (Two jetskis enter -- one jetski leaves!) Every key is a ключ, even if it doesn't qualify as a kludge. (Maybe Russian locks are really unreliable?) And конфети is candy, not confetti, though I guess either would be appropriate to throw at a parade...?
• [posted on election night:] You know, learning about permaculture has sometimes made me wish for a godforsaken wasteland that I could work to reclaim. Be careful what you wish for.
• Has anyone ever confused the MPAA with the NCAA? This college basketball game has been rated PG-13 for adult themes and some violence...
• I know this part of Kansas is home to the Submarine Veterans Memorial Highway against all odds and logic, but why is the carillon of a downtown [Emporia] church playing "Those in Peril on the Sea?" Is global warming going to turn us back into a seafloor sooner than anticipated?
• Duolingo is teaching me Russian sentences that J. Michael Straczynski would be proud of: "I agree, everything is bad and is not going to get better."
• [regarding a Twitter thread about the lack of OB/GYN services in Star Wars:] I think whenever conservatives come after women's health care from now on, we should say, "do you want Sith Lords? This is how you get Sith Lords."
• I have to laugh when people say the stuff in the dryer lint filter is fibers from your clothes. Clearly they are not pet owners.
• Do people who live in New York and New Jersey just crack up laughing whenever a Liberty Mutual commercial shows people hanging out in a park that is apparently somewhere in the middle of the harbor?
• Accelebrate, n. What a Dalek says when it's bored at a party.
• Somebody who is a bigger Star Wars fan than I am, please explain to me how princess -> general (or queen -> senator) is a promotion. Or are the female characters just downwardly mobile?
• Thanks to an Apple commercial, I have "Home for the Holidays" stuck in my head, and now I want to apply its quirky logic to other musical assertions. "There's no business like show business / 'Cause whatever business you're in / You'll always feel you're putting on a show." "There is nothing like a dame / 'Cause no matter whom you're with / You'll always feel you're with a dame."
• I wonder if actual pirates ever say things like "arrr" and "shiver me timbers" ironically.
• You know why they say don't look a gift horse in the mouth? Because the hatch where the Greek soldiers come out is in the belly, silly.
• [regarding the presidential election:] With apologies to a friend who posted a similar parable...
  
  Once there were two mothers who gave birth on the same day. During their pregnancies, the first mother had spoken publicly, saying that the second mother planned to steal her child and replace it with her own dead one, and that if the second mother was seen to have a living child and the first a dead one, that it would be proof she had done this deed. When asked if she would accept the death of one of the children, she said only if it were the second woman's child that died, for that would be God's will.
  
  After the babies were born, lo, one of them died, but there was much confusion on that day and none could say with certainty which baby it was that had died. The two mothers went with the living baby to the king, who asked that his sword be brought to him. The first mother declared, none may challenge what has been ordained. The second mother cried, let her have the living baby, but do not harm it! The king raised his sword and cut himself in two, more or less down the middle, but with a little bit more of himself on the second mother's side, just for the record.
  
  The first mother went home with the living child, and the second mother went out into the wilderness to bury the dead one. A third mother whose child had also died on the same day heard about the situation and paid for a DNA test to determine the living child's parentage, but the first mother tried to prevent a sample from being taken saying, who are you to challenge what has been ordained?
  
  The neighbors of the first mother began to get concerned about the company she kept with a baby in the house. She was seen to be in bed with all manner of angry, disreputable, and foul-mouthed men, who were known to steal from the public coffers and blame others for the loss. The neighbors became worried for the child's safety and called DHS, which sent in a pair of social workers to review the home situation and decide whether it be fit for a child. One of these was disposed to be partial to the first mother and the other to the second, however they had a job to do. The first mother said, who are you to come between a mother and her child? The second mother, in the wilderness, said nothing.
• Trying to learn the Cherokee syllabary, and I can't help thinking of the line from Arrival: "There's no relationship between what they say and what they write..." That's not true of course, but the symbols for similar sounds are no more similar to each other than the symbols for different sounds. I think Sequoia was an early practitioner of Dada.
• It suddenly occurs to me that the fact that we had to repeat the pledge of allegiance every day implies that it must wear off pretty rapidly. I mean, we didn't have to recite the multiplication table that many times, or conjugate Spanish verbs. We learned them, and we moved on. It's no wonder we played at being pirates and mercenaries and aliens on weekends and vacations: our allegiance had expired.
• I keep thinking about the commercial for milk I overheard yesterday, in which they sounded scandalized that almond milk is "only 2% almonds." Well, yeah. If it were 100% almonds, by the time you had spread half a cup of it on your breakfast cereal, you'd have 75 grams of (polyunsaturated) fat, 3 grams of sodium, 25 grams of carbs, 25 grams of protein, 750% of your daily allowance of calcium, 150% of manganese, 100% of iron and magnesium, 50% of copper, 250% of vitamin A, 625% of vitamin D, 750% vitamin E, 1251% of B12, and 375% of phosphorus. By all means, water that stuff down.
• If you think the people on the west and east coasts live in an information bubble, and Canada and Mexico are living in bubbles, and also Europe and the UN are in bubbles, then perhaps you should look up and see if the bubble extends overhead as well.
• I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the fact that the Cherokee words for donkey and mule are both 7 syllables long and differ by only the final vowel. (ᏗᎦᎵᏯᏅᎯᏛ and ᏗᎦᎵᏯᏅᎯᏓ)
• Rogue One = Serenity + The Lion King 1 1/2
• For a technological civilization, the people of Star Wars have a really short institutional memory. You would think that at some point during the Death Star's construction Darth Vader would remark, "You know, when I was a kid, I destroyed a space station by shooting the reactor," and that people would listen to him.
• It's kind of ludicrous that we live in a world where you can be physically in a hardware store, need a ruler, and get an app on your phone to make your phone into a ruler faster than you can find an actual ruler in the actual hardware store.
• I am incredulous that the Cherokee needed six syllables to say "bear" (ᎠᎵᏐᏆᎸᏗ). I would think that natural selection would favor a shorter word. Here's another good one: ᏍᏈᏍᏗᏗᎾᎳᏍᏛᏍᎩ ... eleven syllables to say caterpillar. If the Ses were not separate syllables, it would be "Squeesdeedee Nalasdusky" -- only 7 syllables. But each S is its own syllable.
• People were offended by Pluto losing its status as a planet. Imagine the furor if scientists declared Europe is not a continent. Even though everyone can see it's clearly not.
• Our poor furnace is so oversized for our efficient little house, I imagine it talks like Marvin the Paranoid Android. "Is that all? Here I am, heat exchanger the size of a planet, and you want me to heat 1300 square feet? I think I'll go shut myself off. Life. Don't talk to me about life."
• I had a dream this morning that our Kansas Permaculture Collaborative social meeting was held in a crawl space under a metal grid floor, and dirt from the shoes of people walking above kept falling down into our food. Also, the guest speaker was Kanye West.
• "Die Hard" is English for rigor mortis.
• Your Cherokee word of the day is goat, ᎤᎦᏐᏣᏁᏛ, which sounds like "Uncle Schwarzenegger." ("Oo-ga-so-tsa-ne-duh")
• Cake Wrecks should have a companion site called Tea Wrecks, in which children's tea parties are crashed by a child acting like a dinosaur.
• Aside from Hunter, are there other former professions that have taken on new life as popular children's names? I know a Granger, but that's not common. Gatherer? Trapper? Scrivener? Bootblack? [friend suggested many examples]
• Suppose a high-school English teacher handed you an essay written by one of her students, saying, "I really like this essay about Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but it needs to say more about James Joyce's use of alliteration. Could you just add a paragraph about that? It shouldn't take long; the original author could have banged it out in about 15 minutes, but he's graduated."
  
  Not only would you have to read the essay to figure out where to add the paragraph and in what style to write it, but you'd also have to reread Portrait of the Artist and form an opinion about Joyce's use of alliteration, so that 50-word paragraph is going to take you more like three days to write.
  
  This is why programmers take so long to write a few lines of code.
• If I were a right-wing conspiracy theorist, I would think that the reason the Democrats are allowing the Trump presidency farce to play out is so that all the white supremacists and misogynists feel comfortable identifying themselves on social media, in order to compile a registry of such people for use after Clinton takes office. Because otherwise I would have to admit that I was totally dead wrong about Obama's motives for the last 8 years, and that would be awkward.
• It's that awkward time of the year when retailers reveal just how little they value their merchandise.