More stuff worth saving from a sinking ship:

• Just stumbled onto an infomercial for "The Red Hair Club" and can't help thinking of the Sherlock Holmes story in which such a club turns out to be a con operation for embezzling a red-haired man's money. Wonder how many of the people involved with the infomercial know that.
• Is there a name for those movies that you can't bear to watch anymore because you watched them over and over in the early days of videotape?
• Aughhhh.  It just dawned on me why the price for hot water and a teabag at a coffeeshop is so "steep."
• waiting for the washing machine repairman to come sometime this afternoon.  Sorry, dogs, can't walk you now.  If the guy keeps us waiting, you can pee on his shoes.
• To be thoroughly ironic in retrospect, Lance Armstrong should have been named Pierce Legstrong.  You know, along the same lines as John Bobbitt.
• I just received official notice that Yellowbook, Inc. (publishers of yellow pages) is changing its name to "hibü."  Another quality decision brought to you by groupthink.
• Can anyone explain to me how come the Three Musketeers are always seen using swords?  What happened to their muskets?
• I think it's sad that Forbes magazine is doing nothing with their registration of the domain name forbs.com, when they could be cornering the market on information about herbaceous flowering plants.
• I estimate a lapdog is about 25x more likely to stay in a lap that shifts position than a lapcat.  Further research is needed.
• I keep seeing Doctor Who fan art that shows all the regenerations of the Doctor with their various identifying characteristics, but I have yet to see one done in the style of either A) medieval saint portraits or B) Hindu god portraits.  Seems like both of those are similar concepts.
• I'm a few years late with this joke, but Marshall Mathers should have named his daughter Eminelope.
• Anyone who is revolted by the appearance of a kombucha SCOBY should definitely not try dividing one by hand. On the other hand, if you're looking for a halloween party prop, I know just the thing.
• imagine how awkward it must be for carrot parents to explain where "baby carrots" come from.
• Given the choice between lighting Jim Morrison's fire or wallowing in the mire, I think I'd make time to hesitate.
• Q: why does a permaculture designer need a degree in psychology? A: to tell you your garden has a nitrogen fixation.
• It's all fun and games until somebody finds a slimy dead bird in the rain barrel.
• Words to live by: The purpose of planning is to reduce anxiety.  If your plan is making you anxious, it's time for a new plan.
• I think Jung Seed Co. should sell plants that grow in darkness as well as light.
• Took a nap this afternoon with the cat & both dogs. I'm not ready to sleep with the fishes.
• Do you suppose typologians debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pig?
• Everyone was posting about Pi Day, but I had a complex day. Which way do I need to rotate my calendar to get it back on the real plane?
• Do you suppose "Oz the Great and Powerful" is Sam Raimi's autobiography? Hint: the witches are movie studios.
• Thinking about the ol' paradox about whether God can make a rock so heavy He can't lift it. First: what does it mean to "lift" something that has it's own gravitational field? Second: are we sure God has ever lifted a rock?
• Never try to catch a falling cactus.
• Ok, so dog grooming is not one of my natural talents. Fortunately Loca is very forgiving, thanks to her short attention span and lack of concern for her own looks.
• Wow... CaravanOfDespair.com is available, along with .org and all the other variations.  Apparently *nobody* wants to say that theirs is a caravan of despair.  Which begs the question, what is accomplished by specifying that yours is not a caravan of despair?  Is it like saying you're not a racist? LoverOfLeaving.com and its variations are also available.
• Say what you will about the phony accent Peter Jurasik used while playing Londo Mollari - it's way more convincing than his actual speaking voice. Poor schmuck sounds like one of the Car Guys.
• My brain makes puns even while asleep. It would like you to know that Robespierre is probably just going to pay Paul.
• Why do you suppose there are surnames for all the major flavors?  Sweet, Salt, Bitter, Sauer, Savory... OK, maybe not Pungent or Astringent, but... who was tasting those families of people, and naming them by flavor?  Inquiring minds want to know.
• I think it says a lot about David Holmgren's writing style that I find his writing more readable in the robotic voice of my phone than on paper.
• I still haven't learned rule number one of living in a town with a bad smell factory: before looking all over the house for the broken sewer pipe, first go outdoors.
• Wait, wait.... what if Japanese YouTube celebrity cat Maru's surname is Kobayashi?  That would make all those cardboard box experiments "Kobayashi Maru tests!"  The punchlines write themselves!  Captain Kirk doesn't believe in a 'no-fit' scenario, he just thinks outside the box...
• After I said yesterday that privacy is nonexistent on the Internet, Facebook suggested I like an app called "Whisper" that supposedly confess your secrets anonymously. Through your smartphone. I'm not sure if this proves they were listening, or that they weren't.
• Typo of the morning: a permaculturalist says his garden is "elf reliant."
• I feel much more sympathetic toward Michael O'Hare -- and his portrayal of Commander Sinclair -- knowing that he was wrestling with paranoid delusions. I guess this information was "on a need to know basis... and we DIDN'T need to know!"  😉
• Unfortunate domain name of the day: a spammer just tried to register on one of my sites with an email address at gonereal.com.
• I had a dream this morning that I read two sports feature articles from the '80s all the way through under the impression that they were X-Men fan fiction.  In my waking life, I have never read any X-Men fan fiction, nor any sports feature articles.  In unrelated news, I think I just ate a ladybug.
• I think it was Yoda who said: Pokeweed leads to aphids. Aphids lead to ladybugs. Ladybugs lead to integrated pest management.
• I'm seeing a lot of complaints that the Service of the Living Tradition was different this year. Isn't that what the name means?
• If you steal a funky craft idea, is that etsyonage?
• The only people who "live in a democracy" live in public housing.  Homeless people can't vote, and the rest of us live in petty fiefdoms.
• Gotta love it when weather.com says rain all day, but the hourly forecast shows 0% chance of precipitation for any given hour.  Is this an example of how calculus applies to the real world?
• Some ads on Craigslist use so much jargon (as opposed to those that are just misspelled) that you can't figure out what on earth they're talking about.  Clearly this is the place to sell parts for an interocitor.
• Whenever I hear the phrase "endowed chair," I feel the urge to say, "I thought that was upholstery."
• Just realized "What About Love?" and "Take Another Little Piece of my Heart" have the same tune.
• Dear Swype: "tge" is not a word. Never has been, never will be, no matter how many times you suggest it. Perhaps there's a common English word I might be trying to spell instead.
• I'm glad I'm not on a jury or in public office, because apparently being privy to information that others don't have makes you stupid in the eyes of those who have less complete information.
• If you can't decide which plants to thin out, just wait - the pests will show you.
• [re headline: Dead Stars Colliding Forged Gold on Earth] Old news: Hollywood has been trying to make gold this way for decades!
• When people say, "You can't prove a negative," should I assume their statement is unproven, or false?  Or a joke?
• If I had a piece of paper for every time a bank or utility offered to save paper by signing me up for electronic statements... oh wait, I do.
• Aaaa!  Taxonomy sucks sometimes!  What is called amaryllis is actually Hippeastrum; what is called surprise lily is actually not a lily but Amaryllis belladonna, except that in temperate climates it's usually Lycoris squamigea instead, which is in the Amaryllis family but not the genus, and which has nothing to do with licorice, which is Glycyrrhiza!
• Pretzelcoátl: the salted serpent. [a friend commented: found at Wal-Martlán.
• [re the Andy Grammer song:] What do you suppose happens if you let your hair down without keeping your head up?
• Is a chinchilla anything like a chest freezer?
• So I've been doing a lot of looking into Internet privacy and what normal folks can do to have greater privacy.  It seems you can hide who you are, or where you are, or what sites you're visiting, or what you're doing there, but it's really difficult to do more than one of those things at a time, so you basically have to decide which aspect of privacy is important to you and stick with it.  I can't decide if any of them is important enough to justify the inconvenience.  If you're reading this, clearly you can't either.  😉
• I'm down with PGP.  You need my key? Sorry, I'm about 15 years late with that joke.
• Why are the versions of Android named after snack foods and not after famous robots of fiction?  I realize many of those robots killed people, but just fictional people, whereas snack foods kill real people...
• I think anyone calling himself a "contractor" should be prepared to demonstrate his shrinking ability.
• Is fast-food cappuccino an example of dessertification?
• Football fans, to the rest of us, your status updates sound like this: "Gerbils! Yeah! Totally massacred the Aboriginal Militia! B-Joe went all the way to foible and snarked the jubilee! Awesome!!"
• How many permaculturalists does it take to change a light bulb?
  • It depends, but here's how they do it in Australia.
  • One to observe the burnt-out bulb for a year before designing a comprehensive long-term solution.
  • Two to debate the pros and cons of fluorescent technology.
  • One to build a wood-fired oven and make pizzas for the work party.
  • Twenty-five to attend the work party and construct a "lighting guild" consisting of a skylight, a candle, and off-grid photovoltaics powering new light bulb.
  • Two to build swales on contour.
• Here's a spam email I got this morning: "Danish king Helgo who slew Hundingus, king of Saxony, in single combat. Serves the counties of Imperial and San Diego. He quickly transitioned from teaching to school administration in Loco, Oklahoma and Magnum, Oklahoma."
• How not to conduct research in the social sciences via social media:
  1. send a message to an email list of 205 people saying only "This is to prove we can communicate with each other."  No request for response of any kind.
  2. count the number of people who reply to the message saying variations of "yes, I got it" or "shut up people, stop replying to the list!"
  3. report the number of responses with the headline, "People are listening!"
• Whenever I hear Tom Hanks' outrageous fake Boston accent on the Captain Phillips commercials ("We ah under attack by ahmed poirates!"), I want to hear him say, "Ahsk not wat the poirates kin do fa you, ahsk wat you kin do fa the poirates!"
• I don't always use compound sentences, but when I do, I put a comma before the conjunction.
• Transporting fish this morning. Where you ask? To school, of course.
• I bet the dogs wonder why we never take them to visit the place where we send their collected poop on Thursdays.  They probably think of it as some sort of gallery.  They'd be disappointed and confused if I took them to the big echoey warehouse where a scary front-end loader rampages.  There's probably a metaphor in here somewhere, but looking for it would be like... well, that's probably it right there.
• Has there ever been a washer/dryer set where the action you have to take to start both machines was the same?  Every (home) washer I've ever used, you pull or push the multi-functional dial to start it, while on the dryer you push a start button or turn a knob that only starts the machine and does nothing else.  If you get confused and pull the dryer knob, more often than not it comes off in your hand.  Who decided that was a good idea?
• If anyone has built a pinewood derby car that uses a Sodastream cylinder for propulsion, they haven't posted video online.
• If a humanist has the welfare of humans at heart, does that make Temple Grandin a catalyst?
• Neil DeGrasse Tyson gave Jon Stewart a hard time about the globe spinning "backward" in the opening of the Daily Show. But that's the way it appears to spin from the POV of virtually every satellite ever launched. So sorry, Neil, for not putting the virtual camera in the "correct" frame of reference.
• There should be a Pearl Jam cover band called Oyster Stuffing.
• Did you ever think you'd see the day when Microsoft would beg customers to "be brave" and try their new OS? How the mighty have fallen!
• Guy at the dog park says his dog "doesn't play well with others; that's why we were here by ourselves." ?
• [Headline: Alligator found under escalator at Chicago airport] ...and millions of kids' irrational fears turned out to be justified.
• Geez, I totally forgot it's the 5th of November!  I know of no reason why I should ever have done that.
• The mash-up-o-matic in my head informs me that the 11th Doctor's theme shares the same chord progression as "The Fox."
• What's more surprising than seeing the complete (disturbingly kinky) TV series "Lexx" for sale at the home improvement warehouse? Coming back later to find that someone evidently bought it.
• World society managed to standardize cell phone chargers and cables.  How about we now standardize the sizes and thread counts of lids for bottles and cans?  I figure no more than six should be necessary.
• When plastic firearms are outlawed, only outlaws playing immersive video games will make firearms out of a chicken carcass.  And also judelaws.
• It's a testament to how out-of-it I was yesterday that I forgot to turn off the oven after baking cookies... For 27 hours.
• Yo' momma so homophobic, all her pairs of shoes are one men's and one women's.
• After seeing the 2nd Hobbit film I'm wondering, where did the dwarves of old put the slag from all that gold they refined? I'm guessing Mordor, by the look of the place. Maybe that's why Sauron is so mad at them: they dumped radioactive, toxic slag all over his country.
• If there were open-source electronic dolls, they should be called Software Patch Kids.
• Am I seriously the only one who thought the line, "the chains of the masses untied" was so completely absurd that it ruined the rest of the musical Evita?  I mean, there were lots of bad parts, but that was the point where I thought they weren't even trying.  Nobody ties chains.  If the Argentinian masses were tied with chains, they would just slip right out of them, because knots do not work on chains.  And yet I can find no evidence on Google that anyone besides myself thought there was anything wrong with that choice of words.