So I'm going to give you some links and send you out to play.
Since you're here to read a journal, go check out some of the journals I read, if they're not already on your list.
Sluggy Freelance is a great online comic, though it's serial - don't try just jumping into the middle of it. It's got good navigation; go to the beginning and start to read there. While I'm hyping online comics, Kevin & Kell is good - though once again, I recommend starting at the beginning!
The Healing Power of Obnoxiousness is a site of works written by Paul T. Riddell, primarily dealing with the science-fiction community and movies. He's acerbic and nasty and, well, obnoxious. But funny as hell, if you like that kind of thing.
Kris Brandt just put together her own website, and it's pretty darn good!
You'll need the Flash plugin for this one, but if you like Mah-jongg solitare, this is a fantastic site.
And, for sheer comedy, though I'm sure everyone already knows about these, don't neglect The Brunching Shuttlecocks or The Cruel Site of the Day.
Sorry, gang. I'll be ready to babble again on Monday. Or maybe I'll feel like writing later this afternoon, in which case I'll notify the notify list.
Word of the Day: beau geste - A graceful, magnanimous, or conciliatory gesture
French is just wrong.
Granted, my poor attitude comes from a terrible childhood experience, but I like to think that even without that, I'd feel strongly about the disgusting American penchant for dropping foreign phrases into perfectly normal speech. English isn't good enough for you? Does it really get your point across better to say je ne sais quoi than something indescribable? Or ciao instead of goodbye? (Do you know what the direct translation of ciao is? Look it up; it's interesting.)
Maybe I shouldn't complain. This is as close to knowing a foreign language as most Americans (myself included, since I've forgotten most of the German I took) ever get.
But French is still wrong.
Afternoon update: Okay, I am compelled to update. Becky and I, deciding that work sucks (not that this is a new revelation, merely a sudden re-realization for us), went out to lunch. We went to a little sandwich and grill place not far from our office, where we each had a basic non-alcoholic drink, I had an appetizer, and Becky had the sandwich special.
Our lunch was pretty good, though we spent most of it eavesdropping on the table next to ours and trying to figure out what percentage of the girl's income later in life was going to be devoted to therapy, because her mother wouldn't stop telling everyone else at the table about her weird eating habits. Anyway, the waiter brought us the check, we dug in our wallets for tips, and took the check to the cash register to ask them to break it up.
Becky, who had possession of the check, looked down and realized that she'd been charged almost $9 for her sandwich. That seemed a little outrageous to both of us, so she looked at the specials board when we walked by, and sure enough - it should have been $6. (Well, $5.95, but I'm sure you'll excuse me for rounding things off. There's a shortage of decimal points this season.) When we got to the cash register, Becky pointed this out to the cashier, who looked confused for a moment, then said, "Oh, they must have forgotten to change it from yesterday," and took our check off to fix it. (Why she couldn't fix it at the cash register, I have no idea.) "And we need to split it up!" we yelled after her. (Well, we didn't yell. We raised our voices a bit, but "we raised our voices after her" just sounds dumb.)
Eventually, she came back. As near as I could tell by looking at it, she had neither re-rung the check, nor made any notes as to the new price. "How are you splitting this up?" she asked.
Becky said, "I had the sandwich and a drink." The girl punched some numbers into the calculator by the cash register and eventually came up with a number somewhere around $7.50. Then she looked at me. "You had the chicken sticks?" I nodded. She punched some more numbers into the calculator and came up with a number around $8.50.
I don't usually inflict math on my readers, but I'm pretty sure you can all follow this one: My chicken sticks were $4.50, while Becky's sandwich was $6. Given that our drinks were the same price, my meal should have come to:
a) less than Becky's,
b) more than Becky's, or
c) the same as Becky's?
The girl frowned down at the numbers on her sheet, then said, "I'll just take a dollar off each." Then, despite the fact that I'd clearly seen her writing down the number for Becky's first, and mine second, she charged me for the smaller of the two amounts.
As I told Becky, it's not that the difference of a dollar really mattered that much to me - I just wanted it to make sense. If she was just going to charge us random amounts of money, why bother with the calculator?
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