Speaker For The Diodes

05:24 am - QotD

"Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace." -- Kent Nerburn

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-10-27:

"Science is telling us to have more fun together and do more stuff. This is great news, for we must obey science." -- Danny Wallace, writer, on research by Robin Dunbar of Oxford University suggesting that men need to get together with friends twice a week.

[ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2469485/Mens-wellbeing-depends-meeting-friends.html]

(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)

05:24 am - QotD

"pop tarts? oh please I only eat punk tarts" -- tumblr user philsgotsass, spotted on imgur ( thanks to realinterrobang for quoting this where I'd see it)

05:24 am - QotD

"It doesn't make sense to call ourselves ugly because we don't really see ourselves. We don't watch ourselves sleeping in bed, curled up and silent. With chests rising and falling with our own rhythm. We don't see ourselves reading a book, eyes fluttering and glowing. You don't see yourself looking at someone with care inside your heart. There's no mirror in your way when you're laughing and smiling and happiness is leaking out of you. You would know exactly how bright and beautiful you are if you saw yourself in the moments where you are truly beautiful." -- unknown (it apparently went around Tumblr, that site whose main purpose seems to be making sure attributions get lost but I hear some folks use for some sort of blogging, a few months ago; has also been seen on Facebook and Pinterest, never with attribution AFAICT -- if anyone does know where it came from, please yell; the language sounds too modern for the source to have been legitimately lost already)

[A blessed Samhain to my friends who celebrate it -- happy new year, and may the year treat you well!]

05:24 am - QotD

"They say that I'm bad and should rot
 For munching on kiddies and tots
 It's not that I prey
 On children per se:
 The grownups won't fit in my pots"
  -- from "A Baker's Dozen Of Limericks For Halloween" by maugorn, 2013-10-30

05:24 am - QotD

"The bottom line is, if you're not the one who's controlling your learning, you're not going to learn as well" -- Joel Voss, quoted in Wired 2013-10-15

[Happy birthday to my sister, if she reads this! Well okay, even if she doesn't.]

05:24 am - QotD

"Whenever I hear someone who has not had a transsexual experience say that gender is just a construct or merely a performance, it always reminds me of that Stephen Colbert gag where he insists that he doesn't see race. It's easy to fictionalize an issue when you are not fully in touch with all of the ways in which you are privileged by it." -- Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive (Seal Press, 2013) [ excerpted here]

05:24 am - QotD

Three quotes from Lou Reed (b. 1942-03-02, d. 2013-10-27), gathered from various quotation websites:

"There`s a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out."

"One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz."</i>

"The most important part of my religion is to play guitar."

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-04-04:

"Boredom is the brain's way to tell you you should be doing something else. But the brain doesn't always know the most appropriate thing to do. If you're bored and use that energy to play guitar and cook, it will make you happy. But if you watch TV, it may make you happy in the short term, but not in the long term." -- Gary Marcus, psychology professor.

[ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/your-money/why-its-not-all-bad-to-be-bored.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0]

(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)

05:24 am - QotD

"homeopathic compression: throw away the data and transmit the spaces; the data to be reconstructed from the spaces by virtue of these having remembered its shape. the only compression method more effective with increasing original data density." - yr hmbl srppnt, 1st october 2004 (swiped from the .signature file of ppint in rec.arts.sf.fandom)

05:24 am - QotD

"Why does "I can't just give them money, they might spend it on drugsl" always refer to homeless ppl, never to tech startup employees?" -- Chevalier sans Tête (@eassumption), 2013-10-24

05:24 am - QotD

"When I find myself not wanting to work on a thing, usually because unexpected delays make it drag on, I ask: 'What can I do to make this fun for myself?'

"Sometimes the answer is simple as adding snakes, puns, and existentialism. The weirder a thing gets the more motivated I am to finish it, because I no longer know just what the finished effect will be. When I've had enough experience with a thing that I truly know how it will turn out, and the finished form looks just as it did in my head, I feel no motivation to actually do the thing. When it could all go wrong, life is fun!"

Vi Hart, 2013-10-23

(Happy birthday to fidhle, and to my brother!)

05:24 am - QotD

"The message here is clear. Bigotry and transphobia? Possibly annoying, but really nothing to worry about. Calling out bigotry, however? That's a major disruption that needs to be stopped. The real problem with the discussion wasn't all the people declaring that transgender people are mentally ill and denying them their basic identity. It was that anyone got at all upset about it.

[...]

"[A]ll of this has a particularly bitter ring to it for the trans community. It is, after all, another instance of the most innocent seeming and yet destructive trick in the transphobic arsenal - the manufactured debate about time and place. The trans community sat through years of this at the hands of the larger GLBT community, as trans issues served mainly as the first thing that would be offered as a concession in any political negotiation. Trans issues were actively treated as the thing to deal with after marriage equality. But there's a larger trick involved. Trans issues aren't appropriate for federal non-discrimination laws because they'd imperil passage of laws to protect sexual orientation. They aren't appropriate for Wikipedia, because they have to win victories elsewhere first. The process of telling trans people that their concerns were inappropriate for a given venue goes back as far as 1969, when Jim Fouratt cut trans people out of the formation of the Gay Liberation Front immediately after the Stonewall riots.

[...]

"Often, of course, the harmful effects of this are coupled with talk about how this isn't some slight against trans people. It's just the rules, as those arguing for transphobia kept saying during the naming debate.

[...]

"[T]his is the situation Wikipedia has given us. Vehemently and hatefully denouncing the validity of trans identities? OK so long as you don't reference their genitals. Arguing passionately in favor of misnaming Chelsea Manning while covering up the fact that you work for her jailer? Not even worth mentioning. But knowing trans people? Means you're too involved to take administrative actions regarding trans people. Being willing to call out transphobia and hate speech for what they are? Means you can't even edit on trans topics."

-- Philip Sandifer, "Wikipedia Goes All-In on Transphobia", 2013-10-22 [ thanks to bcholmes for linking to this (and quoting different, also-important bits than I did)]

05:24 am - QotD

"Jazz will endure as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains." -- John Philip Sousa

03:58 pm - Emory's Finger-Doumbek Kickstarter

Here's something I've retweeted, and I think linked on FB, but keep forgetting to post on LJ/DW/IJ/etc.: Emory's kickstarter for producing wee "finger doumbeks" -- to produce the larger models, he needs a bigger 3D printer.

They look too small too really make useful sounds, but watch -- listen to -- the video on that Kickstarter page, especially, when Carmine Guida is playing one; they actually sound pretty cool! Cute, portable, playable ... and you can use them as drinking vessels (the larger sizes will be available with or without handles, so you can use one as a "stein-bek"). You want one of these hanging off your belt at Pennsic, n'est-ce pas?

There's only about a week and a half left in the funding period for this project at Kickstarter, and still quite a way to go, so check it out. If nothing else, some of the drumming in the video is nice (well, except for my bit -- I thought I was doing okay until I heard what better drummers had done with it).

The latest news is that he's started trying two-colour drums, with a white drumhead on a red shell.

These tiny drums are fun. Not as loud as a full-size doumbek, of course, but small enough to keep one with you all the time so you're never caught without a drum. Check it out.

05:24 am - QotD

"We may have the worst healthcare system in the industrialized world. There's a reason other countries aren't copying what we do here." -- The Gay Blade (@ Daily Kos), 2013-10-20 on the (pre-Obamneycare) American healthcare lack-of-system that the Affordable Care Act is trying to improve upon.

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-08-30:

"Insanity in individuals is something rare -- but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

(submitt to the mailing list by Reddy, Michael)

02:38 pm - Mom coming home soon; I've been feeling crappy

Even though I haven't been away, I've been spending a lot of time either feeling unwell or very distracted, and at this point I think I'm a couple weeks behind on reading DW, a little farther behind on reading LJ, a week or so behind on Twitter except for spot checks now and then, and nearly three weeks behind on FB, so I'm declaring my pants bankrupt (dunno whether FB users will be familiar with that jargon; it started as an LJ thing).

While I'm at it ... status update: the last time I went to visit Mom at the rehab facility, I then ran a bunch of errands the next day, burned up too many spoons, and managed to send myself into a fibro flare bad enough and long enough to keep me from attending a wedding I'd been looking forward to seeing. And then the poor sleep caught me with a second round. I'd planned to go see Mom yesterday or the day before, but trying to stave off a migraine with the home remedies that might leave me still able to drive didn't work, so yesterday I gave in and took Imitrex (which, for me, leaves me too drugged-feeling to want to drive a car). Today ... I'm still trying to decide whether I'm up to the drive. ( a more detailed examination of a week if anyone's curious (probably not) )

Mom said she's been getting physical therapy and speech therapy (which she describes as mostly memory practice?) every day lately -- the first weeks she was there they didn't seem to be doing much. The last few days she was home, she was weaker and clumsier than usual because of the infection, but even before that things were getting harder, so I'm hoping that the physical therapy she was sent to rehab for does the good it's supposed to.

Mom is coming home on Thursday (which is also my brother's birthday). So I have to be well enough to drive over to the Eastern Shore then, since I'll be her ride. IIUC a nurse will be coming here a couple of times a week after Mom comes home. We still need to do something about having help here in addition to me the rest of the time.

I'll be glad when Mom isn't an hour and half drive away, and when I know she's in her own house where she wants to be instead of someplace where she's bored. (At the same time, I do confess that I've been glad to have a break from being responsible for her, and I've liked having the house to myself. Except for having to feed Pepper and let her out in the morning instead of just going back to bed after I get up to pee, and having had to take the landline off the hook in order to sleep at all.)

Got some other stuff I've been meaning to post, which I'll do separately. First, let me walk around away from things that glow and have text on them for a while, to see whether that makes any difference in how steady I feel.

05:24 am - QotD

"Actually, it's called 'poly' because the difficulty of keeping everyone happy is of polynomial difficulty. O(n^2 + c). Voice of experience here." -- commenter RS at Failure to Fire, on polyamorous relationships, 2013-09-30

05:24 am - QotD

"Let loose the brakes, and we'll break free
 We'll reach escape velocity
 Let's seize the day, get away
 To the other side of the moon"
  -- from "The Other Side Of The Moon" by Don Tiki (I haven't found a composer/lyricist credit for yet )

(First pictures of the far side of the moon from Luna3 transmitted back to Earth 1959-10-18 (shot on film 1959-10-07, developed on board, and scanned, then the scans finally transmitted via radio)

05:24 am - QotD

"Voilà, c'est très simple, même enfantin et imbécile, comme vous le voyez. Mais c'est de ce pain empoisonné que la presse immonde nourrit notre pauvre peuple depuis des mois. Et il ne faut pas s'étonner si nous assistons une crise désastreuse, car lorsqu'on sème ce point la sottise et le mensonge, on récolte forcément la démence." -- Émile Zola

"It is very simple, nay childish, if not imbecile. But it is with this poisoned bread that the unclean press has been nourishing our poor people now for months And it is not surprising if we are witnessing a dangerous crisis; for when folly and lies are thus sown broadcast, you necessarily reap insanity." -- Émile Zola (as translated in the London Times)

[Oddly enough, he was not actually talking about Republican talking points and Fox News, though it sure sounds like it. M. Zola (b. 1840-04-02, d. 1902-09-29) delivered these words on 1898-02-22 during his libel trial, which was part of the Dreyfus affair.]

05:24 am - QotD

"He showed the words 'chocolate cake' to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. 'Guilt' was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: 'celebration.'" -- Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

05:24 am - QotD

"I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and relations which occur to me, how the matter in question was first thought of or arrived at, etc., etc." -- Ada Lovelace (b. 1815-12-10, d. 1852-11-27), mathematician and the world's first computer programmer.

05:24 am - QotD

"Hey, if New Mexico (or, Reagan forbid, the entire US) had universal health care, there would have been no need for Walter White to take up crime. No crime = no series. Therefore, the conservative battle to limit health care access is responsible for Breaking Bad.

"They must be very proud. Like if the authors of the Slave Codes had lived to see Roots."

-- calling all toasters, September 2013 ( thanks to realinterrobang for quoting this earlier.)

[To my friends to the north: Happy Thanksgiving!]

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-10-03:

"A few short years ago, casting the most classic of love stories with two women would have had to be, by necessity, a political statement in the United States: 'Can you imagine a world, dear audience, where two women could fall in love and marry? What if they could?' But women can marry now and claim each other on their taxes. And for me, that means we're arriving at a point when this casting choice can simply be another version of this timeless story. Another lens to see it through, with new eyes." -- Krista Apple, director of Philadelphia's Curio Theatre Company's production of Romeo and Juliet casting them as lesbian lovers.

[ http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2013/09/12/lesbian-romeo-juliet-curio-theatre-company/]

(submitted to the mailing list by Bob Bruhin)

05:24 am - QotD

"This year let's cancel Thanksgiving and Christmas and just having two more Halloweens instead. Someone pass that law while the government isn't looking." -- Jenny Lawson aka The Bloggess, 2013-10-10

05:24 am - QotD

"We must now have the courage to take the final step and call homophobia and heterosexism what they are. They are sin. Homophobia is a sin. Heterosexism is a sin. Shaming people for whom they love is a sin." -- Rev. Gary Hall, Dean of Washington's National Cathedral, 2013-10-06

05:24 am - QotD

"When your theory directly contradicts our lived experiences, your theory is wrong." -- Imp, "How I Stopped Apologizing and Learned to Hate Judith Butler" (2012??)

05:24 am - QotD

"All kids draw and write poetry and everything, and some of us last until we're about eighteen, but most drop off at about twelve when some guy comes up and says, 'You're no good.' That's all we get told all our lives. 'You haven't got the ability. You're a cobbler.' It happened to all of us, but if somebody had told me all my life, 'Yeah, you're a great artist,' I would have been a more secure person." -- John Lennon (b. 1940-10-09, d. 1980-12-08)

05:24 am - QotD

"Jerks adapt to changing technology at a much faster pace than telephone carriers or the FCC." -- John Bergmayer, 2013-10-04

05:24 am - QotD

"Everytime the #TCOT/#GOP says '#Obamacare is like Slavery' I picture my ancestors going 'This is like Healthcare!'" -- BlackCanseco, 2013-10-01 ( thanks to realinterrobang for quoting this earlier.)

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-10-05:

"This is the weirdest game of Pokemon. We have to find the homeless nerds and catch them all." -- Katy Levinson, Development Director of Hacker Dojo, a community center for "science nerds." Levinson is helping to find housing for NASA interns made homeless when the U.S. Government shutdown caused their government-owned and -operated campus dorm to be closed.

[ http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/nasa-interns-lose-their-space-different-kind-space]

(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)

05:43 am - QotD

"If knitting keeps you sane when life starts to unravel, I'm going to need bigge r needles." -- Gil McNeil, "Needles & Pearls" [thanks to ladyteal]

05:24 am - QotD

"If knitting keeps you sane when life starts to unravel, I'm going to need bigger needles." - Gil McNeil, "Needles & Pearls" http://ladyteal.livejournal.com/1105338.html?mode=reply&style=mine

05:24 am - QotD

"A coworker of ours suggested that the citizens of the US should have our taxes prorated for the time government services stay down. Not that it would add up to much for a lot of us, but that's not really the point." -- ObsJS, commenter at the webcomic Failure to Fire, 2013-10-03

05:24 am - QotD

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead [thanks to blueeowyn]

05:24 am - QotD

"When Jesus said "Love your enemies," maybe he even meant those parts of ourselves with which we're not yet at peace." -- Gabe (@malakhgabriel), 2013-09-29

05:24 am - QotD

"In music and art, there's this little window that we've got that the whole planet agrees upon is a cool thing to do. It's all right to make music." --- Chick Corea

05:24 am - QotD

"This year has been a transition from being a mentally ill woman to being a sane, transgendered man" -- H. Adam Ackley, quoted in "Transgender theology professor asked to leave California Christian college after coming out" by Sarah Pulliam Bailey, 2013-09-20

12:53 pm - Another Little Status Update

'Nuther status update mostly about Mom. She was released from the hospital a few days ago and is now at the rehab center on the Eastern Shore where, as of last night, she said she's only had one session of physical therapy. I got the impression she's still too weak from her infection to do much. I haven't been out to see her since the evening they took her out there, because I've had a cold -- not a very bad one, but enough that I didn't want to be around a bunch of fragile people and risk spreading it.

Speaking of Pepper, there's something I'd been planning to go to for a few days at the end of this week -- RSVP'd and all -- that I need to find a dog-sitter for (as I was reminded last night). I can leave Perrine with a clean litter box and enough food and water for a few days, but Pepper is Not-A-Cat. (I wonder whether my brother can take her for a few days.)

As for today, I'll be participating in the third #qfaith -- queerness and Faith -- chat on Twitter this evening at 6:00 PM EDT. (The second, a few days ago, was a little more structured -- a short mutual-interview between @JMaseIII and @p2son followed by questions from the rest of us. This one will be a looser format like the first one, I think -- @JMaseIII being a good chat-host and me trying to keep up.) The basic idea is to get group discussions going on Twitter from time to time about how being TGLB intersects with being religious. See some of you there tonight.

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-09-27:

"We have learned that in pursuit of its bureaucratic mission to obtain signals intelligence in a pervasively networked world, the NSA has mounted a systematic campaign against the foundations of American power: constitutional checks and balances, technological leadership, and market entrepreneurship. The NSA scandal is no longer about privacy, or a particular violation of constitutional or legislative obligations. The American body politic is suffering a severe case of auto-immune disease: our defense system is attacking other critical systems of our body." -- Yochai Benkler, law professor and director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

[ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/13/nsa-behemoth-trampling-rights]

(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)

05:24 am - QotD

"It's hard to be perfect, It really is. I keep learning things after I've already bungled it." -- Tina Weymouth (b. 1950-11-22)

05:24 am - QotD

"I think of Lazarus coming out of tomb then needing to be unwrapped like coming out of closet needing community to recover" -- Peterson Toscano (@p2son), 2013-09-26 [during a queerness-and-faith chat -- #qfaith -- on Twitter]

See also: "Lazarus, Come Out!", 2011-08-10.

"As I've transitioned, it's felt like slowly unearthing a woman who'd been buried alive, and helping her out of the ground." -- lauren@zinniaj:~$ _ (@ZJemptv), 2013-09-26 [in response to being referred to in the thread the previous quote came from]

05:24 am - QotD

From a 2013-07-24 interview by Jamal Registre, of Danielle Corsetto, author/artist of Girls With Slingshots"

[This parallels something I've pondered for years. Is my life really as interesting and as strange, and my friends so much larger-than-life, as some folks' reactions to my anecdotes often suggest, or is it just that I notice these things and recall them in conversation later? Perhaps it's a bit of both -- I do know some really fascinating people (two of whom share a birthday today!), but I may also have a quirky way of seeing things (like a lot of my friends do), and notice interesting details of events to retell later.]

05:24 am - QotD

"[The computer] is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many tools." -- Alan Kay

04:50 am - A Little Status Update

Four recent LJ entries started and never finished, and the one I manage to get to is this one ... Please excuse typos; I can't seem to type worth #$%^ this week and my keyboard is acting finicky as well -- and I'm too sleepy to do a proper job of proofreading and editing right now.

And how am I doing? Not yet caught up from a nearly sleepless weekend (at one point I'd slept five hours of the previous sixty), feeling more stress than I realize was piling up (last night I thought I was doing okay until I slowed down for a minute and it all caught up to me), with no stamina (when I do et a solid night of sleep, I wake up feeling robust and energetic and ready to tackle my to-do list for a change, but a mere two or three hours later I've used up all my spoons and start crashing again), and with still too much Mom-stuff to deal with to work on the backlog of taking-care-of-myself just yet. Could be worse, really. At some point things will slow down, I hope.

There's other news about my life, but this is the most "now" bit. And I've got some non-news thoughts and ideas to start writing if I ever start thinking them in chunks longer than a hundred and forty characters again -- I've been more active on Twitter lately (@dglenn) than on FB, LJ, DW, etc. (and will take part in the second queerness-and-Faith scheduled Twitter conversation (hashtag #qfaith) instigated by J Mase III this Sunday evening). At some point I need to start copying selected Tweets to here to let folks know what I get up to over there. (Not my whole stream -- there are too many fragmented back-and-forth replies in it to want to put every last drop here.) Before I return to long-form blogging like I've been meaning to (really!), I need to get back to feeling like I have the time and attention span again. In the meantime, I hope I can keep up on Sunday.

(I met J Mase III online (and hope to meet him in person someday) because of his poem "Josephine (What the Bible Says About Transpeople)".)

05:24 am - QotD

"Once one has been initiated into the calculus, it is hard to remember what it was like not to know what a derivative is and how to use it, and to realize that people like Fermat once had to cope with finding maxima and minima without knowing about derivatives at all." -- Judith V. Grabiner, "The Changing Concept of Change: The Derivative from Fermat to Weierstrass", April 1982

05:24 am - QotD

"Back when I was in college, I spent some time doing Quaker plain dress. Skirt, bonnet, the whole nine yards.

"On my way home for the holidays once, I ended up in line at airport security behind a woman in hijab. The TSA agent watching the line told her she'd have to take her hijab off.

"Hearing this, I started taking off my bonnet.

"The TSA agent then leaned around her to tell me that I was okay to leave my bonnet on.

"We both stopped and glared.

"The TSA agent, realizing what they'd just been caught out doing, waved us both through with our hair coverings intact.

"The moral of this story is that privileged people can sometimes provide a shield to less privileged people by making the discrimination obvious and eliminating plausible deniability."

-- Annalee at the Geek Feminism blog, 2013-09-09

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-09-21:

"Data collection and video surveillance will continue to grow as ubiquitous computing pervades almost all areas of our culture, either harnessed to our body or hovering over cities to monitor people from the sky. As technology moves to the nano scale, wearable devices will be both on us (e.g. smart glasses and other head-mounted displays, devices connected to the smartphone in the fitness and sports environment) and in us (e.g. a nanorobot navigating through the human circulatory system or shielding the human body against pathogens).

"Therefore the question is: do we want to live in a surveillance society that might ensure justice for all, yet privacy for none? Are we ready to live in a "City of Control" or do we definitely cherish a "City of Trust"? Would we accept a panopticon -- a scenario in which the "few" see everything without ever being seen, while the "many" are totally seen but never see who is watching them -- or would we prefer an openspace/synopticon a scenario in which individuals are fully empowered to define borders of their own personal space?"

-- Gerald Santucci, head of the European Commission's Knowledge Sharing Unit, from the essay Privacy in the Digital Economy: Requiem or Renaissance?

[ http://www.privacysurgeon.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Privacy-in-the-Digital-Economy-final.pdf]

(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)

Today is the autumnal equinox (in the nothern hemisphere anyhow) -- enjoy the start of fall! For us nitpickers, it happens at 16:44 EDT (20:44 UTC).

Today is:
Gregorian: 2013 September 22
Julian: 2013 September 09
Hebrew: 5774 Tishri 18
Islamic: 1434 Dhu al-Qa'dah 17
Persian: 1392 Shahrivar 31
Mayan: 0.0.13.0.0.13.15

05:24 am - QotD

"That's when Hailey's school bus pulled up and I waved at her, and the bus driver seemed sort of disturbed, but probably only because I looked so realistic that she wasn't sure if it was safe to leave Hailey there with me. Victor agreed, but not for actual bear-related reasons. Hailey, however, thought Beartrum was totally bad-ass, and that's when I decided that from now on I'd only hang out with eight-year-olds, because they still understand the whimsical joy of silliness, and they're too young to call the authorities on you." -- The Bloggess (Jenny Lawson), 2013-09-17 (take the time to click through and read the whole thing. Really. Wait, put down your beverage first.)