k9

[k9]

Hey, look, I made an image macro.

Michael: All right, G.O.B., is this gonna be believable? I want him scared. I love this kid.

G.O.B.: These guys are pros, Michael. They’re gonna push the tension til the last possible moment before they strip.

Michael: They’re not going to strip, are they?

G.O.B.: I told them not to, but I can’t promise that their instincts won’t kick in.

Pier Pressure - 1x10

(submitted by k9)

[k9]

Now THAT's thinking outside the box. I like it!

[k9]

Just saw this movie. One of the very best of 2008, IMHO. Don't miss it!

[k9]

My first day of tutoring

So I decided that I like kids enough that I wanted to tutor one of them. His name is Donald and he goes to an elementary school near work. I spent 1:15 there today; he was really friendly, obviously smart and surprisingly easy to keep on-task. What a joy to work with!

He wants me to come twice a week, which the teacher says is fine with her. We'll see if my schedule can accommodate that. But anyway, the verdict after one day is unequivocally positive. You should give tutoring/mentoring a try!

Entertaining: Donald's favorite ice cream flavor is eggnog.

[k9]

WOTD: jejune

Adj. Naïve, simplistic and superficial.

Someone in comments quipped sarcastically when he read I was going to be in Geneva that he was looking forward to jejune commentary on Geneva public transit.

h/t Matt.

[k9]

Autumn is over the long leaves that love us, And over the mice in the barley sheaves; Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us, And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves. The hour of the waning of love has beset us, And weary and worn are our sad souls now; Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us, With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.

W.B. Yeats, 1889

[k9]

Gives the word "Obamabot" a whole new meaning.

[k9]

WOTD: bluenose

Noun. A priggish or puritanical person.

The GOP is in danger of permanently losing an entire cohort of the electorate if they continue to be perceived as a party in thrall to xenophobes, bluenoses, and tent revival preachers.

h/t Kevin Drum.

[k9]

As I suspected, Obama won atheists and agnostics by 40%.

[k9]

WOTD: serried

Adj. Standing close together. Said of rows of people or things.

So once the public understands that there's more to Obama's plan than green-collar jobs and serried ranks of windmills on the Great Plains, they're going to have second thoughts.

h/t Kevin Drum.

[k9]

Everyone's a bigot

Today I was driving around in Bellevue and listening to the local NPR affiliate. They were doing man-on-the-street interviews at a Starbucks and one woman was beside herself about Obama's victory. Her comment started off fine, but then she said this:

People rose above racism, rose above sarcasm, rose above atheism…

They WHAT? First of all, this doesn't make any sense. Secular humanists are a very liberal crowd. Liberalism as a philosophy places great emphasis on compassion, on empathizing with and helping others, just like humanism. I haven't checked the exit poll crosstabs, but I would expect that atheists went for Obama overwhelmingly. We're not the problem.

And secondly, of course, atheism isn't a negative, to be grouped in with racism and sarcasm. This woman clearly doesn't know any atheists and doesn't understand atheism. To her it's just a nebulous evil, an explanation for how some people can be so bad. Her breathtaking blindness is of a piece with the depressing news about black turnout and Prop 8 in California.

We atheists clearly have a lot of work to do.