Y’all, I finally thought of a food! Avocados! You want to do some All the Avocado Posts in the Interwebs lists for a few more weeks? I do. I was thinking of having a new food every month. So starting with avocados, yeah?

Meanwhile….

• Head on over to Up in the Top for the greatest comic panel of all time. Which answers the burningest question I ever had about comics. To wit, what noise does a titty twister make?
• Conservatives are obsessed with sex!
• Delhi Couture Week 2010. Y’all, there is not enough agog to convey the gorgeous. GORGEOUS. HOSHIT LOOKIT ALL THE STUNNING OMG no words blink blink.
• Do Typefaces Really Matter? Turns out yes, but probs not in the way that you think.
  

  But for Bruno Maag, managing creative director of typeface studio Dalton Maag, Helvetica is a cultural blight.

  “If you think of ice cream, it (Helvetica) is a cheap, nasty, supermarket brand made of water, substitutes and vegetable fats. The texture is wrong and it leaves a little bit of a funny aftertaste.”

• Via Go Fug Yourself, The Sweet Valley High books are all growed up and all fucked up.
• Earrings you can use to set things on fire!
• Animated GIF of the week: Get it get it get it get it get it
• Soccer ball-sized hail stone! Unfortch, the accompanying article contains no speculation about what it would do if it hit you. I guess, “Kill you dead with the awesome power of atmospheric phenomena and crushing” is understood?
• Rave on, dog!
• File under Kids These Days: WTF is plagiarism. Just cos I copypasta’d it off Wikipedia….
• Via Maggie’s Farm, Anne Rice “quits” Christianity. Fellow Christians point out she might not exactly be getting it:
  

  The world, because it is worldly, cannot understand Christianity or the churches; the world will never love either, and it is foolishness to think otherwise. But the church is not here to be loved by the world; it is here to serve the Bread. The Living Bread did not come for the love of the world, but for its life.

• Is “liberal guilt” a myth? Since I have never felt any, that I know of, I couldn’t say whether or not dude is onto something here.
• Truths We Dare Not Speak about Illegal Immigration. Regardless of exactly your opinion on the issue, you have to admit Hanson makes some extremely good points.
• Potterverse name generator. I got “Petunia Crockford” which I think is crap. The only upshot is that I can tell you which two characters they’re blending to get that name.
• Incredible, incredibly small sculptures on the tip of a pencil.
• Via Honu Girl, Four Planet Sunset: What Does It Mean?
• From Skillzy, this week’s most important debate topic: Is this MST3K tramp stamp cool or not cool?

  I say cool. I say it sets the standards for all tramp stamps forever. I think all tattoo parlors should agree to voluntarily look at all tramp stamp requests from here on out, and judge the request versus this. If it is not this cool, they either have to think of something cooler than this or get their lamer tattoo elsewhere.

• This week’s Apollo files:
  • Nazis! From the moon! Are coming to get us!
  • More syllables are always better. ALWAYS!
  • WHAT THE FUCK SHOULD YOU MAKE FOR DINNER?
  • Kayne’s Tweets make outstanding New Yorker cartoons captions.

Seriously, check in on the avocado thing, at least.

Today I am having a hard time dealing with my feelings. So here is an mp3 of the marching band version of “Just Dance.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Okay?
Okay.

Honu Girl just linked me this video. It is grand. If anybody tries to get on my case for enjoying living in Alabama, I’m just going to play them this video.

Okay, y’all, say it with me:

Never give up! Never surrender!

Woo! Feels good! Now vote in the poll:

[poll id="3"]

Not so huge as usual! And kind of listy.

• Guy photographs women who get naked in public places, but not men, because naked penises are scary.
  

  “People see a naked woman and they smile,” he said. “They see a penis and they freak out.”

  Dr. Helen played dumb to get comments on why. The comments are strange and upsetting and, so far as I got in them, probably unfortunately accurate.

• Zombie boot camp
• Modern Drunkard Magazine
• Via Largehearted boy: The 10 Most Historically Innacurate Movies. Alas, my personal ahistoric pet peeve movie, Clue, didn’t make the cut.
• It’s 2 a.m. Time to get in the bum!
• Also from Largehearted boy, The 5 Worst Required Reading books.
• The Woman on Page 194: is gorgeous, blonde, almost nude (but SFW) and not airbrushed. She has large thighs, stretch marks, and, what most people are fixated on: a little belly. A belly in Glamour magazine!
• 12 Literary Pilgrimages. I have never done any of these, but I did take one to San Francisco to go to City Lights bookstore and walk Jack Kerouac Alley.
• The Guide to Being So Choice: How Sloane Peterson from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Taught Me How To Be an Awesome Girlfriend.
• Assholes try to outlaw ice cream trucks:
  

  Wanting the trucks to go away “is not a valid issue,” he said, adding, “It’s like a mother being angry at a store being at a particular corner.” Besides, the ice cream man isn’t forever.

  “It’s summer,” he said, sighing. “It’s only four months.”

• Rachel Lucas’s exceptional travelogue of her visit to Auschwitz
• CDC to recommend universal circumcision to prevent the spread of HIV in Africa. I’m sure there are medical topics with more vast swings of the pendulum than this one, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head. No pun intended.
• Baby Yoda costume
• Start planning now to Take a Vet to Lunch.
• A remarkable photograph: The Cry
• The Top 10 Skimpiest Superheroine Costumes

Vets Like Bacon!

• Bacon with citrus glaze
• Have a BLAST. Yespleaseinmymouthrightnow.
• Crispy Deep Fried Bacon in four easy steps
• Bacon and sage wrapped turkey breast
• Bacon and tomato tart
• Seared scallops with bacon and pureed peas
• Brie, Chicken, and Bacon sandwich would be an acceptable substitute if they were out of BLASTs
• Dude makes a BLT from scratch, SERIOUSLY. As in, goes to the sea to get sea water to make salt.
• Bacon Corn Chowder
• Fontina-stuffed bacon-wrapped dates. Yesthesetoopleaseomg
• Pork/Chicken Liver Pate for Bahn Mi is covered in bacon
• 100 Ways to Use a Strip of Bacon

Sir, we apologize for operating in low power mode, but we are experiencing a hmmm reflective flux field this close to the galactic axis.

You don’t hold the turbo down, it’s for quick boosts!

I failed because I stopped. I got over a hump at around 17,000 words and then just quit. My first attempt at NaNo ends not as long as the longest short story I’ve written.

I did it willfully, too. I took what should have been a great time to work on it– vacation time during Thanksgiving week– and just frittered it away doing housework and chatting with Doc and reading fanfic. But not writing any fanfic, even though I had a few good ideas.

I sat down on, I think, November 23 or so, freshly encouraged to get back in it because of that visit to see Poptart. As I was getting situated, my head was all full of ideas for stories that weren’t my NaNo project. But, as I’d been having these ideas for the better part of six months, I just tried to shove them away. I fired up the word processor and sort scrolled through to the point I thought I had left off. I put my hands on the keyboard. And the first thing I thought to type was, “I hate writing.”

Then I had some WTF. I hate writing? I wondered it, really, with big old interrogative held tilt. One of my cats was sitting on top of the monitor and it got her attention. Then I thought that that was silly. Of course I don’t hate writing. Poised fingers. Typed “Anina,” cos you may as well start it out with the main character. Thought, “I fucking hate writing.”

And that’s when I decided it wasn’t worth it. I was not about to let this one thing, which was supposed to be about fun and pushing your own boundaries and going a little berserk but for fun, take away one of my favorite past times. I love Poptart, and I love Doc, and it makes me not a little sick and sad to disappoint them, but no. I’m confident they’ll forgive me, even if it’s grudgingly or eventually.

I ended at 18,257 words. I didn’t even make it halfway. And here’s my hug and cry and learn and grow moment: I write for pleasure. I knew this before, and NaNoWriMo reinforced it. There are few things that irritate me more than people who claim they’re “real writers” (as opposed to all us fakers) because “I had this idea and I just had to get it down. The idea would not let me sleep” or who talk about their ideas and inspiration as if it’s some benevolent third party supernaturally blessing the individual with plots and characters so that it can then be freely blamed when said individual is out of ideas and characters or just feeling not real into it. Yeah, write for whatever reason you want, but take responsibility for it. If you’re going to take credit and adulation, take responsibility. I write for pleasure. If it doesn’t feel good, I don’t do it. NaNo felt, for a few days, very not good, so I stopped.

And since I’ve stopped? I feel sorta like writing about spaceships and war. Fancy that.

So, that’s how that went. I’m disappointed, I suppose, but not wailing or gnashing my teeth or anything. I spent last evening chatting with Doc while we monitored both results and Megyn Kelly’s legs. I still disagree with pretty much everything our new President is about, but okay. I’m also pretty relieved that the victory was clear and McCain didn’t pull any nonsense, you know?

Number one post-election season hope: That people will stop using the phrase “throw ____ under the bus.” It really annoys me. From overuse, I guess.

Your discussion question for the morning: your VERY FAVORITE Firefly scene of EVER. Pick one. The Favorite. Go!

Edited Because I Should Tell You Mine, Too, Huh?: In Shindig, where the camera cuts to Zoe’s knee, then thigh, then body as she and Wash are catching their breath after making love. “Out there it’s all fancy parties. I like our parties better….” all the way up to, “Here lies my beloved Zoe, my autumn flower [smack on the behind] somewhat less attractive now she’s all corpsified and gross” followed by a pillow fight.