PR S7, E1: "Back to New York"

Since I've got some time and the inclination today, let's start back-filling those earlier episodes' dresses. This is going to be based primarily on the stills and whatever memory I have of how the outfits moved. I'll try hard to keep my later knowledge out of it but I can't guarantee that I won't be affected by knowing who ends up auf later.

PR S7, E4: "Design your Heart Out"

Okay, I've decided to belatedly start doing a little summation of Project Runway outfits and what I thought of them (and the judging). Maybe I'll go back and fill in the other episodes, but let's start with the most recent.

Jon Stewart Batters Blogs

So, as is my custom after Project Runway, I watched The Daily Show tonight. (I usually don't remember to turn it on the other days of the week; thankfully, the site has all the video available.) During the show, Jon Stewart did a segment on the headings of blog posts when discussing... oh, let's call them critiques of certain people. Mainly people blogging about his own critiques, though he went over a few related ones. These headings were noteable for using violent words (e.g., eviscerate, maul, hammer), and he was poking fun at this tendency.

Now, I'm not saying it wasn't funny, because, well, it was. However, I did think it was strange he was concentrating on blog headings specifically, because the practice is one that newspapers have engaged in for years in their headlines. I suppose it could be more noticeable with blogs, because whereas people who read the paper are unlikely to read more than a couple a day, blog readers frequently follow several dozen blogs. I imagine it's also more likely in political blogs as those frequently are covering disputes or discussions between people with widely divergent opinions.

But, eh, I don't know... I guess it just seemed weird that a guy whose job is basically dissecting news wouldn't at least mention that the blogs were following in newspapers' footsteps with such headlines. And when I say "weird", I mean "for some reason I've been thinking about it since the show aired 5 hours ago". Or possibly, when I say "weird", I mean "my brain".

Project Runway is Back!

And by that, I don't mean "a new season is showing" (though, of course, it is). I mean that so far, at least, it's an interesting season!

Um... WHAT?

So, I'm over at Passive-Aggressive Notes, when I come across this entry regarding a note put on the artificial sweetener drawer at some office. The note reads "HOW ABOUT GOING TO THE GYM INSTEAD" [ALL-CAPS and lack of punctuation preserved from original].

My initial reaction was: But... what? I mean, you... Do you... Ummmmmm.

Or, translated: Seriously, what the hell? Did non-overweight people stop using artificial sweeteners? Was there a memo? I wouldn't have gotten it, being overweight, but... was there?

Because, I mean, even leaving aside diabetics (and contrary to popular opinion, it's possible to be skinny and diabetic), what about someone who is generally in reasonable shape who just is trying to keep their unnecessary calorie intake to a minimum? I mean, sure, unless you're a serious coffee fiend or drink a lot of tea you probably aren't using a lot of calories of sugar, but even a moderate coffee-and-or-tea drinker could easily be adding 100, maybe 150 calories a day that way. Even if you aren't "dieting", that's not a bad reduction. Or if you don't care about that, it's not a bad way to reduce calories in one area that you can use to have a bigger piece of pie or a couple ounces of pretzels without increasing your overall intake.

Seriously. Do people ever stop to think... about anything?

It's like people who mock someone ordering a diet coke with their fast food. It doesn't matter how many calories the food has, you still are consuming fewer calories if you skip the sugared soda. That's how math works: when you subtract a number from a starting value, your result is a smaller value than the one you started with. (Unless you subtract a negative number, but food typically doesn't have negative calories.)

Nappus Interruptus

Things that will wake me up, guaranteed: The sudden cessation of all white noise in the apartment coupled with the sound of four separate UPSes beeping.

Luckily, the power outage was only for a bit over an hour, as our heat depends on the power and it's, um, not warm out.

Dude.

So, over at Questionable Content creator's Jeph Jacques livejournal, which I periodically peruse, I found this comic. If you're too lazy to click, the important part is this statement: "Stop using 'win' and 'fail' as complete sentences."

The post's a month old, so rather than post a comment there, I'm just gonna put it here, where no one will see it.

I can't really understand the animosity towards this practice. People have been using one-word reactions to things since long before the internet. Back in the Jurassic era when I was a kid, it was things like "cool" and "awesome" (and "tubular", but I'd like to forget about that one). Or, of course, the all-purpose "dude", which, depending on tone, can convey a myriad of reactions. There's even a precursor to "pwned" from pre-internet days: "burned".

Sure, it gets annoying when the only thing someone seems to be able to say is "LOL" (or, more likely, "lol", because the shift key is apparently only for SHOUTING these days), and I want to smack each and every person on the internet who uses it as punctuation (lol i guess lol *smack*). But "win" and "fail" aren't trying to convey anything more than an instant reaction to something, so why should it be any longer than that one word?

You can't put a price on human life

Unless, of course, you are Joe Lieberman.

Or anyone else who has done their best to gut health care reform.

Well, I'm disappointed

Three chefs. I liked two. The third one won.

My reaction? A big 'whatever'.

I recommend....

Over at Making Light, this post on cold-weather safety contains links to helpful posts on how to avoid hypothermia and other winter troubles. (If you're in the Southern Hemisphere, save until June.)

Right now it's a comparatively balmy 36°F outside here, and I'd be willing to bet at least one of the sets of sirens I've heard this morning has been for someone who thinks that means it's not cold enough to be dangerous. (I live near a fire station, at which all the ambulances for the area are also housed.) They were wrong.