I’ve allied myself with the Amazon Empire and put up a widget with my recommendations (updated frequently with good stuff!) and a search box. When you buy Amazon goods through my site, I’ll get a percentage that will help pay for my webhosting, etc. I may look into getting a new theme that will have the widgets on one side and the Recent Comments back up high on the other side, but for now the Amazon widget will stay on top. Go forth! Buy goodies! Thanks.

I cannot speak of it.

A disproportionate number of Oregon hits on my blog are referred by a search-engine query for marijuana.

I could really stand to move out of this state.

“There are to be forty interlocking committees sitting every day and they’ve got a wonderful gadget–I was shown the model last time I was in town–by which the findings of each committee print themselves off in their own little compartment on the Analytical Notice-Board every half hour. Then, that report slides itself into the right position where it’s connected up by little arrows with all the relevant parts of the other reports. A glance at the Board shows you the policy of the whole Institue actually taking shape under your own eyes. There’ll be a staff of at least twenty experts at the top of the building working this Notice Board in a room rather like the Tube control rooms. It’s a marvellous gadget. The different kinds of business all come out in the Board in different coloured lights. It must have cost half a million. They call it a Pragmatometer.”

–C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

All the relevant parts connected to all the other relevant parts by little … links. The major difference, of course, is that the Notice Board was to be run by an Institute whose purpose was to manipulate, gull, lull, and damn the population, while the internet really is the embodiment of the old sixties radical slogan: Power to the people. When anybody net-savvy can link and pipe up their opinion, you really can see the views of vast swaths of people taking shape “under your own eyes.” It’s a marvellous gadget indeed.

“What if she filled it in ‘nay’ or ‘WTF’?”

Via Ace’s headlines.

I’m back from my trip, up early due to the time change, actually getting a few things done before 10 a.m., which is nice. Back with fresh grievances against the TSA (did you know that sealed, in-their-original-individually-sized-containers applesauce and chocolate pudding, aka my son’s food during all-day travel ordeals, are liquid and gel, respectively? I didn’t, despite having taken these items on numerous flights before without incident. I do now), back to the usual routine … just back.

Lileks says he doesn’t know anybody who can eat a box of saltines before they go bad. At Chez Anwyn, soup is consumed is vast quantities that mow through a box of saltines in far less than a month. Plus the fact that one of the Bean’s favorite dishes is egg salad on a cracker.

Anne’s daughter Lily wants for her spring break … to stay home. Well, I guess we’ll be doing the same thing since we just took a week’s vacation when it wasn’t actually spring break.

And Rachel Lucas (surprise, surprise, surPRISE!) hates “MommyBloggers.” You mean, like, telling the story about how when I viewed Sunny’s campaign video, my son requested repeated (and I do mean REPEATED) viewings of its predecessor, “Sunny Pesters Digger,” and then proceeded to act it out with me:

Son: “I’m Sunny. You’re Digger.”

Me: “Okay.”

Son: “I will bark at you, and you growl.”

Me: “Okay.”

Son: “Ruff. Ruff. I’m pestering you, Digger!!”

Me: “Growl.”

There you go, Rachel, that one’s on the house. MommyBlogging comes at a premium around here. Son sends his love … for Sunny and Digger.

Goodbye and best of luck, Bryan; hello and best of luck, Captain Ed.

Taking the Bean to see his grandparents for a week or so. Be good.

Ace invokes the Reagan in all of us.

Ace wins Blogger of the Year at CPAC.

Wow.

I seriously considered going to CPAC, but decided what I really wanted was a few days of wandering D.C. at my own pace, looking at stuff both in and out of museums, rather than listening to political speeches. But if I’d known Ace would speak … I’d have been right there.

Congratulations, Ace!

I love to read Anne’s LifePundit blog, so I hope she won’t be upset that I’m picking on her a bit here. As Calvin and Hobbes once ruminated, “Verbing weirds language.” And although verbing words may be a clever shorthand and perfectly understandable, like many things that are at first new and cool, after a while it can seem affected and pretentious. Anne’s use is one of the oldest forms of verbing I’ve observed in my lifetime and has definitely passed over into the “pretentious” stage:

To stay on track, I will journal every day.

To stay on track, perhaps she should write in a journal every day or even keep a daily journal, but to journal every day sounds both mysterious and banal* at the same time, like it’s the current hot fad that she will do because everybody says it will be good for her (and, in fact, a hot trend in all the various levels of schooling plus psychological journeying was indeed, as far as I know, the origin of the verbing of the noun “journal,” at least in its current incarnation). Now Anne’s a writer and she’s not keeping a journal because it’s a fad, but because she understands that this is something that works for her personally, I suspect. So remove the trendy jargon usage from the word and it goes back to being more a serious, thoughtful act of reflection than something she’s doing because she read it in the Oprah magazine. (Yes, if you’re wondering, I crack myself up, even if nobody else laughs.)

There’s the $.02 Anwyn’s Note on verbing. Don’t do it, especially when it’s popular.

Maybe for Lent, I should give up pointing out people’s bad grammar habits.

*I frequently look up words I already understand just to double-check that I’m using them correctly before I throw them up here. I’m going to link definitions when I do that, in case you also want to make sure you know the word or just want to see what kinds of things I find myself having to look up. Fun, no?

…to Slublog, for altering one of the existing FredHeads for Mitt buttons into a size and look that I wanted for my sidebar. I’m fairly clueless at Photoshop, so he helped me out. If you want to put it on your blog, go for it.

I typically would avoid labels like “FredHead.” (See also: Browncoat.) But I think it makes sense, since I had a first choice who I felt was the best choice, to continue to make that known.

Thanks, Slu!

Somebody came to this blog by googling the phrase “how healthy is it to live in oregon.”

Well, it depends. What political persuasion are you, and how high do you like your blood pressure?