Me, myself, and I present...

I SURVIVED A TOWERING INFERNO AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT
............a party! at my house! and everything!
............Friday! September 2! 10 o'clock PM!
............contact prancelot@gmail.com for further details!

That's right! For the very first time in the whole history of the physical universe, I am throwing a party. Why? Partially to mark the third anniversary of my arrival in Seattle. Partially to give me an excuse to decorate my living room at last. Mostly, though, for the purest, most basic, most fundamental reason there is: because I can. Because all of us floppy meat-based organisms are, despite everything, somehow still alive and flopping.

I can offer you...Music! Yes, music as once played by living persons, recorded for the ages via the miracle of digital technology! And booze! Yes, booze, which made our species great thousands of years ago and may indeed have been the key to our survival. And light refreshment! Yes, and so forth. Not to mention a broad cross-section of the human species to meet and greet, and a guarantee that you will not be consumed by fire. You may indeed get a chance to find out who I socialise with when you're not around.

Bring your friends! Bring your enemies! Bring booze! Bring snacks! Or don't! Simply bringing yourself is sufficient.

Formal dress is optional. Clothing is compulsory, though only insofar as the law requires.

Word.

A low-orbit religious fetish?

Taken on its own merits, the Shuttle gives the impression of a vehicle designed to be launched repeatedly to near-Earth orbit, tended by five to seven passengers with little concern for their personal safety, and requiring extravagant care and preparation before each flight, with an almost fetishistic emphasis on reuse. Clearly this primitive space plane must have been a sacred artifact, used in religious rituals to deliver sacrifice to a sky god.

As tempting as it is to picture a blood-spattered Canadarm flinging goat carcasses into the void, we know that the Shuttle is the fruit of what was supposed to be a rational decision making process. That so much about the vehicle design is bizarre and confused is the direct result of the Shuttle's little-remembered role as a military vehicle during the Cold War.

Fred 'God Hates Fags' Phelps is still dedicating his life to spreading the crazy hate. If anything, it seems to be getting crazier. Apparently American soldiers who die in Iraq are honourary fags now. As is anyone who crosses Phelps. Within a few years, if this keeps up, Phelps will consider every single living and inanimate object in the history of the Earth to be completely and unredeemably faggish, apart from his wife, Jesus Christ (though not John the Baptist, whom everyone knows was a dicklicker), his Glock, and maybe the poor frightened soul who brings him his horse tranquilisers.

Canada and Denmark are fighting a rudimentary infowar via Google ads.

The scariest comic book ever written: Sean Hannity as a superhero defending America from the filthy ultra-liberals and their pal Osama. There's really nothing I can add to that. I'm not General J. C. Christian, Patriot, after all.

If you're in Seattle, you should rent a canoe and go tooling around Union Bay.

A new controversy rocks the world of biology. Intelligent Design versus the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: both have the same weight of scientific evidence to their name. Be touched forever by His Noodly Appendage.