I stole this from the lovely roguebitch.

Comment here with 1-2 sentences saying what you think about me. Post in your own journal and I'll do the same for you.

no longer maintaining interest in biomag

It comes from a Gilbert Gottfried impersonation of George Jessel doing a bit called "Hello Mama" that he seems to think is hysterical.

i'm trying to get over a really, horribly devastating breakup and sadly all of the books i have left to read were his, or just remind me way too much of him and i desperately need new suggestions.

i can't read anything philosophy related, or any nonfiction about the environment, politics, religion or what not. just can't handle any of that right now. also, please no mysteries, thriller, or horror type things either.

what i'm mostly looking for are fun, upbeat reads that aren't necessarily reeking of intelligentsia but also aren't completely devoid of any intelligence.

so you can get an idea of what i'm interested in, i just finished kitchen confidential by anthony bourdain, and the devil wears prada. i'm also probably going to ransack my best friend's collection of david sedaris.

are there any new hot writers along the lines of david sedaris whom i should be checking out? 

please please please help! any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Last night Kristin and I got talking, God knows how, about chameleons and their ability to change their color to match their surroundings.  We both were completely ignorant of how it was done, though the why we pretty much assumed was based on needing to blend into their environment as a means of protections against the various big things that lurk with a nice chameleon dinner on their minds.  My hypotheses, which was maybe concurred (you'd have to ask her) by Kristin, was that chameleons were privy to sort of using visual stimulation to alter their own physicality, citing certain human instances of visual stimulation that causes real physical reaction, like arousal, disgust or excitement as precedent for this being something that happens in nature.  Now, obviously I'm not a scientist* and on further research it turns out I'm completely wrong, not only on how it's done, but why it's done.  Chameleons change color as an expression of their condition, be it psychological or biological or whatnot, e.g.** a frightened chameleon might go orange, while an embarrassed chameleon might turn blue.  Like how humans turn red when they get embarrassed, except less to do with blood.  Nothing to do with blood at all actually, but with these things called chromatophores which are specialized color cells.  On the outer layer they have xanthrophores and erythrophores, which contain your yellow and red pigments, while the inner layer has a bit of iridophores, which extract the blue part of light and reflect it, tossing the rest of roy g biv to the curb like a used up whore.  The three colors combine, like they do on your television set, to manipulate the way our eye (and any other eye for that matter) sees whatever the chameleons biological instinct dictates.  So oddly enough, against popular misconception, chameleons do not change to melt into their surroundings, they change in a combination lock-esque complexity, according to their psychological state of being, their biological state of being, the way light strikes them and on the odd occasion how horny they are, though we'd say that fits in with biological/psychological state of being.  This has been your interesting topic of the day.  I hope it hasn't bored you.

*i am a scientist, actually.
**which is anglicising Latin, by the way ...it should be g.e., but lets not bog down science with grammar, shall we?

I didn't make her clap her hands at all times while I slept so I would know she wasn't stealing my wallet. I also left a 25% tip instead of just 20%.

I survived the move. There are still a lot of boxes around and the walls are empty, but the essentials have been unpacked and it feels like home. Critter is downright gleeful about having stairs again. As for me, well, I'm just trying to get stuff situated.

Another huge development today: Critter began taking the bus to school. I was very nervous about how he'd handle it. Most parents get those sort of jitters, but my little guy is only three and he's autistic and can't communicate well. I didn't get any calls from the school about a disaster, so I can only assume everything went okay. The peculiar thing is that this now gives me a five hour span during the day with no child underfoot.

Five hours.

Plus, when he gets home from school he'll have a snack and then go down for a nap, raising the time to closer to seven or eight hours. This is mind-boggling. And this will happen four days a week, through May. I'll have time to write without constant pleas for more juice or to play games! I can start a paragraph and finish without interruption! Heck, once my scrapbooking materials are unpacked, I'll have time to resume that hobby and work on my writing.

Of course, he can't cope with the bus I'll lose a good time of that time, but I'll still have a few hours of isolation. Better than the scant time I've had to make-do with.

But first I need to empty out more boxes...

I just got a note I'm now a maintainer of this group.

I do not want to be.

Can someone help me undo that.

Cheers,

Beatrice

LOOK AT WHAT BOOKS I GOT FOR $1 EACH TODAY! I CACKLE FOREVER.

Death Note, volume 12 - Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women
American Born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang
Women and Health in America, 2nd Edition

PLUS, 4 books that will be given as gifts.

Very freaky.

I was sitting in the office working when Amanda and Drew came in. Drew said, "What's that?" and poked something that was hanging off a rubber band that someone had put around the doorknob.

The something was a bat. A dead bat, which had apparently been hanging from this rubber band (last night?) and then died there, and kept its grip.

"Ah, that's why you thought it smelled in here," Amanda astutely observed. Then, "Go wash your hands, Drew."

It was totally crazy, it was just hanging there, dead, about two feet from me as I worked. I can't imagine what would have happened if I had noticed it later while trying to use the doorknob. I'm guessing I would have screamed like a girl. Wouldn't you?

My great-uncle Michael. No date on the photo but judging by his age, probably late 1920s to early 1930s.