Miscellaneous newsie stuff.

Cthulu wants to know: I won't spoil it for you.

"Not many people know this, but, done correctly, scrapbooking is a contact sport." Opening lines for Mormon fiction.

Things heard during Objectivist Sex. Just in time for Ayn Rand's 100th birthday.

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I wonder if Merlin should be annoyed: Amazon.com has secretly started a new venture: 43 Things. Their FAQ on "why 43" is so blatantly dodging the question I don't know how to describe it as anything other than a blatant rip-off. It's not a secret that 43 Things runs the place, but it was a secret that "Robot Co-Op," the holding company that owns 43Things, is a front for some very monied Amazonians.

I'd be annoyed, myself.

Buying a book.

"Bae Yong Jun ga totemo kawaii desu ne?"

The woman operating the cash register paused in her habitual repetition of the credit card dance. The thoughts turning in her head were visible in that pause: who is this guy? His Japanese is serviceable enough for commercial transactions, probably a second-year student, but what he had sought out was obscure. Westerners browsing the Japanese novels section was rare but not unheard. Westerners who watched Winter Sonata, on the other hand, were simply not to be found. For one thing, the show isn't even in Japanese; it's made in Korea, and available in Japan only in subtitled editions.

The pause enters its second phase as she took in the picture. Groomed and business casual, wedding ring, iPod, PG-rated shoujo-ai kanji novel, Korean soap opera, "the male lead is very cute, no?" It was simply not adding up.

Instinct took over and she finished the ritual with a pallid flourish of the receipt. I took the book and opened it to page one: "Gokigenyo."

I love messing with folks' heads sometimes.

I am delicious!

I am del.icio.us! While I doubt that many of y'all will care, this is a good look at my daily feeds. I've uploaded the OPML file that runs my RSS aggregator (Light Feed Reader). You can get a feel for the zeitgiest of an Elf in one quick scan.

Note that this is not my full collection of the stuff that dumps into my brain. Specific torrents and shows that I watch I'll put up as they occur to me. What you're not seeing here are the things that I read via my cartoon aggregator (which I really should trim), or my professional link list, or anything like that. But this is an excellent start on the stuff I read.