Humor for you!

Click here for the funniest blonde joke ever.

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"Chasing Rainbows" is back! "Chasing Rainbows" is back! More Jinkies! Yay! *does little dance of webcomic fan-geekness*

P.S. Past pages are subscription-only, though. I pity you!

Leave sugar alone, you bastards

[BEGIN RANT/]
This is driving me crazy. I keep hearing people complain about "sugar content" of menu items. It's not the "sugar" content, folks. We hardly use actual cane sugar anymore. It's corn syrup. Corn syrup, which is cheap due to ridiculous farm subsidies which don't help actual farmers.

Go poke around on the web for a while, and you can see how the farm subsidies are helping corporate, and not family, farming. The cheap corn hurts family farms as it helps giant corporate farms. It also leads to foods which formally had no sugar content or actual cane sugar content to have the ingredients switched, so that cheap corn syrup is used. (I really wish the subsidies actually helped real farmers, as it's terrifically depressing to watch farming families up here struggle the way they do, and the farm stands are the only place up here to get decent vegetables.)

Ever had Coca-Cola outside of the States? You have it in France, and it's so much better. It's not as sticky-sweet and it's fizzier. Okay, so ET would hate it, as she prefers her soda, if she has to drink it, flattish and basically like swilling dark Karo Syrup. (;p) But I think most people who like the occasonal bottle of Coke would prefer to drink what they serve in Japan. Why do they use sugar in Japan and France? Because they don't have the corn (syrup) subsidies. (Unless, of course, they've changed the way Coke's made abroad, too. Which would suck. But then, I can still get my yummy-yummy peach water in Japan and Badoit in France, so, screw 'em.)

Then again, I'm big on tea. Darjeeling, lemon with one sugar. Other black teas, a splash of milk, one sugar. Green, ooloong, or white teas, a bit of honey. Or, if chilled, just the tea. I'm also fond of drinking cold water with a splash of pink grapefruit juice (the actual stuff, not the watered down crap with the--your guessed it!--corn syrup). And cranberry juice, 'cause I'm a crazy Yankee girl. But if I'm eating something like pizza, Coke's the only thing that keeps me from feeling sickish (I've a crazy-sensitive stomach but I love food...and hate Pepto-Abysmal, so I go with my great-grandmother's tummy cure of Coca-Cola). I just wish that Coke, and other beverage companies and food companies, offered the option of buying versions without corn syrup but instead using cane sugar. I'd definitely pay more for that option.

So, please, keep the corn syrup to the delicious, delicious pecan pie and fake blood, and stop yelling at sugar. We weren't so damned fat as a nation before, when we ate sugary foods instead of corn-syrupy foods. Go ask Bill Maher. He bitches about the same thing on his show, too.
[/END RANT]

All right. Comment about my freakish ignorance and horrendous grammar/spelling below. No, I didn't put in any links. You can Google for actual information as well as I can, I'm betting.

Please read this Op Ed

This Op Ed at The New York Times will require you to register (it's free) with the Times in order for you to read it, and the article will become unavaialble except for a fee in about a week's time, but I really think it's worth you reading it now. By "you," I mean people who are educated enough to understand scientific principles. It's also good for the "you"s who want to stand up to the growing, intellectually gangrenous concept of "intelligent design." Here's a little sample:

Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution - New York Times:

Evolution is a robust theory, in the scientific sense, that has been tested and confirmed again and again. Intelligent design is not a theory at all, as scientists understand the word, but a well-financed political and religious campaign to muddy science. Its basic proposition - the intervention of a designer, a k a God - cannot be tested. It has no evidence to offer, and its assumptions that humans were divinely created are the same as its conclusions. Its objections to evolution are based on syllogistic reasoning and a highly selective treatment of the physical evidence.

Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding science. Much has been made of a 2004 poll showing that some 45 percent of Americans believe that the Earth - and humans with it - was created as described in the book of Genesis, and within the past 10,000 years. This isn't a triumph of faith. It's a failure of education.

The purpose of the campaign for intelligent design is to deepen that failure. To present the arguments of intelligent design as part of a debate over evolution is nonsense. From the scientific perspective, there is no debate. But even the illusion of a debate is a sorry victory for antievolutionists, a public relations victory based, as so many have been in recent years, on ignorance and obfuscation.

The essential, but often well-disguised, purpose of intelligent design, is to preserve the myth of a separate, divine creation for humans in the belief that only that can explain who we are. But there is a destructive hubris, a fearful arrogance, in that myth.

Reasons I wish I were living closer to New York City

You know, other than the obvious, like the majority of my friends being there and the superiority of the food.

• Film Forum's Summer Samurai Festival
  August 19th through September 15
  You lucky bastards. I mean, samurai! The only thing cooler would be a ninja film festival, but I don't know if there are that many watchable films featuring ninjas.




• New York International Fringe Festival
  August 12th through 28th
  The next coolest fringe festival after the one in Edinburgh, which you can't afford to get to 'cause you're American and underpaid and overworked and your holidays are used up so you can go to the doctor or prep for Maggie's wedding. You poor, poor bastard. Except that you can still go to the New York Fringe Festival, which is more than I or a great number of your fellow North Americans can say, so stop yer whinging and go shell out the miniscule amount of cash which allows you to go attend the cool freak that is the fringe.

All that having been said, and on a completely different note, I cannot get Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" out of my head. You know, the song that Wayne and Garth lip-synched while driving the Gremlin along the main strip in the first Wayne's World movie. I can't tell if this is a result of the fever which came out of nowhere or if the fever is a result of this "ear worm," as the Germans call it. In any event, it's freaking me out. I fear my hair will start feathing itself soon.

Diagnosis

After making a request for people to comment to let me know if they're reading this blog, I've heard from ONE (1) reader. I've waited over a week and no one else has added anything.

This blog is officially in the critical ward. I.V. and such hooked up. Prognosis is poor.

My mother's childhood memory

My mother's earliest memories are of rationing. The little coupons you had to have in order to get gas, butter, sugar. The crushing and collection of steel cans. She remembers her uncles returning from the war. No one in her family died. Surprising, considering how many brothers my grandmother and grandfather each had. Both of my grandparents were air wardens. They lived near the Saint Lawrence, and a major river route like that was considered a vulnerability, so citizens were selected to keep watch at home.

My mother remembers these things like I remember holding Beatrix Potter books in my lap and trying to read them (in spite of being just a little too young to read) while sitting in the branches of a weeping willow. There was a time when every citizen made sacrifices when our nation was at war, when every citizen was involved. When a grandmother collected steel cans from the neighborhood with the help of her tiny granddaughter.

I heard on NPR that one planned anniversary in New York City was to be kissing, hundreds of people gathered together to kiss at the same time to celebrate the announcement of the end of the last world war. I really liked that.

The Writer's Almanac - August 14, 2005:

Today is the 60th anniversary of the day on which President Harry Truman announced that the Second World War had come to an end. You might argue that more human beings were happy on this day in 1945 than on any other day in history.

It was the worst war in history. An estimated 60 million people died; about two-thirds of them were civilians. In the United States, the war had been going on for three years and eight months. About one in every eight Americans served in the war—more than 16 million American soldiers. Virtually every American family had at least one member overseas. With 400,000 Americans killed, most families knew somebody who had died in the war, and the most American casualties had come in the last year of the war.

Most Americans had believed that the war was far from over. The first few battles on Japanese islands had been some of the bloodiest battles of the war. Military analysts were projecting horrific losses, casualty estimates in the hundreds of thousands. But after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese suddenly accepted terms of complete surrender. And the announcement was made on this day at about 7:00 p.m. The newswires carried the headline, "Japan Surrenders."

There were spontaneous celebrations and parades in every major city in America. In New York City, more than a million people filled the street, overflowing Times Square, the crowd stretching from 40th all the way up to 52nd streets. Factories blew their whistles. Air raid sirens went off. Ships and trains and cars honked their horns. Churches tolled their bells.

Americans had been living under strict food and gas rationing, and once the news arrived, people went to the gas stations, filled up their cars and went riding around for the fun of it. Throughout the war, people had tried to keep their lights off after dark to save energy, but on this night, people turned on their lights and left them on all night. Some children who'd grown up during the war saw the streets lit up with lights for the first time.

And one thing that commentators noticed at the time was that nobody shouted, "We've won the war!" or anything about triumph. They simply shouted, "The war is over!"

The most famous photograph of that day in 1945 showed a sailor in Times Square kissing a nurse in a white uniform. The nurse's name was Edith Shain. She later said, "When I was kissed, I closed my eyes. I didn't look at him. It was a startling thing. But I thought, this man had fought the war for all of us." The photograph of the sailor and the nurse was the cover of LIFE magazine that next week and that photo has been reprinted thousands of times.

Poem of the day

The Writer's Almanac:
Poem: "Night Flight" by Marjorie Saiser, from Lost in Seward County. c. The Backwaters Press.

Night Flight

From 18F I see only the wing,
see only metal and rivets and painted black arrows
and partially worn-off letters saying things like NO STEP.
From 18F, or anywhere on this plane,
I could see, if I want to, the video.
I could, evidently, watch ads for Buzz Lightyear, the series.
But I am watching us, the community
of 1090 to Denver. We are facing forward
as though in a tunnel or tube,
dots of light in a row above our heads.
We are ranks of readers, sleepers.

or we are the cast of Our Town;
we are cast as the dear departed,
sitting onstage on our chairs-supposed to be graves—
looking straight ahead, talking among ourselves,
never looking at Emily, the living,
when she comes to visit the cemetery.
We are not turning toward Emily;

we are numbers and letters facing forward.
From 18F I see we are regular in our posture,
regular in our habits.

In my row we are raising similar cups from similar trays,
oddly comforting:
now this head, now that one, lowers to drink.
One by one we sip our mutual nectar;
one by one we set it down.

Health check

Okay. Just wondering. Have to make this check every once in a while, just to reassure myself that I'm not just writing to myself here.

Is anyone still reading this blog? By "anyone," I mean my friends. Seeing as the commenting now works (as proved by a complete stranger in the last post), anyone who does read this can, in fact, post a comment to the effect of "I do!" or something equally creative and time-consuming.

Sorry, that was obnoxious. I'm tired and have eaten way, way too many cookies today. Made a batch of chocolate chip cookies (which my mother hated) and a batch of molases drop cookies (which my mother hated).

(My mother is impossible to please if you're not my brother. He uses the exact same recipies, with the exact same results, and she'll praise his mad bakin' skillz to the high heavens. Me? Everything I bake is shit. Unless my nephews or siblings eat them. Then I'm a good baker. ... Okay, enough of this whining.)

Anyway, please post and let me know you're lurking. Someone besides me comes here, 'cause I get a whole 2/10 on the Google bar ranking system.

This reminds me of Mark

From The Writer's Almanac - August 9, 2005:

It was on this day in 378 A.D., the Romans were routed by the Visigoths at the Battle of Adrianople, a victory of barbarian horsemen over Roman infantry. It was one of the most decisive battles in what is now the nation of Turkey. Two-thirds of the Roman army, 40,000 men, including Emperor Valens himself, were overrun and slaughtered by the Visigoths which set the stage for the fall of the Roman Empire.

Once upon a time, little emo, MTV actually played music videosI've got soul, but I'm not a soldier

Remember when MTV showed (uninterrupted) videos all day long, instead of only during the ghettoized hours of something like 3AM-6AM?

I, on a whim, taped one of the buttcrack-of-dawn showings and have spent the week watching a couple videos here, another there.

I have come to the following conclusions upon viewing the Gwen Stefani video for "Cool:"

• her current persona is a cuter version of early-90s Madonna, but differs from early-90s Madonna in that Stefani actually has a singing voice and is, as I mentioned earlier in this run-on sentence, much cuter;


• her music has become very boring since she went solo;


• while very teen-boy-fantasy as a platinum blonde, I think she looks much, much prettier as a brunette.

Also, I finally (finally!) saw a Gorillaz video and have discovered I love their videos as much as I like their music. w007 and so forth for animated videos. (The bassist had me laughing my arse off at the end, and I so love the way the lead gorilla swung his legs while he played guitar.) I didn't even mind that it ran twice in an hour, in spite of what I know are hundreds, if not thousands of other videos I know they could play in that time slot. (I guess MTV's not really into that whole "variety" thing. Many other videos were replayed, ad nauseum.) I want the Gorillaz to be featured in a video game with Donkey Kong and his cohorts. Gorillaz v. DK! of summat like. That would be awesome.

Moving on, MTV's programmers appear to be in love with My Chemical Romance's "Helena" video, which is actually rather boring, considering what they could have done with the song. It has its moments, but it looks like it was scripted/choreographed by the angsty emo teens who make up a large portion of My Chemical Romance's listening audience. That said, I want one of those nifty black umbrellas with the red interior. So emo/goth! Hee!

"Pretty" emo boys make me wish I could point a wand at the screen and say, "Dance, little emo boy, dance!" and shoot nasty curses at their feet. "Dance for me! muhahahahaha!" They're hysterical, honestly. *laughs at the emo/angst* ... This is completely hypocritical of me, as I was the emo-est of all throughout my teen years and for a goodly portion of my life after that. (I wish I were as good at applying eyeliner as emo boys are.)

I'm completely sick of the "cute/sexy" girl/boy bands where they think they can get away with boring-ass music because the performers are "teh sexx!1!!" Ugh. Enough already. There's enough shitty music out there. Just have them do Playboy/-girl spreads and the pay-per-view porn videos and leave the music alone.

Jessica Simpson is now channeling Britney Spears's unmarried, thin self in her new video. The untalented attempting to show talent by mimicking the untalented. Fascinating. Furthermore, as of this video, it's official that Willie Nelson has not even one proton of self-respect left. Seriously. Someone should have shot him in the head long before he reached this nadir in his "career."

In an entirely different genre, Missy Elliot kicks ass. Holy crap, I so very wish I could dance like that. (I'm so fecking white. *sobs*) The choreographer for her video "Lose Control" needs to take the My Chemical Romance choreographer aside and give the emo some pointers re: rhythm. If Shakira's fucktard greased-up boobie-pop "dancing" wins out over "Loser Control" for best dancing at the VMAs, I'll know Shakira really has turned tricks to make her way to the "top." (However, I can't figure out the why for the last minute or so of Missy Elliot's video. Maybe it's 'cause I'm suburban white girl?)

And, HOLY FUCK! BOYZ N DA HOOD! GAH! *has fallen into timewarp and iz ded* (I can't help but snicker at "P Diddy." That's one man who is secure in his masculinity if he's willing to own up to that nickname.) ... Oh, wait. No, it's some sort of bullshit, "gangsta" BNDH, not the real one. How... um, sad?

Finally, remember when male rappers had a sense of humor about themselves, could rap in actual English, and didn't have to feature themselves on the street corner holding scantily-clad "'hos" and large wads of cash in their videos in order to be considered legitimate rappers? When their political rants were actual cogent and firey and topical? Well, I do. *sighs and lights a candle for the (degenerated state of) rap* It's all the fault of asshat, suburban white boys. Those are the ones who are buying "gangsta" rap, goddamit. They've fucked up rap for the rest of us. Grr!

BWA-fuckin'-HA HA HA

Yeah, yeah, old news. But, still, quoth the immortal Homer Simpson: "Mmm, sacrilicious!"

YOUR OWN PERSONAL JESUS TOAST.

The paraphrasing of an old Depeche Mode song title warmed the cockles of my heart.

EDIT: 2:09PM
I didn't think it could get better...

...and yet, it can. Also, this article features my new favorite fake word, crapitalism. Yay!

Admin 1, Executive 0

I enjoyed this little article so much, I felt the need to share it with you, my dear readers, even though it is nealy two months old.

CNN.com - Ketchup stain sparks e-mail flurry

"I apologize again for accidentally getting a few splashes of ketchup on your trousers. Obviously your financial need as a senior associate is greater than mine as a mere secretary."

She wrote that she had told various partners, lawyers and trainees about his e-mail and they had offered to "do a collection" to raise the cash.

"I however declined their kind offer but should you feel the urgent need for the £4, it will be on my desk this afternoon."

Hockey is the devil's sport

I was slowly making my way through the Sports section of Monday's New York Times when I came across the last section of sports-related headlines on the last page, in a little ghetto-for-off-season-sports-reporting box.

HOCKEY
Devils Keep 10 Players

[three paragraphs about one team which I didn't read because the following lead to a tiny paragraph about another team was in all-caps and bold]

SATAN BECOMES FREE AGENT

Honestly. I shit you not. I wish ... wait. When Mom's computer is up and running, I'll scan it in and post it here so you can see.

Mom says I should submit it to David Letterman or Jon Stewart. Somehow, I don't think they'll laugh as hard at it as I did.

Happy birthday to Harry's other mother

The Writer's Almanac - JULY 31, 2005

It's the birthday of the novelist J.K. (Joanne Kathleen) Rowling, born in Chipping Sodbury, England (1966). She's the creator of Harry Potter, who, in the first book about him, is an orphan forced to live with his aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley at Number Four, Privet Drive. He sleeps in a cupboard under the stairs. For the first ten years of his life, he's believed that his parents were killed in a car accident. But on his eleventh birthday, he learns that they were wizards and that they were murdered by a man named Lord Voldemort, who is trying to take over the world. The Harry Potter books follow Harry as he attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and learns how to use magic and tries to avenge his parents' death.

J.K. Rowling grew up in the suburbs of Bristol, England. She was telling stories when she was a little kid. She said, 'The first story I ever wrote down was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends ... Ever since Rabbit, I have wanted to be a writer, although I rarely told anyone so.'

She set out to be a secretary, learned French so she could get a job as a bilingual secretary, but she found that she hated office work. Instead of taking notes in meetings, she daydreamed and wrote possible names of fictional characters in the margins of her notebooks.

She was in her mid 20s when she took a four-hour trip by train across England, and the train stopped somewhere between Manchester and London. Rowling looked out at a field of cows and suddenly got the idea for a story about a boy who goes to a school for wizardry. She said, 'Harry Potter just strolled into my head fully formed.' She liked that it was a story about a boy who was powerless in the ordinary world but who gets to travel to a place where his power would be almost limitless. By the time the train trip was over, she had already invented most of the characters that would appear in the Harry Potter books.

She worked on the first one for about four years, during which time she got married, had a daughter, got divorced, and was living in Edinburgh as a single mother. She had to live on public assistance to finish the book. It came out in America in 1998, Harry Potter and the [Sorcerer'sPhilosopher's] Stone, and J.K. Rowling became one of the best-selling authors of all time.

My Day-saint: Mary Magdelene

Catholic Online - Saints & Angels - St. Mary Magdelene

If I ever go crazy and decide to go through Confirmation (next step after where I left off with First Communion), when I'd become a "real" Catholic (rather like Pinocchio became a real boy) and have to take on a new name, I'd totally take on the name Mary Magdelene.

No, Maggie, not because you are awesome, but because it would be the very last bit of my spine making show.

Dude. You heard what those gnostic-types say? w00t and hollah for Mary Magdelene!

(Ignore the bland blandness of the Catholic site. Google her. Also under Mary Magdalene. She rocked, in a Christiany, female, saint-like way, which means easy listening/"adult contemporary", but is better than the elevator music a lot of the others emit.)

Well, dagnabbit

I've just looked at my blog using Apple's Safari, and the layout is not working at all. It works just jim-dandy in IE... and (phew) Firefox, but not Safari. And I don't know why, dang it. Why? Why?

Why, Sugar Kat? It's 'cause the Internet HATES you. The whole damned thing just loathes your dumb white ass. That's why. Bitch.

Also, no one's reading this anymore. I can tell. I'm psychic that way. Yes, I'm psychic in a completely useless way. I can't tell you who's going to win the Preakness or what the outcome of the continuing wars in Afghanistan and/or Iraq will be, but I can tell no one is reading this. I'm freaking Trelawney, only with the Internet. Which hates me.

Also, I got Maggie & Ryan's invite and IT'S SOOOO PURTY! And I'm thinking, Yay! Maggie and Ryan are getting hitched! Yay! I hafta get 'em presents! Groovy, groovy presents. ...Wait. Money. Job. Crap. But, PRESENTS! They must have fantabulous presents. ...Hotel? Fuck! Hotel! Augh! But, dammit, I am going, and I'm bringing presents. I may have to drive back home at 3 in the morning (three hour drive), but, dammit, I'm going, and I'm bringing presents. I'll probably be wearing jeans, as I've nada to wear, but I'll hide behind a pillar or something. Drive. I have to get a driver's license. Me, driving. Gah. That's just freakin' terrifyin'. Clear the roads, people. Sugar Kat's behind the wheel.

But I can write all that and be fine 'cause no one's reading this so no one will know and I can freak all I want about how the hell I'm going to pay for it and no one will know. Or care, really. And there you go.

And the Internet still hates me.

"I did not know that. Did you know that? I did not know that."

The Writer's Almanac - JULY 27, 2005

It was on this day in 1940 that Bugs Bunny made his debut in a cartoon called 'A Wild Hare.' Warner Brothers' writers and animators set out to make a rabbit who would be the epitome of cool. They modeled bugs on Groucho Marx with a carrot instead of a cigar. Mel Blanc gave him a Brooklyn accent. He was a nonchalant rabbit who chewed on his carrot in the face of all of his enemies and he was famous for the line, 'What's up, doc?' which he used in that first cartoon when he met Elmer Fudd who was hunting rabbits.

As America entered World War II, Bugs Bunny became the most popular cartoon character in America, always defeating his enemies through sheer cleverness, oftentimes as a quick change artist.

*ahem*

The Writer's Almanac - JULY 26, 2005

It's the birthday of the writer Aldous Huxley, born in Surrey, England (1894), best known as the author of the novel Brave New World, about a future in which genetically engineered people take drugs to keep them happy, have sex all the time, and never fall in love.

Tasty, if time-consuming

Lemon-Flaxseed Loaf Cake

I used another tablespoon of lemon juice in the cake itself as well, which turned out quite nicely and required no extra baking time.