Twitterpated

• 12:11 It's always easier for me to get up when I don't have to. #
• 12:12 I have to wonder if "I Heart Huckabees" was inspired by Dirk Gently, even though it played out totally differently. #
• 12:13 I had dreams that I was in an amusement park with nasty birds, all of which looked like bad CGI. #
• 13:53 Animals get drunk, too! tinyurl.com/c5axtw #
• 16:06 Why won't Google Reader let me stay logged in? #
• 17:06 Inspired by @3x1minus1 and her recent website updating, I did much the same. members.verizon.net/VoVat/ #
• 17:06 No mixtapes or fancy web design on mine, though. #
• 17:07 @NowIsStrange Depends on what it is. Not if it's a bathtub or a collar. #
• 17:15 Why do strippers want to add me on MySpace? And is it really typical for a stripper to travel a lot? #
• 18:37 @3x1minus1 It's traditional. I picked that color pretty much randomly when I first made a webpage twelve years ago, and just stuck with it. #
• 18:56 I hate it when library books are missing pages. What do people DO with those pages? #
• 21:07 I must have passed 666 posts without even noticing it. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

The real world is for people who can't imagine anything better

Okay, tonight's Simpsons episode wasn't terrible, but it does seem like they've pretty much used up every possible plot. This one had some clear similarities with "Lisa's Rival," and a few elements of the most recent Futurama movie thrown in. The meeting of the two families for dinner was all right, as was the segment at Clam-Elot, but the only line that really made me laugh was when Lisa suggested that the restaurant failed because no one wanted to drive to the middle of the woods for clams. Speaking of which, I have to wonder who those girls were that Lenny and Carl were taking to Clam-Elot. And even though Groundskeeper Willy claimed to have no last name in "My Fair Laddy," here we find out that it at least was MacDougall. It's kind of sad when these random trivia bits are the most interesting parts of the show, but that seems to be the way of it nowadays. The American Dad episode was pretty good, though, especially the parts with the spa detective.

Orient and Oxident

Good evening, and welcome to the year 4705! Or is it the year 4645? That depends on whether you believe the calendar begins with the birth or the ascension to the throne of the legendary Yellow Emperor Huang-di. Really, the idea of a continuous calendar was a Western one, with the Chinese calendar originally conceived as a cyclical one, and I think everyone agrees that this is the Year of the Ox.



While I know what an ox looks like, I was never quite sure how they were biologically classified. As it turns out, it's actually a term denoting occupation rather than species; an ox is a bovine used as a draft animal, and is often castrated. In Vietnam, they use a water buffalo in this place on the zodiac.

Anyway, we Americans all know about the Chinese zodiac from the menus that they have at every single Chinese restaurant, which inform you that you're most compatible with people several years apart in age from you. But just as Western astrology has rules about the Moon and the planets that I've never bothered to learn, the Chinese years are also associated with the five elements (which, in turn, are also the names for the five closest planets) and either yin or yang. So this is actually the Year of the Yin Earth Ox, while I am a Yin Fire Snake, which I believe looks something like this:



I suppose it should come as no surprise that, to me, the most interesting aspect of Chinese New Year traditions is the Nian (literally meaning "year"), a ravenous monster that was said to come above ground to feed at the time of the new year. The people would scare it away by making noise and prominently displaying the color red, or give it food so it wouldn't feel the need to eat the children. Maybe in modern China, they could scare it away with rap music.



It's also Australia Day, but there aren't any monsters associated with that, as far as I know. Maybe Australian fauna is weird enough that the people don't have to bother making up their own creatures.