Books Lying Open
¤ A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin
¤ Shelters of Stone, Jean M. Auel
¤ The Complete Tales and Poems, Edgar Allen Poe
¤ The Year's Best Horror and Fantasy, 2001, Editors: Terri Datlow and Ellen Windling
¤ A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
¤ Abarat, Clive Barker
¤ Hearts in Atlantis, Steven King
¤ Everything's Eventual, Steven King

Soul-Devouring Worry
¤ Unknown feline esophagus impediments.

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your new duster be the embodiment of man's greatest aspirations.

Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "mostly".
¤ Usage: "They mostly come out at night.  Mostly."
¤ Synonyms: N/A
¤ Deviations: Most any qualifying word you can use in a sentence, and then repeat afterwards for extra emphasis.  Eg: "probably," "sometimes," and so on.
¤ Origin: Newt's famous line in Aliens.
¤ Notes: Cribbed from Cartman who cribbed it from Aliens, this word and its deviations spice up most any conversation.  Malaya and I have developed it to a science, where one of us will speak a viable sentence, and then after a momentary pause we'll both repeat the repeatable word in almost perfect harmony.  Yes, we realize how sickeningly cutesy this is. 

The best usage yet? When I said, after we saw the results of this boxing match: "Who kicked Oscar de la Hoya's ass tonight?
*pause*
*M and F speak together*
"Mosley." -- September 18, 2003

¤ Survey shows that women who get cosmetic breast implants have a higher suicide rate than average women.

The results of a new study suggest that women who receive cosmetic breast implants are at increased risk for suicide.

Dr. Eero Pukkala of Tampere School of Public Health and colleagues examined the death rates and the causes of those deaths among 2,166 Finnish women who underwent cosmetic breast surgery between 1970 and 2000. Most of the procedures involved silicone gel implants.

Women with cosmetic breast implants did not have a higher death rate overall than women in the general population, according to the report in the Annals of Plastic Surgery.

However, the authors did find an "excess" of suicides among implant patients--10 to be exact. This means that implant patients were about three times more likely than other women to commit suicide. Deaths due to suicide were most pronounced in the first five years of follow-up.

My immediate thought was that since lots of miserable, shallow women get implants hoping they'll make things better, this is no real surprise.  The article mentions this possibility, but doesn't really spell it out for people.  I'm sure that surveys would reveal women who obsess over their appearance in any way, women who are bulimic/anorexic, women who get deeply into goth stuff and start dying everything black and wearing 5 pounds of silver jewelry, women who get a dozen tattoos, etc... all have higher risks for suicide than women who do not.  This all goes for men as well, but to a lesser extent since men don't tend to associate so much of their mental state of mind with their perceived appearance.

Miserable people kill themselves, but before they do they often do weird things to try and make themselves feel better.  It seems like common sense to me that some miserable women who are unhappy with how they look think that bigger, perkier boobies will make them happier. And if having every man maintain steady eye contact with their chest doesn't improve their state of mind, they might kill themselves.

A really thorough study on this would examine suicidal women who got implants and suicidal women who didn't, and we might see that getting implants actually helped.  Take 50 suicidal women, half of whom get implants and half who don't. Say 5 of the new bra-size girls kill themselves, and 10 of the flat-chesters do the same.  Both would be well above the average suicide rate, but implants would actually have saved five lives!

Lest you take the wrong impression from this, I am not Howard Stern, and I am not a big fan of cosmetic implants, primarily since most women get ones that are way too big and shapeless.  The whole "beachball with a nipple" look can be tempting in a push up bra and a tight shirt, but it's nasty nude, looking way too plastic and artificial.

¤ Top news item on Yahoo right now is another in the recent glut of "men dying from testicle injuries" stories.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - An enraged Ethiopian mother of five will be tried for the murder of her husband who died after she crushed his testicles in a fight, police told the state-run Ethiopian News Agency. Police said on Friday the man was so embarrassed after the incident that he declined to seek treatment for the injury, and died days later.

"Following a disagreement over the husband's spending habits, his wife refused to give him his dinner and also decided to sleep alone," police in the western region of Wellega said. "The husband was so angered by this affront by his wife that he tried to beat her. In the melee that followed, the wife grabbed and twisted his testicles causing serious damage."

So he was blowing all their money on drinks, neglecting their kids, he tried to beat her and got his ass kicked... does anyone not approve of this outcome?  She should get a medal, not arrested.

Courtney Love's inexorable downward spiral of self-destruction continues.

LOS ANGELES - Singer-actress Courtney Love (news) was arrested for allegedly being under the influence of a narcotic after police responded to a burglary call, and was taken to a treatment center, according to published reports.

Love, 39, was found early Thursday outside a Los Angeles home where she had allegedly broken the windows in an attempt to enter, police spokesman Don Cox said. She was arrested and booked for investigation of using illegal drugs, posted $2,500 bail and was released.

Hours later, police and paramedics in Beverly Hills responded to an emergency call and took a woman to a hospital for treatment, according to a story in Friday's editions of the Los Angeles Times.

Law enforcement sources told the newspaper that the woman was Love and that she had overdosed. It was not immediately known what her condition was.

Let's just hope they can finally get Francis Bean away from her before she kills her just like she did her daddy.

¤ Good blog post on CalPundit about a new study showing the amount of misperceptions people hold about the Iraq situation, depending on which news source they get their information from.  The survey presented people who rely on only one source for their news (where do you find such people?) three main questions and charted their responses, then comparing them to objective reality and sorted it by what their source of news was. You can see the results in the chart here, with Fox leading the way in misinformation, but CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, and newspapers not far behind.

The whole report is pretty damn depressing, when you get right down to it. How do 69% of people feel that it's "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that Saddam was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks?  I mean Jesus Christ, even that nutcase Cheney has never claimed that. Hell, 20% of people believe that Iraq used chemical weapons in the Iraq Attack, and I can't recall there being even a hint or a whisper about that, even from FOX and other right wing news outlets.  Another question reveals that 25% of people think the majority of the world favored the Iraq Attack.  How is that possible? Where do people get these beliefs?  It's like the Bushies don't even need to make up the lies anymore; people are so eager to invent them themselves.

I also wonder where you find people who only get their news from one source.  That's almost true for me, but that source would be the Internet, and that's unclassifiable, since there are virtually infinite news sources online, coming from every ideological bent.  But I also check out print media from time to time, (newspapers or Newsweek) and I even occasionally turn on the TV news.  I can envision people who only watch Fox "news", just because they are true believers in Bush and don't want any reality to intrude into their sheltered little world, but I've always seen all the other news sources as pretty much interchangeable.  Is there any difference between CBS/ABC/NBC in terms of news coverage?  How does a person just watch say, NBC, and never click to CBS or ABC by accident?  How can you even tell which network you have on at a glance?

Ordinarily this wouldn't be especially big news, but since I hadn't touched the game for about two weeks, it was nice to get back to it, if only briefly.  I fired up my biggest v1.10 beta character, an 85 Paladin, and headed off for a quick Baal run.  This had become a pretty routine event a few weeks ago, but it was hell today.  I died about 8 times on WorldStone 2, due to the horrendously bad spawn of Gloams, Poison Skeleton Mages, and Unravellers.  The Gloams in hell are just obscenely nasty in v1.10a, dealing something like 500 damage per lightning bolt direct hit, and that's to my Paladin who has 58% lightning resist in hell and 1200 hps.  Basically any 3 that hit me at once kill me instantly, which means every time you get a boss pack you have to dodge and weave and shimmy and try to get them spread out so you can pick them off one at a time.  My Pal has lvl 25 Smite, which is good for like 4.5 seconds of stun time, and I use that liberally, often keeping 3 or 4 monsters stunned at once, and try to let my merc get closer to the others since he's got higher res than me, a unique death mask on, and 1800 hps.  The gloams don't shoot lightning at melee range, but they do steal your mana with every hit, and you can't leech from them at all.

Add those to the poison mages who keep you constantly poisoned with very nasty life loss, and who can't be leeched from, plus the occasional Greater Mummy to resurrect the skeletons you kill, and it was just a train wreck.

I didn't die on WS 3 or the Throne, though it was a close thing.  I got Blood Lords, Ob Mages, and Gloams on the last level, and that was an equally awful spawn, though fortunately there were very few of the gloams.  But 

I'm not going to go on and on about D2, but I've been thinking about doing an article for the D2 site about my experiences taking new chars through the levels in v1.10 with equipment from scratch, so this game was a sort of reminder or remotivator about that.  Didn't quite work out that way though, since now I'm like, "bleh" about the whole thing.

I hadn't played in 2 weeks since I was getting into playing too much and after a conversation with Malaya about our long term goals and ideas, I swore not to play anymore in September. And I didn't and I've not missed it since I spent my time reading a few novels and working on my own novel instead, along with time with her, some TV, surfing, and of course this blog.  I think it's unlikely that I'll ever do another big project on the D2 site, and this isn't a big project, but it would at least be one last opportunity to share my gaming knowledge with the masses.  Since I'm not going to play much once v1.10 comes out, and therefore what I know now will be obsolete in about a week.

I'm trying to think of something to talk about besides the kitties, but with Jinxers asleep in my lap, as she so often is, it's hard.

Dusty has been more accepting of Jinx, but he's still a bit bitchy. His new thing is to start meowaling and yowling and then walk over to the sleeping Jinx and start licking her back and neck, with alternating bites and nips.  Jinx puts up with it for a bit, but Dusty always gets carried away and starts biting too hard and she has to roll over and paw and bite back or leap away.  She's like 1/10th his size so can't hope to compete in their mock combat, but she's pretty game and gives it a go.

He's not trying to hurt her, and not biting her that hard, even though he is famed for his kill-a-man-mouth, but he never does it for a minute and then licks her and then goes to sleep.  He always bites and bites some more until she has to hiss and mew pitifully and make an escape.

They didn't do any of their usual racing around madly last night, possibly since they were both tired from getting shots at the vet.  It's like when humans get inoculations; afterwards you are often just wiped out, almost like you have a cold.  The vet told us that cats are often very sleepy the evening after they get a shot, and both Jinx and Dusty were up and scooting about as much as normal for a few hours after the vet, but come nighttime they were just sacks of cement.

Tonight Dusty seems to be fine, but Jinx has been sick from a hairball or something she ate, and has been horking up kitty spit every couple of hours, and once what looked like a piece of string.  She also hasn't eaten anything in hours, probably since her tummy hurts from whatever is in her.  Needless to say, this seems to have taken the wind out of her sails and she's been lying around a lot, alternating sleeping on me with sleeping on the couch and on Dusty's chair. She's not even shown any interest in attacking her spider or chasing the string mousie, so you know she's under the weather.

Since getting Dusty fired up for chasing is pretty much up to her, in the form of screwing with him until he gets interested, he's taking advantage of her under the weather'ness to sleep and sleep some more.  Lazy kitty.

We're hoping she doesn't die since we just spent like $90 on her at the vet, counting the blood test, vaccinations, and exam.  No animal I have already spent more than the price of a new snowboard is allowed to die on me, damnit.

Speaking of snowboarding, as I just sort of was, I'm probably going to go sometime this winter.  Malaya isn't into that sort of action sport, though she'd probably be up for some intertube type sledding and snowball fights.  However her best friends, a male/female couple, are sort of our opposite.  The female is very athletic and active and wants to try snowboarding with someone who knows how to do it, while her boyfriend is not into athletics and would much more enjoy hanging around inside a cozy loge and talking to his old friend Malaya.

Since it's about a two hour drive from here to Lake Tahoe, home of some great skiing and tons of snow, we'll likely head up there at least once this winter. I haven't been snowboarding in a few years, but I used to go several times each winter and I used to really enjoy it.  I gave away my snowboard since it was old and beat up and we couldn't manage to sell it at a yard sale despite severe price mark downs, so I'll need to get a new one and possibly new bindings as well.  I still have serviceable boots and pants and all the rest of the clothing, and I miss not wearing them for the last few years.  I love heavy gloves and coats and stuff; it's just never cold enough in San Diego to wear them.

It's not cold enough for that here yet either, but it's getting there.  It's been down into the 50's the last few nights, with highs in the day in the low 70's, and I rather love the weather.  I'd prefer some more clouds and cooler day time temps, with perhaps some rain, but hey, it's only October, and we've got 5 of 6 months yet to go of cool and frequently rainy weather.

I so do not miss San Diego.

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