Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "Your little hopes and dreams."
¤ Usage: "Poor fellow, his little hopes and dreams have all be smashed."
¤ Origin: Quipped by a whore, or pre-op transgender man, or a sociopath, or some other lowlife who was engaged in a vicious verbal battle with another lowlife guest on the Jerry Springer show
¤ Notes: While the Jerry Springer show is generally pretty lacking in opportunities for intellectual improvement, you do tend to hear some funny jokes, of the personal insult type.  This was one of the best.  One loser was arguing with another loser, and when one said something about how she'd loved her husband, whom the other lowlife had stolen away, lowlife #1 replied, "Bitch, I don't care about your little hopes and dreams!"

You'll find it applicable to almost every situation in life.  It's the "little" that really makes it work, since that just so perfectly and cruelly diminishes whatever claim to importance the other person might previously have had. -- February 20, 2004

uesday, and I'm dragging. I sprained my left knee a couple of weeks ago, and while I could barely walk for 3 days afterwards, it was getting better during that time, and continued to improve for about the first 10 days. In fact it was feeling so good that I started to walk almost normally, and did some housework late last week.  Squatting down to clean out the cat box and rat cage, moving around the house, etc. That was a bad idea.

It didn't hurt much while doing it, but that night it was sore, and for the past 2 or 3 days it's been aching all the time again.  I walk slowly with my knee hurting if it straightens out all the way, my knee aches if I extend it straight or bend it up, and the back of my knee feels like it's throbbing and hot all the time. I've regressed about a week in my healing, and have been taking Advil again and spending time sitting with my leg up and an ice pack on or beneath the knee again, and that makes me unhappy.

Here I was, a week ago, thinking I might be all healed up and able to get back to jogging by now, and there's no way in hell that's going to happen any time soon. I'll be lucky if I can think about a long walk by May, at this rate.

Partially because of that, and partially because I've been sleeping very little lately, I felt like shit most of the day Tuesday. No real specific ailment; my head didn't hurt, I didn't have an upset stomach, etc. My knee hurt, but I'm used to that, so I couldn't say what was wrong, but damn I felt crappy. Around 7pm I was nodding off on the couch, but felt hot and unhappy, so I went to bed and dozed for a little while. I didn't really sleep, but it was one of those, "I'm not sleepy, but I'm tired and this soft horizontal surface just feels so good." times. And I was daydreaming random things that I forgot almost immediately, and every time I looked at the clock it was 20 minutes later.

It differed greatly from my usual lying in bed when I'm not asleep schedule, when I'm bored and restless and toss and turn and wake up Malaya, and every time I look at the clock it's 2 minutes later, and I can't believe how slowly the night is passing.

Fortunately, when I got out of bed around 10 I felt the best I'd felt all day, and had the first appetite I'd had all day. So I ate a Boca burger with some fries, and had a burst of energy... which lasted about an hour, after which I was again lethargic and bored and unsettled. It's a weird mood; I'm not in pain or anything, I just feel dumb.  Snarkless.  Confused. Like the ten different directions my mind is usually working in at once has been reduced to one direction, and it's a plodding, slow one. Sitting here typing now, past 3am with Malaya long since gone to bed, I just realized that I'd had my headphones on for the past hour, with no music playing.  And no, it's not so cold that I need cheap plastic earmuffs.

All of this is basically a long excuse as to why the blog is mediocre today, and why I'm going to shut up now and cut right to some absurd news stuff and post thing thing, so I can go stare at a wall, or finish up Harry Potter 4, or level up my Barb's new Might merc enough that he can use the ethereal thresher Doom I made him on Saturday, or something.

With any luck, Thursday will bring a return to my usual snarky and non-bored self.

¤ Here's an aspect of marathons that I hadn't thought about previously. And would have been just fine never thinking about, to be honest. Insufficient toilets.

"Our town loves to have the marathon, everything is wonderful, except for this peeing thing," said Carl Barker-Hook, a Grove Street resident. "It's pretty vile."

Race officials from the Boston Athletic Association met last year with the Hopkinton Marathon Committee -- formed more than 20 years ago to address the fouling of property during the event -- after an unprecedented flood of complaints about runners not only urinating, but defecating, applying Vaseline to private parts, and changing tampons within public view. The instances have been more common in Hopkinton than anywhere else along the route, race officials and runners said, because all 20,000-plus runners converge on the town at the same time, and a good portion of them need to prepare themselves and use the restroom before the race starts.

The article lists all the things organizers are doing to alleviate the problem, but some of the participants don't think it will be enough.

But there are some runners who say little can be done to eliminate the unsightly incidents, short of installing hundreds, even thousands more toilets in Hopkinton. After hour upon hour of meticulous hydration, which often includes guzzling gallons of water, Gatorade, and other liquids, many runners say, there comes a point when they've just got to go. A lot.

"By the time you get to the start line, if you take that last swig of whatever, almost immediately you've got to get rid of it," explained Tom Licciardello, a founding member of the Merrimack Valley Striders who will be running his 28th marathon. "Your cup runneth over, that's for sure."

I never have to stop to pee when I go run, but then again, I'm never at it for much more than 6 miles/an hour at a time, and I don't do much more advance prep than drinking a bottle of water on the drive up to the reservoir.  And if I did have to pee, there's no shortage of trees and bushes and privacy. Not that any of you had any real need to know that.

¤ Amusingly-pathetic story about an anti-gay Christian group that put together a huge pamphlet about gays infiltrating schools; and used an article from The Onion as a keystone for their presentation, not realizing it was a joke and the Onion is satire. The picture can be seen below.

A school board trustee is demanding an apology from a parents' group that used a fake photo from a satirical newspaper on its pamphlets opposing the expansion of a safe schools policy. Simply Truths Our Priority, or STOP, handed out pamphlets and computer discs with a 300-page book of Internet research outside a public meeting last week. The session was a chance for the Thames Valley District school board to get input on its plan to expand the safe schools program -- a move to protect gay and lesbian students. But STOP argues the board is changing the curriculum and will promote a homosexual lifestyle in schools.

When some reporter pointed out to STOP's shrewish spokeswoman that the Onion article was sarcasm, she still didn't get it.

Marilyn Ashworth of STOP said it's concerned the photo represents what will end up in this region's schools if the board goes ahead with its plan.

"We knew it was a gay paper and we hold that even as a joke, the gay community is proud of their advancements into the safe schools program in the U.S.," she said. "We don't think homosexuality in schools is a joke."

Asked whether she believed it was a real photo, Ashworth said the caption included the teacher's name, city, state and grade.

"We researched in depth and that was one of the things we found," she said, noting the group spent seven weeks accumulating research.

"We don't come by our findings lightly. . . . Whether it was meant to be a joke or not, it's not funny to parents who are trying to protect their children."

So they didn't know it was fake, but when they were informed that it was fake, they said they included it to show where gays want to take the schools, and that The Onion was a gay paper. And immediately defended the wading-pool-depth of their seven weeks of research.

Before you think it was an honest mistake, go read The Onion article and hurt your brain trying to imagine how dumb someone would have to be to take it seriously. How can anyone with more than a 3rd grade reading comprehension not realize that it is a sarcastic commentary on some uptight Christians, with their, "Gays can't reproduce, so they must recruit." ravings?

"It's crucial that we reach these kids while they're still young," Emmonds said. "That's when they're most vulnerable to our message of sexual promiscuity and deviance."

"When I grow up, I want to be gay," said Christopher Linn, 8, a second-grader at Philadelphia's Lakeside Elementary School, one of thousands of public schools nationwide that actively promote the homosexual agenda. "I don't want to have a family or go to church."

"Straight people don't have any fun," said Teddy Nance, 11, after watching Breeders Are Boring!, an anti-heterosexual filmstrip, in his fifth-grade class at Crestwood Elementary School in Roanoke, VA. "Gay people get to do whatever they want."

Seriously, would you rather have your kids learning about gay stuff, or learning what these STOP people, who can't even tell The Onion from the news, want them to learn?

¤ In news that should be a surprise to no one, swimsuit model and actress Rebecca Romijn finally dumped that short guy she was married to.

Married life is over for "Full House" actor John Stamos and "X-Men" actress Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, the former Victoria's Secret model. The couple has separated after five years of marriage, publicist Lewis Kay said Monday.

"The split is amicable and they have asked that the media please respect their privacy regarding this situation during this difficult time," Kay said.

The spokesman said the couple had no further comment.

Rebecca is in a lot of movies, mostly bad action movies, but I never recognize her. She was in both X-men movies, but entirely covered in blue paint aside from one brief seduction scene, which could have featured an entirely different actress, for all you could tell if you'd never seen her without blue paint before. She was in Rollerball, but it was one of the worst movies ever made, and no one saw it. She was in Femme Fatale, but it was one of the biggest bombs every made and no one saw it. It did at least provide us with the dignified pose you see below.

Look for Rebecca to massively upgrade her partner profile in the immediate future, given how many famous single actors are floating around Hollywood, and perhaps parlay the publicity of a big star boyfriend into better movie roles. Films that she's actually the star of. She's in practically every other action pic that comes out now, but never with top billing. That's understandable, since while she's a good actress for a model, she's still just a good actress for a model. It's not exactly a term of distinction. I imagine a dramatic movie with her as the lead would be a train wreck, but she can do the cute chick or the bouncy girlfriend very well.  She's just 31, so she has plenty of time to improve yet, what with the miracles of surgery and botox.

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