It's my day off today and I can't be bothered with you people. It's not that I don't love you all madly. It's that I just need some space. Okay? Okay?! Can I please just have my space now?

Ahem. Anyway, a link roundup:

This is hilarious: Swirlspice presents the Sunday Night Sex Show drinking game. I'm adding this to my growing list of reasons I need to get cable.

At Amish Tech Support, Laurence Simon asks: "Did I miss the brutal crime wave of drag queens ruthlessly injecting themselves with silicone, causing a grave risk to the safety of the public at large?" Well. I guess we all did, then.

How to write like a wanker: Tim Blair offers a prime example. I mean, I'm talking serious Morford territory here, but with worse punctuation. You have to read it; it doesn't even matter whether you know anything about Australian politics, and you know why that is? Because repeated mentions of The Artist Continually Known as Meat Loaf automatically create comedy gold. That's why. And if you don't agree you're just wrong.

I owe tremendous thanks to another Australian for not only providing me with a 100%-journalspace-free web site, but also for providing me with links on the subject of Type C/Type M arguments. What the hell am I talking about? Well, you start here to find out. And then you read a dissenting opinion here, and then you read a rebuttal to the dissent here, and then you start studying for the exam I am going to give later on about it. Number-2 pencils only.

I like Dean's update on alcoholism and AA, because it's reminded me of a similar phenomenon I see with diet and nutrition: people get positively religious about The Best Way to Improve Oneself. I'm going to argue that this is a larger problem than just AA; try, for example, telling people that using this low-carbohydrate diet, you successfully lost 50 pounds over the course of about 18 months, successfully kept that weight off for another seven years, then proceeded to gain it back, foolishly, by increasing the amount of carbohydrates in your diet. Now, to me, the obvious conclusion to draw from this is that limiting carbohydrates helps me lose weight safely and effectively. But you'd be surprised how many others think the logical conclusion is that low-carb diets don't work and are unhealthy for you and by the way, Dr. Atkins was obese. Ohhhh-kay. These are the kind of people I back away from slowly--and I haven't even brought up the rabidly Atkins-indoctrinated who shriek that I cannot possibly lose weight on that diet when that diet never puts you into ketosis, and that the only way into fit-and-trim heaven is through Our Lord and Savior, Dr. Robert C. Atkins.

Anyway, Dean's final question seems well worth asking to me: "is the goal to get people into AA, or is it to help them?" I suppose if I were to rework that for my own purposes, I'd ask, "Is the goal to get people to eat what you tell them to, or is it to help them lose weight?"

Dumb things found via b3ta: an animated pigeon story I can't stop watching, though I don't know why exactly that is; a very odd game that proves, again, that the Japanese have too much time on their hands (for the lazy, the solution is here--scroll down to "WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?"); and--no, on second thought, that was about it.

Finally, Helen went to Terezin, and I think you should read about it, and I can't really say anything more about it than that. Go. Go now.

Posted by Ilyka at April 5, 2004 04:50 PM in hell is other people