Someone please take this away from me. I really have no excuse.

Clickity-click for full thing.

( I'm the butt of the worst joke in history. )

   The snow crunched beneath their feet and it glittered diamonds as the sunlight caught it.
   'It must be hard,' said Laura, 'not being alive.'
   'You mean it's hard for you to be dead? Look, I'm still going to figure out how to bring you back, properly. I think I'm on the right track-'
   'No,' she said. 'I mean, I'm grateful. And I hope you really can do it. I did a lot of bad stuff...' She shook her head. 'But I was talking about you.'
   'I'm alive,' said Shadow. 'I'm not dead. Remember?'
   'You're not dead,' she said. 'But I'm not sure that you're alive, either. Not really.'

- American Gods, Neil Gaiman

http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=ce5e4b09a48dcedbad5ae404d0b21f10

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/12/31.html

vicissitude: a change in condition or fortune.

Poll #1505420 2009 Poo Facts!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 60

Did you like the 2009 poo facts?

Poo nugget for this weekend: A Gift for the Person Who Eats Everything - The Big John Toilet Seat is a product that boasts an ultrawide and contoured nineteen-inch sitting surface, large stabilizing bumpers, and is rated to support over 1200 pounds. The makers of the Big John claim, "It's not just for the Big and Tall / Plus Size Consumer. It is great for people who are larger-framed or bigger-boned, or anybody who just wants a more comfortable toilet seat."

Poo nugget for Monday, December 28: Dr. Stool Says - Acid Poo - It is well known that acid produced by the stomach can cause heartburn and ulcers. In one particular condition called Zollinger-Ellison syndrome, an excess amount of acid produced as a result of a tumor leads not only to these typical upper GI symptoms, but also to torrential diarrhea. Diarrhea occurs because the sheer volume of the acidic juices secreted by the stomach cannot be absorbed by the GI tract, and also because the acid destroys the pancreatic enzymes that normally help us to digest our food. The end result is acidic and fatty diarrhea. Symptoms can sometimes be controlled with medication, but surgical removal of the tumor is the only curative treatment.

Poo nugget for Tuesday, December 29: Doo You Know? - Seven Years To Digest Bubble Gum? - A bezoar is a concretion or stone formed in the intestine, usually of indigestible matter. Examples of things that can form bezoars include ingested seeds, fruit pits, hair, medications, and, yes, bubble gum. While bezoars typically form in people who have slowed emptying of the stomach (the stuff sits around longer, and can congeal into a large bolus), consumption of large amounts of certain foods have been known to form bezoars, even in people with normal gastrointestinal function. Don't worry, chewing gum isn't one of them. A surprising culprit? Persimmon.

Poo nugget for Wednesday, December 30: Penguins, Pressure, and Poo - The science humor journal Annals of Improbable Research awarded its 2005 Ig Nobel prize to the European scientists who calculated the internal pressures generated by a penguin's anus during defecation. It's sixty kilopascals, which (by the way) is higher than the pressure humans generate.

Poo nugget for Thursday, December 31: If Tonight's Champagne Gives You The Hiccups, Call A Proctologist - Although benign, hiccups can be a nuisance. While most experience hiccups for a few minutes at a time, there are instances where individuals hiccup every two to three seconds for days or weeks. One physician, Francis Fesmire, MD, recently reported on a novel treatment for this condition: the rectal exam. Employing what he calls a "digital rectal massage," accomplished by inserting his finger into the affected individual's rectum and moving it in a "slow, circular motion," Dr. Fesmire was able to cure patients of their intractable hiccups.

And there you have it - the end of 2009 and poo facts! Happy New Year, and stay safe!

Been a while since I posted here:


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( NOTES & DIRECTIONS )

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and 'Do I dare?'
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!')
My morning coat, my collar mountain firmly to
      the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a
      simple pin--
(They will say: 'But how his arms and legs are
      thin!')
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will
       reverse.

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," T.S. Eliot

He removed the thermometer from my mouth, folded his arms and delivered his diagnosis.  'You are suffering from an ailment that afflicts ladies of romantic imagination.  Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of appetite, low spirits.  While on one level the crisis can be ascribed to wandering about in freezing rain without the benefit of adequate waterproofing, the deeper cause is more likely to be found in some emotional trauma.  However, unlike the heroines of your favorite novels, your constitution has not been weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries.  No tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions.  You'll survive.'
...
I reached for the prescription.  In a vigorous scrawl, he had inked: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The case Book of Sherlock Holmes.  Take ten pages, twice a day, till end of course.

**
The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

Bianca Balti in W January 2010, Xtreme.

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WARNING: IMAGE HEAVY

HERE @ my livejournal!

here @ melteddashboard 

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

-"If" by Rudyard Kipling

Mma Ramotswe had a gift for the American woman, a basket which on her return journey from Bulawayo she had bought, on impulse, from a woman sitting by the side of the road in Francistown. The woman was desperate, and Mma Ramotswe, who did not need a basket, had bought it to help her. It was a traditional Botswana basket, with a design worked into the weaving.

"These little marks here are tears," she said. "The giraffe gives its tears to the women and they weave them into the basket."

The American woman took the basket politely, in the proper Botswana way of receiving a gift with both hands. How rude were people who took a gift with one hand, as if snatching it from the donor; she knew better.

"You are very kind, Mma," she said. "But why did the giraffe give its tears?"

Mma Ramotswe shrugged; she had never thought about it. "I suppose that it means that we can all give something," she said. "A giraffe has nothing else to give--only tears." Did it mean that? she wondered. And for a moment she imagined that she saw a giraffe peering down through the trees, its strange stilt-borne body among the leaves; and its moist velvet cheeks and liquid eyes; and she thought of all the beauty that there was in Africa, and of the laughter, and the love.

The boy looked at the basket. "Is that true, Mma?"

Mma Ramotswe smiled. "I hope so," she said.

Tears of the Giraffe, Alexader McCall Smith