The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Kate Yule:

I keep one of those thread-cutter pendants in my knitting toolkit, travel edition. I considered buying a plastic one as perhaps being less obvious, but reflected that those actually were a wee bit hazardous: cheap plastic case would easily give up the razor if stomped on.

The pedantic, does-not-play-well-with-others side of me would like very much to show up at the airport sometime with a filled water bottle that has spent the night in the freezer.

I just found out about Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" website. I am croggled. Some of these tasks... It's astroturf farming! Sharecropper astroturf farming! No?

Does anyone else here hear the words "explosion" and "Guy" and think of Guy Wicker of General Technics?

TV-B-Gone is useful at the gym. Not for the televisions out in the cardio area, where people are actually watching them, but in the locker room. I am so very tired of being aurally crowded by Texans Behaving Badly on the courtroom channel, or Dr. Phil, or ads, while I deal with getting dressed.

The Muppet explanation is the best thing I've seen for understanding "Instant Runoff Voting". Seriously.

Teresa, it may be Bob's novel and Bob's Hugo, but you helped. For which we thank you.

re summer drinks: There's a liquor store next to my dentist's office, and I often treat myself to a bottle of something nummy after I've been a good girl. (Lollipops are so 40 years ago.) Last month I laid in a bottle of Bendistillery's Desert Juniper gin, featuring handpicked wild juniper-berry-ness. Ooooooh. I'll get around to tonic and limes for it, but for now I've been sipping it straight.

re pink/blue particle, or, What Color is Your Gender: I've read something attributing the switch to an extremely popular museum exhibit/tour involving Gainsborough's Blue Boy. Can't find anything online to back this up, though, except that when BB was sold to that American chap Huntington in 1921 or 1922, Brits did come to see it by the tens of thousands before it left for the wilds of California.

Terry K: Ah. Civil violation vs. criminal. OK, I can see that. Trying to find clarification on this point online ("Is it a crime to be here 'illegally'?") has been frustrating. Most sites will just refer to there being "limits" or "bans" on immigration, which doesn't answer the question, while more technical sites provide a DELUGE of forms/laws/procedures/visas/exceptions & on & on.

I'm repeatedly hearing newscasters refer to the proposed federal immigration legislation as "seeking to criminalize undocumented workers" or as "something that would criminalize people who are here illegally".

Isn't that redundant, verging on gibberish? There are lots of points to argue on the immigration question (though I think it's a massive distraction from Iraq and Bush's own self-criminalization) -- but surely we're all agreed that right now, being here as an illegal alien is, er, illegal?

The children's zoo in Pittsburgh included one exhibit with the sign "These rats are not hamsters, they're guinea pigs".

As for Potrzebie axolotl fink and all the other little finks: There is a charming picture book titled Sarah So Small in which the title character is shrunk to the size of a teacup and seeks to return to her proper size. The magic words? "Klaatu barada nikto". I Am Not Making This Up.

Harking back to something five days upstream --

Surely potato chips are flavored, while crisps are flavoured!

Bujold has said there will be one book per deity.... She hasn't specified otherwise how closely they'll be related.

We can only hope it's less closely than Chalion and Hallowed Hunt. As I have remarked on LJ, our protagonists in [insert title] are an intelligent, strong-willed young woman being buffeted by circumstance (and relatives), and the protective, world-weary, slightly-shady-but-loyal-in-a-pinch man with someone or something living in his gut. Oh, and the King is wasting away. Political hijinks ensue.

I liked it quite a lot, the first time.

Re hot+sweet: Most hot pepper jellies I find (a) have sharp heat but not flavorful heat and (b) don't have actual fruit. Quinn's Peach Habanero Jelly is a tasty exception.

There used to be a locally-made blueberry-chipotle "grill sauce" that made the best PB&J ever. I miss it and mourn it.

By the way, Serge, the actor you were asking about WAY upstream was indeed in both Sidestreet and DaVinci's Inquest: one Donnelly Rhodes. Says the imdb.

Well, there's a brief "Shame on you" message off to nine senators. Thank you for the links, Patrick; that helped.

Before I go patting my local Republican on the head for not being completely venal, at least not today, at least not on one side -- who was the 100th, non-voting senator? Or are we down by one at the moment?

I might react to Delay's indictment with "Woo Hoo!" But I cried a tremendous "Woot!" when I heard Brown had been ousted from FEMA -- and then found out he's still on their &(*%$+# payroll.

Pfeh.

Also, neither Hilary nor Condi would look good in knee-high wading boots, ammo vest and an orange hat.

What, and men do? Not on my planet.

The plushy microbes (see particle) have multiplied since last I saw them. Who knew syphilis was so cute?! I don't understand why HIV, hepatitis & TB are flagged as "professional", though. E. coli and salmonella are guarding their amateur status?

And every evening, they shoot off the nine o'clock gun in Stanley Park. This, as I understand it, means it's bedtime in Victoria and we need to keep the noise down.

Love it.

Circa 1970 in my Pittsburgh suburb, the volunteer fire station down the hill let off their siren nightly at 6:00. It was a good bet that any household with kids had dinner at ten or fifteen minutes past 6.

One sentence from a long-ago article in Smithsonian has stuck with me for years. It asserted that "There was no such thing as 7:02 until the invention of the railway timetable." Some truth to that.

no no no, the lurching zombie guy in Threshold wasn't Mal (Nathan Fillian), he was Ethan from Lost (William Mapother). There is a resemblance, especially in Googled-for images where he's, like, smiling instead of crazed & eeeevil.

Mina, re. the administration's inability to keep from lying even when they name legislation: well said. I don't know a pithy way to express that, but I agree that we need one.

The one I want is the yellow infinity symbol (or perhaps moebius strip) with the word "Quagmire". Have seen it once in the wild.

T, your link from the words "big spitted" is only leading as far as the Mesa Tourist Office main page, and not to anything resembling gyros.

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