I was reading an article today on Souter's departure and couldn't get past this sentence (emphasis mine):

Unlike Chief Justice John Roberts (football star) or Antonin Scalia (lead guitarist in a rock band), Souter is the good-looking, nerdy guy in high school who sat in the bleachers and read.

I then spent the rest of the afternoon trying to think of appropriate band names and songs for him, which I'm sure you'll do much better than I did.

This post refutes a rather silly argument by some professor, who argues that we should marry younger and younger. (He's not making BitchPhd's argument about having kids when you're twenty.) In the course of rebuttal, the author states

He also doesn't acknowledge that what people want in marriages has changed dramatically over the last half-century, for myriad reasons. Our grandparents got married because there was tremendous social pressure to do so (and stigma for not doing so), but I think there's more social stigma for us under 30-somethings to be married unhappily. Staying in an unhappy marriage is not seen as some deeply honorable thing. In making the decision to get married -- and the fact that we can decide not to is another huge cultural change -- I think people of marrying age today do so using much more involved calculus. At 20, 22, 24, 26, we're still legitimately working that stuff out.

I never thought about whether there was social pressure among the younger set not to stay unhappily married, but it's an interesting idea. There is certainly pressure for people to present their marriages as happy, (unless it's someone's shtick to bitch about their marriage), and so maybe chastising someone for staying in an admitted bad marriage is a way of policing the happy marriage projection.

When friends are in non-permanent relationships that aren't working, I think "End it! End it now! Are you nuts? Don't stagnate there." When friends are in marriages/permanent commitments, it gets harrier for me. Basically I think that if both parties meet some threshhold of maturity, there is a benefit to sticking it out, because ideally its an opportunity for growth and you'll emerge blah blah blah chrysallis something. After sustained efforts to try to work it out, if it's still broken, then you are probably looking at a basic incompatibility. Divorce. And if either partner has really dropped the maturity-ball*, by all means, dump their ass.

So I guess I do believe that people in sufficiently crappy marriages should get the hell out. I'll buy the above quote.

*maturity-ball, not unlike a purity-ball but with condoms.

Oh my god, I would never stop laughing.

Goodbye, Souter.

If, on Inauguration Day, you'd asked me what issues Obama would face in his first 100 days, I'd never have guessed piracy and swine flu. The year's only 1/4 over. What are your guesses for where this random year will go?

What's your report card? I give Obama a C. Policies are OK but too many press conferences while I'm at the gym.

When I was in high school, Florida approved this vanity plate design:

"It has nothing to do with abortion!" I recall the right-wing protesting. "We just like life!" Mm-hmm.

So at least there's a precedent for their new state-approved vanity plate design:

Not kidding.

Oh well. I asked Jesus how much he loved me, and do you know what he answered?

Via Jammies

Eekbeat sent along this article with instructions to read the comments. Whereupon I read:

I agree. If Yup'ik can't learn english, they should go back to the country their parents come from and live there.

Which was sarcastic, but not far off from this sincere comment:

I realize the truth does hurt... tell me this, are the instruction manuals that come with your NEW snowmachines and four-wheelers printed in Yupik? You don't seem to have a problem understanding new "technology" such as snowmachines, four wheelers, boats, rifles, electricity, etc... Why the misunderstanding on voting ballots? And as far as gaming, more pulltabs are sent to the BUSH than Anchorage!!! You all know GAMING (Gambling) very well!!!! Quit making excuses!!!!!

Wow. People are still being asshats. And the idea of a national language is still a very stupid idea. Noted.

Is it okay to ask the mineshaft on behalf of someone who doesn't know I'm doing so? I submit that of course it is! You are some nosy and judgmental motherfuckers!

So: a friend has acquired for around $20 a bike that he's pretty sure was stolen. For starters, the cost is less than 10% of a current reasonable resale price. Secondly, something about the transaction (this part's a bit vague—I think it was all arranged on Craigslist and just generally sketchy) further cemented his belief that it's likely not on-the-up-and-up. But! he's pretty much okay with doing nothing about it.

This is the part where I gallop in on my moral high horse.

I've appealed to his better angels: advise the police that you seem to have gotten a surprisingly good deal on a bike, and while you're quite happy with the purchase, you just want to confirm it's not in their database as reported-stolen; after all, it's what you would want anyone else to do if it were your stolen bike.

I've appealed to his baser instincts: look, this ain't the biggest burg in the world, and no doubt more than a few vigilante cyclists are on the lookout for that bike; you're likely to catch a U-lock to the back of the head if it really is stolen, so you ought to at least check with the cops.

Plainly, I'm offering helpful and sagacious counsel here but being brushed off. I mean, you would check with the police, right? Of course you would!

Yesterday, we were looking at a bruise-up primary between Specter and Toomey, facing a field of (I think?) three possible Democrats: Joe Torsella, Joe Sestak, and Allyson Schwartz. Now, it's Specter vs. Toomey, right?

Knowing absolutely nothing about the three would-be Democratic challengers, I'm not so sure this Specter development is a net win for Dems. Specter possibly saves his own arse, sure. But beyond that? I don't get it.

I know that they say that if you want to get rich, you start a religion but I think people are getting a bit too smart for that, or at least the market for it is becoming a bit too crowded. I think the modern path to riches is to start your own professional certification.

Here's what I'm going to do: pick a random non-quantifiable topic and write a book of Best Practices while in a drunken haze some weekend. I'll charge people charge $49.95 for the book and then $555 for the privilege of applying to take my certification exam. But! They can't just study the book and pass my test! Nooooooo! Before they can even sit for the exam, I'll require that they take 36 hours of official training that only I can give them (or someone who has paid me for the right to teach the material). To make my life easier, so I don't actually have to teach them anything in these classes, I won't let anyone who hasn't done the thing I'm certifying them for for three years already take the classes or the test. THEN! Once they do have my certification, I'll make them take continuing education classes each year (which, again, cha-ching!) FOREVER or they'll lose it.

Who wants to buy some of my certification-backed collateralized bond obligations ?

I haven't seen or read any news or been online since Tuesday. So we're all dying of swine flu or something? What'd I miss?

The only post I've been able to think of is one about textures and all these new wildly soft fabrics that baby stuff is made out of these days, which weren't around when we were tykes. Except - seriously, what a boring topic for a post. Textures? I fear I'm getting mushy-brained. (Which is why I wanted to post. To prove to myself I'm still sharp as a magnet, or something.)(My least-favorite thing to be told while I was pregnant was "The bigger the belly, the smaller the brain! No really, it's based in science!" Which I heard a hundred times, but all one hundred were from the same person.)

So we were given a blanket with that new-fangled softness on one side, and satin on the other side, and the design was on the new-fangled softness side. Jammies tucked it around Hawaiian Punch upside-down, so that the design was hidden and the new-fangled softness was against baby. I pointed this out and he said that the satin fabric gives him the willies. Whereas I much prefer satin to the new-fangled softness fabric. This was the incident that I thought I could stretch into a post, and apparently I can.

But in general, I'm not a very tactile person. I never opt for certain clothes because they feel good. My tactile experiences run from neutral to unpleasant. Okay, now you write a bunch of witty comments because it turns out I can't comment very well while I'm nursing, but I like to lurk and be entertained.

Update: Jammies just sent me this highly entertaining nugget. Ok, go be funny commenters! Go!