Does there exist a culture where toddlers are not obsessed with saying "MINE"? Or is it built right in to the model?

Leafing through the Heifer International catalog that arrived unbidden today, I was immeasurably delighted by the suggestion that I give the gift of bees. I'm picturing someone unwrapping a Christmas gift and being suddenly swarmed by bees, and, since I'm a terrible person, I find this mental image very, very funny.

So, if anyone out there is struggling to complete last-minute holiday shopping, please take a moment and consider bees.

I have a zit on my forehead. I was told this would not be an adult problem.

From the Dwarf Fortress wiki:

I've been seeing a number of blog posts about how great the lame duck session has been, and reveling over all the legislative victories therein. I'm really not seeing it. DADT was a legitimate victory. It was also favored by what, 80% of the public, and had become clearly inevitable -- kudos to everyone who got it passed, but it's hard to picture a desirable policy where the politics were more favorable than that. The tax deal: Republicans got everything they wanted in terms of tax cuts; Democrats got more, different tax cuts, which honestly, isn't going to be that hard to sell to Republicans, and an extension of unemployment benefits. So, if you want to call getting a small payoff for total capitulation, in a position where the Democrats went in with all the structural advantages, a victory, I suppose you could but I'm not inclined to.

And now the START treaty. Which I'm all for, but everyone on the planet (other than the small and poorly funded nuclear proliferation lobby (slogan: A nuke in every garage!)) is also for it. This wasn't a victory overcoming real political opposition, this was successfully doing routine business in the face of a meaningless political tantrum. So, great. The gears of government haven't completely ground to a halt, despite all the sand, monkey wrenches, and wooden shoes in the machinery. It's better than the alternative, but I'm not breaking out the champagne.

I love my housemates, and I really love my sub-$300/month rent. However, the past month has supplied a wealth of pet- and house-sitting opportunities in a living-solo arrangement.

Why have you all been hiding this greatness from me? I'm not sure I can go back to living with creatures who don't mostly purr and/or swim around in a tank.

I really like it when businesses have online chat customer service. The difference between chat customer service and email or phone customer service is huge. Every time I've used it, I've ended up feeling like it was an efficient use of my time. Email drags out, and everyone uses weird formats for submitting your complaint. Phone conversations you end up feeling like you're talking at cross-purposes half the time, and the start-up to actually talk to someone is infuriating. But chat! It just seems to work especially well.

Fred Fiske could beat Andy Rooney in a curmudgeon-off any day of the week.

I've mentioned before, I think, that I get emails from various conservative mailing lists. Recently I have received two emails purporting to be from Gun Alerts, but apparently actually sent by some odious spam house, about tomorrow's FCC meetings. The emails (seemingly identical) urge the recipient to "CLICK HERE to send a FAX to every single Member of Congress TODAY, and tell them that they need to exercise their Constitutional authority and oversight over the FCC, by insisting that the FCC postpone the implementation of these new regulations until proper Congressional Committee hearings are held to determine whether the Executive Branch has the Constitutional authority to take over the Internet", which last is, as you can see, on the agenda. (This agenda differs a bit from the one engadget posted, but I assume the second item is just a later version of the first.)

This email is truly crazy and remarkably nonspecific. Even the fax template is almost entirely contentless. I guess the real point is to make money for AmeriPAC, but I still would have thought that there would be a little more specificity to either the email or the fax.

Twice over this past weekend I mentioned the idea that, even if some dudes named Joseph and Mary really did travel to a place called Bethlehem for a census back in the day, setting aside the whole magic-baby-in-manger thing, they almost certainly wouldn't have done so at this time of year. And both times I was met with a reaction of,"Wait, what?! You crazy."

I thought this was a well-accepted and generally uncontroversial point, but it occurs to me, based on these reactions, that I might be wrong. Or maybe I totally made up this "fact" and have convinced myself of its veracity through the magic of repetition.

In any case, I'm feeling irrationally grumpy about the holidays today, so consider this my contribution of ho-ho-hum.

Hi honey! Wouldn't it be tactless if I broke up with you for one of our kid's friend's parent, and then submitted my new love story to the New York Times Vows column?

Via Becks

Hey, something good happened in Washington. For a day or two we can all bask delighted in the belief that it is not absolutely impossible for anything ever to improve after all.

After New Years? Coffee break over, back on your heads.

Afterthought: If I were involved in a campus LGBTQ organization, I'd be thinking about organizing a big cheerful: "Welcome Back Military Recruiters!" event, partially just for the hell of it, and partially for culture-wars reasons. "We're here, we're queer, we're delighted by the prospect of being able to serve in our country's armed forces, and if you find that last item puzzling, perhaps you should be examining your preconceptions." No one's ever going to hire me to write slogans, are they?