Lakeshore

Fantasy Book Critic is giving away a set of Mainspring and Escapement

Toonopedia — For all your cartoon trivia needs. (Thanks to lt260.)

Snow's Barbecue, Lexington, TX — Mmmm. Brisket. (Thanks to my Dad.)

What will globalization do to languages?

Some discussion of the McClellan memoir — My favorite bit is when he describes the Bush White House as "propagandistic, disconnected from reality, dangerously insular, allergic to transparency." Ambinder refers to this as a caricature, while I would call it a life drawing.

Clinton, Florida and Michigan — A reminder that she was for the stripping of the Florida and Michigan delegates long before she was against it. Useful reading if you're a Clinton supporter concerned about the alleged cynical disenfranchisement of the delegates in those two states.

Gore Vidal on JFK, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

U.S. Experts Bemoan Nation's Loss of Stature in the World of Science — Thank you, conservative America, for this one. We may be a generation recovering, if we ever do. Hope you guys are proud of yourselves. Was it worth the votes?

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5/29/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (still recovering from surgery)
Last night's weigh-out: 0
This morning's weigh-in: 261.2
Currently reading: The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia [ Amazon ]

At this point, the hardest part about the post-surgical recovery is the fact that I am still forced to sleep on my back. I have never been a back sleeper, and generally have a strong preference for lying on my right side. When I roll to the right, my viscera shift in an unpleasant and rather painful way. Rolling to the left is slightly less painful, but still feels very weird and uncomfortable. So I am trapped on my back like a turned turtle. (Waking up twice a night for medication isn't helping my quality of sleep either.) This is the only part of my daily life now which consistently makes me feel helpless and victimized.

I notice the same effect riding in the car. Turns, bumps and swift stops cause everything in my abdominal cavity to slosh around. This is not a desirable sensation, I can assure you.

I suppose this makes sense — I was unpacked, trimmed a bit, then reassembled in a slightly different configuration than what I was born with. Whatever balance of tissues and fluids it is that holds everything together in a comfortable and stable conformation hasn't yet been reasserted.

But I can tell you that whenever I am able to sleep on my side, that will be my own sense that I've returned to normal.

karindira with a very funny photoessay on the post-operative journey of my tumor.

lasirenadolce and I just wrapped up the first three seasons of the new Battlestar Galactica on DVD, thanks to kenscholes.

Bob Dylan. Really? Cripes. I smell some real world-class shark jumping here. There must be some kind of way out of here.