Non-seriously, I propose that we replace words like "book" and "vampire" with "cilantro" and "gerund". "Tim" could be "muffaletta". "Internet" could be "tiara".

paperdol259: I really like that cilatro. It's not really about gerunds, yet it is!

paperdol20: Did muffaletta like it?

paperdol156: He did, though he's not on the tiara all that often anymore.

I'm sorry you're feeling so sick. When Ben was a baby, any excitement, good or bad, sent him into a melt down. I finally twigged to this and started telling him, "This is good excitement," when it was.

Aw. Kind of like how when I was little I threw up for every occasion -- Christmas, Easter, vacation, etc. It was always a combo of sugar and excitement.

He did, though he's not on the tiara all that often anymore.

Poor muffaletta and his sore ass....

I'm sorry you're feeling so sick. When Ben was a baby, any excitement, good or bad, sent him into a melt down. I finally twigged to this and started telling him, "This is good excitement," when it was.

This is good excitement, paperdol. I hope you can feel that way soon.

Cindy is wise. I know that we are so excited for you, and I hope that you can feel happier and less stressed about the whole (exciting!) book release soon.

Damn, I never knew mud wasps were so big.

There's one crawling on the ceiling near me.

eta: Fuck. Now he's stuck between my window and the blinds. He's making a loud buzzing sound as he beats his wings against the blinds.

And then I worry about you guys, too.

I worry about wankery hitting the board, too, and how to deal with that.

I don't think any new wankery from outsiders can be any worse than the insider wankery we've inflicted on our own selves in the past. And we survived that, so we'll survive new wankery, should it arrive.

(I say that as one of the Chief Creators and Perpetuators of Wank around these parts.)

Count Gottfried von Bismarck

Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies.

The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany's Iron Chancellor and architect of the modern German state, the young von Bismarck showed early promise as a brilliant scholar, but led an exotic life of gilded aimlessness that attracted the attention of the gossip columns from the moment he arrived in Oxford in 1983 and hosted a dinner at which the severed heads of two pigs were placed at either end of the table.

Man, *I* want to lead an exotic life of gilded aimlessness!

The last line of that obit is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time.

Oh, we should totally do it. If for no other reason than it would be highly amusing to all of us.

That would be totally fun, trying to guess who was who from taglines and speech patterns.