Browser Clear-Out Special

Tome is first handmade Bible in 500 years: Gorgeous illuminated text on vellum looks quite a bit like a high-scale graphic novel (thanks, chrysippvs).

Things I Learn From My Patients: Contains such sage advice as "If you are going to get into a fight, and have a prosthetic eye, make sure you take it out first.....and, for safe keeping, shove it up your vagina.....the, realize that you cannot get it out and go to the ED for removal".

BDSS Solos From Monte Carlo: The Bellydance Superstars have a new DVD, and it's only available at their shows. Hmm...

Knife Block: Probably a bit too morbid for most kitchens, but I rather like it.

Dawn of the Dead: Someone knit the movie (I think you'll like this, psoridian).

Women Get Infections After Tattoo From Door-To-Door Salesman: Well, duh!

Meditation found to increase brain size: My skull's already stuffed with brains.

Fish School: Teach your goldfish to play soccer.

A really, really no-frills ride...: "Migrant workers in south China are wearing adult diapers on packed trains heading home for the Lunar New Year holiday because they have no access to a toilet."

British school bans raising hands: "The same children often wave their arms in the air, but when teachers try to involve less adventurous pupils by choosing them instead, it leads to feelings of victimization." How lame is this? Very.

Japanese Scientists Identify Ear Wax Gene: This could be the most important discovery since penicillin. "Earwax comes in two types, wet and dry. The wet form predominates in Africa and Europe, where 97 percent or more of the people have it, and the dry form among East Asians, while populations of Southern and Central Asia are roughly half and half. By comparing the DNA of Japanese with each type, the researchers were able to identify the gene that controls which type a person has."

Lovelorn Canadian writes to 3,700 Sabines: Is it romantic, stalking behaviour, bathetic, or a combination thereof?

Intelligence Test: I'm miffed because I only score as intelligent, and f00dave is ranking as a genius. Grr....

Wimpy Wakeup Call

Way too early this morning, I slowly crept awake with the realization that something was wrong. I didn't know what, but my Spidey senses were tingling. Then my nose stud fell out of my head and onto my hand.

Blearily, I staggered into the bathroom to disinfect everything and poke the stud back in. So I covered everything with antibacterial soap and begin poking the stud at the hole in my nose. But it wouldn't go in. The inside of my nose was swollen, and apparently has been all along. I'd assumed the thick inside wall of my nostril wasn't a swelling, but just a bizarre tactile artefact of my fingers not understanding what the stud felt like. Weird, I know, but there you go. But with the stud absent, the knob is obvious.

I tried several times to get the stud in, and it just wouldn't go, so I called f00dave. He got up and thought he was still dreaming. I suppose it was rather surreal. I was standing there covered in suds, with bubbles blowing out of my nose when I exhaled. When he woke up enough to figure out what was going on, he washed off and tried to put the stud back in.

But, for whatever reason, it wasn't going. He went and got the needlenosed pliers so he could get a better angle on things.

The swollen inside of my nose was very unhappy, and this whole process was hurting. It wasn't hurting like a broken leg, or even like the initial piercing itself, but it was hurting a lot. My imagination started to kick in. I thought that maybe the skin had grown over on the inside of my nose, and the only way to get the stud back in was for it to burst through the membrane.

That's when I started to faint. "I'm blacking out!" I said.

My vision closed down to a mere pinpoint. My ears were filled with a rushing sound. My legs buckled beneath me, and f00 helped me collapse onto the toilet, rather than the bathroom floor. "Look at me. Look at me," he said.

My eyes were squeezed shut. "I can't!"

"Just open your eyes," he said. "I need to look at your pupils."

They apparently looked fine, but I did not. "You're getting paler by the second."

And that wasn't all. When I opened my eyes, my vision was positively filled with migraine dots. At the centre of the mess was a glowing ring, much like the one in The Ring, only phosphorescent blue in colour. I could do nothing but stare at it.

"Can you get me a pony tail thing? I think I might puke."

I put my hair back, breathed deeply, and the nausea began to back off, but my head still ached and my stomach felt like it contained a few heavy rocks.

"Get up," said f00. "I need more light to put that back in."

So I got up, and after much painful poking and prodding, the stud was put back in place. We both staggerwalked back to bed and fell back to sleep.

My nose feels much happier now. The blackouts are gone, too. Those annoy the bejeezus out of me. I get them when I am injured in the lamest ways. I go into shock over the most pathetic things, like while I'm picking gravel out of a skinned hand or when I'm getting a nose ring put back in. But the time I got my ribs cracked with a whallop of a punch, I didn't black out. What's with that?

A New Customer Trick

Me: I have you booked in our Deluxe room with a king size bed at the rate of ...

Silly Customer (SC): *screams* No, no, no!

Me: ... Ma'am?

SC: *laughing* I'm sorry. My roommate just came home and I'm naked.

Oh Dear

Silly Customer (SC): I'd like to book a room for my boss.

Me: And has he ever stayed at the hotel before?

SC: No.

Me: (goes through room descriptions, and guest chooses a room to book) And which credit card would you like to hold that on?

SC: What do you mean which credit card? You should have that information.

Me: Er, I couldn't have that, considering he's never stayed with us before.

SC: Oh. Ok.

Me: And which credit card would you like to hold that on?