akasha was bitten by the meme bug and i thought i’d see if i could come up with 10 things, too.  that’s actually hard for me to do, but we’ll see…

1.  i still have “old bunny”.  the stuffed animal i’ve had since i was a baby.  he’s covered in bandaids, because his cloth began ripping past the point that it could be repaired, so we kept adding bandaids over the years.  mom’d had him stored away and recently returned him to me, so that i could get rid of him as i saw fit, but.  i’m strangely unable to.  “get ~rid~ of old bunny?!?!” :O

2.  i once passed out at the eye doctor’s when i was in 6th grade.  yes.  the EYE doctor’s.  shup.  ;o i have a phobia of doctor’s and when they dilated my eyes?  all i remember is waking up in the floor with an oxygen mask on my face.  bless the doctor for telling me it was a common thing (suuuuure, it is).  and bless my 6th grade teacher, who on the first morning of my wearing glasses to school, told me, “my, don’t we look sophisticated”.  every bit of apprehension i’d had about wearing glasses melted away at that moment and i’ve never had a problem wearing ‘em since.

3.  my most fond memory of childhood: mom fixing a roast for sunday dinner, while i sat curled up in my dad’s lap, listening to neil diamond on the stereo.  everything was calm, peaceful, and ~right with the world~.  my other ~most~ fond memory is of the day my brother was born.  i was paged to the office at school, where my dad had called to let me know my baby brother had been born.  the principal, overhearing the conversation, gave me a long talk on how wonderful it was to have siblings.  then sent me off to notify all my teachers

4.  i have no real accent… unless i’m really tired or really upset.  then stand back, i’ll texas twang you to death.

5.  my favorite book, growing up, which i still love… the five little peppers and how they grew.

6.  robert urich, avery brooks, kevin spacey, and mike patton are among the ~sexiest men EVER~.

7.  i love the hill country in texas.  it’s where i feel most in touch with myself.  <3 new braunfels / canyon lake.

8.  guilty pleasure, music: the offspring.  books: the spenser for hire series and the vampire chronicles.  (guilty pleasures being those groups / books which you know are NOT the best, yet you can’t help but love them anyways)

9.  i LOVE boots / hats.  and own way too many of each.

10.  hrm, one final thing… i love the sound of dominoes being shuffled on a table.  when i was very little and my grandparents would visit, they’d play 42 with my parents after i’d gone to bed.  i’d lie awake for hours listening to them play and laugh and argue over the game.  and the sound of dominoes always brings that back, that sense of home and family. 

but collecting links.  try these:

atheistic forum —some good stuff

the 9/11 norad tapes

the national debt chart —scaaaarrrryyyy

op-ed on presidential candidate responses to recession

rogue trader may have caused fed to cut interest rates

op-ed by caroline kennedy, endorsing barack obama—ted and patrick have now also endorsed obama

background story on obama’s church—some people seem so concerned

and for today’s bizarre story: In the U.S. south, is Canadian a new racial slur?—canadian is beautiful?

“He convicted Mr. Sosa of a double intoxication manslaughter, got a weak jury to give him 12 years in each, and then convinced Judge Wallace to stack the sentences,” Harris County assistant district attorney Mike Trent wrote in an office-wide memo. Then came the odd part: “He overcame a subversively good defence by Matt Hennessey that had some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant and forced them to do the right thing.”
...
It is unusual that a seasoned attorney like Mr. Trent would not have wondered how a Harris County jury came to be stacked with Canadians. (There were no Canadians on the jury but there were some black members.) “The only way that there could have been Canadians on the jury, was if they were born in Canada and then became U.S. citizens, and then became citizens of the county in which the case was tried,” Mr. Vinson noted.

desktop of the moment: 

christmas decorations are ~up~.  tree is lit, candles burning.  by golly, i’ll have christmas spirit this year if it kills me >:| i skipped it, for the most part, for 2 years and that was… horrible.  :o with the amount of ‘bah humbug’ that i can muster, i just felt the worse for it.  and.  heck.  i ~like~ christmas strings of lights, decorated trees, santa, reindeer!  i WANT to enjoy the “magic” of the season

read on...

list of links

logical fallacies

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/

http://www.geekpress.com/2006/09/excellent-list-of-logical-fallaciesad.html

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/logic.html

critical thinking

http://www.infoshop.org/critical_thinking.html

http://info-pollution.com/

http://skepdic.com/

http://www.zmag.org/content/Instructionals/shalalbcon.cfm

http://www.crank.net/

sasha stumbled across www.x365.org and now i’m hooked on the idea: 41 words for 41 years, 365 people over 365 days.

was going to wait for my birthday, but decided to just go ahead and start.  the people are those that i’ve met throughout my life and the impression that they made on me.  in no particular order.  just a random sampling of my life.

it’s here, if you’re interested.