To those inclined to step on ants,You'll need Kevlar(tm) underpants.For boots, though strong, with lac'd shank high,Protect not the tender thigh.

My friend Justin:Your lips are like two flaps of fat. They go front and back and flapitty flap.Me:Collagen-filled, they're beefy beggars,Lips that beat against the nose,Habsburg-style are Schwarzenegger's,Someone slap him with a hose!Homer Simpson's underbiteDrooling simian pedigree,Louis Armstrong kept them tight,So did Dizzy Gillespie.Flapping at the poetry slam,Talking heads on id'jit box,Politicians' look like ham,Noise enough to stun an ox!

Someone on Amazon started the discussion, "Does anyone think that walruses are plants?". Responses varied, but some were: "Are you insane? What has this world come to?! Walruses are ANIMALS" and "What the hell is everyone talking about? Has everyone gone mad"I wrote, "Actually, plants live and grow inside and outside of the walrus'sbody. This intimately interwoven matrix of plant and animal cellsmakes the walrus more akin to lichens, those wonderful green flakesseen growing on the sides of trees. Walruses are truly giganticlichens.As well, an insightful contributor above pointed out that jellyfishare related to clouds, and so they are. You see, coelenterates arecolonies within which there is little specialization of cells. Themost notable are the "stinging cells", which can be empiricallydiscovered also in cirrus clouds. Simply fly naked through one ofthose at >= 20,000 feet, as I often do, and you will have your proof.Plus, if you cross your eyes slightly and look at jellyfish, you cantell that they are really dense clouds, floating gently, changingform, stinging fish, and occasionally looking red and stormy."

I am bored stiff today. I just got a good laugh from an NPR story, though! They carried a story called "Bacon Gets Its Just Desserts", about mixing sweets with bacon. Some of the responses were precious:"How awful, sounds disgusting.""Chocolate and bacon should not be in the same zip code as each other.""because you people aren't fat enough already""Why do people insist on adding meat to fricking everything?""As a pescetarian, when I go out to eat, I have to look suspiciously at cooked vegetables, salad, and now dessert.""I'd rather staple my tongue to Rush Limbaugh's armpit."I just had to respond to this..."Yes, swine farming is disgusting. I should know; I'm from Texas, and I had to take my runs at one time past a smelly pig farm. Also, I almost ran over a big black boar-hog in my T-Bird one night, and still bear a grudge against him to this day. All the same...I wonder if there would be much of a market for bacon-flavored soda water?""Tori Amos is a pescetarian. Good enough for me!""A million hogs produce almost a million tons of excrement per year. On some farms, they stack cages, and the hogs on the lower layers eat what comes down from the top. In fairness, the farmers rotate the hogs' hierarchy so the top-most get their share of the goody, too."I'm actually still laughing sporadically...but it's a serious topic. Meat farming is filthy, cruel, and wasteful.

When I was at the gym today, I happened to think "Hey, isn't Aphex Twin Welsh?". The answer, of course, is "yes". And there is another Welsh artist whose name is even further out there. It's Thighpaulsandra. I know the latter from his collaboration with Coil.Thighpaulsandra is a bit edgy for me (I'm showing my age now), but Aphex Twin's ambient music is actually good stuff to listen to while running or lifting weights. I'm sure he'd be delighted to know how much he's helping middle-aged Americans in stretchy pants to pump it up.

On this day in Welsh history...nothing happened! So says the Welsh Calendar.http://welshcalendar.blogspot.com/2008/12/maymai.htmlBut, and it's a big "but", the 18th was Bertrand Russell's birthday!As a present to myself, I have just bought another copy of "Unpopular Essays", my well-worn copy having evaporated.What a rare man. A giant of mathematics and philosophy who single-handedly challenged mathematical empiricism, Aristotle, and the Christian Church, he also had the courage of his political convictions. Years after getting kicked out of Trinity College and being thrown into Brixton Prison for his anti-war protests, he took on both the Soviet Union and the United States for their nuclear proliferation, conquest of sovereign nations, and the Viet Nam war.

Has anyone ever noticed that, during the Linux boot process, there used to be a kernel message "Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039"? It had to do with the TCP/IP networking stack, and was removed from the source code in 2003:http://twenty.sucs.org/TheSociety/AboutThere are links on the page cited above to material about Linux hero Alan Cox, who still lives in Swansea. He is also the Technical Director of CymruNet http://wri.cymru.net/ .