“GRASS“: Saw big swathes of this movie last night with Shamed. It’s awesome. It’s a documentary detailing the history of marijuana prohibition. I doubt it would convince anyone, but for people (like me) who are firmly pro-legalization it is a great time (if depressing, as you watch while the ’70s movement toward decriminalization gets rolled way, way back). The directors dug up all kinds of fun snippets–chanteuses crooning about marijuana, test subjects gigglingly responding that they would love to participate... Read more

SNOW LINKS: Silent Snow, Secret Snow Cecil Adams on how many words for “snow” the Eskimos have Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine, much coveted by me in my youth (along with Freaky Freezies) Read more

BUT SOMETIMES IT IS CUPID AND PSYCHO… Read more

THE OLD OLIGARCH on preparedness for nuclear/biological/chemical attack. Just keep scrollin’ because there’s a lot of info there. I am too broke/lazy/close to the center of any likely attack to bother with this stuff, but it’s much better advice than anything involving the words “duct tape.” Watching the news footage of people taping up their windows reminds me of the old Bloom County (? or Doonesbury? The Rat will know) cartoon of the teacher conducting the duck-and-cover drill–“Fold your hands... Read more

I EAT KLEENEX FOR BREAKFAST… Feeling much better today; mental activity returning to normal levels. It’s like when you’ve been away from your computer for hours, but left it on, and when you get back and tap the mouse it takes a while for the screen to slowly iris back to life. Anyway, as long as we’re on the subject of health, I thought this Ron Bailey column on restructuring health insurance was really interesting. Ultimately via Welch, whom I... Read more

THE FOURTH BOOKE OF THE FAERIE QUEENE, Containing The Legend of Cambel and Telamond [1], or, of Friendship. [1] Nobody named Telamond appears in the poem. —TFQ title and textual note. No, I am not reading the whole thing, just the excerpts in my Norton edition. Am almost done. Book I still ranks as the best, in my opinion, though the sequence where Malbecco is transformed into Gealousie (starting with the stanza where he suddenly, out of nowhere, has real... Read more

OPERA FOR VALENTINE’S DAY. Read more

CHURCH OF THE MASSES, Barbara Nicolosi’s blog. Nicolosi runs ActOne, a group dedicated to fostering Hollywood screenwriting that is both Christian and sublime (rather than ridiculous). Good stuff. The title is from a ’30s film reviewer: “Theaters are the new Church of the Masses–where people sit huddled in the dark listening to people in the light tell them what it is to be human.” Read more

FOR THE PERSON WHO CAME HERE LOOKING FOR “MEANING OF DMX.” Read more

U.N. HELPS STERILIZE MEXICANS AGAINST THEIR WILL, REPORT SAYS: “MEXICO CITY – In early September, 21-year-old Obdulia decided to go to the nearest health center to get treated for abdominal pain. But the ‘treatment’ she got was an unasked-for and undesired tubal ligation. “Obdulia, who doesn’t want to give her last name, had dreams of having more babies. A native of the Tzotzil ethnic group, she lives in a small rural town 130 miles away from San Cristóbal de las... Read more