Saturday Grab Bag Bumper-to-Bumper

I feel compelled to link to this article in the Columbia Journalism Review. It is about the sequestration, which I know everyone is sick of hearing about, but it's also about Green Lantern! And even that codename-dropping in itself might not have been enough to merit a link, but the author of the article refers to Green Lanterns and power rings, plural, which indicates to me more than a baseline familiarity with the concept. So this is like me acknowledging some sort of comics geek secret handshake, or something, I guess. In any case, it's a good article (even if the point being made via Green Lantern analogy hinges on the fact that the amount of willpower the president exerts has nothing to do with what he can create or cause to happen externally, which illustrates the inherent absurdity of the Green Lantern's sci-fi gibberish. Ah well.)

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From the Vanity Plates Archives: Speaking of nerd shibboleths, and also politics (stay with me here), the other night I was walking the dogs and noticed a car parked on my cul-de-sac with a license plate that read "6X9 (Gadsden Flag snake) 42", and despite the fact that opting for a Don't Tread On Me license plate in the first place makes me deeply suspicious of a person's irrational Tea Party sympathies, I do enjoy a good Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy joke. Particularly one that references not simply the answer to life, the universe and everything, but the attempt to spontaneously generate the question. Guess we'll call that one a wash.

But then again a couple of days later I saw a car in town with multiple bumper stickers for Democrats, as well as the animal shelter charity my wife sometimes does work for, and a vanity tag that read "LIZLEMN". Strong.

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We've made to exactly 38 weeks gestation and no sign of baby egress quite yet, which means I've got to make the most of this afternoon and assemble a changing table and a co-sleeper and then re-arrange the master bedroom as well as the little girl's bedroom. I'm not planning on blogging tomorrow, but I should be back on Monday unless the proceedings do indeed get underway between now and then. I'm sure you will all be electrified with anticipation until then!