"I'd say I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not. I excel at not giving a shit. Experience has taught me that interest begets expectation, and expectation beget disappointment, so the key to avoiding disappointment is to avoid interest. A equals B equals C Equals A, or whatever. I also don't have a lot of interest in being a good person or a bad person. From what I can tell, either way, you're screwed. Bad people are punished by society's laws, and good people are punished by Murphy's Law. So you see my dilemma." ~George, Dead Like Me

I'm going to tell you a story, not my story, that's later, this is just a story... Ready? Once upon a time, or more specifically at the dawn of time, god, lower case "g", was getting busy with creation, as the kids these days are saying. He gave Toad a clay jar and said, "Be careful with this. It's got death inside".

Pleased as punch and oblivious to the fact that he was about to become god's fall guy on the whole death issue, Toad promised to guard the jar. Then one day Toad met Frog. "Let me hold the jar of death, or what ever you call it", Frog begged. With a nod to Nancy Reagan's pros of wisdom, Toad just said no. But Frog was determined, and after much whining Toad finally gave in. "You can hold it, but only for a second", he said.

In his excitement, Frog began to hop around and juggle the death jar from one foot to the other. Frog was an asshole. "Stop!" Toad cried out, but it was to late. Frog dropped the jar and it shattered to the ground. When it broke open, death got out, and ever since then all living things have to die. Makes you wonder how much better the world would be if frogs just stuck to hawking beer. So there you have it, the mystery of death finally revealed. We all die, some of us sooner then later. For me it's going to be much sooner. But that's only the beginning of my story.

(George's story from the series Dead Like Me)

LONDON (AFP) - Vandals used a hammer and screwdriver to vandalise the Stonehenge ancient monument, the first such incident for decades, officials said Thursday.

The night-time attack by two men last week involved the central megalith in the 5,000-year-old ring of standing stones, with English Heritage saying the vandals could have been looking for a souvenir.

A chip of stone about the size of a large coin was removed, while a 2.5-inch long scratch was left on the Heel Stone, at the centre of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, near Salisbury.

"Thanks to the vigilance and quick action of the security team at Stonehenge, very minimal damage was caused," said a spokeswoman for English Heritage.

"A tiny chip was taken from the north side of the Heel Stone with a screwdriver and hammer, but as soon as the two men were spotted by security guards they escaped over the fence and drove off.

"This is now a matter for the police," she added.

A spokeswoman for Wiltshire Police said: "Two male offenders were seen disturbing the monument with a hammer and screwdriver... It is believed they could be two men seen acting suspiciously on a previous occasion."

Stonehenge is one of the world's best preserved prehistic monuments. In around 2,600 BC, 80 giant standing stones were arranged on Salisbury Plain, where there was already a 400-year-old stone circle.

Around two centuries later, even bigger stones were brought to the plain.

Today, only 40 percent of the originals remain. But around 850,000 visitors per year come to marvel at the 17 stones which are still intact.

The biggest stones came from a quarry some 18 miles away, while some of the others come from a range of hills in south-west Wales -- a 150 mile journey.

Source

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I wonder if they meant for the title to be a pun somehow? ;)

By William Cruithni

If you be born of a seed,

then listen now and take heed!

Theres an elf around here

that all plants should fear!

She has the darkest thumb

So much killing, it is now numb!

She'll rot you at the very roots

and when your dead, down the chutes!

She'll through out into the compost

Not certain death, but true for most!

Though by chance you might survive...

Keep low, and from her sight, hide!

Why the chicken crossed the road is a question that'll never be answered. But the circumstances of the domesticated chicken's ancestry should be discoverable.

And a new study suggests Charles Darwin had it wrong. Darwin maintained that the domesticated chicken derives from the red jungle fowl. That seems at least partly true, but new research from Uppsala University now shows that the wild origins of the chicken are more complicated.

The researchers mapped the genes that give most domesticated chickens yellow legs and found the genetic heredity derives from a closely related species, the gray jungle fowl. The study is being published today in the Web edition of PLoS Genetics.

"Our studies show that even though most of the genes in domesticated fowls come from the red jungle fowl, at least one other species must have contributed, specifically the gray jungle fowl," said Jonas Eriksson, a doctoral student at Uppsala University.

The gray jungle fowl was probably crossed with an early form of the domesticated chicken, Eriksson's team figures.

The genes for yellow skin are spread among billions of domesticated chickens around the world. Darwin's studies of domesticated animals were of key importance to his theory of evolution, and he also explained the wild origins of domesticated animals.

Source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It was the biggest, baddest, meanest froggy ever to have hopped on Earth.

Scientists on Monday announced the discovery in northwestern Madagascar of a bulky amphibian dubbed the "devil frog" that lived 65 million to 70 million years ago and was so nasty it may have eaten newborn dinosaurs.

This brute was larger than any frog living today and may be the biggest frog ever to have existed, according to paleontologist David Krause of Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, one of the scientists who found the remains.

Its name, Beelzebufo ampinga, came from Beelzebub, the Greek for devil, and bufo -- Latin for toad. Ampinga means "shield," named for an armor-like part of its anatomy.

Beelzebufo (pronounced bee-el-zeh-BOOF-oh) was 16 inches long and weighed an estimated 10 pounds (4.5 kg). (that's so cool!)

It was powerfully built and possessed a very wide mouth and powerful jaws. It probably didn't dine daintily.

"It's not outside the realm of possibility that Beelzebufo took down lizards and mammals and smaller frogs, and even -- considering its size -- possibly hatchling dinosaurs," Krause said in a telephone interview.

"It would have been quite mean," added paleontologist Susan Evans of University College London, another of the scientists.

Their findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Even though it lived far away, Beelzebufo appears to be closely related to a group of frogs that live today in South America, the scientists said. They are nicknamed "Pac-Man" frogs due to their huge mouths. Some have little horns on their heads, and the scientists think Beelzebufo also may have had horns -- a fitting touch for the "devil frog."

Beelzebufo was bigger than any of its South American kin or any other living frog -- "as if it was on steroids," Krause said. The largest one today is the goliath frog of West Africa, up to 12.5 inches long and 7.2 pounds (3.3 kg).

The presence of Beelzebufo in Madagascar and its modern relatives in South America is the latest sign a long-lost land bridge once may have linked Madagascar to Antarctica -- much warmer then -- and South America, the scientists said.

That would have let animals move overland among those land masses. Fossils have been found of other animals in Madagascar from Beelzebufo's time similar to South American ones.

Source

I am not a political minded person, if I see it I stay out of it and generally keep my yap shut. I am notorious for being indifferent or as a friend once tagged me as being stoic, for probably about 98% of my life. I won't argue.

I see enough rebels have gotten themselves into places of power and the great festival debates are on again, unfortunately I can't just pop in a DVD. But I can drift through the DI or as I did before I really paid attention to the DI was to visit the groups I had anything to do with or needed to keep an eye on.

I'm a big believer in if you don't like something don't watch it, read it, partake in, eat it, ruin it (for someone else)...unless of course that noisy couple making-out session literally has fallen into your lap, then by all means interrupt unless of course they invite you in (that's a joke and meant for a comic relief - so laugh damnit).

Of course paragraph #3 contradicts paragraph #2. But no, it doesn't, it would if I really cared. I chose to read the debates. Doesn't matter to me. They all say the same thing. We're here because we like it. Have we lost our way? A bit.

"Oh, W, why do you say that?"

We're not AS anymore. Many of us are much older than we were then (who'd have thunk it?). More jaded, I know I am of past things that have happened here at AW. We have however lost something and not because of the E-Drinking 12 step program that apparently many (aka the few) of us same AWians need to take.

I do not openly gram new faces and names on the com panel. Not because of the gram limits (as being a patron or not)...Why? I think I've gotten WAY comfortable with the few people I write with or had gotten involved with because of a festival.

Do you know that I used to frequent the main chat way back when? That's where most of my initial friends came from? No one is ever there anymore. I've seen a few posts of late of it being really hard for a newbie to get situated here.

Newsflash peoples: AW is not for the meek at heart.

If you're web savvy, you'll figure out a way to navigate yourself around. Of course that leaves the question. If you're truly new around here...how and what did you find here through your searches? A single post? a specific topic? a group? a 'hood? If that's where you found yourself...start there. If you're not supposed to be there, someone might say something. If it's a group start bothering the members at their homes.

A big part of keeping anyone around is not the job of scribes to take newbies by the hand. It's their own exploration of the site and willingness to ask "stupid" questions to eventually find what they want. Hell, I find out new things around here every so often and I already know everything ;)

Now what's newbieism got to do with festivals? De nada...and I'm not sure why those two things always run together in discussions.


I will continue to answer newbie questions on my board, groups and other various places I feel like. I will continue to play where I play, read where I read, post where I post and participate where I participate.

I will do as I please (within the CoC).

Don't believe me?






Ha...even check my journal stats for yesterday...

...the other day. OK, actually of couple of things.

#1 Nebraska also has a damned groundhog and his name is Unadilla Bill...I had no idea. Now I bet you're dying to ask, "So W have you been you Unadilla?" And to answer that...No, but I've driven it past it a few times. I only remember some green and white gas station that's not a Sinclair is there. There might be a hippy shop there too and I only know about that because I saw an add in the paper. I was going to go until I saw it was Unadilla. Not that it's a bad place, it's small. But I didn't want to drive over there.

#2 I just learned that putting your journals up a level other than 0 restricts people from reading them. This should have been intuitive, right? Only just partially...I figured putting it at 1 made it so that you had to be logged in. Would make sense, yeah? Well, not so much. When journals go to 1 it restricts those who are on your friends list. Understandable if you like to put lots of personal stuff in there. But the academic stuff! I want to read that too! *wail* This of course makes me wonder if just putting a single journal at 1 that it restricts access to all your journals?

I may experiment...

I'm supposed to be getting Cetlia stuff ready for Imbolc and we have, of course, a site crash. I'm glad I didn't lose any images as W, my poor Egyptian on the other hand lost a couple as well as any of my personae that had avatars or images dated from 2002. GAAA!

Such a freakin' pain. Should I be thankful that more wasn't lost? Jury's out on that one...

And remember, I don't decorate much...