Important Stuff (and some that's simply Odd).

1. Today is my mother's birthday. Happy birthday, mother! also, in a weird case of synchronicity, egadfly's. Appropriate salutations to him as well.

2. Charlie Stross predicts the future. One of the reasons I so enjoy his writing is that he actually thinks about this stuff, not least about how our own context shapes our expectations of the future: he has an amazing ability not just to extrapolate from history and current technology, but to make wild, extravagant conceptual leaps when necessary.

3. Humanities students are weird. My current lectures in internet sexuality are an extended wrestling match as I attempt to persuade the class that an online relationship or experience can be "real", at least in emotional and psychological terms. They are horribly inclined to make the obvious and rather bigoted equation between "finds an internet abstraction compelling" and "has no real life." This annoys me. Closed-minded little buggers, immune to nuance, layering and conceptual blur, not to mention alternative notions of culture. Phooey.

4. Obligatory state of health mutterings: the current levels of nausea are, for some reason, making me crave green tea, which is, for some reason, really good for nausea and curiously comforting. No demonic black monkeys yet. I live in hope. Really good hallucinations are so difficult to come by, these days.