Last month, Diary-X toasted on me. That sucked, but sometimes these things happen, and you just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and carry on.

This month, my Number One Internet Fanboy had a passel o’ bad news, which may toast this blog. Or might not, we don’t know yet.

Worst comes to worst, there will be a new NOTD started from scratch …in some format, somewhere. While I wait to see how that pans out, I’m going to finish the last hour or so of crocheting left on my mother’s birthday gift. She’s 55 today.

I love Mari. Not just because she’s far smarter and sassier and more fun than the vast majority of humankind, but because she’s all about encouraging good by doing evil. Hence this example!

Anyone who thinks this is genuinely a bad and mean thing to do, I just have one question for you: Are you a parent?

Because if you are, and you’re doing a good job as a parent, you should never have to worry about seeing one of these stickers on your precious little darling. Right? Exactly.

And if you aren’t a parent, I’d be a lot more worried about what not supporting this sticker idea says about you and your desire for parents not to supervise their spawn properly. Think about it.

It’s official, I’m lactose-intolerant. I’ve suspected this for years, as I always hated drinking milk as a child and stopped drinking it entirely around age 12. I love cheese a lot but learned to avoid large quantities of most kinds of cheese (although apparently I can eat aged Swiss until the sun burns to a cinder, with no ill effects). I also love sour cream a lot, but finally realized that my indulgences at Toxic Hell were often followed by my gut pointedly hating me.

Being not-a-milk-drinker (and having found every non-dairy source of calcium for humans in existence, since I’d rather not end up as a brittle old lady), I almost never ate cold cereal. But I remembered my childhood appreciation for Frosted Mini-Wheats when I saw them on sale last week, and when I saw they had a new flavor out — maple & brown sugar — I had to get some. After all, maple & brown sugar is yummy in damned near anything! Except maybe steak.

As an experiment, I broke down and paid TWICE the cost of regular milk for the Lactaid non-lactose milk. But only a half-gallon — I don’t see myself suddenly becoming enamoured of milk anytime soon, even if it doesn’t make me sick. And several days (and bowls of cereal later), I can confirm that my system has been absolutely fine with the non-lactose milk. I think the issue was further proved last night, as Jenn made scrumptious chili but gave me a bowl with a dollop of sour cream added to cut the spicyness (since I don’t do spices), and I was awake all night with a very angry gut. Damn…it’s Imo for me, and fake sour cream is not half-so-enticing as the real thing. And I’ve heard some people substitute plain yogurt for sour cream, but yogurt is just nasty.

At least I can still eat aged Swiss. (And no jokes about dating geriatric citizens of Bern, thanks.)

I happened to catch a few minutes of the local news on TV, after getting to the end of a terrific National Geographic Channel special on the superflu (last week I saw episodes about ebola, cannibalism, and voudon — you know the show’s gonna be good when they warn you that viewer discretion is advised due to extremely graphic content!). But anyway, back to catching a bit of the local news…

Normally I don’t watch the news (local or otherwise) because it’s phenomenally depressing. Many years ago, I used to watch the news, and subscribe to the daily newspaper, and watch all the news-magazine shows like 20/20 and 60 Minutes. I followed the Rodney King story; I watched the OJ Simpson trial avidly (and first began to suspect the profound stupidity of the average American when the jurors were clearly lost in the testimony on the forensic evidence, while I understood every bit of it — in spite of being a 26-year-old high school dropout & stay-at-home mom, and my abject lack of knowledge about DNA evidence technology). And then one day I caught myself bawling my head off because Mary Beth Whitehead lost custody of the child she’d had in a surrogate-mother agreement and refused to give up. In a moment of stunning clarity, I realized that getting overly emotionally-involved in a situation that I could do nothing about and wasn’t my goddamned business anyway was downright stupid and unhealthy. (Unfortunately, it took many more years to learn to apply this philosophy to my interpersonal relationships…but I think I’ve got the knack of it now.) I stopped watching the news for the most part, and I’ve been a lot happier since.

And now for something completely TMI…

The unwashed of my household are finally clean!

My remaining at-home demonspawn, Anxiety, had a day off school yesterday (yet another inservice day or some such). She hadn’t showered since Thursday morning, and swore that since she hates bathing, she wasn’t going to shower until she had to go back to school Monday morning. Now, being a young adolescent, she was stinking to high heaven after maybe 24 hours without a shower. Knowing that her mother highly values bodily cleanliness, she spent much of yesterday taunting me with her odor.

And now for something completely TMI…

I’m one of the 40 million Americans who can claim some Irish ancestry. Okay, so I’m not all Irish — in fact, I don’t have any proof of Irish blood beyond the people on my mother’s side stating that they’re of “Scots-Irish” descent. (And, quite frankly, most of the names sound more Scottish than Irish, but neveryoumind.) At least my eldest demonspawn can claim at least one-fourth definite Irish heritage, as her male biological parent was half Irish & half Russian. Oh damn, when you include my Norse (confirmed by family genealogists) ancestry and my (possibly reputed) Scots-Irish as well, that means she’s born to drink, doesn’t it?

But to shore up my claim to Irish heritage, I can proudly say that corned beef and cabbage has been my favorite dinner for my entire life; growing up, my family had a tradition that on your birthday you got to choose the dinner menu, so every year on my birthday it was corned beef and cabbage! The truly crazy Irish will be celebrating down at Kells or Biddy McGraw’s tonight (which will both be standing-room only), but since green beer isn’t my thing, I’ll just have a quiet evening at home. And possibly a glass of Midori on general principle (as Scotty said on the original Star Trek, “It’s, uh, it’s green!”).

So this afternoon I was watching the secret crack of cable TV again, because they had a wonderful show called The Irish in America, which is something I may just have to get on DVD. Aidan Quinn narrates, and damned if that man doesn’t have one of the sexiest voices ever. (But that’s just a bonus — the show is fantastic on its own merits.) A bit later tonight, I’ll be watching Paddy Whacked: The Irish Mob (and is that the Best Title Ever, or what?!).

Normally on Fridays, I’m watching Battlestar Galactica — which, alas, won’t have new episodes until October. (Frakking October! By the Lords of Kobol, I’ll go insane waiting for more BG goodness until October!!!) Usually on a TV series, I have a favorite character, or perhaps two favorites. But on this one, it’s impossible for me to pick even a few favorites! Most of the characters are just too good not to love (or love to hate, in some cases). But if I had to pick just one, the character of Starbuck would be my favorite — and the actor who portrays her, Katee Sackhoff, is from the Portland area! (That had nothing to do with me liking her, actually, since I just found that out today.) So until the new season starts, or I get the DVDs of the first two seasons, I’ll just have to remember to:

My next-door neighbor, the World’s Best Ex, got a new pet a few days ago, which he hasn’t named yet. (I keep telling him he should name the critter “Stew” but he doesn’t apparently think that’s terribly funny. I think it’s hilarious, if not exactly original.) He told me his cat had been vaguely skittish about meeting the little black half-grown bunny, and I made a snarky remark about terrorizing my cats by introducing the little critter. Because I am evil, we decided to see what would happen.

And now for something completely TMI…

So I had to go talk to my youngest’s school counselor today, and the more I know about the Happy Hippie School, the more alarmed I’m becoming by people in general. There was the usual psycho-babble nonsense about “our children reflect our dark shadows” (which I guess was supposed to mean something like “your kid will do things you don’t like about yourself to push your buttons”) and “validating their feelings” and “recognizing their comfort zones” and “nurturing their self-esteem.”

No, I’m not kidding. These are actual phrases this woman used.

And now for something completely TMI…

There are rumors about a possible movie version of the classic SF book by Orson Scott Card, “Ender’s Game.” I loved this book (and most of its sequels), but of course scifi movies made from books are usually gawd-awful (look how “Starship Troopers” got slaughtered, for one!). Still, if they do make a movie, I’ll probably be at the theater on opening night. *sigh*

8> Because of special effects budget cuts, Ender spends his first three months training on the classic “Space Invaders.”

7> Lazy MPAA never views film, gives NC-17 rating thinking it’s gay porn.

6> The Buggers look surprisingly similar to the leftover aliens from “Starship Troopers.”

5> Mazer Rackham is not only played by Shatner, but he sings!

4> Thanks to a product placement deal, the Battle School shield looks an awful lot like the Pepsi logo.

3> In “Starship Troopers,” co-ed shower scenes were cool, but in “Ender’s Game” they got the producers arrested.

2> The lightning-bolt-shaped scar on the kid’s forehead wasn’t a big deal, but “Harry Potter and the Bugger Invasion”??

1> Walking out of the theater you discover you were never watching a movie, but an actual live video feed of planetary destruction.

This comic instantly made me think, “Oh look, it’s what Lyse would be like as a cat!” And then I realized that Lyse is more into tequila than vodka…so instantly I thought, “Nope, it’s what Jenn would be like as a cat!”

And that’s about all I have to say today.