There's a dead animal in that woman's mouth.

In response to Cricket’s post, here’s my oft-told Ayn Rand story: I asked our high school English teacher for an Ayn Rand scholarship application once, and he gawked at me like I’d just raped a butterfly.

“What’s wrong?”

And he muttered, as he shook his head in loathing, “You don’t want her money.”

Since I’ve never read any Rand, I have no idea why.

…

My endless quest—and that’s what it is, really, wow—for ways to pass time at work lead me to Unwirer, a collab SF about wireless networks and the Man keepin em down, written by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. The story’s pretty flawed in places, and overall not that wonderful—you can almost smell the oil in the Deus Ex Machina near the end—but the way they wrote it is great and weird. They blogged it, taking turns with sections. The best parts are the ones where they’re arguing over whether or not pulling a gun on a cop explodes the suspension of disbelief.

…

This morning there was rum on my breath, so:

Me: Can I have a piece of gum?

Co-worker: Oh, sure. (hands me gum) Usually I don’t buy gum, but this morning I thought something had died in my mouth.