Nice article by Gish Jen, updating the Chinese restaurant:McDonald's ratio, now 3:1! Dang. Thanks to angry asian man for pointing this one out. He's so incredibly thorough & consistent, that angry brother. How does he do it? Does he have a dayjob? Just make sure you don't hurt your angry hands!

Hey, gingham's going for big bucks these days. Makes my gingham look like a total steal (which it is, actually). No secret pockets though.

I'm sure all you smart cookies out there in blogland have already figured this out, but: yes, my hand is still fucked up. I'm trying all kinds of different things for it. Walking. Yoga. Feldenkrais. Thumb bondage & ice play, ha ha. (That's what you call bitter laughter.) It really sucks, but the truth is it could be a lot worse. I get to look at all the lovely Berkeley flowers. Yesterday on one of my many walks I found a whole block full of fragrant, pink flowering trees. I have no idea what they are. Maybe I'll bring my camera next time & put up a picture of them, in case somebody can tell me what they are. So heavenly! I forgot all about my hand while I was walking there.

Anyway, if I seem a bit slow at answering emails, the hand is the reason why.

Check out this hilarious phonetic analysis of Marge Simpson's signature noise, complete with wav files. Donna accuses me of sounding like Marge sometimes, when I make my version of a noise we both picked up from Caitlin. Unlike the Marge noise, the Caitlin noise isn't just for frustration & annoyance. It's very adaptable. You can use it for enthusiasm, skepticism, irony, &c.

Just my luck. I finally got the DSL up & running, only to find the plug's been pulled on EzTorrent. Doh! Good thing there's a million audioblogs out there still. Wheee!

Yeah, you heard me right, I only just now graduated from the old-school dial-up I was functioning on this whole time. Laugh all you like. I never had a cell phone until a few months ago, either. & no, I don't own an iPod. Sheesh, somebody's gotta be a luddite around here. (As if.)

The hand is still limping along. I went for another session of electrical weirdness. It helps.