Nine is pronounced the same as nein, the german word for "no." And german and english are so closely related they might as well be the same language.

So today is really no, no, oh-no. This morning, for one second, it was no:no:no no, no, oh-no. This evening, for one second, it will be no:no:no no, no, oh-no PM, unles you prefer military time, in which case it will be 21:no:no no, no, oh-no.

If you want negative stereotypes, you need to go to a gaming convention, not a comic convention. GenCon was the biggest mass of unwashed humanity, nearly all male, I have ever seen (or smelled).

ComicCon, in particular, is the polite side of fandom. It's changed in the last ten years, unfortunately, as Hollywood has taken over, but it used to be a favorite place for celebs to run elbows with their fans. Friend of mine ran across a Babylon Five actor (who he knew on a first name basis from other conventions) wandering around, alone, in the dealer's room once. Commented on the lack of security/bodyguards, and the actor told him, "This is the safest convention in the world to wander around in alone. If somebody bothers me, all I have to do is make some noise, and the other fans will drag them out in the parking lot and beat them to death." And he wasn't exaggerating.

"It makes you wonder what difference it would have made if George Lucas had rewritten the prequels a couple more times."

No, it makes me wonder what a difference it would have made if *someone else* had rewritten the prequels a couple of times.

This is hardly new. The exact same thing was happening in Los Angeles 25 years ago, when the car pool lanes were new there. Still does, for all I know. Except here, they were generally kids skipping school, and they charged enough to spend the day in the arcade.

They'd look a lot less stupid if they started cracking down on homeopathic and herbal "medicine."

Anybody who thinks there is any question about whether or not (southern) Californians will give up their cars has never ridden a bus for three hours to go ten miles (ten or fifteen minutes in a car). After having to wipe bum urine off the seat before sitting down.

Pouplation densities aren't high enough in southern California for mass transit to make any sense. There aren't high enough concentrations of people living close together, or high enough concentrations of jobs close together, for it to pay for itself. Everyone I know who uses public transportation drives their car to the Park-N-Ride.

Of course this is all a crock of shit. Virtually all paper, toilet and otherwise, is made from trees that would never have been planted except as a crop to be harvested for paper production.

There are more acres of forest in North America today than there were before the white man arrived 500 years ago.

Anybody who thinks that an "etheral blue glow" is going to replace real lighting is smoking dope.

He's introduced this every session since he was elected. It's never heard from again, every year. This isn't news, just some dumbass journalist having a slow day.

What's more annoying than the imbecilic fascination of some people at seeing things that aren't there is the utter inability of others to ever miss an opportunity to talk about it like it matters. Who cares?

Packs of feral dogs will literally come in to your yard and eat your children, so yeah, it's a very serious problem. Add in a rabies outbreak, and it's even worse. When I was in high school in rural Missouri, it was considered something of a civic duty to shoot feral dogs, for all the same reasons. Anybody who thinks this is horrible should - and I am serious -go out and capture these dogs and give them a home. If you're not willing to do that, you're part of the problem.

"...his own specially-designed machine to apply dots of acrylics onto canvas"

Isn't that called an injet printer?

My only Christmas decoration is a Santa Claus crucifix. Santa Claus did not die for our sins.

Virtually everyone in the medieval world was cleaner than most modern folks think. And vanity about one's looks is certainly nothing new.

But anybody who thinks the vikings weren't violent raiders, who killed everything that moved and stole anything that didn't, is an idiot.

This was obviously written by someone who has never, ever, ridden a motorcycle, and is too afraid to try. It would be funny if there were even a small element of truth to some of his point, but he's so full of crap it's just sad.