I've read Greg Bear's "The Forge of God" literally more times than I can accurately recall, and David Gregory Robert's "Shantaram" about as much as that. Both were life-changing reads: the former is what got me into reading more than just the comics in the newspaper in the first place, the latter made me realize that a book could have a soul and get richer and deeper the more I read it.

I read fanfiction. It's hard to say which book-length story I've re-read the most times, but one that I often come back to is "Process of Elimination" by Brian Randall (aka Durandall). It is a Ranma 1/2 crossover with Tenchi Muyo with very tragic overtones. The end always makes me into a crying mess.

Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut. Before I got treatment for Depression, this was the only thing that could even temper the crush of it all. The book is sad and innocent and cynical from sentence to sentence. I read it almost monthly for 24 years ...

Now that I have medications, I read it once a year to remind me of how bad things were and how they've gotten slowly better.

I find rereading it reinforces who I try to be. It kinda washes away the futility of being Lawful Good in a Neutral Evil world.

Tomorrow: The 5 Coolest Gangsters of Love.

Come on! North Korea does this every month or so!

Not really my style; guess I'm too much of a herbert.

Hard to be mesmerized with the herky-jerky editing... usually that kind of editing is used to cover faults, which probably abound in Guinness world record attempts.

One thing I learned from this post: never, ever do an image search for "penis caught in zipper."

Now there's a meaningless paragraph of artspeak. Hope the sparrows like rain.

More stupidity from the experts at Buzzfeed.

The rollers (the narrow white tubes) reverse the direction in which the rear wheels push on the ground. Imagine a pair of two gears meshed together or rubber wheels. If one gear turns clockwise, the other must turn counterclockwise. The truck's rear wheels are like the driving gear in this case, and the rollers act like the other gear. The tire turns "clockwise", and the roller "counterclockwise", just like putting the vehicle in reverse (the front wheels can spin freely in either direction). The chains serve as axles for the rollers, keeping them in place under the wheels. Makes sense?

Well, it's a diverse world, and some people like different things.
Luckily the rest of us aren't expected to like it as well.

I've decided that my new boffo, sci-fi, aliens-taking-over-the-world movie is going to start with exactly this.

Hope it has a working restroom!

Why do they all have to take lunch at the same time? It would be fairly easy for their electronic overlords to stagger the workers lunch breaks to prevent that sort of stack-up.