You ever read up on entomology for the sole reason of being able to have this conversation:

Normal person (NP): Ack! A  cockroach!  I hate bugs.
Nerdy You (Y): Cockroaches aren't bugs?
NP: Huh?  What are they, then?
Y: Blattariae.  Bugs are Hemipterae.
NP: What's the difference?
Y: Bugs like aphids and cicadas have mouthparts adapted to piercing and sucking.  Roaches have generalised mouthparts and their first pair pf wings form a hardened protective shield.

The problem is, nerds like you and me expect the conversation to continue like this:

NP: Wow!  I am in awe of your learning!  I am not worthy!

But what really happens is this:

NP: Fuck that!  I hate bugs!  *SQUISH*.

Finally got it.  See y'all there.

Saturday 4:00 PM:  Diversity 2.0

If half the 'Verse was settled from Asia, where were the Asians in
Firefly? Is media casting changing to better reflect global diversity
or has progress effectively stalled since the original Star Trek? Does
Hollywood need some sort of "affirmative casting" plan?

Andrew Clark (M)
Rob Caves
Berry Kercheval
Justin Lloyd
Carlos Pedraza

Sunday 5:30 PM  The Happiest Place Off Earth

What might Disney: Mars look like? What can we do if we build an
amusement park at L5? And how will the changes in local gravity and
atmosphere modify the technological requirements?

Chris Doyle (M)
Berry Kercheval
Justin Jackson
Tim Kirk
Mia Molvray

Monday 1:00 PM  "Pop Goes the Culture"

"There's no place like home." "I feel like I've fallen down the rabbit
hole." Some fantasy and sci-fi classics have permeated popular culture
to the point that people get the reference without even knowing the
original source material. Is this a good thing or has popular culture
finally jumped the shark?

Arabella Benson (M)
Tim Crowley
Berry Kercheval
Kate Morgenstern
Martin Young

I saw Smetana's opera "The Bartered Bride" last night at San Francisco State University. It was pretty darn good, and the costumes were FABULOUS.

My daughter was assistant costume designer. Here's the press photo shoot on flickr.

From a craigslist posting seeking a freelance writer:

The daughter-unit is now happily living in her own apartment much closer to school.  It's 3 miles instead of 40 now.

Saturday and Sunday I made 6 trips from Palo Alto to Daly City.  The first was the funniest.  We were about to get in the loaded station wagon and I spotted the Airship Ventures Zeppelin overhead.  "Cool" we said.

We drove up, unloaded, and came out to head home.  There was the Zeppelin, just passing over us.

We drove home along 280 and when we came over the hill just south of Colma where you can see straight down the SFO runways, it was there again, heading south now.

Then when we came over Page Mill to get down into Palo Alto, there it was AGAIN!  STILL FOLLOWING US!!

I'm not paranoid, but it seemed like the Zeppelin was stalking me!

(What it was really doing was taking a load of sightseers from their Mountain View base up to San Francisco, around the Golden Gate Bridge and back.  But that's not nearly as much fun as Zeppelin Surveillance.)

When someone follows me (@berry_k) on twitter, I get an email.

A couple of days ago, Eddie Izzard (yes, the real one) got on, and in less than 24 hours he had over 30,000 followers.

Does this mean he got 30,000 emails?   WOOF!

Meme of the day:  Make an album cover.
1) Click on wikipedia's "Random Article", That's your band name.
2) Select "random quotations" on quotationpages.com.  The last four or five wirds of the last quote are your album title.
3) Click on “explore the last seven days” on Flickr. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it together in Photoshop, Gimp or whatever and post it.

Here's mine, from the fictional Palo Alto band "Dirty Pictures".  I sort of like it.

So, I drank the Twitter Kool-Aid™.  Anyone who gives a damn can follow me as @berry_k.

It was a bit weird.  Within half an hour I was being followed (that's like the Twitter version of being friended) by a goldfish in London (no, really, that's what his profile says) and learned that Stephen Fry was stuck in an elevator.

Do you like living in the future?

from darkerblogistan  and ( ellen_kushner  from </a>eegatland</span> who got it from </a>sovay</span>)

Grab the book nearest you. Right now. Turn to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal. Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Closest eh?  I'm at work, and within reach are Mac OS X Internals by Amit Singh, I Know a Trick Worth Two of That by "Samuel Holt", and BEATLES: The Complete Scores, but the closest, well.  The fifth complete sentence on page 56 is:


It's from a story in The Best of the Bubbas of the Apocalypse, edited by Selina Rosen.  I happen to have a stack of contributor's copies in my office.  My first published story is reprinted in it.  Yay me!  Too bad page 56 wasn't in my story.

"A diver in Santa Claus costume rides a bicycle inside a shark tank"

(Caption for picture 28 of today's The Big Picture.)