You know, I had this really great post lined up about two years or so ago. I had recently purchased a Palm Treo 700p, and there was no such thing as an iPhone, and I was playing so much Solitaire. Then the post expanded as my game count went up. I was becoming obsessed with raising my win percentage. It became a long-term study of my playing habits. Then I was getting close to 1600 games and I was going to get a worse win score on them than I did on my SATs. I started developing a philosophy about the relationship between the difficulty levels of Solitaire and the SATs. Delay, delay, delay. This was becoming the Duke Nukem Forever of blog posts.

I signed up for the GRE so I could apply to Poetry MFA programs, and I thought, "Hey, I should totally incorporate this into the blog post too!" Studying for the GRE took up all of my time. Applications took up all of my time. My phone screen cracked and I couldn't play Solitaire anymore. Machu Picchu took up all of my time. I ordered a new screen online and installed it myself! Moving to Gainesville, FL took up all of my time. Acclimating to the University of Florida's MFA program took up all of my time.

Now I'm in my second semester. Hil and I are both in the program together. Adam got married to Heather and they just had a baby and we're going to London to see them on Saturday.

Look, I finished a post! See? It's not Duke Nukem Forever. It's just Daikatana. Which, ultimately, was not as good as Solitaire.

See how I wrapped that around? Cause, like, I'm a writer. And stuff.

In the category of "Had It Coming", we have a new lovely example: Sean Avery of the New York Rangers, antagonist, annoyance, and, now, spleen-laceratee.

I love spleens. More specifically, spleen injuries. Especially the ones that happen in movies or on TV. Let me explain. When a character gets into a near-fatal accident, but lives, writers need to make the injuries sound serious, but without having debilitating or well-known long-term effects. This allows them to ramp up short-term excitement, fear, and so on, and then just forget about everything later, unburdened by any continuing plot points. For example, a character will injure his back, become paralyzed temporarily, but then get back the use of his limbs, and make a "full recovery." Scary there for a second, but everything is ultimately okay. The full recovery is key. "He was in bad shape for a while, but it looks like he will be making a full recovery." Hooray!

But what if the writer wants to make it scarier, more exciting? Everybody's seen the bad accident and the full recovery, the Wile E. Coyote scene change, the unstoppable Terminator. Well maybe we can do something really nasty to the character, something that sounds like it could actually have long-term effects, but still not really mess her up if we want to do a sequel, if this is only the first season. I know, let's remove an organ! A lung? Can you image a one-lunged action star huffing after the bad guy? No, it'll have to be more inconsequential, something small, something that no one ever thinks about or knows what it does...

And so we arrive at the spleen. Everybody picks the spleen. It's practically a drinking game. "She's gonna be okay. She broke two ribs, and the doctors had to remove her spleen, but she's gonna be okay." Thank God!

Of course, the spleen isn't inconsequential, and people who need to have them removed end up with messed-up immune systems. I know this because I learned all about the spleen from watching a movie. Patriot Games. IRA-splinter-group baddies attack Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) and his family, and his daughter (Thora Birch) ends up losing her spleen! Main IRA-splinter-group baddie Sean Miller (Sean Bean) calls Jack, and dishes out what must be the most ridiculous and amazing bad-guy taunt ever:

Sean Miller: How's the family, Ryan? Nearly lost 'em, didn't you? It's easy to get at them. You should look after your family better, you know? Are you there?
Jack Ryan: Yeah.
Sean: I understand your little girl's feeling better, eh? Lost her spleen though, eh? Pity, that. Make it a mighty tough on her to fight off infection, eh Jacky?
Jack: You sick son of a bitch!

[lifted from IMDb]

It sure will be tough, Sean. If it ever comes up again. Ever since I saw it, whenever I hear the word spleen, that's the first thing I think of, a terrorist in a thick Irish accent taunting Harrison Ford. So, Sean Avery: slainte!

Hil emailed me today this link to a slideshow of pictures of baby bears. I can only imagine that these scientists are weighing the bears because they are ardent Stephen Colbert supporters who realize that when the great bear uprising occurs, they need to know what countermeasures and technology to deploy. I realize that my website is probably not deploying enough of its own technology, so I decided to see what I could make it do in the post.

I installed a while ago, but have had yet to actually use, a reasonably popular script for displaying images called Slimbox, which is a version of Lightbox2 that takes up less room. Here is an example using a bear.

But photos on the web are so 1997. I decided to see if I could also embed a video using the code provided to me by the bear-lover site, which they have titled "Bear cub in a sock" although it is clearly a sack and not a sock that the bear cub is in.

So what do we learn from all this? That I have managed to demonstrate the web design prowess of an 12-year-old girl? Sometimes that's just enough to keep these soulless creatures at bay.

It's the only month that starts with Feb, and love is in the air. I am talking, of course, about Microsoft which, jealous of lothario Google's dating record ("Wherefore art thou, DoubleClick?") and sexually frustrated by Apple's curvy leopard-print dress, has moved past its earlier pickup lines to Yahoo and Facebook, grabbed Yahoo forcefully by the hair, kissed it full on the mouth, and then leaned back casually to await a response. Will it get a slap, or is Yahoo drunk enough on strawberry daiquiris for some casual sumfin-sumfin in the back of Microsoft's Geo Metro? Yahoo! (Google, as everyone knows, drives a plug-in Prius, while Apple rocks a New Beetle). If MS gets a drink in the face from Yahoo's board, it can always mack on their stockholders, and drop poison-pill roofies in their recession-scare mojitos.

I'm not really excited about this possible merger. (Full disclosure: I think I still own Microsoft stock.) I think that at this point Yahoo is only going to drag down whomever tries to acquire it. And I don't want all of my email accounts to suddenly change to me874658923@windowsliveyahoohotmail.omg. Microsoft seriously sees no regulatory hurdles in forming a company combining the top two webmail providers? (Yahoo is #1, Hotmail #2, Gmail a distant #3 or 4 depending on who you believe.) At the same time, combining the usage of the Yahoo and Microsoft search engines would only give a total 26% of the market, as compared to Google's dominating 66%.

What I mean to say is that, since both companies are already kicking Google's butt in email, and since their joined numbers for search would still be losing badly, this may turn out to be an expensive buy for Microsoft with no potential benefits. Microsoft would deal a much bigger blow to Google by acquiring Facebook (although it is way overvalued), since Google's own attempts at social networking have been pretty anemic. I dunno. I was kinda pissed when they spent all that money to develop Xbox Live back in the day, but that seems to be doing well for them.

I detest Microsoft except when their stock makes me money, so I am often conflicted as to how I should judge their business moves. The crappy highway-side view they called Vista makes me laugh and then worry about my savings. But with this merger they've somehow made me upset about the future of my bank and email accounts. Thanks, Microsoft!

And hey, sometimes dotcoms like it when you come on strong, so you just keep doing what you're doing, buddy. No means yes when you've got deep pockets. Remember, there's a Melinda out there for every Bill.