Re: Ana's idea Sounds worth a shot. It's vaguely worrying, but I think that's just because it's different and any idea for a new place would have that. Whatever we end up with, I'll show up and comment. (Probably not make new posts, as I'm terrible at starting conversations. Often I can't even bring myself to say to Mom "Listen to this neat thing I just read!" and have to conspicuously laugh or make "Hmm" noises trying to get her to ask about it.)

Nenya: Alternately I suppose we could use the existing Facebook group, but FB isn't really set up for actual long conversations (which are what I love about this place). Not Facebook. I can't even see Facebook through Dad's firewall (he distrusts them), let alone take part. Besides, I thought Facebook was a legal-name-only sort of place. (I could be wrong.)

I've always viewed autumn as a time of rest and fun. Similar, I gather, to how children who don't get fall vacation view summer, only with better weather and more pumpkins, apples, and Halloween candy. This year, for the first time in as long as I can remember (possibly ever), I'm beginning school in September rather than ending it. It's disorienting.

Froborr: A superstition I've found appears to be unique to my family: Never, ever name a child after a living person, because one of them will shortly die. I was told that was a general Jewish thing. Or at least, there was something about not naming kids after living people. Not sure what the reasoning was.

I try not to listen to songs too often after the third mix CD Mom made. She's played it over the car speakers dozens upon dozens of times over the decade or so of its existence. At first, there were some songs I liked, and some not so much. After so much exposure, though, everything evened out. I couldn't really like or dislike any of them anymore; they were just background noise. I don't want that to happen again. For a while when I was younger, I liked "Look Through My Eyes", but eventually I decided it wasn't worth having it stuck in my head for a week afterward and stopped listening to it. There's been a couple other songs like that, too. I was surprised when I didn't mind having "Never Let Me Go" stuck in my head for a week, and didn't dread the thought of having it happen again.

Nenya: Another is describing really tasty food as "edible" The greatest and only compliment my dad can give food-wise. (The rest of us are unsure if there are different levels of liking he doesn't distinguish in speech, or if to him the only categories of tastiness really are "edible" and "inedible".)

Majromax: Worse than Buckley's? That's saying something. I've never had Buckley's. Why should I buy something that prides itself on tasting terrible when there are other options? (I couldn't be raised with it, since I didn't move to Canada until I was thirteen.)

Kirala: And that is how Biaxin (antibiotic) caused me to have a bout of nausea and lightheadedness that culminated in unconsciousness. I don't think I had any particular side effects (I might just not remember; I was only eight or so), but liquid Biaxin is the worst-tasting substance I have ever had the misfortune to ingest. My parents had a hell of a time getting me to take it. Afterwards my mom rubbed her finger on the residue so she could know what it tasted like. She told me she completely understood now why I fought it so hard.

chris the cynic: The argument presented after that is, "Either my absurd claim is true, or your best friend thought it was worth it to tell a third party about that in order to get you to let me inside." Or a telepath, which is still far enough outside known reality to be worth further investigation.

I thought chili chocolate roulette was taking turns eating from a set of six chocolates, one of which is painfully spicy. The game described here sounds like a mixture of that and Chomp.

I remembered reading it and specifically which site I read it on. With that it was easy.

Do you remember how said author pulled this off? You can find out yourself, if you like.

Otherwise the whole press campaign leading up to the movie was nothing but massive false advertising. There was a press campaign? Why did nobody tell me? (I haven't actually seen any of the latest trilogy, so there's not much I can say about it. I didn't even know until I saw people referring to TDKR as "the third of the trilogy" that it was a trilogy. I'd been under the impression Batman Begins was a prequel to the previous Batman movie series.)

Well, my first thought was those angels shaped like wheels, but they don't appear to have specifically nine spokes. Maybe they do in one of the depictions under "Ophanim in popular culture", I don't know. Get well soon, Slacktivite.

Laiima: Because I couldn't bear to find out that perhaps *everybody* I liked here really wanted me gone after all. I must remember to refresh more often, because I can say that I don't want you gone. I like having you around. @Kirala Thanks.

Kirala: I've never understood why spammers don't read this insightful Dork Tower comic and be done with certain methods. What insightful Dork Tower comic? The link is broken. (I can't really think of anything to say regarding the main discussion, and in any case I can't remember the last time I got into an argument and didn't regret it.)

*hangs up "Happy Birthday!" banner*

TRiG: The other standard game was "wall-to-wall". We all line up against one wall. The person who's "it" parades no man's land in the middle, between the two walls, and calls out a colour. Anyone wearing that colour could proceed safely to the other side; anyone not so fortunate was at risk of being caught as they tried to cross. I played something like that once at Girl Guides. You were supposed to pick a colour arbitrarily in your head (I suppose you could base it on your clothing if you wanted) and only run to the other side of the room if the caller picked that colour. (They trusted you not to wait until after the calling and pick your colour accordingly, and explicitly stated relatively obscure colours like periwinkle were not allowed.) I never actually ran, because nobody ever chose black. ("Black's not a colour!" "Yes it is!")

kisekileia: It's one of the many, many things that are just sort of there in popular culture, but that I've never really understood because nobody ever explained them to me and/or I wasn't exposed to the appropriate media enough to learn them. I know the feeling. @Froborr So what did boys play? I'm guessing lightsabre-duel, but what else?

Izzy: There was also some kind of non-painful but excessively *weird*...thing...that involved wiggling your fingers up and down the other person's back while chanting. I don't remember most of it, except that it was bizarre, but the "chorus" was something like "Concentrate. Concentrate. Concentrate on yellow. People are dying, children are crying. Concentrate. Concentrate." And you're sure you didn't dream that?

Long vacations aren't quite as special as they're made out to be, in my opinion. Autumn breaks are just like weekends, only much longer. Having the break in autumn instead of summer has worked well up until now (better weather, less competition when going to amusement parks and such), but Mom's pushing me to have a much shorter or nonexistent break this year to have a standard September start in university. On the one hand, the online course I'm starting off with allows you to begin at the first day of any month. November's just as good as September to them. On the other hand, I suppose it has to happen sometime.

Lonespark: There's a pirate museum in Salem. It's quite fun. There used to be a World of Witches Museum, but unfortunately the economy got them. Oh, they closed the witch museum? I liked that one! (I liked the pirate one, too. Went to both of them in the same day back in 2008.) Mike Timonin: baby sitting has become hugely lucrative since I did it as a teen; $20 and $30 an hour. Huh. I always thought babysitting was the kind of job where you were lucky to get minimum wage. (Mind you, I have no idea what's going on in the world of babysitting. I've never done it, my friends never do it or use it that I know about, and my parents never used babysitters back when they had kids young enough to need them.)

I like the "our home and cherished land" version. More accurate, for one thing.

Why are the comments on the Canada Day post closed?

I suspect most Americans would say L.A. or San Francisco is the capital of California for the same reason. The word "Sacramento" popped into my head. Hmm. ... Ha! Apparently knowledge of the capital of California is in fact buried deep within my mind. Now I know that I know.