Bastet

I thought that was the definition of a Mary Sue -- a character who's a wish fulfillment stand-in for the creator/writer, getting to be and do a bunch of cool things.

I don’t use Twitter, so I didn’t think about tweets not being just between the person sending it and the person it’s being sent to – so everyone who follows the consumer of crappy pizza on Twitter will see the pizza emoji? Not content with trying to convince women their bodies require special cleaning products, they'd now like us to believe we require separate soaps for day and night?

I knew I had to leave before it was over, so I recorded it and just sort of had it on in the background as I got ready; I'll watch tonight. It really took me back to those glory days, when the games were just so fun to watch. (Then, of course, the awful memory of the 2006 championship game.)

D is for Dancing With the Stars. So they could get ideas for the next time they competed in a dance marathon.

I get an automated call for my doctors appointments, but my dentist's office does them personally (after an email reminder about a week before). I've been going to them pretty much since I had teeth, so I told them years ago to skip the call -- we've well-established that I'm going to show up, and they do their calls around 8:00 in the morning. Unless I have to be in court or deposition, I am asleep at 8:00 in the morning. I do not want to be woken up by a call about getting my teeth cleaned.

Criminal defense attorneys defend clients they know are guilty all the time; the idea is to ensure the client has a fair trial -- make the prosecution do the job it is required to do in order to deprive someone of their liberty or even life. It's why I have such respect for public defenders. And I don't hate attorneys like OJ's "Dream Team." It was good legal strategy - because deflection was the only realistic option given the evidence - and it worked. But on a basic human level, yeah, it is a struggle given the result.

I won't be home for tonight's game, so while checking the archive for last night's I also took a look at what's up so far from tonight's (just the first round). I didn't know that one, either. I only three of the Dr. Seuss titles (Mulberry Street I knew from real life, not the book, and moo I just guessed based on the rhyme). I know I read Cat and the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham as a kid, but I guess that's it for my Dr. Seuss experience. Red Sox was the TS that surprised me. Cambridge, too. I can't believe someone said antibiotics for the antibodies DD; I hope that was just a brain fart.

I finally got myself emotionally braced enough to watch this latest episode. “I know he’s ready, but I’m not. But I guess that’s how these things go.” Oh, Lizzie. You speak the truth. Although it's a different situation since Snickers possibly got lost in the hurricane rather than being deliberately abandoned, seeing Tia, Tania and Lizzie there with Snickers at the end took me back to the episode where Louise found a 14-year-old mastiff at a Los Angeles shelter (probably because I was just telling someone about it this past weekend). He literally had days left in him, and his owners had just dumped him. Tia pulled him from the shelter, he got comfortable at Louise’s, Rita made him a great last meal, and then he was put to sleep on Louise’s living room floor surrounded by the three of them. These people who had only known him for a couple of days gave him the kind of death he deserved, and shed tears over him. Compare that to his owners, who discarded him like trash and left him to die on the streets. I like that Tia isn’t overly judgmental given all she sees, but that was one where she just flat-out said those owners should rot in hell, and I’m with her. I’m glad that, unlike Snickers, Oatmeal did get the home she deserves. Watching her walk with those shoes on was precious. And I love Uncle Jethro. I hope he’s able to work his magic. Whew. This may have been the wrong night to watch; friends are taking me to a concert in a few hours to distract me from my own pet loss depression, and here I go and marinate in someone else's sadness! My condolences to Megan and nitrofishblue, for whom this episode stirred up such emotional memories.

This goes beyond a peeve, but I'll put it here anyway. I hate vocal fry and uptalk (and sentences in which "like" constitutes 40% of the words) as much as the next person, but I also hate that it's generally only the women who speak this way who are criticized for it. As Robin Lakoff said, "With men, we listen for what they're saying, their point, their assertions. With women, we tend to listen to how they're talking, the words they use, what they emphasize, whether they smile." Ira Glass did a nice piece about how the show receives all kinds of complaints about the voices of its female reporters/producers, but none about their male counterparts, even though Glass himself has a vocal fry.

You had to take death off the table? I guess I’ll go with uptalk, since it only happens at the end of the sentence while vocal fry plagues pretty much every word.

Ah, that clears things up; thanks!

Not a favorite commercial, but a favorite moment within an annoying commercial ... I don't like the "I'm a fan of DQ Bakes" commercials, except for a brief moment of one -- after someone sings, "I'm a fan of Lionel Richie," we cut to a snippet of Richie singing Hello.

Something with Brussels sprouts and spicy Italian sausage, as that's pretty much all I have in the fridge. (I really need to go to the market.)

Basically. The emoji (or other "one touch" means of ordering; I forget what Domino's calls it) only works if one has already created an account with Domino's and registered a favorite order -- it's that order, method of payment, delivery address, etc. that gets put into motion. If Hyland wanted to change it up, she'd have to do more work than texting an emoji. (Yes, sadly, I looked all this up based on the commercial even though I do not order Domino's. It was just that annoying.)

Ha! I suspect that's a badge most of us wear proudly. Not that I heard. The correct total (reflecting a loss of $5, not $5000) was shown on Matt's screen, but we heard Alex say his new total as a loss of $5000. I'm sometimes late coming back from commercial, so I could have missed something, but I did not see any "I misspoke earlier" segment. I'm sure that Matt and/or the producers interrupted when Alex made his misstatement, so I'm wondering a) if Alex was the only one who got it wrong and thus the total on Matt's screen was always correct (versus Alex not being the only one who thought "five" meant $5000 and thus Matt initially having too much money deducted) and b) why they didn't edit Alex's misstatement out or have him overdub it. While contestants can say, for example, "[Category], six," as a shorthand for the $600 clue in that category, I don't think they're allowed to similarly express a $5000 DD wager as "five." If I'm not dreaming that, Alex should have known "five" meant $5. Or at least had a "Just five dollars?" moment of clarification.

FJ was one of those clues I could have sat here until I died and not come up with the answer -- I have never heard of the Bayeux Tapestry. Damn you, Alex, for asking if Matt’s cats were still alive. Obviously Matt felt comfortable talking about them despite the loss of Jules this year, since he wrote about them on his questionnaire, but jeez. You know his family got the cats about 15 years ago, and you have cats so you must know 16 years is the average lifespan (assuming they're indoor) – don’t ask that. J! is supposed to be my distraction. I'm watching football, so I didn’t see much else of the game.

Yep. Haden has fired Sarkisian. Now if only Nikias would fire Haden.

That's the most memorable image from the reading of the verdict for me; he's stunned, and he looks sickened. I've watched bits and pieces of these documentaries, but it just stirs up so much emotion. I cried when the verdict was announced for all that it confirmed about our criminal justice system and our society. I've done both domestic violence policy work and direct representation of DV victims. To this day, we still hear women threatened with references to OJ, meaning "I'll kill you, and I'll get away with it." The trial was a clusterfuck, and there's plenty of blame to go around for the unconscionable verdict. The juror who listened to all that testimony explaining DNA and came away saying, "So, it was his blood type. Who cares? Lots of people have the same blood type." The juror who thought the testimony about domestic violence was irrelevant, because what did him hitting her have to do with whether he killed her. And, of course, the jurors in general who listened to a mountain of evidence and said, "Nope, reasonable doubt." The police who did sloppy work. The prosecutors who made poor strategy decisions. The judge who got caught up in his celebrity and forgot about his job. And the defense team. Who took a community's very real and very valid frustration with the long history of bullshit LAPD and the DA's office got up to when dealing with black suspects and used that to secure an acquittal in a case where none of that happened.

I'm not surprised; the PedEgg is great. But the Amopé Pedi Perfect (the electronic foot file) is even better.

Because he was always one of at least 200 cute, healthy, friendly dogs VRC had available. There are 2-3 million dogs killed in shelters each year simply because there are that many more of them than there are homes for them. VRC has operated in two cities teeming with pit bulls. Their adoption rate has gone up since the show started, and then really went up with the move from Agua Dulce to New Orleans. But they're still dealing with a saturation problem -- there are a shit ton more dogs being bred and dumped than there are people available to adopt those dogs. At least in Los Angeles, there were some public programs in place to educate owners about the need to spay/neuter and provide free or low-cost services to low-income residents. The resources simply aren't there in New Orleans. VRC's "Off the Chain" initiative is great, but they can only afford to do so many spay/neuters (and put up so many kennels). We've seen them put on a mobile spay/neuter event at least once, but same thing. (And it's easy for Best Friends - a sanctuary I also love and support - to have a higher adoption rate since they have all kinds of dogs; VRC is focused on a breed many dog owners won't consider or would but can't have because of their landlord, HOA, insurer, etc.)

After the Salute to Troy incident, The LA Times went looking into Sarkisian's alcohol-related behavior during his time at Washington. And Bill Plaschke is all over Haden for waiting so long to put Sark on leave. And he isn't the only one in the media to do so. It will be interesting to see what USC does. While Haden didn't hire Kiffin (that was Garrett), he waited far too long to fire him, and he is the one who hired Sarkisian. So I've wanted him gone for years.

This season? When the Giants try their best to hand games away in the fourth quarter? There is no team against which I can relax. That entire second half a was a nail biter. When it came down to going for it on fourth and one or kicking the FG, I knew all the statistical reasons to kick the FG, but I also thought, "You know SF is going to score a TD on their next drive, so just go for it." It all worked out in the end, but barely. They have SUCH fourth (and sometimes third) quarter issues. Against a team like the 49ers, okay, maybe they can still eke out a win. But, again, with the long season.

Goddamit, Eli. I know it's only your second INT of the season (and, I can't recall now, but it may be the first one wasn't your fault), but of all times ... I think I need to step up my drinking during halftime. USC implodes (and now Sark has been put on leave, hopefully to get whatever help he needs), OU loses to Texas, Seattle blows it, the Raiders are showing progress under Del Rio but still a bad team, and my G-Men ... this is going to be a long football season.

Helton stepped in to coach USC in its victory in the 2013 bowl game -- Ed Orgeron was interim head coach (and did a great job) after Lane Kiffin was finally fired, but when USC hired Sarkisian, Orgeron split before the bowl game. While Sark wasn't at practice when Haden went looking for him today, he apparently was at a team meeting this morning -- and players reported he was acting strangely.

As I've said elsewhere, I love every minute of A League of Their Own ... right up until Dottie drops the ball. I hate Kit. She's nothing more than a crybaby who needs to grow up, so I'm completely at a loss as to why I'm supposed to be happy this horrible character (and a bunch of characters we don't know) won. I'm not. I'm bummed for the Peaches.