Friday morning: Yay for holiday weekends . . .

1. Yes, today's a regular day of work, but right now I do not have anything outside of the office, so I hope to get a number of things knocked out of the way as I get ready for a short, but busy, week next week.

2.Science fiction author  Robert Asprin has died. He was supposed to have been a special guest at MarCon this weekend. (Thanks to dsrtao for the post).

In the SCA, he was known as Yang The Nauseating and was a co-founder of the Great Dark Horde.

3. That brings us, of course, to the Yang and El of the Two Knives telephone story.

I went look looking for a good version of it on the web.

It was a little strange when I found the one with the wording I wanted -- and it was one I had posted on the Calontir list serve in 1999.

*****
It was back in the early days of the Society and for some reason, El of the Two Knives (of Bridge -- that would be Rhode Island) *had* to get ahold of Yang -- mka Robert Asprin -- for some reason or the Society would fall apart).

He tried the mundane name through Detroit information, but could not get it, so he called again and said he needed the number for "Nauseating, Yang The."

The information operator, so the story goes, incredulously repeated the name back to El, and another operator sitting next to her said. "Oh, he's my neighbor. Here's the number."

Details, as in all legends, may be fuzzy.

*****

4. The sky in the North Country this morning is a bright shade of robin's egg blue.

Friday: End of the week start of the long weekend . . .

1. Those blue skies gave way to rain, but it's still supposed to be nice tomorrow.

2. Tagline of the day:

"Baldrick, you wouldn't know a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing 'Subtle Plans Are Here Again'."

3. Quote of the day:

The Globe and Mail:

For the U.S. market, the appearance of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup final is about as good as it gets.

“The hockey gods are smiling so wide we can count their missing teeth,” was the way NBC play-by-play announcer Mike Emrick described his reaction to the series in a telephone conference call this week.

4. Reading this incredibly long NY Times Magazine article by and about Emily Gould is like watching a train wreck. A really fascinating, horrifying, slow-motion train wreck.

5. Best response of the day to my posting on a friends' journal:

"you and me, and a mandate to distract and amuse?

no, srsly... what could *POSSIBLY* go wrong with that??? *snort*"

6. Lines from my friends' pages:

"I just sat in my ham sandwich"

"How can you say you are faithful to your boyfriend if you are seeing other people?"

"so, i'm looking to get loaded and sing tons of karaoke tonight. "

"but as a pagan, it's much more 'nature oriented' to actually parent a wee one than send them to daycare"

(Do people really call children "wee ones?")

"I think my uterus is trying to kill me. "

"I feel like Dung!"

7. Favorite line of my own today:

"There are more than 3,000 members on the menstrual_cups LJ community."