Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Sometime between June 30th and July 1st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• The Slow Reversal of Periods and Quotation marks: "In the past, total integrity of the greater ideas within a missive was required, hence, something set off in quotation marks framed the complete thought, including a period or comma. But as technology advanced, the need of technical speech developed. Here, total integrity of the letters themselves is required. A trailing character within a quotation, required by grammatical tradition, could introduce unnecessary error to the data." I've been using this style (formally called logical punctuation off-and-on for years when the situation called for it (especially, for instance, when writing URLs or code).
• The Boys Club: I wish that I'd one, discovered this post when it was posted, and two, had the time to actually read through the many, many comments, but this is MetaFilter's discussion about Pixar's lack of female lead characters (a recurring thread on my blog).
• 16 Bitchin’ Commands and Shortcuts for Twitter: "I love a shortcut, and regularly make use of a range of keyboard shortcuts on Twitter. There are more of them than you might imagine. As such I have aggregated a bunch of commands to provide you with one handy cut-out-and-keep / 'bookmark on Delicious' guide. "
• Fallen Princesses: "I explored the original brothers Grimm's stories and found that they have very dark and sometimes gruesome aspects, many of which were changed by Disney. I began to imagine Disney's perfect Princesses juxtaposed with real issues that were affecting women around me, such as illness, addiction and self-image issues."
• Supervolcano May Be Brewing Beneath Mount St Helens: "IS A supervolcano brewing beneath Mount St Helens? Peering under the volcano has revealed what may be an extraordinarily large zone of semi-molten rock, which would be capable of feeding a giant eruption. If the structure beneath the three volcanoes is indeed a vast bubble of partially molten rock, it would be comparable in size to the biggest magma chambers ever discovered, such as the one below Yellowstone National Park."

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Just watched the new trailer for 2012. Don’t think it’ll be good, but I do think I’ll want to watch it in the theater. http://xrl.us/bezche

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Into social networking? Broadway musicals? The two come together at last in Web Site Story! http://ping.fm/LJfyM (via @seattlegeekly)

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Gothic Charm School: An Essential Guide for Goths and Those Who Love Them by Jillian Venters

My review rating: 4 of 5 stars

Simply put, this should be highly recommended, if not required reading, not just for goths, but also for anyone curious about the goth community, whether because they are personally interested or because they have an acquaintance, friend, or loved one (spouse, significant other, boy- or girlfriend, relative, child, or secret crush) who counts themselves among the spooky set.

Miss Manners’ more somber-dressed and bat-festooned doppelgänger, the Lady of the Manners, has adapted from and expanded upon columns from her long-running website and assembled a delightful collection of advice for the goth and goth-friendly. Covering everything from the basics (“The difference between being a Goth, a NotAGoth, and not being a Goth yourself but being Goth-friendly”) to social etiquette both online (“The Internet is not Real Life (with an aside about the Great Flounce-Off)”) and off (“What to do when people ask why you’re dressed like that”) to parenting (“How to show support to your babygoth or babybat without relinquishing the keys to the hearse, and everything you need to know to Not Freak Out”), Gothic Charm School quickly becomes, in many small and a few not-so-small ways, the very “Goth handbook” that the Lady of the Manners so often reminds us does not exist.

I can’t go back in time twenty years and hand this book to my teenaged self (more’s the pity), but I canquite heartily recommend this to both old and new members of the goth community, as well as those around them who just might not quite get it.

View all my reviews.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Interesting: @djwudi mostly tweets about: trek prairie photo norwescon prairie’s neighbors info impact flickr finally http://xrl.us/bezefi

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

WWIII propaganda: http://xrl.us/bezeo7 Loose Tweets Sink Fleets!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Hungry, and ready for dinner. Happily, Prairie should be home from work soon. Then vegging with dinner (spaghetti), Jeopardy, and Wipeout!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Hungry, and ready for dinner. Happily, Prairie should be home from work soon. Then vegging with dinner (spaghetti), Jeopardy, and Wipeout!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

I really like the Dell Inspiron “Lollipop” commercial. Wouldn’t buy a Dell, but love the commercial.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

I’m #reading The Trellisane Confrontation by David Dvorkin - http://tinyurl.com/lb838r