all dialogue as little approximate as possible

and that, mother's own darling, is the end of chapter six and it's time to go to bed

I'm scared

no, love of my life, you're not scared, you just don't want to go to bed

no, really, I'm scared

young lady. you promised to do whatever I said if I read one more chapter and I did and it's bedtime and you have to go to bed

(the perfect picture of newly minted seven-year-old dejection squeezing out a tear) yes mommy (choke. sob. slouch from room, every movement showing the weight of sorrow far beyond her tender years)

but I'm really scared...

hey, kid. let's talk.

snuffle

you know, when you were three and you started to go to preschool and you had to get up on time for something for the first time in your life, you used to try everything you could try to get to stay up

(brightens some. wasn't I a dickens?)

and after a while, you found out that just saying you didn't want to do something wasn't working and you started saying you were scared when you didn't want to do something

(the picture of aggrieved innocence - who me?)

and it worked for you and after that, you were scared of everything you didn't like. if you didn't want to eat something, you were scared of it. you were scared of going to the bathroom, you were scared of vegetables, you were scared of going to bed, you were scared of waking up, you were scared of sweaters for a while, you were scared of dresses, you were scared of your room, you were scared of ice cream once

that never happened

i promise, love of my life, it did happen

no it did not. that never happened. that's a fib

honest, it's not a fib.

but

ahem. ANyway, the problem is that there's something called fight or flight that your body has from back when we lived in caves and saber tooth tigers would come in and something called adrenaline came out of our brains and it was like a zillion cups of coffee and your body would say woops, don't have the energy to digest food, gotta run, so it dumped a whole bunch of acid in your stomach so you would poop all the food out so you could use all the energy for running instead of digesting

gotta poop now

yep. and that makes your tummy hurt

owwww

only your body doesn't know the difference between saber tooth tigers and your teacher being crabby because you're late for school. it just knows that your tummy hurts and you have all that adrenaline so if you keep saying you're scared sooner or later you're going to think every time you're not happy you're scared and then you'll be scared all the time because if you don't feel being unhappy it just gets bigger until you do feel it

(tear)

and you've been kinda scared about school and mommy getting hurt, huh

(tiny nod)

and that stinks

(big nod)

but you know, if you make yourself unhappy all the time because you think no-one notices you're unhappy, anyone who doesn't notice is still not going to notice and you end up being unhappy all the time and they don't even notice anyway

(wrinkled forehead)

and if you're sad all the time and they don't even notice who gets hurt?

i don't know

well, think about it - if YOU'RE sad and THEY DON'T NOTICE who gets hurt

me

yup. so that doesn't work

no

so maybe instead of being sad all the time you could try to find stuff, like bad jokes or a nice day or a dress you like to be happy about and be happy about the good stuff at least

ok DON'T YOU GET UP NONONONO

my arm is asleep?

oh. ok.

but i'm also getting up because I'm tired and you have to go to sleep so you grab onto mrs harry [mammoth] and go to sleep

ok

i love you

you always say that

yep

the long-awaited Sims story

Some of the stories end badly. It occurs to some players that they don't have to play by the rules of normal society, so they start killing people. They invite neighbors over to their backyard pools and then pull up the exit ladders and watch them drown. Or they kill off husbands. But the striking thing about these stories is that most of them do end happily; the abusive relationships, dysfunctional families, drug and alcohol addictions are overcome and careers are put on track, just like at the ending of all those ''Behind the Music'' rockumentaries. Interestingly, the stories generally don't seem to regard marriage as the happily-ever-after ideal. Instead, cliques are the key to paradise. In story after story, the happy denouement comes when the main character settles into her new home, furnishes it to her taste and then invites 5 or 10 people over, and they surround her with companionship and celebrate her triumphs.

-----

I work in some alien's Sims game.

Again, you have no idea how much this explains.

You know, though, Zarg or whatever your name is, some of this shit isn't even vaguely realistic. Maybe you need to work with lower primates for a while.

Yes, there certainly are.

Well, I'm pretty sure.

freepage

Lou Dobbs on CNN has an online poll asking what self-selected internet users who happen to hear about his poll somewhere or another on line think the prevailing bias of the media is.

An overwhelming majority of early responders feel that the media is liberal in nature.

Is this what Al Gore invented the internet for? (I know, I know, Ronald Reagan invented the internet in an idle reflective moment while he was patrolling the skies of Metropolis. I was being sarcastic).

running tally

well, Rittenhouse is back, which is cool, but Ted Barlow's still gone and my beloved povero (I just knew he'd drop out of touch when he moved to that new neighborhood) is gone for now and so is brainslug, and Antidotal is making quitty noises and Kos has had dreadful news and has to concentrate on other stuff for a while and homeobox hasn't posted since forever and LeanLeft and Groupthink Central and a Skeptical Blog are taking downtime to have "lives" (whatever that is - I can't find it online) and the Hamster wants Thanksgiving off and MWO is somewhere with a hat on and Sour Mash Bob hasn't posted for weeks and - well, it just doesn't bear thinking about.

I'll just sit here in my little virtual corner and rock back and forth in the fetal position sucking my thumb for a while...

Jesse over at Pandagon did coin the phrase "conservative bitcherati" which makes me kinda happy, and Alas has some way cool new Tennielish illustrations (although I'm kinda conflicted about how he squashed the ampersand) and there's another priceless anti-hipster vignette up and I discover that Interesting Monstah reads me in the morning which fills me with an awesome sense of responsibility which I will try to live up to.

Insofar as it's consonant with rocking in the corner in the fetal position, of course.

Well, and making a half-gallon of nonni sauce for the freezer to have over gnocchi at HM's birthday bash which mother has bigfooted and now is going to consist of 25 people, about six of whom will be under forty, and roasting a turkey because we always go to someone else's house for Thanksgiving and I want to make my own damn stuffing because I make awesome stuffing, dammit, and I found the middle stick thing for the cuisinart so I can make that bok choi cole slaw I keep threatening my family with and my infamous moroccan carrots (only it's going to be my infamous moroccan carrots and steamed hubbard squash chunks because I don't know what the hell else to do with hubbard squash) and gingerbread green apple stained glass christmas tree cookies and poultry demiglace for the freezer and maybe some focaccia because I keep promising and the house will be way warm anyway and the kid's after me to clean my room and we never did put away the bulk food tubs on the pantry shelves after we painted...

So, um, blogging will be light today?

Which is probably just as well, as according to Eschaton, that dreadful Kaus person says that Professor Reynolds said just exactly about himself what I said about him and I'm not sure something dreadful isn't going to happen to the subatomic structure of the universe if that dreadful Kaus person and I agree about anything...

because she's engaging is why

Jeanne D'Arc emailing with someone who thinks differently and they both give ground with each respecting the other in the end.

Well, it's unorthodox, but whatever works.

momma's got a

(n) accordion she wears on her chest.

She plays it after the neighbors go to bed.

OK, you explain it, wiseass.