MENnonites

1. Visited some Old Order Mennonites yesterday. They shun cars and electricity, the boys tend to have stupid haircuts, they speak their own dialect of German, and most families have eight to twelve children. I think I've found the community of my dreams.

2. Packing update: no way I'm fitting all this shit in my car. The books and stuffed animals alone would fill it to capacity.

3. In honor of my recent search for Health Insurance after college, I give you Gore Vidal, from Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace:

It is ironic -- to use the limpest adjective -- that a government as spontaneously tyrannous and callous as ours should, over the years, have come to care so much about our health as it endlessly tests and retests commercial drugs available in other lands while arresting those who take "hard" drugs on the parental ground that the;y are bad for the user's health. One is touched by their concern -- touched and dubious. After all, these same compassionate guardians of our well-being have sternly, year in and year out, refused to allow us to have what every other First World country simply takes for granted, a national health service.

4. Once again, The Onion has me pegged:

Aquarius: (Jan. 20—Feb. 18)
While it's true that a certain software giant stole its graphic user interface from a smaller computer company, it stole its tendency to get locked up repeatedly from you.

5. The other day Dad gave me these words of wisdom re: riding horses:

"Do you realize what a huge advantage you have as a rider in not having testicles?"

Indeed.