Many perished in the Bamboo Wars.

I managed to keep my original one from the '80s going by swapping out bad components with RadioShack transistors and capacitors. It finally ran out of lives about 4 years ago, and I still miss it every morning.

Here to meet all your psycholinguistic and trash panda needs. 🫡

Joshua, I knoooow! The cover and book design is <chefs_kiss.gif>.

It does have some very pretty color plates in it, and I will buy you dinner, too!

Ugh, I'm so sorry. It's not as though the extra stress is good for rest and recovery! (I hope there is no fuckery within 700 miles of your insurance claims.)

Just bananas. And what happens when insurance decides to stop paying for it because it's expensive? It's a biologic, you can't just switch to generic!

(It me, I was the lady at the low-paying job trying not to angry-cry in the company phone booth.)

Anyway, be kind to the people around you, who may have to do things like call their doctors on their shift break at their low-paying job and beg the office to fix a billing code so the billion-dollar company they pay to cover healthcare expenses will agree to pay for their child's $300 inhalers.

NOW: we're fortunate. I have good health insurance through my job. We had already met our deductible for the year. Our policy has a low out-of-pocket maximum. My job also offers optional accident insurance to cover some bills that insurance won't pay.

We weren't always fortunate, though.

The Wreak of the Edmund Anti-Christian Bigotry.

Megan, the ughs I ughed.

Nope--usually it's early December, first or second week of. But new leadership, new methods, blah blah blah.

Anyway, it's fine to choose a ridic WOTY for the sake of joy and fun, and you don't need to shoehorn it into the grand narrative arc of modern history. Not everything needs goddamned gravitas! Be silly! It's fine!

Also, ABC reports that "tariff" and "agnetic" were on the short list this year.
1. Surely "agnetic" is a top misspelling of "agentic"? That would have made a great WOTY, honestly.
2. Every other dictionary company thanks you profusely for leaving "tariff" alone so they can have it.

Brought to you by two lovely blurbs for my next book that make me think, "Huh! Maybe...this book isn't dumb and bad after all!"

Time to (re-)share that my niece and nephew called me "Auntie Social" until they were in their late teens. My niece couldn't say "social," so I was "Auntie So-So" for a while.

And this, chief among their many crimes, is why they are ineligible to run for office.