I'm SO sending that to him. Thanks to Marisa (funky_peacenik) for all the lovely pics!

A few more entertaining ones ( behind the cut. )

My favorite "Everyone in America is Mean and I Am, Too" show started up again last night. I can't take two solid hours of it, though, so switched over to "The Colbert Report" for a while. Boy, is that man entertaining - though there is a lot more feature-type stuff and interviewing. No "Word." It's interesting to see the difference having no writers makes. Colbert spent the first five minutes eating Chinese food and trying to be funny about it. The hand-off from Jon Stewart was random and... well, just random. With both of them sort-of giggling through it.

I was reading about place-names and how they can be interpreted as indications of how popular certain gods were at certain times, and the author reiterated a theory I'd come across before about Odin really having been a very shadowy, secondary god of death and strife and magic instead of a king-like All Father. The people we get most of our Viking Age info from were poets and writers, and Odin was the god of poetry - so it makes sense that they might accentuate their patron god in a way that did not reflect the actual prevalence of his worship. It's also pretty accepted that Odin was a god of the nobility while Thor was the god of the people. Snorri and others were probably trying as hard as they could to make Odin like the Christian god, hence the title All Father, and making him omniscient. The myths recorded do NOT favor the idea of Odin as literally the "father of gods." His Valholl was great - but only the dead lived there. The other gods had their own halls (Thor lived in a great hall in the World of Joy and Freya had her own, etc). This also speaks to how Thor is sometimes portrayed as rather bumbling, despite his great strength and stamina. The poets wanted to put him down. (Fortunately, knowing that is a possibility doesn't make the stories any less funny).

ALSO: (warning: etymological excitement ahead!) Valhalla is a mis-translated Anglicization of the actual name of Odin's hll. Valholl means "Hall of the Slain," where as Valhalla is the plural form, meaning "halls of the slain." !!! AND "val" is only mostly accepted to mean slain or dead. It is related to the word for "foreign." So Valholl could also be "foreign hall" or "strange hall." AAANNND that's the same word that begins Wealhtheow's name. Weal = wal = val. Her name could mean not only foreign maid or foreign slave (I'm using strange maid under the rules of artistic license), but ALSO "servant of the slain." So me deciding to make her a priestess of Odin? TOTALLY BACKED UP BY HER FREAKING NAME! Cha-ching.

:D

So, yesterday late afternoon, I get a politics email from NYT (yeah, I can't *not* mention it) with a bunch of campaign coverage. The third headline is something like, "Huckabee funny on Colbert Report."

Me: huh? *blink*

I reread, then click on the video link. My mouth slowly falls open as I watch Colbert interviewing Huckabee via satellite, and they are talking about the Iowa caucus. Meaning: this is a new episode!

Me: No way. I'd have heard.

Off I go to Comedy Central, and sure enough, there are clips from both the Colbert Report and The Daily Show labeled January 7th, 8th, and 9th, 2008.

Me: But... the strike.. the writers... huh?

I watch several clips to find clues. And what does Colbert reveal? Will Smith is a Scientologist now!?!?!!

And of course, with that news, all fears about the WGA strike are wiped from my consciousness. Not Will! Noooo. He can't be crazy! My favorite actor/hunk of sweaty man-flesh canNOT be falling for the insidious evil of Scientology!

When I got to work this morning, I investigated (before doing any, you know, actual work). It isn't as horrible as Colbert made it seem. That article I linked above quotes Smith as saying, no he's not a Scientologist, but he's studied it with Tom and it's 98% like the Bible. It isn't evil or bad, it's pretty cool. But he's still on God's side. Ok, he isn't crazy, he's just not that smart. Would I rather him be crazy or smart? I haven't decided.

BACK TO THE STEWART/COLBERT DRAMA. They are indeed back on the air, without writers. :( Much sadness.

( In a joint statement, Stewart and Colbert said: )

In completely unrelated news: apparently, a meteor is on it's way to Earth and we'll all die. At least, according to some visionary who called the Physics Department yesterday. So we can contact Bruce Willis, I assume. No, really.

And I had a long nightmare about a serial killer who was murdering people in this 25 story snazzy hotel. He used a brilliantly polished silver hook to tear their throats out. I think he worked there. I don't know if I worked there or was a guest. The weird thing is that it wasn't *really* a nightmare. I never woke up in a panic. I only say nightmare, because, uh, it should've been. Once, I interrupted him and the hook slammed up through his victims head and the point poked the victim's eyeball out from the inside. The killer fled and that's how I figured out what the weapon was. It was there. Shining and pretty.