I received a little unexpected surprise in email last night:

Red/yellow highlight added by me

Originally, everything was pointing to a shipping date after September 20th, and thus an arrival of “maybe by the end of the month”. Now, it actually stands a chance of arriving before my birthday. Or even on my birthday. If that happened, it would be the second time a “not-a-birthday-present” purchase turned up on that day (the last was when I bought my new-to-me-used camera in 2007 after my Rebel 300D broke).

Since we’re kinda far away from everything, I don’t expect it will come very quickly or arrive next week, but knowing they’re dropping it in the mail tomorrow certainly gives me something to look forward to after the rather crappy weekend we’ve had (the ONLY saving grace of the entire weekend was that the pouring rain stopped while Honeymoon Suite was actually performing on Friday night – I won’t bore you with the details, it’s just been a real pisser all around).

Now all I have to do is figure out how I am going to PAY for the Kindle. Oh well, one step at a time.

Officials did not release the name of the manufacturer but confirmed the rat was discovered in January and tests performed indicated it had gone through the canning process, The Independent reported Friday.

The health official in charge of the inquiry said the incident revealed “severe failings somewhere in the food production process,” the British newspaper said.

From: Whole rat found in can of beans

I think it may be time for them to update their labelling. I found this can in our cupboard.

Artist's conception

My second batch of free, custom-designed stickers from StickerYou arrived in the mail this morning! I made some little “I ? CarpeLumen” for the kidlins, and although I mostly wanted to do my own thing (I’ve been reluctant to stick my CL stickers on anything fearing I’d never have more), I couldn’t help indulging my geek-hood with some more Spock stuff and a few of my favourite comic-related symbols.

I’m doing this every week until they stop offering them.

This fine fellow, James Jay Lee, is dead. He was shot in the head by police while holding people hostage at Discovery Channel Headquarters.

He is EXACTLY the kind of extremist that most disturbs me: a person who believes we should sacrifice humanity for the “good of the planet”. His inspiration? “An Inconvenient Truth“.

Here are some excerpts from his “manifesto” (You can find it by clicking on his face – please click hard, and repeatedly) – a series of demands to the Discovery Channel:

Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn’t, then get hell off the planet!

Saving the Planet means saving what’s left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies!

Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.

For every human born, ACRES of wildlife forests must be turned into farmland in order to feed that new addition over the course of 60 to 100 YEARS of that new human’s lifespan! THIS IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FOREST CREATURES!!!! All human procreation and farming must cease!

Honestly, he finally did something right today. He stopped consuming resources better used by decent human beings. It’s just unfortunate that he didn’t have the courage to off himself years ago.

Good riddance.

NOTE: To “Conservative” commentators who said this guy had to be a “Liberal nutjob” – the values espoused by this freak show are more of an extreme conservatism than liberalism. You don’t get to politicize this one in your favour, it just makes you look like an even bigger asshole.

I got this in the mail this morning…

Solid vinyl, peelable, and completely customizable stickers

And – it was for the low, low price of FREE! Well, free if you count iCoke coins as free.

I’d never heard of StickerYou before (although I’d seen another custom sticker site a while back), but when I was looking through my “rewards” the other day I found this “design your own sheet of stickers” option. That led to checking out the neat CocaCola stickers I could get, which led to discovering they also had Star Trek stickers, and that I could upload my own images, too. When I ordered it, it said the projected arrival date was September 2nd, but they arrived today – only 4 days later. And I live in the boonies!

I made a couple of minor booboos I won’t repeat – the smaller CL sticker overlaps the “giving her all she’s got” sticker slightly which will leave a notch in one and a slightly cropped edge on the other (that was just a placement error I didn’t notice) and the rounded corners on the CL stickers nip off a tiny bit of the S in SEIZE.

Also, is anyone else going nuts looking at the word “seize” while their brain recites ‘i before e except after c’ over and over? No? Just me? Cognitive dissonance rules.

I can only order 1 sheet a week for free, so I sure hope iCoke still has these as an option next week, and for weeks to come. I want to get some more CarpeLumen stickers, as well as some other stuff. Maybe it’s the 10 year old in me, but I think it’s pretty darn cool.