brainylady

It's a very slow day at work. To make it into something fun, I am devoting myself to some hardcore surfing of the Internet, and I'll share with you some of the fruits of my labour, as it were.

1. This morning, my Australian workmate sent me a note over the messenger thing that said, "I like that you [read: Canadians] spend your time productively in those long cold winters," and had a link to this story, Not talking out of rear, which begins as follows:

Herrings communicate with one another by emitting high-pitched sounds from their anuses, according to Canadian researchers.

2. I don't care about what Prince Charles did or didn't do, and I don't care whether Princess Diana had an affair with a certain Canadian who plays the guitar and sings overblown rock ballads. I do, however, admit to reading a snarky column (Yet another icky royal scandal) in the Toronto Star that mentions both things, and I do particularly like this sentence: "Yes, yes, [Diana] went to her marital bed a 20-year-old virgin, never got a chance to sow so much as a pinto bean, much less a bunch of wild oats."

3. Fill in the blank: "I've been knitting like a ____." According to a quick Google search, responses include maniac, fiend, zombie, crazy (old) woman, madwoman, demon, and monkey. But mostly maniac and fiend.

4. Click here for a free pattern for knitting a monkey.

5. Did you ever wonder which Smurf you would be? Find out now. Do you know why you can't see me right now? Because I'm Transparent Smurf.

6. Note to self: When traveling to a country in which being caught with illegal drugs is punishable by death, don't bring thousands of tablets of ecstasy. And don't bring this dumbass.

7. There's a big list of knitting links here.

OK, I should get back to work. I generally don't write about my job on my blog, and believe me, it's tempting. (My job is to edit material -- often written by Chinese speakers -- for textbooks that supposedly teach English to local high-school kids.) (As if.) But for one day only, I'm going to do it, just to give you a taste of the wildly bad and often bizarre content that I encounter on a daily basis. In a dialogue between Tom-boy and Burt-head(?!), Tom-boy says the following sentence:

Last but not least, I fell from the apple tree yesterday and landed right on the wholly shit, breaking my right ankle.

No, I'm not kidding. You don't think I could make that up, do you?