Far too many undeservedly rejecteds for this week's SI to fit in this Away Message.

We would like to remind our Republican travelers that they may bypass the security checkpoint by showing proof of party affiliation.

Passengers in exit rows may be called upon to assist the crew in certain non-emergency situations. Federal law requires these passengers to be at least 18 years of age, but no older than 25. And female.

Attention, travelers: there is a sale on lingerie and skillets at gate 34.

Domestic travelers, we have some gate changes to announce. Please report to gate x^3 - 2x^2 - 5x + 53 mod 32, where x is your original gate. International passengers, please use mod 31.

For those passengers who have not yet reached Chapter 22, Hermione kisses Ron in front of Harry.

I once made an announcement that Brad Pitt heard.

“Who am I?”
“Crazy?”
“I said who, not what. Nice string of letters there after my name.”

“Nothing screams out ‘I am a slacker’ than wearing flipflops to class.”

“You can’t have an undog or an uncat, but you can have an uncola.”

“You don’t just learn linguistics in linguistics class; you also learn parenting.”

“Syntax is very touchy-feely; semantics is very violent.”

“If you want to have a successful marriage, don’t go to 7-11.”

“They won’t be playing the Canadian national anthem at the Linguistics Olympics anytime soon.”

“No one wants me to cancel class today? That takes all the fun out of saying no.”

“There are no weekends in linguistics.”

Pottermania.

(The remixed music is almost more clever than the concept. Listening to it is an excuse to keep watching the later movements for the differences.)

Let there be a stack of N coins, one of which is counterfeit. The N-1 real coins all weigh the same, but the counterfeit one is either heavier or lighter than the rest. Given a balance, find the counterfeit coin in three weighings and solve for N.

What’s in a name?

“The first recorded urban myth involved a choking Doberman in a Brooklyn closet in 1973.”

The Mall is a tourist attraction in DC.
It shouldn’t be in St. Louis.

If it's Friday, it must be Oh-let's-have-a-sludgy-kitchen-sink Day.

Will be looking for fun and meals that don't involve proximity to my kitchen this weekend. IM/e-mail/call if you can aid with either.

<fearless>

Experiencing deja vu twice about something that never really happened in the first place.

Not that that would be an excuse:
“My parents just died.”
lol Funny coincidence.

My Away Messages, totaling 165 pages (plus another 16 pages of yet unused esoteria) have managed to break Word’s spellchecker. Apparently there is a limit to the number of red squiggly lines that can be generated, and there are enough proper words and other text not listed in the dictionary to trigger the cutoff. Meaning that henceforth there might be a few more typographical errors within my Away Messages. As always, feel free to IM an edit, but now I have an excuse.

"The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn’t suck is the day they start making vacuum cleaners."

“...It's cold / It feels like Independence Day / And I can't break away...”

Suffering summer, season of irony.

“...There's got to be an opening / Somewhere here...”

War of the Worlds, described as “simultaneously Spielburg’s best and worst movie”, I found suffered from thematic deficiency, containing only the too simple “survive”. Other ideas were never fully developed and were chaotically contradictory to one another; I was particularly disappointed that the “heroic” rejection of xenia/regression to barbarism was lost. The ending felt especially anticlimactic

I would have liked to have seen it remade as a TV miniseries, perhaps narrated through news broadcasts, to update the this-could-really-happen theme which made the radio version so powerful.

Tripled in this week’s SI: 2 HMs and a win! From a letter/word ratio standpoint, I was disappointed that my earnosethroater: Hellenophobe's otorhinolaryngologist was edited. Considering that Dane-rot was improved in editing, I really shouldn’t complain.

I did have a bad pun on vernalism to answer a recent contest’s “Le Sacre du Printemps, but not the Sack of Rome.”. There was a much better but horrendously obscure pun on vaernal I didn’t even try to submit.

Other rejecteds:
beanrate: .2 cows.

bourneagain: Someone who is filled with wonder by another insipid sequel to another Hollywood action flick.

arenal: Of, like, or characteristic of holding it after a game because the lines at a stadium restrooms are way too long.

How are you spending your Fourth of July weekend?

(a) Vacationing with friends in the mountains.
(b) Going to a baseball game on a glorious summer day.
(c) Driving to Kansas City for the fun of it.
(d) Cleaning sludge off the kitchen floor.

If you answered (a-c), congratulations: You're not Danny.

[Call/IM; I'm going to be desperate to be doing *anything* once maintenance shows up.]

Melodic cacophony.
Somehow Media Center managed to replicatably glitch itself so that two playlists play simultaneously. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature.

WWLD?

The sister fanclab to “Danny Is Cool” has a motto.
(And a meeting place: next to my former room, present and future.)

Won the Texas Holdem themed game (Mini 188) of online mafia as A8- Dead Man's Hand. I really wanted to claim to be a "superdeputy", with the ability to gain the abilities of a killed hand, but when 5+ aces showed up in other claimed hands (accurately, as it ironically turned out!) I instead claimed to be 99- Barbara Feldon. Though by that point the game was all but over, after which my actual role of Mafia Godfather was revealed.

While the game was fun, albeit with some balance issues, it didn't *feel* like a mafia game. Day 1 was a competition to figure out the rules; Day 2, to figure out the setup; Day 3, a race. The informed minority vs. uninformed majority theme never really felt prominent.

Hit every roller coaster at 6 Flags, but the best ride was easily Xcalibur. I need to ride it on a cloudier day or at twilight, so that the sun does not force me to close my eyes to the unrestrainedly shifting horizon.

The rest, best to worst:

Batman- Excellent all-around.
Ninja- Very nice spirals.
Mr. Freeze- Short but thematically intense.
Screamin’ Eagle- Nothing too memorable, but some good drops.
The Boss- Too woodenly rickety.
River King Mine Train- Too tame, especially having the misfortune of being ridden following Batman.

No SI mentions this week; my best was probably a meta-entry. (102nd use for an AOL disk: Installing AOL.) Two fellow Losers also had overlooked entires I thought funny:

“102nd thing to do when bored: Challenge yourself to a game of "Rock, Paper, Scissors".”
Actually, I know someone who’s done this. (In fairness, they are ambidextrous.)

“102nd thing to do to get through another lonely Saturday night: Sit at your computer and keep hittingthe refresh button until the new SI results pop up on-line.”
Actually, I’ve done this.

And for that matter, I’ve installed AOL from an AOL disk.