Clever sarcastic people with keyboards make my world go 'round.

Metaquotes pointed me to active_apathy's answers to the standard Scientology questions:

Q: Have you ever destroyed a culture?
A: I had to take amoxycillin for a month once, so I damned well hope so.

Q: Have you burned literature?
A: I have. The Complete Works of Shakespeare in HTML format on a pocket CD-R, to be precise.

Points if you know what is going on in the answers to question 71 & 147. Knowing my friends, it's a given that you'll catch the Monty Python quotes. Allie, Kernmantle, you'll enjoy #213. On the other hand, I do not get 10 points or the cookie for #334; it's familiar but I can't place it.

ETA havocthecat found this great page of pagan humor. Out of that, I have to particularly pimp the perversity that is Tamponhenge. Should be worksafe.

Soapmaking and gardening stuff

Gardening Stuff
If you container garden, you want Miracle-Gro Moisture Control Potting soil. Why? Because as an experiment, I took 6 trimmings from the same rosemary bush and put them in my bedroom window. Two each were in water, spagum moss, and the Miracle-Gro stuff. They were watered on the same schedule (the ones in water had their water changed once a week, on watering day), they had the same sunlight, they were at the same temperature.

The ones in water died. The ones in moss aren't dead but aren't thriving either; they don't look healthy. The ones in Miracle-Gro are bright green and are putting out branches.

Fortunately Home Depot has it. I'm going to stock up, because this year and next year I'm slowly shifting from planting in the ground to planting in containers.

Soapmaking Stuff
I have discovered a website for making soap in the blender. I like this idea because it's almost "microsoap" making - you have to be much more precise in your measurements, but on the other hand, if you screw up, you aren't pouring out 5 pounds of mess.

Quite dangerously, I noticed that all of the cited recipes required 16 oz of oils and 7 oz of liquids, which means I'm already making up my own recipes to test along those lines. 'Cause craftmaking's no fun if you follow the rules.

Book Reviews

My first review for I Love a Mystery Newsletter is up; it's for Better Read Than Dead, listed under Guest Reviews. For Reviewing the Evidence, it's Sherlock Holmes, The Hidden Years. (One of my better reviews, that.) Links for both sites on my LJ links bar.

Once Written seems to be MIA; the site hasn't been updated for almost a full month now and I haven't heard back from the owner in response to previous emails.

(Oh, and points for the first line in Sharon Wheeler's review of The Smoke Room on RtE.)