Nothing hurts like your mouth

Agh, I've been remiss. Aside from work keeping me busy, I need to send my laptop in for more repairs, and it's harder to blog in the meantime. What's worse is that I periodically think of things that I might like to mention, and lacking anywhere to commit them, soon forget what they were.
This morning, however, when I again had the thought "hm, this is worth discussing with my blog," I decided that I would actually follow through this time. You might think that this suggests that the topic was a particularly noteworthy one, that I felt was too vitally important to let slip through my fingers, and if so, boy are you in for a disappointment. Maybe if I had done this another day you'd get to hear some of my exciting geopolitical insights, but today you get to hear about toothpaste. See, I...really don't like minty toothpaste. The taste lingers and gives me a headache, and I've reached the point where I'd rather clean my mouth out with soap afterwards than deal with that wretched aftertaste.
This came up because I had been using this Crest cinnamon stuff, which is pretty good, but recently I bought a tube of what turned out to be "Cinnamint," which doesn't work for me at all. I'm actually slightly uncomfortable discussing this, since I feel like there is something faintly juvenile about cinnamon toothpaste...I suppose I could get into that Tom's of Something toothpaste with baking soda or fennel or whatever the heck other flavors it comes in. For now I guess it's back to finishing with Zest (there is a mango tangerine variety that is actually pretty good).

Yes, I'm weird. If you didn't already know this, then I don't know who the hell's blog you thought you were reading.
Anyways, links:

This thing has been all over the Internet lately, so I'm sure many of you have seen it already.
I have to admit, I can't read much Treehugger with ODing on insufferableness, but here is a cool picture to look at.

Finally, you'll be pleased to know that my existence has reached its culmination. I have written a chapter for the book with this cover. Really, I can't describe how happy that cover makes me.

Just for one day

Two articles for you: one from M. Campbell about an online community of real-life superheroes, and an older one from...uh, hmm, oh let's just say it was Jess, about the effects of praise on children. I approached the latter with a certain hesitancy, since I buy into the Lakoff story enough to suspect that there are certain political overtones to the whole backlash against the "self esteem movement." But it was interesting; there are some neat studies described in there, and definite implications outside of parenting.

I have been looking at my referral logs again, and have noticed that the people who found my website while googling something else seem to fall mainly into four categories. So I thought I'd help these people out by addressing their searches:
1) Here are the lyrics to Michael Sembello's "Maniac," Black Sabbath's "Paranoid," and The Police's "Every Breath You Take"
2) To my knowledge, one cannot cut oneself while using an electric shaver, though once I drew blood with my beard trimmer by accidentally poking myself in the mouth. But it seems unlikely that one will ever get anything worse than a mean case of razor neck burn.
3) Violent actions beget violent actions.
4) I'm afraid I don't know where to get a Strange Adventures in Infinite Space torrent, but honestly, it doesn't cost much, and maybe you should support independent video game makers for chrissake.