User:	shortpacked
	Date:	2009-12-23 22:00
	Subject:	What a blockhead.
	Security:	Public

Shortpacked!: Obsolete Translation of Scripture Theatre

Yeah, these days they translate "axe" to "carving tool," and the context makes it more apparent they're talking about idols, but does it really matter whether you take a knife to your tree before you take it indoors and put lights on it? 

I don't actually care.  But today's comic strip was too good an idea to pass up. 

So my Winston's already kinda broken.  The hose to his ecto-gun snapped off at the backpack when I wasn't looking.  Well, fuck.  Do I order another one before he sells out?  Or do I save myself $30 and just tuck the end of the tube behind his back? 

Dammit.

But he's caught himself a spooky skeleton guy!  Look!  Sure, he's not actually a ghost, but I won't fault Winston for thinking so.  He's not gonna fit in that trap, though....

Speaking of Bludgeon, he features prominently in a new prose story from the Transformers Collector's Club that was released today!  It's a Classics story, which means it takes place at the end of the Marvel Comics continuity.  If you're a member, log in and check out "At Fight's End."  

There's also Seacons!

	User:	theferrett
	Date:	2009-12-23 18:51
	Subject:	Two Photos Of Culinary Terror
	Security:	Public

For those about to infarct! We! Sa! Lute! You!


This cost $9.99. Ten bucks says it's more like Yoo-Hoo and MD 20/20.

	User:	lesmcclaine
	Date:	2009-12-23 11:42
	Subject:	Last minute notice!
	Security:	Public

We just got this all scheduled yesterday, but I’m going to be doing a short signing tour around the Boston area on Saturday the 26th.  Here’s the stops!

	User:	silveradept
	Date:	2009-12-23 10:18
	Subject:	Only two more days until a major holy day... - 23 December 2009
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	chipper
	Music:	Nobuo Uematsu - Red Wings

Greetings, informed and interesting people. There is something to be said about living in a world where the foundational text of Christianity is often the text most stolen from bookstores, as part of an apparently wider sequence of people stealing from bookstores and author fears that piracy will run rampant on the publishing industry. There are two things to be said about this: first, for all the people thieving books, you do realize you can borrow them from the library, right? (If you steal from us, though, you go straight to Special Literary Hell, where you have to manually re-make every item you stole, using the most primitive technology available.) And second, what does the rash of thievery (and the statistics that say less than half of people buy the books they read and less than 30 percent buy them new) say about the price of a book, whether in print or digital form? Will publishing go through the gutting that should be rightly happening to the music industry, were it not for certain cabals with more money than brains?

Beginning again, as we do, in the world, the old becomes new, and cycles that have happened before repeat - the funeral for a cleric in Qom became a protest against the government in Iran. Agitation for change, with the question being whether or not the government responds with harder crackdowns or hopes that things will go away. Reports from the ground believe that the protest is now about regime change instead of reform candidacy, because regime change is what they want. Others try to paint the President's policies of open-hands negotiation as rebuffed and failures, citing what they see as the buildup of weapons, a lack of any political gesture or diplomacy, and continued support for terror organizations.

In Iraq, if you ever wanted to know how much the military is stretched thin, consider this - a major general in the United States army has made getting voluntarily pregnant or impregnating a female soldier an offense punishable by court-martial. Assault and forced sex cases will not have the female punished, the major general states. I'm sure there's also something that could be said about how the military still resents having women in it, and this is one of those ways that resentment plays out, but all the stresses are on how it's legal and part of a bigger restriction-of-behavior package. Plus, I'm not really versed enough to make a cogent argument about how much this behavior is or isn't intended to hurt women.

Elsewhere in Iraq, the ruling United States-backed power is continuing their outreach to clerics like Muqtada al-Sadr, hoping to bring them into the governing fold instead of staying apart as independent power structures.

The recent release of Avatar in other countries leads to an interesting story about subtitle re-positioning and the censorship offices in Egypt, where it takes family connections just to be seen after an ugly standoff with censorship security. And that's just over moving subtitles to the bottom of the screen (and re-editing in a "sex" scene, but mostly the subtitling). Definitely nice to know that films here don't have to pass a board with any more power than the MPAA (which is voluntary, I believe, but can sink a film if it rates it NC-17)

Last out for today, Israel admitted to harvesting organs from the dead without the consent of their families for much of the 1990s. While there are arguments to be made about whether organ donation should be the default instead of the exception, to do so without the consent of the dead or their surviving relatives (assuming the dead weren't organ donors) is not good.

On the domestic fronts, as health care bills make it to final passage, we find right-wing bloggers and Senators alike wishing that a Democrat, any Democrat, would have been unable to make it to the chamber to do their vote, so that the sixty-vote caucus would be broken by absence. This is not a new trend necessarily, witness tee shirts and other paraphernalia advocating, jokingly or otherwise, for the death of the current President, including the recent Psalm flap, but it is climbing up fairly high into the ranks of the government, which we would normally expect to be above that kind of talk or posturing. Other tacks taken include accusing the government of "seed Chicago politics" as an insult to the process and the President, or trying to pump up the populace to get their states to invoke nullification on whatever gets passed by the federal government, spinning it as the only way to get real change done, instead of wasting time with federal politicians, claiming the bill will be a death knell for Democratic politics, with the moderates being sacrificed to enact the dream of a welfare state the liberal elements and President Obama apparently want, and delcaring that the bill as noted won't actually achieve its ends.

On the other side of the coin, the compromise resulting in special treatment for Nebraska has earned flack for the way it was done, including the Governor who was concerned about budget stress from another federal mandate.

In the end, however, nobody should lose sight of who it's being done for - people like Sierra Cooper, a 21 year-old with muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis, ineligible for life insurance (and probably most medical insurance) who is soliciting donations for her own funeral expenses, keenly aware that her time left on Terra is limited.

Some welcome news about open government - The Obama Administration is getting ready to issue an executive order requiring review of the classification procedures of each agency, as well as setting up an institute to process the severe backlog of documents ready to be declassified at the end of the year. Hopefully, that center can then keep putting the screws on government agencies to release their classified data at an improved rate.

In technology, designs unveiled for a lush Singaporean garden that captures some of water and solar and other natural resources to feed itself, hope that climate change agreements will help reverse the acidification of the oceans, an effect not talked about much in climate change arguments, a robot got very close and personal pictures of a violent deep-water volcanic eruption, including the formation of a lava previously only found in samples millions of years old,

Starting with opinions, Ecocosmology, the belief that every intelligent lifeform on a planet close enough to a star to be destroyed by it is being tested to see whether they will overcome their limitations and achieve independence of destroying stars before their stars expand to engulf them. Certainly frames the cosmic clock properly - if we can avoid destroying ourselves through our own hands, we still have to get far enough away from Terra so that the eventual death of Sol does not consume all of humanity.

Mr. Michaels claims that the East Anglia e-mails were the exposure of an already known conspiracy by scientists to shut out dissenting voices from peer-reviewed journals, with disastrous results for official policies, a conspiracy whose pressure he experienced firsthand as it became more difficult for him to be able to publish anywhere, and now he fears the effects of what the EPA has decided about CO2.

And out of opinions, Ms. Noonan suggests that America is feeling things are going the wrong way not just because of economics, but because Americans feel their values and their children are under constant assault by the cultural left, with the Adam Lambert performance on broadcast television as a recent example of that attack. Ms. Noonan is almost correct. People are concerned that their children are being subjected to violence and sexualized images on television, which does happen on broadcast television at more intervals that sport programs and music award performances, like sitcoms and crime dramas and reality television. They're also under constant siege by marketers with commercials attempting to turn them into consumers that will get you to spend $50-100 USD on a piece of easily-breakable mass-molded plastic that doesn't do anything like what the commercial said it would do. Some of them feel religious values are being demeaned, too, by the programming that's on. To accuse the "cultural left" of being behind these changes, however, is to fire an arrow in the wrong direction. Marketing departments for large corporate conglomerates are not composed exclusively of New york or Hollywood liberals. The executives that approve those campaigns are certainly not exclusively cultural liberals. Performers all across the political stripe tap into the energy in their work and their stage presence. What they are doing is playing the culture, which is well-tuned and responds to their efforts. Sometimes strings break, which usually results in public outrage over a wardrobe malfunction or Mr. Lambert's performance bringing out into the open what the cultural conservatives would like to see stay in the back of the closet, but for the most part, he culture feeds on it and generates a lot of revenue from it. "Pop Princesses" make albums full of sexual songs, put to video where they wear revealing costumes and gyrate their hips and tops in sexually suggestive manners. Rap talks about the violence present in a lot of places and of making one's money any way one can, whether legally or not, to live the good life instead of the slums. Change the skin color and put a suit on them, and that could describe a lot of CEOs. The culture approves of sexuality and violence in its marketing and performances - Sarah Palin and the NRA for two on the conservative side of the fence. What it does not approve of is when the sex, sexuality, or violence is obvious and can't be explained away behind one of many fig leaves put up. Then, the last-ditch fig leaf appears, the children, the immature, the people who supposedly can't handle the marketing blitz yet grow up to prove themselves savvy consumers and people who understand the messages really well before they even get past the legal requirements of age. The mythical past is just that, mythical, but if one really wanted to try and put the brakes on this perceived cultural slide, they'd have to manage to stop up commercial success using sex appeal. Far easier (and probably more Taoist of them) would be to instead push in the direction the water is flowing - get kids to understand the nature of sexuality with frank conversation, to understand what kind of sexual advertising is going on, the differences between real and fantastic violence, all of that - if we educate early, age appropriately, and constantly, then perhaps we can lessen the taboo power that sexuality and violence have on kids and teenagers and break the ability of marketers to use that as effectively. To many of the Mythic History defenders, though, if we do that, we've thrown ourselves headlong into the abyss and abandoned all of our core principles, so it's not likely to happen any time soon.

Mr. Fitzgerald examines what he sees as the trend moving evangelism away from anti-intellectual feelings-based ministry into a more intellectual mind, a return to the time where the religious theology mixed, mingled, and debated with the contemporary philosophy, concluding that the move is a good one and will make evangelism better, although the progress toward it is quite slow.

Last for tonight, the year in band names, proving that we're pretty good about coming up with all sorts of names for our musical groups, and a study confirming that some people experience physical sympathy pains when viewing other people in pain.

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	User:	clarkesworld
	Date:	2009-12-23 12:17
	Subject:	Unplugged at Amazon
	Security:	Public

Amazon finally has copies of Unplugged: The Web's Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy in stock, but it looks like they've already sold all but two copies.

	User:	ryanestrada
	Date:	2009-12-24 01:22
	Subject:	Rudolph
	Security:	Public

	User:	theferrett
	Date:	2009-12-23 08:13
	Subject:	A Brief Rant: Defanged
	Security:	Public

( Put behind a cut, because it's fairly whiny )

	User:	troutman
	Date:	2009-12-23 02:00
	Subject:	Twittin'
	Security:	Public

• 13:49 I might be stuck in Green Valley with Scrubbo for another night. tinyurl.com/yk4k3qx
• 19:04 Yay, I'm back home and alive!

	User:	everyueveryme
	Date:	2009-12-22 22:38
	Subject:	¡¡¡Chingona Navidad!!!
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	...
	Music:	Divertimento In D, K 136, "Salzburg Symphony #1" - 2. Andante - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(technical pens & lotsa digital media)

	User:	shortpacked
	Date:	2009-12-22 22:02
	Subject:	Real wrath of God stuff.
	Security:	Public

Shortpacked!: So there's a use for him.

Yay, I have my Winston!  As you can see, he comes with the containment trap thing.  I don't want to get into too much depth, saving that for a proper "review," but I'll mention the obvious.  Yes, Slimer can fit into the ecto-energy field.  But that damn trap barely stands upright without adding another half-pound of top-heavy weight.  (In the photo, it's leaning up against Slimer's stand.)

So we found out where and when BotCon is next year!  Since Fun Publications took over the convention, me and my friends always sort of joked that they'd take it to hyper-expensive Disney World.  Well, they've gone and done it!  Thankfully, they waited a few years until I had the funds to manage.  So, yay!  And it's in the summer (June 24-27), too, so that means all my friends who are schoolteachers can go. 

In general, I'm pleased.  I don't really care where BotCon is so long as it's convenient for my buddies to come with.  I'll go.  Location's just scenery.

Now to figure out whether I should chip in for a dealer table.  Everyone there's always asking me if I brought books to sell, but BotCon is my Personal Nerd Vacation.  The one year I got a table and sat there all day was probably the most depressing weekend of my life.  Sure, I paid for the trip and then some, but I go to see folks and see things.  So I'd have to bring Maggie to do most of the tabling, but... we'll see.  I've got a few months to sort this out.

	User:	the_kiggy
	Date:	2009-12-22 21:43
	Subject:	They are doing it again!
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	rushed

By that I mean many media outlets keep reporting this decade as "ending" now, when the decade actually ends on December 31, 2010.

In other news: in about 12 hours I'll be boarding a Continental 737 to fly nonstop to Puerto Rico, where I'll spend the holidays. Last time I was in PR for the Xmas/New Year season was in 2005-2006 which, as many of you know, was in very sad circumstances.

But enough gloom! I'll be seeing cousins, uncles and aunts that I haven't seen in years! There will be Puerto Rican food and music! Maybe a trip to a mountain reserve! A mini-class reunion! Nostalgia and reminiscing as only 40 year olds can! XD

So, Merry Christmas, Joyful Yule and Happy New and Improved with 100% more Better Year 2010.

Which is the correct final year of the decade.

	User:	theferrett
	Date:	2009-12-22 18:46
	Subject:	Amusing And/Or Disturbing
	Security:	Public

This was posted on October 15th, which makes it a Cro-Magnon video in Internet Time, but I now present to you:

....the drunkest guy ever.



What terrifies me is a) how did he get to the store, and b) what is he actually on? There are those who think this is faked - I don't think so, I've (sadly) been this messed up. But there are those who think you can't be this stupid on alcohol. In any case, you have a mix of "wow, that's kind of comedy" and "wow, that's kind of sad."

	User:	silveradept
	Date:	2009-12-22 09:39
	Subject:	Thoroughly in the season - 21 December 2009
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	calm
	Music:	Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Sarajevo 12/24

Greetings, fans of sport, of theater, and of other things important and trivial. We're in full VEWPRF season, and one of the things that means is there's some new Doctor Who. This time around, there's more buzz than usual, as we know that there will soon be a new Doctor on the scene. For David Tennant, it's been quite a ride, and he seems to have escaped whatever curse may have followed his predecessors about being able to find work outside of Doctor Who. (Plus, mental note, figure out a way to see the Hamlet on BBC2 that has Tennant and Patrick Stewart in the same company.)

Congratulations on making it past another darkest night of the year - I hope that your ceremonies of warmth, light, and seasonal change were all wonderful.

In the gift-giving department, this should seem obvious, but giving gifts that imply someone needs self-improvement, without them requesting those kinds of gifts... well, let's just say it's a bad idea.

A reminder to parents before we begin - please have you child vaccinated. Things like mumps should not be having outbreaks at all, but they will be more likely to, the more people listen to wild claims about vaccination.

Internationally, The Holy See has declared copyright on the Pope, the Papal Seal, and other Pontiff-related phrases. We'll see how well that works out for them.

Much more cruel than this, attempting to revenge himself on his wife, a man drugged and then stuck needles into their two year old son, several times a week. There was also the four year old, beer in hand, who was taking presents from the neighbors and the fetus under the Christmas tree. It's a weird season, the winter. And just because someone is in prison doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to complain about inhumane conditions. The NYT Editorial board pushes for removal of a requirement that says physical injury has to happen for prisoners to be able to bring suit about their condition.

Iraq accuses Iran of invading and occupying an Iraqi oil well right near the disputed border between the two nations. Oh, look, tensions rising. If this were the previous administrator, I would wonder whether that wasn't the opening he would need to invade Iran. It being the current administrator, however, I don't know whether that will be his conclusion.

Following on an earlier story, the sign stolen from the Auschwitz camp has been found, restored, and will be a bit more secure the next time someone wants to try and take it off. According to reports, the suspects are four or five men who evaded the current security set up and cut the sign between the words to dismantle it and carry it off. There are no political leanings thought to be involved in the theft.

Last out, slightly over 50% of the UK self-identifies as Christian, continuing on a 25-year downward trend for that particular monotheism. Most of the population leaving that zone still consider themselves religious/spiritual but do not identify with one specific faith or philosophy. Perhaps this is why the Century of the Fruitbat marches on, with Mexico City joining the list of places where homosexuals can be married and adopt children.

Domestically, the President is trying to positively spin the health care bill and non-bindnig climate change accord in the face of opposition from both left and right about the bill's effectiveness and the accord's non-bindingness. Got to boost the numbers somehow, because they sure aren't improving. (It's like the President enjoys his Rock and a Hard Place position, where he gets assailed for not compromising enough with the opposition tht doesn't like him and assailed for not leaving the opposition in the dust because they won't negotiate in good faith.) Considering what's coming out of what Mr. Reid gave away to achieve the consensus needed to overcome filibusters and the other Democratic senators, the President is probably trying to make a pile of dung look and smell like a dozen pleasant flowers. The whole thing can really be looked at logically if you take the premise that politicians are looking out for corporate interests instead of yours, because they have to court those corporations for the donations they'll need to be re-elected, as true and work from there. At that point, it no longer is a shock that we're getting what we're getting.

a teenager in Wisconsin has been required to pass any potential heterosexual dates past his probation officer for three years after fleeing the state with a young woman. As far as we know, any homosexual dates will not have to go through the officer.

In another story involving a policeman with no apparent sense of humor, after his hummer was pelted by snowballs, a detective drew his gun and got out of the vehicle, threatening the flash mob of revelers.

And one involving orientation, a state Senator for South Dakota threatened to pull funding for the Rapid City school district if they passed a policy that would add the words "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the list of things the school will not discriminate against students or staff for. The board eventually decided to add sexual orientation, but not gender identity. Still, Gordon Howie, one of the worst persons in the world, for that kind of threat, regardless of what the board was discussing.

Last out, Seattle's new mayor is apparently in favor of legalization and taxation of marijuana. Too bad there are all those pesky federal policies that will make it more difficult for him to achieve his ends.

In technology, what kind of government would we have where most of it was truly on the record, recorded by citizens, either with intent to flatter or to demonize, uploaded and available on YouTube for all to see?

Furthermore, some flap over whether $19,000 USD is too much to pay someone to develop a website and keep it content-updated for a school year, with the response resembling the response to what people say about librarians having advanced degrees. We think the 19,000 was a bargain, especially if the school district is very active in what it does.

Additionally, Yelp walks on the Google deal, HP heads to the drawing board after one of their face-tracking cameras doesn't recognize darker-skinned faces, a research review indicating that the categories of visual learner, auditory learner, and the like are not borne out by the results, meaning, well, back to the blackboard on that, and some suggestions on what kind of propulsion could replace chemical rockets for interstellar travel.

Last out, Lingt, which aims to make learning a new language like playing a game, complete with achievements and tailoring the difficulty level so that the words that give you the most trouble show up more often than those you know. This, if it pulls throuh on the promise, will be AWESOME.

Opinion time, where Mr. Harsanyi accuses he President of inventing unanimous consent and consensus where there is none to try and get his bills passed. Mr. Harsanyi also has disparaging words for those bills, like the "impressive impotence" of the first stimulus bill and his assertion that the health care bill is about insuring the uninsured and getting the federal government to be able to control health insurance markets (first assertion right, second way wrong...), but his point of the habit of creating a situation where "everyone knows" something must be done and will be good is both valid and disturbing...and not just President Obama's, either. Why is it that we need to invent the idea that everyone is going along with it, other than to present the idea of invicibility and inevitability to the opposition?

...oh. Well, here's an example of why we'd need it - the Obama administration and the Supreme Court have firmly stood with their predecessors, letting stand a lower court ruling that declared "suspected enemy combatant" being held outside the United States are unpersons and entitled to no rights or protections other than that which the law will deign to grant them. A ruling that can just as easily be turned on those who are citizens of the United States. This could be the worst of all worlds - Huxley is right, but Orwell is accurate.

And last for tonight, because our profession appreciates and understands many of the jokes, stereotyping readers by their favorite authors, hitting the powerhouses, like Shakespeare, and the other powerhouses, like Rowing and Meyer, and the horde of authors, middling and famous, in between.

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	User:	ryanestrada
	Date:	2009-12-23 00:34
	Subject:	Donner!
	Security:	Public

	User:	theferrett
	Date:	2009-12-22 10:16
	Subject:	Thread Overload
	Security:	Public

I've seen a very cool Christmas idea going around a few places - namely, compliment threads. You leave someone's name in the thread, and the idea is to give them compliments to make their day better.

I haven't linked to any of them because I don't know the people making them - I know, it's completely anti-season, but I'm shy about linking to a friend-frenzy originated by strangers - but shadowwolf13 has started her own. She's got a very nice listing of all the people mentioned thus far (though I dunno how long she'll be able to keep that up), and I figured I'd add mine.

My thread's for my wife zoethe, of course: here it is. If you have nice things to say about Gini, go nuts.

	User:	theferrett
	Date:	2009-12-22 09:27
	Subject:	The Weird Part: Simpsons Reflecting Life
	Security:	Public

In the beginning, The Simpsons had two store owners: Apu and Comic Book Guy. Apu would sell anything at the Kwik-E-Mart to make a buck, and Comic Book Guy was an overblown tyrant who'd sell any collectible to make a buck.

Thing was, as time went by, people started to feel guilty about Apu. As an immigrant from India, you could tell that they were a little uncomfortable mocking the American dream so much - here was the guy who came from another land to open up his own shop! Isn't that worthy of being more than just a bit gag?

So they started asking a vital question: "Is there anything else about this guy we should know?" And as it turned out, yes. They started writing episodes that opened up his character - he wasn't just a ripoff artist, but a psychotically hard worker! And a devout Hindu! And proud of America! And a vegan! And a Ph.D. in Computer Science! And now Apu has a wife and too many children, and his relationship has been the focus of more than a few episodes.

They kept deepening who Apu was until he had depth. He's always got his roots in that stereotype of the Indian store-owner, but they've kept adding to him until he's a character in his own right. Because, I suspect, it felt unfair just to leave him stranded as nothing but a stereotype.

Comic Book Guy got no such save.

Comic Book Guy's been the focus of a handful of episodes, but the same could be said of almost any Simpsons character - after 400+ episodes, they're desperate for new plots. But his central character hasn't changed: desperate for women, a blowhard, lives in a basement, has no social life. And, I'd argue, it's because the Simpsons writers (and people in general) feel that the guy at the heart of the Comic Book Guy stereotype largely deserves his fate.

And I can't deny that. I've known too many Comic Book Guys, with their shops and lousy business practices and their focus on making themselves the king of their local nerd cabals rather than running a good business, and I'm pretty much in agreement that they're all just worthy of being mocked relentlessly. Apu got a bad break, and should have been fleshed out. Comic Book Guy? Well, he chose that path. He deserves nothing but mockery.

I just find it interesting that one stereotype got explored until he was a fully-realized character on his own, and the other remains a walk-on gag to say, "Worst. X. Ever."

(Full disclosure: my daughters say that I sound like Comic Book Guy, so feel free to read this entire rant in Comic Book Guy's voice. It's funnier that way.)

	User:	troutman
	Date:	2009-12-22 02:01
	Subject:	Twittin'
	Security:	Public

• 23:09 Yay, I'm in Green Valley with the Scrubbo Clan, all of whom are tres awesome. Wish I could party with 'em for more than just the one day.

	User:	shortpacked
	Date:	2009-12-21 23:33
	Subject:	It's Indiana and stuff.
	Security:	Public

Shortpacked!: Cue the pan flute.

Hey, folks!  I'm in Westville, Indiana, now.  I don't have a substantial blog post for you at the moment, but thought I'd be nice and throw up a link to tonight's strip.  I got my Ghostbusters Winston in a box as we were running out the door, so I'll get a photo of him at some point.

He's safe, for now.  I didn't bring my punching Batman.  Though I did bring Bludgeon...

Okay, there's something for today's blog. We were trying to find my hamster Youtube videos on my dad's television, and a search for "Shortpacked!" turned up this awesome LEGO Ultra Car by this awesome dude. I remember his first pass, but not this second pass! The interchangeable expressions and the working arms... that is just way too cool.

Oh em eff jee.

	User:	ryanestrada
	Date:	2009-12-22 13:11
	Subject:	The Bad Garfield Party continues!
	Security:	Public

	User:	ampersand
	Date:	2009-12-21 18:37
	Subject:	by request, the Black Socks song
	Security:	Public

Black socks, they never get dirty!
The longer you wear them, the stronger they get!
Some-times I think I should launder them;
Something keeps telling me -
Don't wash them yet, not yet, not yet!