Friday notes

1. Bill Crider reports that Alice Borchardt has passed away. I was never a huge fan of her works (although I found her to much more talented than her sister), but I know that others are, and all indications are that she was also a nice person.

2. Had dinner at Fire+Ice Last night (for zlana's birthday). I'm still full (not that this prevented me from having breakfast). I consumed mass quantities of squid. And bacon. And other good stuff.

3. LOLCats are getting mainstream attention! It's only a matter of time before they appear on Ally McBeal next to the dancing baby. Or whatever Single Female Lawyer show is on the air these days.

4. New York Magazine's awesome Vulture blog analyzes Times critic A.O. Scott's history of slipping Simpsons references into his reviews.

5. Deion Sanders defends Michael Vick. Poorly. Could someone let Deion's employers know that his fifteen minutes expired a long time ago?

6. Um. Five versions of Blade Runner? WTF?

7. No, seriously. Why the fuck do we need five versions?

8. Joe Smith got sent down to the minors. :-( Not that he doesn't have room for improvement, but he's hardly as much of a burden on the team as Scott Schoeneweis.

9. The Linksys brand name will soon be dead.

10. So, Pat Tillman wasn't just killed by friendly fire. He was killed by friendly fire at close range with no active combatants around. Which, you know, might explain the cover-up, since it's getting harder and harder to call this an accident.

Blogathon is tomorrow!

Tomorrow, my wife will spend 24 hours blogging for The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. She just wrote a wonderful post about why she supports them and will be working as a speaker for them starting this fall.

You can go directly from that post to sponsoring her for Blogathon. You can also read more about 'song's blogging efforts, as well as see links to dozens of other folks blogging (including zarhooie, slipjig, rafaela, mnfiddledragon, lordandrei, boutell, [Bad username or site: <lj user= @ livejournal.com]">, bettybaker, blitheandbonny, aurora_lamour, and the awesome irana) here

Blogathon involves a log of folks spending 24 hours supporting some amazing causes. Sponsoring them -- even for $5 or $10 -- provides a huge boost to these organizations, many of which get by on very limited budgets and lots of volunteerism.

And if you can't afford to sponsor (or even if you can), you can always help out by A) spreading the word, and B) reading and cheering on the bloggers. By late Saturday night, these folks will be wiped out, and your encouragement and the knowledge of the good they're doing (along with caffeine) is what'll get them through the final stretch.