I'ts back, baby! Signe's already a fan - did anyone else here pick strawberries at my grandparents' place in the 80's/early 90's?

There is a picture on there of my cousin picking with her daughter. I so want to be home right now....

I made a cheese souffle tonight. Oh shit! I'm a badass in the kitchen.

So we were watching a Nova on PBS the other day about music and the brain, and they showed a lady with amusia. When she described how she experiences music, it clicked. Hey, that's me. So I took an internet test, and sure enough (because the interwebs are never wrong) I have amusia. I'm ok with two tunes side-by-side for comparison, but if I'm just listening to a tune I won't know if it's off-key. I also have trouble with rhythm. When I tell Justin to turn off his music because that tone causes me pain, that's what's going on. Now I have an answer when people ask me incredulously "Can't you hear that?". Nope, amusia. I'm also guessing that amusia has a genetic component, as I have several ancestors that were deaf and I'm a musical genius in comparison to my grandmother and mother.

According to Wikipedia, amusia is a learning disability. I'm not sure I agree, since it doesn't affect my life in any meaningful way. So I don't dance or sing. So what? Maybe it seems like a disability to the people who dropped out of the womb playing classical piano. But I don't know the difference, so the only way in which I am inconvenienced* by amusia is when people natter on and on about their band/instrument/composition/music theory and I have no idea what they're talking about. But it is a fantastic excuse to never attend the concert or listen to the composition of an acquaintance ever again. I'd rather strangle myself with my own intestines than listen to your CD not because I'm an asshole, but because I'm disabled. Win.

*I probably inconvenience other people because I typically prefer silence to music and when I do listen to music it's pretty much the same few songs over and over and over again.

This is a fantastic article about a study which indicates the children of lesbians are better off than the children of heterosexual couples. This study was published in the journal Pediatrics in case you're interested in looking it up on pubmed.

Anyway, the reason this study is important is because all the temper tantrums that conservatives have thrown over gay people raising kids has been for naught. It makes me cackle with glee that the proponents of the traditional patriarchal family structure and gender roles have to eat their words.

Actually, I doubt this study will change the minds of conservatives at all. It's far more likely they will throw a screaming bitch fit about how persecuted they are by evil academics, ignore any evidence they don't like, and continue in the belief that society should reflect their own personal fetishes and sexual hang-ups.

Holy Christ on a fucking cracker, the Twilight series is the worst thing ever. I know that in the past I have ragged on literary snobs because of my love of genre lit, but this Twilight schlock is simply indefensible. Even my taste in fiction is not this piss poor. The main character is a Mary Sue. She is literally nothing more than an empty shell into which the reader is supposed to insert herself. And all the vampires having their own unique power? That's the hat technique. The author can't be bothered to actually create compelling characters, so instead she gives each character a different hat. It's horrible, lazy writing. Ok, so I only watched the movies. And even copious amounts of alcohol and the MST3K treatment didn't make it better.

And why do the immortal undead with super powers repeat high school over and over and over and over? And American Indian wifebeating werewolves. Really? Really?