1. The new US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking feedback on how to make mortgage disclosure forms more understandable. If you have a few minutes, go and vote for the alternative you find easiest to understand.

2. I am seriously amused that Patrick Stump’s song This City, now free on iTunes, includes a lyric using the word “gentrification.”
( Civil War, understanding comics, economics and economic collapse, funky numbers )

Note from the past week: Guys, I appreciate that you come to DC to march and are unfamiliar with the Metro. But even if you were home at the mall, it would still be rude to stand at the top of the escalator. Thank you!

Dessa, A Badly Broken Code: Much love for this album. “And it’s just not true that I’m a man-eater; all the same, we should probably go dutch.” Cheaper on Amazon than on iTunes for the whole album.
( cheap thrills, Joseph Priestley, regulation and the internet )

1. Further on the meat thermometer injury: when told about it the next morning, my 5-year-old son asked, “were you hot?” thus making the same joke his father had right after I stabbed myself. Nice to know the bloodline is running true, I guess.

2. Who else is watching Tower Prep? After last night’s episode, enjoyment has graduated into love. Former XF staff = cool visuals (though evident risk of incoherence in mythology already pending); I was genuinely creeped out. Also, gotta respect a show that’s willing to base an episode on the Odyssey.

3. I am, right now, incredibly infatuated with M.I.A.’s XXXO. It’s something about the surprise of going from “you want me” to the turnaround of “you want me [to] be somebody who I’m really not,” delivered in a way more aggressive than sad about that. I even like the director reference—“I could be the actress, you’d be Tarantino”—because even though the “actress” is generic, it’s pretty much the opposite of, say, a Hitchcock reference, given what Tarantino’s leading ladies are like.

4. The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Thesis Defense: I loved it!

5. Make a vid, if you want, for Akon’s No Labels theme song: I am not a supporter of the organization, but I can’t help wanting to see what a vidder would do anyway.

( Appropriation art, getting copyright permission, and a bad GRRM book )

I am, it turns out, totally predictable: ( one more episode of Dark Angel to go )

( L.J. Smith, Pratchett, images and video )

Can’t reign forever: Via crypto, Just a Band: Really good electronic-type music; you can get Ha-He for free and Usinibore is just 99 cents at iTunes, along with other songs!

( zombie YA, Harlan Coben, and Hernando de Soto on property rights )

1. My own website won’t recognize my login! This makes me worry. The CMS is nice in many ways, but I am starting to realize how vulnerable I am now that I rely on something beyond the hand-coded html I can make myself.

2. I’ve been using this free file-hosting service Dropbox, and I think it’s great for document management—I keep all my works in progress, as well as other stuff including teaching materials, in my Dropbox folder. That means I can access them on all my computers and on my iPhone and have changes automatically updated across all my devices. It’s good for joint writing projects for the same reason. You get 2 gigs free, [ETA: I've maxed out on free space, so I'm not asking anyone else to sign up via me any more.  I still recommend the service though]. I’ve been using the service for nearly a year, I’m highly satisfied, and I only get email from them when I’m near to filling my space. So anyone interested in trying the service/helping a girl out, I encourage you to check it out.

3. I’m also on Google Wave now, though I still don’t know what it’s for. I’m rivkat and if you want an invite or if you want to connect there, let me know!

4 etc. Realms of Fantasy has made its Feb. 2010 issue available as a free download on its website. Aside from the skeevy naked-girl art from Frank Wu, I found the stories largely entertaining; Harlan Ellison, Leah Bobet, Euan Harvey, Aliette de Bodard, and Ann Leckie are the authors represented.

( Middleman, Wild Cards, original slash, urban fantasy )

Raising children: 2.0 took two pairs of boxer shorts, mushed them together, and insisted they were a baby. But she also maintained that she was the daddy and that the baby had two daddies, so perhaps I haven’t failed as a parent.

( mortgages, discounting, food, suburban history )

I’m really enjoying Better Off Ted. Not too many triggers of my embarrassment squick, and some really funny lines. Ted on his strained relationship with his father: “We’re like oil and—what’s that thing that’s always disappointing oil?” Clever like that. (And, hey, I learned a new word for that: paraprosdokian.)

Miles Fisher: This guy is weird, and I like three of the four songs on his free EP. For one—a cover of the Talking Heads’ This Must Be the Place—he has a music video, also freely downloadable, in which he does a creditable impression of Christian Bale in American Psycho, and the combination of the song with the images of 80s excess and sociopathy produces a deeply disturbing fanwork.

( parody, Alices in Wonderland, and music video )