Well, I saw the bag lady this morning seeking shelter from the rain under the BK awning. Either she, or a well-made duplicate created to confuse and console me.

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EN is going to start as tech next Wednesday, and the Sunday after that. I foresee a week or tow of babysitting from home, just in case, and then I’ll have every other weekend off.

Had a good time talking to him about Earthdawn, Magic cards and Etc.

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Dear diary, you make me sick – Article

Keeping a diary is bad for your health, say UK psychologists. They found that regular diarists were more likely than non-diarists to suffer from headaches, sleeplessness, digestive problems and social awkwardness.

Their finding challenges assumptions that people find it easier to get over a traumatic event if they write about it.

“We expected diary keepers to have some benefit, or be the same, but they were the worst off,” says Elaine Duncan of the Glasgow Caledonian University. “In fact, you’re probably much better off if you don’t write anything at all,” she adds.

The study, carried out with David Sheffield of Staffordshire University, was presented on Wednesday at a meeting of the British Psychological Society in Edinburgh.

Cathartic process

The pair studied 94 regular diarists and compared their health with that of 41 non-diarists. The subjects, all students at Staffordshire University, answered questions about their diary-keeping habits, and filled in a standard health questionnaire.

“We decided to test the idea that writing is cathartic,” says Duncan. She claims that her study is the first to investigate subjects who write of their own free will. In most other studies, volunteers are actually asked to write about traumatic experiences in a systematic way.

The researchers asked the diarists recruited to say how often they made entries and for how long they had kept diaries. They were also asked if they had written about anything traumatic.

Statistically, the diarists scored much worse on health measures than the non-diarists. And worst affected of all were those who had written about trauma. “They were most susceptible to headaches and the like,” says Duncan.

Ruminative cycle

Although she does not have proof, Duncan speculates that diarists buck the usual trend because instead of a single, cathartic outpouring to offload trauma, diarists continually churn over their misfortunes and so never get over them. “It’s probably better not to get caught in a ruminative, repetitive cycle,” she says.

But she acknowledges that her experiment could not demonstrate which came first – the diary writing or the health problems.

In a forthcoming experiment, she hopes to explore this by asking volunteers new to diary writing to report exclusively positive or negative things, to see if the health of the two groups diverges.

Maybe people who keep journals are just bigger melodramatic whiney-babies… or more likely to remember little nit-noids that other people blow off? I suspect that a group of 135 people doesn’t create an effective control group, especially where there were more than twice as many diarists than non-diarists. (94:41 respectively) I wonder how linkified this news article will be throughout the blogosphere?

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Hm. He doesn’t seem that fierce. Would it help if I told you he destroyed 90% of the buildings in Grenada, and was heading right for us? It’s not every Ogre that can weave his armpit hair into a loincloth, either.

He was looking extra-scary yesterday, set on a course right up the middle of the state, but now it seems he’s heading back to the gulf.

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More nifty shots of WoW – Willow watching the moonrise, and in Bear-form. Dig the big-goofy elfy-ears on the bear! May as well laugh a bit, right before it tears out your Islets of Langerhans. A rustic little footbridge leads to the Vineyards, and a really pretty temple of the moon. Thankies to Whims for all the spiffy shots!

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George Bush singing Sunday, Bloody Sunday.… Sampling. ah, it amuses me.

See also, GWB – “Because He Says So”

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The Google Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy Cliches

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Revised my favicon to be more pawlike. (What’s a Favicon?)

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Dance, Raja, Dance!, I may snag that and host it at my site. (see also the Rastafari Babylon System Jam Machine) I’m a sucker for digital audio loops, it seems.

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Police: Puppy Shot Man Trying To Kill Dogs (PENSACOLA, Fla. — A man who was trying to shoot seven puppies was shot himself when one of the dogs made the .38-caliber revolver discharge, deputies said.)

…and they’re so cute!

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There’s a lot of damage around Kennedy Space Center which might delay the space shuttle’s return to space. Florida Today runs a some KSC storm shots. (via)

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Someday, when I die, I want all of my useful organs to be donated to medicine, and I’d like the rest of my cadaverous husk turned to ash or mulch.

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A German hotlinked to an old palm doodle I drew of Horse shoe/Elf shoe.

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Archive –

1 year ago – RPC issue, Badger badger, baboon nose suitcase, RIAA sues a 12 year old, RI’s birthday, new opus strip.

2 years ago – Newt Play, vote day, traded some magic cards for heroclix/mage knight, lem-doodles, wobbly

3 years ago – got a lovely poem, found old family letters, cadmean victory, stayed home, assorted news, Anne Heche’s wacky interview, ‘mat event, observations

4 years ago – embarrassing fight club reference, everway, Chat ‘toon review