Yellow gingham on the bed, remember?

Birthday went well. Excepting the 4-5 drunkdials I made, which I guess you might consider as not going well if you consider I was missing all kinds of people's numbers from my semi-new phone. The good news is, though, that it wasn't actually a party, and my actual party is on the 14th, so that is plenty of time to get more people's numbers.

Thanks to Tumblr, I became totally obsessed today with Akinator, which is one of those 20-questions algorithms that uses users' answers to gather data and refine itself, so naturally I went crazy testing the damn thing. Here are some of the results:

Roy Mustang: 18 questions
Jonathan Strange: 19 questions
Scout: 23 questions
Locke Lamora: 25 questions
Dolores Haze: 18 questions
Maes Hughes: 18 questions
Hisoka Kurosaki: 32 questions (after first guessing "Pikachu")
Dr. Frank-N-Furter: 58 questions (after "Andy (Toy Story)," "Thomas Leroy (Black Swan)," and "is your character a sex maniac")
Sam Axe: 20 questions
Brienne of Tarth: 18 questions
Guybrush Threepwood: 27 questions (after "Qwop")
Mordecai Heller: Gave up (after "Niels," "Nostalgia Critic," "Spades Slick," "Jordan Chase")
The Master: 16 questions (winner!)
Maru: 24 questions

~

We first reported this rumored casting a few weeks ago, but now it is official: Gemma Whelan has been cast to play Yara Greyjoy in season two of Game of Thrones. Yara was named Asha in the books, but has had her name changed in the show so as not to confuses audiences with the character Osha.

Oh, sure, don't change Osha or anything, change POV character Asha Greyjoy instead. I mean, Yara Greyjoy. Yara. Yarrrrrrrra.

Meanwhile, they went and cast a black guy as Xaro Xhoan Daxos the Qartheen, because it's not like ethnicities or consistency matter if the characters are non-European, and this definitely could not bode ill considering GoT's track record with the Dothraki.

As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma: so write ‘a, b and c’ not ‘a, b, and c’. But when a comma would assist in the meaning of the sentence or helps to resolve ambiguity, it can be used – especially where one of the items in the list is already joined by ‘and’:

They had a choice between croissants, bacon and eggs, and muesli.

There are some cases where the comma is clearly obligatory:

The bishops of Canterbury, Oxford, Bath and Wells, and Salisbury.

I've never been so vindicated. I am practically the only Oxford comma opponent I know. Lo siento, Henry Higgins, the damned thing is antiquated for general use and in no way phonetically represents the flow of the spoken word!