Today I received this in my inbox:

From: dae [at] 0451 [dot] com
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2005 4:33 AM

> Good day, commander

It's still in my inbox, because I can't decide if it's spam or the coolest thing I've received all week. Possibly, of course, it's both. I obviously had to share this with the world. Also, this is a Subtle and Devious way of seeing if this is actually a piece of coolth delivered by someone I know who reads this thing.

Don't all speak at once.

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In the spirit of random, coolth and the goodwill unto men that it generates, have a damn good Christmas, all y'all. I'm winging my way up to Brisbane, as I do every year, to partake of family shenanigans. This year, I am reminded anew of the passage of time and the fact that we're all growing old by the fact that my baby cousin (long since a foot and more taller than me) has just been accepted into graduate medicine. OLD! SO OLD!

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In other important updates to the State Of Dee - we have a television.

I'll give you a moment to process that. We. Have. A. Television.

I haven't had a television in eight years now. It had become something of a point of pride that I hadn't seen anything after first-season Buffy. That I had only ever seen half an hour of reality TV in my life. And that I hadn't sat through an ad-break in many blissful years.

All undone in a moment. Well, a succession of minutes during which there was swearing about the bloody thing not fitting through the door. We've got a fairly large thing. It's not, I suppose, strictly speaking a television yet because we haven't got the right cable to plug in the aerial, so it's just a large, hulking, reflective thing clogging up the living room. But it's there.

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But anyway. MERRY CHRISTMAS.