Good things after too much haggis

My Grandma is staying, and while she's here we eat our main meal in the middle of the day, usually literally so, at noon.  I find this a trial.  For some reason the afternoon seems a bit more depressing after an octogenarian-appropriate meal, like steak and kidney pudding, or eggs and bacon, or, today, haggis, neeps, and chattered tatties, which my parents used to eat a lot when they were students in Scotland. 

Anyway I have felt moved to list some of the good things in this generally depressing world, in which you stop paying attention for a few days and suddenly we're bombing the Middle East again:
1.  True Blood.  I've got a bit addicted to this rather silly but dramatic Deep South vampire saga.  I like the way that each episode starts the same way the previous one ended, usually with someone screaming.  It's about a telepath called Sookie Stackhouse (the little girl from the Piano but grown up now and working in 18-rated drama) who's a waitress in a Lousiana diner.  When a vampire called Bill walks in she falls for him because she can't hear what he's thinking, but it's not a popular move among the population at large, who are anti-vampire.  There's a fantastic scene where she runs to him at dusk through a graveyard, wearing a big floaty white nightdress, to have emotionally meaningful sex in front of the fireplace at his Civil-War-era house.  I blame Mal from Firefly for the recent increase in men on TV wearing high-waisted button-fly trousers.

2.  Neal Stephenson has a new book out in the autumn.  That's a good thing.

3.  It's William Shatner's 80th birthday!  Here he is all covered in Tribbles.  Watch him give the camera a little bit of Shatner love at about 0:41


4.  You can do what you want with this man's textbook on Data Communications as long as you agree to be a nice person.  I think that's a pretty high price.

5.  Amazon.com now has an Android App store, and there is some speculation that they might launch a tablet.  That's interesting, at least.  And anything that keeps Apple down a bit is good.