Tracy Empathy

I just started reading ME's next-to-most-recent book, Wertham Was Right, a collection of essays on various topics, many comic-book related and all hilarious. The first essay in the book is about a woman named Tracy who once worked for him. One of her tasks was to file his comic books. Anyone who thinks comics are for kids should take one look at the numbering systems on comics. No medium intended for children would randomly insert Issue #0 into the 500's, and at equally random intervals restart the numbering on a title so that Spiderman #1 is several entirely different comics.

Reading about Tracy's troubles with filing ME's comics called to mind the first time I tried to organize Elie's comic book collection. At the time, we had been together for just a couple months, and he was at work one night when I got the brilliant idea to surprise him by organizing his comic book collection. So that seemed like a good idea at the time. At the time, it was organized archaeologically in a green Rubbermaid about the size of a bathtub, back when it would fit in something the size of a bathtub. I figured you take the Batman comics and go 1-whatever, then move on to the Superman comics and stack them 1-whatever, and so on. Ah, silly, silly, naive me. That was right about the time I found out that there are something like 400 Batman series and no two comics in that entire tub had consecutive issue numbers. Several hours later, I surrendered. Organizing by title turned out to be prohibitively difficult, so I gave up and decided to just sort them out by superhero.

That would have worked, too, if it weren't for the damn crossovers. I wasted more energy trying to decide if Superman meets Wonder Woman should go in the Superman stack or the Wonder Woman stack. To top it all off, later I found out that Azrael, Agent of the Bat is sort of part of Batman. Yup, just try organizing even a small comic book collection and see if you still think these are meant for kids. Trust me, the kids have given up on following comics and are hacking your V-chip. It's easier.

Breaking In

Every so often, AOL Organizing offers nifty collections hints to help me organize my life, brought to me by Real Simple magazine. Today, they offered me hints for, and I quote, "How to break in" the following items, in this order:
1. Husband
2. Puppy
3. Blue jeans
4. Leather sandals
5. Knives
6. Butcher block
7. Wine
8. New house
9. Hotel room

I'd like to register my offense at item #1, and not just because it implies that husbands need more "breaking in" than wives. Having done it before, I'll admit that merging two households can be a bit of an undertaking, what with getting used to both people's little idiosyncrasies and resolving that ever-important question of crunchy or creamy (my advice: "his" and "hers" Skippy), but its on an entirely different level than keeping your steak knives sharp. Joining lives is an adjustment to be made by both sides. If you're looking for someone to fit around your every curve like a perfect pair of jeans, but a pair of Levis.

How's this for Irony?

A cruise ship carrying 122 ecotourists ran aground off Alaska, spilling 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel and some wastewater. The current dissipated the fuel and wastewater before the spill could be contained and cleaned. I guess ecotourism isn't as ecologically-friendly as it used to be.

Here's the story from CNN.

Still More Con Reporting: The Grooism

And now for my new Most Embarassing Convention Moment:

While walking the con floor Sunday, I glanced over to my right just in time to see something fall out of the backpack of a person waiting in a line.  Trying to be helpful, I picked the trinket up, tapped the shoulder under the long hair, and as politely as possible said, “Miss, I think you dropped this.”

It was a guy.

Mortification would be an understatement.  I wanted nothing more than to have the earth open up under my feet and swallow me whole right there in the middle of the San Diego Convention Center.  All the earthquakes in southern California, and never one when you need it.  At least the gentleman was very nice about my faux pas and acknowledged that it’s an honest mistake looking at him from the back. 

Milestone

According to my post counter, this is Post #400.  Thanks for tuning in to my random thoughts and what I hope is insightful commentary.  Here's to another 400!

Well, Duh!

As the clock radio woke me up to NPR this morning, the person reading the news said that John Edwards' speech to the Democratic Convention last night focused on undecided voters because they're going to decide the outcome of the election.  Ya don't say?  When the decided voters are pretty much split down the middle, that kind of has to be the case.

More Con Reporting: The Peanuts Incident

On Sunday, I happened across the Peanuts booth while Jeannie Schulz was signing.  She does the appearances now, and graciously gave me a moment of her time even though I did not have anything for her to sign.  At the various comic cons I’ve been to, I’ve met quite a few famous people, but I’ve never been choked up talking to any of them like I was with Mrs. Schulz—then again, none of them have been representatives of childhood institutions.  I told her about how, when I was about 5-7 years old give or take, my big sister used to read some of the Peanuts strips to me because, though I could read most of the funny pages, whenever Spike made an appearance in Peanuts, Spike wrote in cursive.  She looked shocked.  Charles Schulz drew Peanuts for 50 years, and until just that moment, no one realized that little kids don’t know how to read cursive.  She seemed so horrified.  I shouldn’t have said anything.

Girly Stuff Alert

I'm not sure, but I think I may now be legally bound to "be the next Arthur C. Clarke," having declared that intention to my gynecologist while I was wearing some sort of cocktail napkin.  I must say that it is rather odd to have a casual conversation about the latest Harry Potter book during a pelvic exam.  You know, on the day they send all the boys out of the classroom, the teacher really ought to cover how to make appropriate small talk after the gynecologist breaks out the speculum.

Con Report: ME's Panels

Thursday, we had the Sergio and Mark Show, an annual panel given by the entire creative team of the Groo comic books.  Groo holds the distinction of being one of the (if not the) longest running comic series with the same creative team.  For 20 years, Sergio Aragones, Mark Evanier, Stan Sakai, and Tom Luth have put out Groo together.  They’ve had 4 publishers in those 20 years and go through editors faster than I go through boxes of Q-Tips, but have only had one change in the creative team:  Tom Luth replaced the colorist after the first issue.  (Gary, chime in if I got any of that wrong).  This year at the Groo Panel, they announced three upcoming Groo projects.  In addition to the 12-issue miniseries, they’ve finally consented to a crossover.  Get ready for Groo Meets Conan and Groo Meets Tarzan.

Saturday was the huge panel day, partly because that was the day of all the best panels, and partly because Saturday is the day with the biggest attendance, so it behooves one to stay off the floor if there is anything else one wants to see. 

After a quick stop in the Stargate SG-1 panel, I headed over to Quick Draw!  Cartoon Improv, which lived up to its reputation as a not-to-be missed panel.  We missed the unveiling of the title of the new Star Wars movie (Revenge of the Sith), but then again, the people unveiling the new title missed a hilarious panel of improvisational cartooning.  ME moderated, throwing out ideas to three of the quickest pens in the business:  Sergio Aragones, Scott Shaw! and Jeff Smith (author and artist of Bone, not the Frugal Gourmet).  If you’d ever wondered what Pictionary would be like with professional comic book artists, this is the place to go.  Also, we got a hilarious look at The Hulk’s new career as a proctologist, taxidermist, and tax attorney.  My favorite, though, was when they played “What do you get when you cross…”  To Sergio, they threw the prompt “What do you get when you cross a rhino with a zebra?”  Sergio drew a rhino, and you could almost feel the disappointment in the packed hall as everyone thought, “He’s just going to put stripes on a rhino.  What’s the fun in that?”  Then Sergio drew a second rhino, looking at the first, and this rhino looked as pissed off as a cartoon rhino can.  In front of the second rhino, he drew a third, smaller, baby rhino.  This rhino had stripes.  But that was not the end of it all.  Bushes sprouted in the background, and hiding in the bushes was a very nonchalant looking zebra.  So what do you get when you cross a rhino with a zebra?  A pissed off daddy rhino!  I must emphasize that this whole scene fell off his pen in probably under 2 minutes.  This is why they call it Quick Draw.  Another fun moment came as ME asked Jeff Smith to draw his character, Bone.  Jeff Smith just put out a 1,300-page collection of all the Bone comics, plus he’s drawn innumerable unpublished Bone drawings and sketches for fans, so drawing Bone wouldn’t be too challenging for him.  He tossed off a casual sketch of the character sitting on a log with a flower.  Then out came the blindfold!  Following the blindfold, the challenge to reproduce the previous sketch.  The consensus among the hall was that we couldn’t draw half as well with our eyes open as Jeff Smith did blindfolded.

That was just Panel 1.  Panel 2 was a group panel by some of the top cartoon voices in the business today, with a nod to the star of Panel 4, June Foray (the woman about whom legendary animator Chuck Jones once said, “No, you’ve got it wrong.  June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc.  Mel Blanc is the male June Foray.”).  June Foray was sitting right in front of us for much of the panel, though she did get up partway through, leaving the panelists gesturing to a short Asian man every time they mentioned June Foray for the remainder of the hour and a half.

I leave you with a word from Panel 3, the Ray Bradbury hour.  Every morning, the universe has decided to give you another day to live.  Prove yourself worthy.

Con Report: Preview Night

After checking into our hotel, (which was neither near the convention center nor convenient to the San Diego trolley system as the website suggested, but from what I hear, we had it better than a lot of people) we headed over to the convention center for Preview Night.  Preview Night is a 3-hour block given over to pre-registered con attendees.  We could get the lay of the land, check out a lot of the booths without the huge crowds that gathered later, and (most importantly) start collecting the primo freebies.  We went right through the registration line, though I understand there were some problems later on in the evening, so we got the entire 3 hour block on the floor.  Man, was that place HUGE.  Huge doesn’t even begin to describe it.  The front of the convention center occupies I’m guessing about 3-4 city blocks, and it was full to overflowing wall-to-wall with exhibitors, distributors, artists, and vendors—and that was just the first floor!  The second floor (or possibly third, it was a little confusing) had the autograph area, speaker’s rooms (more later on that, including plugs for ME’s panels), art show with Kaytee’s award-winning beadwork, and a few other things we never quite got to.  I only got to the top floor once, for the Robert Heinlein blood drive (see Day 3 for more on that), but that was also fully occupied by things I did not see.  Also at the con were about 6,000 Mrs. Fields cookie stands.  Judging by the snack stands, comic fans subsist on Mrs. Fields cookies, soft pretzels, and shots of Starbuck’s Light Mocha Frappucino (given away free at one of the booths).  At $8 for a deli sandwich, no wonder that free Frappucino shots were a primary source of nourishment for some.

Preview Night also has one other distinct advantage for the con:  it is the least gamey smelling part of the con.  Some people try to save a few bucks on lodging and sleep in their cars, others probably couldn’t find a hotel room this side of Tijuana, and others seem to believe that because there are people walking around dressed as Klingons, the normal standards of hygiene no longer apply.  By some estimates, there were 80,000-plus people there at the peak of the con.  My guess is 60,000 of them bathed.  Particularly by Day 4, it became apparent that some people were considering one or more of the three essential elements of conwear—soap, water, and antiperspirant/deodorant—to be optional equipment.  At least on the first day, even these people are reasonably April fresh.

And Now, a Brief Interlude

Before I get back to the convention reporting, I must explain why my distaste for dentists has been reinforced yet again today.  The root of my dentist issues lies partially in the fact that I find the state of dentistry and dental hygiene to be absolutely barbaric.  Have you ever just looked at the implements your dentist and hygenist uses?  Metal hooks and string (yeah, it sounds better calling it floss, but it's still string).  How many millennia of human evolution and the best we can come up with are pieces of string and metal hooks?  For goodness sakes, we stopped drilling holes in people's heads to release the evil spirits.  Can't we progress beyond Paleolithic dentistry?  And while we're on the subject of cleanings, I'm still waiting for some proponent of Intelligent Design theory of human origins to please explain to me what sort of intelligence designs so many hard-to-reach crannies in the most bacteria- and dirt-laden part of the human anatomy.  I've also never had a hygenist explain how they got into the wonderful field of scraping other people's plaque, but that is another story.

I brush, floss and Waterpik with diluted Listerine daily, so my dental issues cannot be the product of bad in-home oral hygeine.  Still, my dental hygenist will not be happy until one hand is doing nothing but flossing 24 hours a day.  Again, that is not the problem.  I have the kind of teeth that dentists look at and have a "Eureka!" moment, having solved the problem of how to send their kids through graduate school.  Today at the dentist, I found out two very disturbing things.  First, my dentist wants me to have my wisdom teeth removed and to get braces, in spite of the fact that neither my wisdom teeth nor my crooked tooth give me any problem and that I have agreed to the work if any health problems arise.  Second and more distressing, though, I found out that I have 8 composite enamel fillings.  I 'd lost count of the exact number of fillings I have (every dentist I've ever been to has found at least one tooth to drill and fill).  Nonetheless, I am positive that at one point at least two of them were silver.  The hygenist says that the silver fillings must have been in baby teeth, which I am sure is not the case.  My parents seem to think it slipped their minds to tell me my fillings had been replaced.  However it happened, I find it very upsetting that someone did something in my mouth without telling me.  Shouldn't one be aware of what is going on in one's own bodily orifices?

You Call That a Convention?

I watched part of the Democratic National Convention on CNN (or maybe C-SPAN, I was still groggy).  My convention was much more fun.  Political parties should model their conventions after Comic Con. Ours looked so much more fun than theirs.  All they had was people giving speeches and a couple musical numbers.  Just imagine how much more exciting that could be with movie screenings, announcements of the very latest mocie and comic book projects, free books and t-shirts, and a costumed Snoopy walking around.  Hey, we all know who will end up being nominated at the Democratic Convention.  Who saw "Revenge of the Sith" coming?

For those who, for reasons utterly beyond my comprehension, do not yet know, "Revenge of the Sith" is the title of the last Star Wars movie, coming out in May.  They revealed the title at a panel at the San Diego convention.  More on that later.

I'm Back!

Well, I'm back from Comic-Con International in San Diego, the world's biggest comic book convention.  It was positively incredible!  I was awestruck for the first two days before I got a handle on the overwhelming hugeness of it all.  I'll write more in the coming days when I'm not hopped up on motion sickness medicine, but here's a preview of coming attractions:

What happens when you cross a rhino with a zebra.

My newest Most embarrassing Convention Moment.  This one puts to shame the really stupid thing I said to Adam West in the autograph line.

The futility of packing t-shirts

Panel discussions, or why it took me two days to realize that "Revenge of the Sith" is the title of the next Star Wars movie

Posting starts tomorrow on that.  Tonight, I sleep off the Bonine (Bonine is chewable, raspberry flavored motion sickness medicine--far superior to Dramamine).

See You Next Week

I'll be offline for a few days. Check back for new entries early next week. Until then, check out the links at the right. Mr. Grooism has said he intends to start posting once again to the blog he left languish since April (How's that for pressure, Larry?). If you want to read what I would be commenting on if I were online, check out Slate, Salon (subscription required), the New York Times (registration required), Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Satellite of La Mancha

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza ride again. This time, they're satellites Spain is planning to launch in 2010-2015, and the one christened "Don Quixote" is set to smash headlong into an asteroid while Sancho Panza watches to see what happens. It's a test run to see if we can prevent a repeat of the asteroid-induced extinction of the dinosaurs. No one thinks that Don Quixote will actually destroy an asteroid on a collision course with Earth; the point is to nudge it far enough off course to let Earth get the heck out of the way.

Satellite-naming issues aside, at least someone is looking for a way to save the planet from the 1000 or so pieces of space crap that may one day smash into our little corner of habitable space. Here's the link to the Reuters article about the satellites.

We Couldn't Anticipate Feline Complications

Thank you to everyone who has expressed concern over my feline-induced injury. I'm healing nicely, though I must remember that next time I require large-scale bandaging, I must do it in winter. I'm itching like crazy.

Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

Since Sonja was meowing and pawing at my leg with her two declawed paws, picking her up just seemed to be the thing to do. Unfortunately, as soon as all four paws--including the two rear ones that are still armed with claws--cleared the floor, Chessie snuck up and freaked her out. Not a good situation for soft tissues. Elie says that I look like I tried to commit suicide with a bunny. All this less than a week before the comic book convention. I'm going to look like Princess Leia from the hair up, and from the elbows down, I'll look like I got stuck in a Cuisinart.

More on Black Holes...

In the previous entry, it slipped my mind that, in revising his theory on black holes so that information can escape the event horizon, Stephen Hawking has lost one of physics' most famous bets (then again, can you name another bet between physicists?). Dr. Hawking now owes an encyclopedia set to John Preskill of Caltech.

A Brief History of Timing...

Now, after I have read and, armed with nothing more than a 100-level college physics class, managed to more or less understand Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, he's gone and changed his mind about one of the paradoxes of black holes. Reuters reports that Dr. Hawking will present a solution to the black hole information paradox at a conference next week. Just when I thought I had a grip on this.

Poached Decaf and Brazil's Toast

It's my 4th anniversary (and a happy 57th to my Grandma and Grandpa!), so I'll make it short today. Here's a link to a bizarre Reuters article. Ethiopia is accusing Brazil of poaching coffee, specifically stealing beans from a coffee plant that produces beans with negligible levels of caffeine.

More Senate Stuff

For what it's worth, the U.S. Senate just agreed to vote on SJ RES 40, aka "The Marriage Amendment," on Wednesday, which is also the fourth anniversary of the day a county court judge declared Elie and me legally husband and wife.

Mr. Smith Emails Washington

I've got CSPAN-2 on in the background as I clean the house. Trent Lott is talking about why marriage is such an important issue that the Constitution of the United States must be amended to limit access to this institution to heterosexual couples. This is one of those hot-button issues that people are pretty much set on, so I won't rehash the debate. I've already done that in several previous entries.

Trent Lott just passed off the lectern citing laryngitis, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is talking about how, by declaring various state DOMA laws unconstitutional, the judiciary is taking citizens out of the process of determining state laws, and how a vote in the Senate is the only way to bring the people back in. I say, go with him on that. Whichever way you fall on this issue, take 30 seconds and click here to go to the U.S. Senate web site. There's a nifty drop-down menu from which you can select your state, and your two senators' names will pop up along with their office address. All you need to do is click on the name, and his/her website pops right up. They have a easy link to "contact," and once you click that, it's simply a matter of filling in the blanks to tell them who you are, verify that you are a constituent, pick a subject, and leave a brief comment about how you think your senator should vote. Repeat the process with the other senator. It really is that easy. While you're at it, here's the link to the U.S. House of Representatives where you can look up your congressperson by your ZIP code. The process is much the same, and the debate will get around to them sooner or later.

Senator Rick Santorum is now making some of the least persuasive arguments I've heard yet on this subject. Whoa! Back up the trailer! I am reasonably certain that Rick Santorum just implied that we need to keep homosexual couples from marrying because women have joined the workplace, depriving men of their traditional roles of "Provider and protector." I'm willing to entertain anyone's analysis on how that makes sense. I'm also willing to listen to an explanation of how machismo became a constitutional entitlement. I must not be getting all my memos.

How to Make a Banana Penguin

Take 1 banana with a stem end. Peel down partway to in 4 sections, so you have 4 strips of banana peel that are still mostly connected to the banana. Eat the top inch or so of the banana. Hold banana so the stem section of the peel is away from you. Tuck the peel section nearest to you (the one opposite the stem part) over the banana. Let the two side sections of peel fall naturally to the sides to create flippers. Bring the stem part of the peel forward over the tucked-in peel so that the stem creates a beak.

Thanks, Mom. She's still trying to get me to eat my fruits and veggies.

Cola Challenge

Before I start my carbonated beverage review, I will point out this map of where in the U.S. people call it "pop" and where they call it "soda." Though I have lived deep in "pop" territory for almost my entire life, all of my forbearers hail from "soda" territory, and I married a man from a separate "soda" zone. I have never called it "pop" and refuse to start now. This post will be about soda.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I don't particularly like colas in general. My distaste stems from one of the least amusing anecdotes that involve me vomiting (not from the cola--quite the opposite, in fact, but as I said, it is one of the least amusing of those tales). Anyhow, if I have to choose, I prefer Pepsi, but I would drink a whole lot of things before I would drink either Pepsi or Coke.

That notwithstanding, I have now tasted both Coke and Pepsi's latest efforts in the world of caramel-colored fizzy beverages: Coke C2 and Pepsi Edge. If you haven't been paying attention--and who has time to keep tabs on the cola wars these days?--both companies have rolled out "lower carb" versions of their flagship colas by using half high fructose corn syrup and half fake sugar. Pepsi uses Sucralose and Coke uses aspartame to cut out some but not all of the calories and carbs of regular soda. The result: both have managed to come up with formulations that play the corn syrup off the artificial sweeteners to enhance the most repulsive aspects of each. They have somehow created beverages that simultaneously have the overwhelming syrupiness of regular soda and roughly five times the bitter aftertaste of diet (and I like diet soda!). The main difference is that one tastes like diet corn syrup with a hint of Coke, and the other tastes like diet corn syrup with a hint of Pepsi. However, unlike the person who emailed ME over here, I did not detect the taste of either monkey or rhino urine.

Cell Phone Etiquette

Sprint has declared July National Cell Phone Courtesy Month. Click here to take their 14-question Wireless Courtesy Quiz. I scored 89 out of 100, which is very disappointing considering that I don't even have a cell phone to be rude on. Of the 1317 people who have taken the quiz so far, 29% scored 90-100 (extremely courteous), 34% scored 80-89 (quite well), 26% "got some right" in the 70-79 range, and 11% scored less than 70 and "need to rethink" their public cell phone use. Somehow, I think more than 11% should be in that last category.

Now, I know you all are very courteous on your cell phones and never interrupt live in-person conversations to answer your cell phone unless you have warned the other party in advance that you are expecting a call that you absolutely must take, but we all know people who have held taken cell phone conversations in the restroom. I'd like to go on record as saying to these people that it is most disconcerting to be in the stall next to you as you carry on a one-sided conversation at top volume. For those less than courteous people, Sprint has a handy page outlining Consumer Tips on Wireless Etiquette. That list should be preprogrammed as the default ring tone on all cell phones.

Fantasy Press conference Question...

A spokesperson for President Bush's campaign is quoted this morning in the New York Times as saying, "We think it's important that people understand that this is a ticket of John Kerry and his second choice," to explain why the Bush campaign is using John McCain in Bush campaign ads highlighting the fact that Kerry made overtures to McCain about possibly being his running mate before selecting, as rumors now have it, John Edwards.

So, in my fantasy world right now, I'm at a press conference with President Bush and am asking him the following question:
"Mr. President, as someone who, four years ago, painted himself as a 'uniter, not a divider,' is it really wise to point out that your opponent was willing to cross the aisle to consider a Republican for his Vice President, and that the Republican rejected the offer?" Followup questions: "Why did you not cross party lines in your VP search four years ago?" and "Would you consider trying to unite the country by dropping Cheney and picking a Democrat running mate?"

Since I'm not a reporter anymore (and when I was, I covered things like suburban city council meetings and sewage treatment), I lay the responsibility for asking those questions on the professional news media. They're great questions. Someone has to get answers for them.

What Happened to Summer...or Autumn?

I just got a mailing from Hallmark inviting me to come in to their stores July 10-11 for their ornament premier weekend. At least they're still giving us six months off from the Spirit of Christmas. Really, how long does it take to decorate the tree?

And Now For Something Completely Different...
According to the highly unscientific review you can read at slate.com by clicking here, I have good taste, at least when it comes to quasi-meat items. Until a few years ago, I couldn't stand to eat hot dogs at all. Now, I've worked up (or down) to being able to stomach Hebrew Nationals and Oscar Meyer All Beef, which come in at #2 and #3 respectively in Slate's hot dog taste test.

New Way to Waste Time on the Internet

Let me preface this by saying that I found this website while searching for a Reuters article on a protest by nursing mothers at a Houston area mall. A security guard at the mall noticed a group of men were ogling a woman's Janet-Jackson-naked breast as she nursed her child and tried to tell her that naked breasts in the middle of the mall might not be such a great idea, at which point the woman, obviously hopped up on the postpartum hormonal roller coaster, rallied 50 lactating women to hold a nurse-in protest at the mall. I think I may have pointed out before after a similar incident that this was an episode of "Married...With Children." There is a way to subtly tell these women that "shirt and shoes must be worn" policies also apply to nursing mothers: since they're exposing their breasts in public places where they have no reasonable legal expectation of privacy, there is nothing stopping someone from snapping digital pictures that include them nursing and posting the photos on the internet. I do not suggest Googling "lactation fetish" to find out why this could be effective method of encouraging these women to throw a scarf over their shoulder.

Anyway, that was what I was doing when I found this page, an actual part of the KHOU Channel 11 News website dedicated to a daily "Guess the 'Hairline of the Day'" contest. Yes, you read that right. An actual news station posts a famous forehead, and you guess which prominent person it belongs to.

Independence Day Weekend

In anticipation of Independence Day, I'm posting a link (click here) to the portion of the US Code that deals with proper display of the American flag. Fathers of the world, feel free to notice that the list of days that we should make certain to fly the flag includes Mother's Day but not Father's Day.

If you know anyone who flies a flag from their car, kindly point them to Title 4, Chapter 1, Section 7(b), which reads in part: "When the flag is displayed on a motorcar, the staff shall be fixed firmly to the chassis or clamped to the right fender." Those who are mechanically inclined will note that windows are neither chassis nor fender. Those patrioticker than thou people who fly enough flags from their SUV windows to supply a motorcade of the Joint Chiefs are only graphically demonstrating how little they really pay attention to the etiquette of displaying the primary symbol of our nation.

Head for the Hills!

The zucchini are coming! The zucchini are coming! Yesterday, I witnessed the first zucchini transfer of the summer, which can only mean it is time to grab the pets/kids and take cover until autumn. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against zucchini. I like a good breaded fried zucchini with ranch sauce, or steamed with ginger dip, or even zucchini bread, but every summer seems to be plagued by Zucchini Overload. There's something about a zucchini plant that seems to produce bumper crops every year, leading otherwise normal people with backyard gardens to go to great lengths to get rid of the stuff (yet they plant it again the next year). I've known people who have resorted to the Zucchini Drop. This is not a baked good, but rather an insidious technique Zucchinistas use to divest themselves of zucchini by leaving bags of it on random front porches in the dead of night.

Image of the Day

On the way in to our local Cold Stone Creamery tonight, I saw two men in their late 30's dressed in suits and ties sitting cross-legged on the curb eating ice cream. It was an interesting picture.

Not Quite Cosmic Irony

Sue's screen died today. Sue is Elie's GPS navigation unit with the pleasant computerized female voice that says "in point-three miles, turn left," etc. She's an indispensable piece of business equipment. Without the touch screen, there's no way to input the destinations for Sue to navigate to. Fortunately, we bought the extended warranty, so we went to the place of purchase, which I will refer to only as "ABC Warehouse" to protect the identities of the salesyahoos, to obtain a replacement.

Too bad our local ABC Warehouse was out of GPS navigators; however, there was good news. They could order one from another store and have it delivered around Friday or so, or we could go to the store two towns over to pick up ourselves. As I mentioned, the GPS is an indispensable business tool, so we opted for the latter.

This, of course, led to the big problem. The next nearest ABC Warehouse is somewhere in the next county. Our salesyahoos kept throwing out random street names and buildings that, apparently, are somewhere near our replacement GPS, and we kept coming back with variations on, "If we knew where that was, we wouldn't need a GPS navigator now, would we?"

So we followed the directions given to us by the salesguy who assured us "I don't need MapQuest. I drive there all the time." We circumnavigated the entire city of Toledo and a good chunk of the suburbs, and still haven't found that second ABC Warehouse. This is why we have the GPS.

Happiness is a Warm Puppy

As Sonja's vet said today, even the toughest day is tolerable when you know that you're coming home to a cat who wants nothing more than to curl up in your lap and be pet, even after you lure her into her carrier and haul her off to get her rabies shot.

Alternative for the Undecided Voters

Mark Twain is running for President in 2004. I read it on the internet, so it must be true!

I checked Article 2 of the Constitution just to be sure. Nothing in there mandates that the President be alive, though the age requirement might be a bit of a roadblock for a pseudonym.

All joking aside, twain2004.com does make a few interesting points about modern politics and current events.

Update

At 8:30 p.m. Eastern time, the AP reported that Arnold Schwarzenegger has reversed his stance on the killing of puppies, kittens, and cute little fluffy bunnies by saying, "I realized last night that there was a mistake I had made in the budget."

California Governor Wants My Cats Dead

Either Arnold Schwarzenegger lives in a fantasy world where he is so popular that he can do no wrong, or Californians really are so beguiled by the man's charm that they will stand back and watch their governor publicly advocate drowning burlap sacks full of kittens.

I exaggerate, of course. The Governator did not specify any particular method of killing puppies, kittens, or cute little fluffy bunnies. He just wants them dead, and quick.

Seems the accountants have figured that Schwarzenegger could save local governments $14 million by changing the law to allow shelters to whack cute little fluffy bunnies immediately upon arrival and only wait 3 days to off cats and dogs. Current law requires shelters to hold animals for (gasp!) very nearly an entire week before they consider euthanizing them to make way for another animal to have its window of opportunity to be adopted.

I would not make this up, for the simple reason that I do not want to go to jail. Accusing a sitting governor of wanting to kill kittens and puppies would be libel if it were not true. It's all in the Associated Press story that you can read by clicking here.

The AP headline is a little more tactful: "Schwarzenegger Wants Strays Killed Faster." I don't have to pretend to be as dispassionate as the AP. I am not a reporter; I am the owner of two cats, both adopted from animal shelters. The Humane Society did not disclose how long Chessie had been there, but Sonja, who is currently curled up in my lap nudging my arm because I'm using it to type instead of pet her, was dropped at the shelter a full 21 days before we adopted her. She's purring, blessedly oblivious to the fact that the governor of California thinks she should be dead right now.

Urgent Manifesto

If we are going to remain a functional voicemail-using society, we are going to have to agree on a universal definition of the word "urgent." I suggest the 48-hour rule: urgent matters require action within 48 hours to avert, at minimum, a minor inconvenience. If we cannot agree to abide by a uniform standard of urgency, we must remove the option for leavers of voicemail to mark their message as "urgent."

My voicemail box gets maybe 2 messages a month, and almost without exception they are preceded by the chipper announcement, "This message is marked 'urgent.'" These "urgent" messages are usually requests for me to call with basic information--a task which, while important, is not urgent. "Urgent" would be matters like requesting a loan deferment be faxed to a lender before a student's loan goes into default and leaves a black mark on an otherwise immaculate credit history. Of course, people with these kinds of urgent matters have contacted me before, know what my office hours are and call when I am in.

"This message is marked 'urgent'" is voicemail code for "the person who left this message is a douchebag." If the matter were truly urgent, you would be in my office writing a note to leave in my inbox, not sitting at home in your Fruit of the Looms calling me.

Calling Top Cat Fans

I'm passing on an appeal I heard from ME. Click here to read the original, longer version of this appeal from ME.

Warner Home Video is looking for someone who has original 16 mm or 35 mm releases of the 1961 Hanna-Barbera series Top Cat. Specifically, they are looking for the original end credits for the cartoons. They're up against the wire putting together a DVD collection of all 30 Top Cat cartoons, and the original end credits are nowhere to be found in the vaults. The credits that have run at the ends of the cartoons for most of the time the series has been in syndication are from a single episode, so some writers, animator, and guest voice actors have gone uncredited for all these years.

If you have any or all of the original releases of Top Cat cartoons in 16mm or 35 mm, click here to get in touch with ME, who can pass you on to the appropriate people over at Warner Home Video.

Frequent What Card?

I enjoy frequent buyer programs. My Starbucks card is especially fun because I make coffee runs for my entire office, keeping all the punches for their multiple $4 iced mochas on my card while only paying for the $1.70 iced coffee out of my own pocket. In addition to "buy 9 Starbucks drinks, get one free," my wallet is stocked with punch cards from Papa Murphy's Pizza, Holland Laundry, and The Body Shop.

I've had punch cards for everything from sandwiches to pantyhose, but I wasn't ready for the announcement from Pfizer that they were getting into the punch card game. Through this website here, you can sign up for a frequent-buyer card from the drug maker. The promo: buy 6 prescriptions for Viagra, get the 7th free.

There are so many inappropriate jokes I could make right here, I wouldn't know where to start.

(Thanks to Elie for the tip-off on this one)

Be Prepared to Choke

You'll need to either watch an ad or get a subscription to read this article on Salon.com, but this following sentence, lifted from that article, ought to make you want to:

one night in March, members of Congress hosted a crowning ritual for an ex-convict and multibillionaire who dressed up in maroon robes and declared himself the Second Coming.

The night was March 23, the ex-con was Rev. Sun Myung Moon (convicted of tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice, which Moon's website characterizes as "trumped up"), and the party occurred at the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The Salon article characterizes the event as a "coronation" based on the pictures of the couple in robes and crowns, but Moon is quoted on other sites as referring to it as more akin to an Eagle Scout banquet. Whatever you choose to call it should not make the event's presence in the Dirksen Senate Office Building any better. More background on Moon's background from the Salon article:

Moon preaches that...the U.S. Constitution should be scrapped in favor of a system he calls "Godism" -- with him in charge.

The ellipses replace some beliefs that are so offensive to certain groups that they would pull any meaningful discussion away from the fact that a U.S. Senate office building was used to host a coronation ceremony/awards banquet for a man who wants to scrap the Constitution so he can run the country.

Did I mention that this took place in a U.S. Senate office building? That would be an edifice that you pay for with your tax dollars. Check this Website to see if you should be doubly upset that one of your congresspersons was there and is now trying to weasel out of admitting it.

Close Doesn't Cut It

My affinity for puzzles probably has a lot to do with the 13 inch black and white TV we had for most of my formative years. It received channels 2-13 (and UHF if you went to the second knob), so I didn't watch as much TV as my cable-connected counterparts. I spent a lot of that time reading the World Book Encyclopedia and doing puzzles of just about any kind. I think my predilection for crosswords is genetic. My grandparents do them, and I've heard rumors that my great grandpa, with his third grade education, could do the New York Times crossword in pen.

Naturally, I couldn't resist entering The World's Hardest Crossword Puzzle Contest. The entry requirement: complete the Entry Puzzle, with clues such as:
33 Across: Downs a Sub (4 letters) [eats]
56 Across: It might be filed (4 letters) [nail]

Out of 195 letters to be filled in, I missed one. I put "rallies" instead of "rallies" when for the clue "came from behind."

Which brings me to the answer to 45 Across: Duh.

Type Casting

Recently at work, we were discussing our Myers-Briggs personality types. Myers-Briggs tests are supposedly rooted in more psychology than a Cosmo quiz, but the entertainment level is the same. It's far more interesting to read the descriptions of the profiles than to know that I am supposedly an Introverted Intuitive Thinking Judging type--though it is a bit of a comfort to know that only 2-3% of the population test that way. Descriptions of my type include the phrase "sees more to the forest than just the trees." I find the forest/tree question to be unnecessarily limiting. Why trees? Why can't I choose between seeing the forest and the moss, deer or squirrel? As if to demonstrate this, in the midst of the discussion, my boss asked what my sign was. I launched into how I am a Leo going by dates in the newspaper, but if you account for the precession of the vernal equinox due to perturbations of the Earth's rotational axis, I'm actually a Cancer.

Apparently, I do that sort of thing all the time. I don't notice. I simply think that the world would be a much better place if everyone was precise and accurate at all times. According to my personality profile, other people find this annoying.

Is that Roaming?

On the eve of Father's Day, this news story should serve as inspiration for any expectant father who secretly longs for the time when fathers were not expected to be in the delivery room. Lieutenant Colonel Mike Fincke wasn't even on the same planet when his wife gave birth to their second child on Friday. He's been on the International Space Station since April, and isn't slated to return until October. Lt. Col. Fincke did not entirely miss the birth, though. NASA patched his wife's cell phone through to the Space Station. Is an orbital altitude of 358 kilometers included in Nationwide Long Distance?

Semi-Current Events

The commentaries are out now on Monday's Supreme Court decision that ultimately left the words "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Most of the commentary seems to focus not on the Pledge of Allegiance itself (anyone who even addresses that part seems to be of the opinion that the legal arguments of the case were sound and that "under God" will come out eventually), but on the reasoning that led to the decision.

For those who haven't been paying attention, the Supreme Court did not find that "under God" was permissible because it is not an establishment of religion that would be prohibited by the first amendment. They found that the plaintiff, as a non-custodial parent, did not have the legal standing to bring a lawsuit on behalf of his child. Basically, the Supreme Court declined to hear an issue because they were compelled to enforce a parenting plan that gave the custodial parent broad veto power over the non-custodial parent.

Michael Newdow, the non-custodial father in question, writes an intriguing piece in Slate (click here) about how custody laws invite conflict between parents during a breakup--intriguing because he is quite apparently bitter about the way he is excluded from his daughter's upbringing, but still manages to make a reasoned argument.

The Christian Science Monitor (click here) accuses the Supreme Court of using the parenting plan issue to duck making a decision on a controversial issue, and in the process setting a dangerous legal precident against non-custodial parents. The Court did weasel out of a tough one, but they made the only decision they could, given that the child's mother has a parenting plan that gives her broad veto power in any disagreement over how the child is raised.

This latest discussion is focused on the many ways that non-custodial parents can get the shaft in family court, which is a discussion that has been a long time in coming. While there are far more opportunities for a non-custodial parent to get the short end of the parenting stick, I've also seen cases where non-custodial parents won't shoulder their part of parenting. Then there are the cases where both parents have forgotten that custody is an entirely separate issue from the divorce and both act like a horse's hindquarters. The only thing I can say is that there must be a better way than this to sort out childrearing when parents are not together.

Coming to a Theater Near You: "Colons Gone Wild"

Over here, ME discusses his recent colonoscopy. You'd think if the medical community could make having a camera shoved where the sun don't shine that comfy, they could do something about the Pap smear. ME does not indicate that there is a video (title of this entry notwithstanding), but I think the pirated DVD market at comic book conventions would do a brisk business in a DVD of the digestive tract of a major Hollywood writer. Myself, I'm holding out for the sequel, "Intestinal Tract Episode II: Attack of the Polyps."

I guess this is good news...

The latest Social Security forecast has pushed the program's insolvency date back to 2052. That means I no longer have to look at my annual Social Security statement as my annual reminder of all the money I've earned that I'll never see. Now I get a cool 9 years of Social Security benefits, assuming no one has pushed the retirement date back or eviscerated the program by then. Frankly, I don't care either way. I've rather gotten used to the idea of depending on my financial planner (a great guy named Bill) for my retirement planning rather than the government. I understand Bill.

Shades of Purple

This article in the New York Times explores whether we, as a nation, really are as polarized as reports would have us believe. The gist is that no, we are not.

I have lived in a "blue" state (Oregon) and a "red" state (Nebraska), and I now live in a "swing" state (Ohio). There was a general sense that the community in Omaha was more conservative and the community in the Portland Metro area was more liberal; however, some of the most conservative people I've known were in Oregon and some of the most liberal were in Nebraska. The problem with red and blue states is that a couple hundred votes one way or another paints the entire state Crayola red or blue because the Electoral College setup forces the entire state to go one way or another. Most people are neither red nor blue unless they take the easy way out and pick a political affiliation then conform to those opinions. As an illustration of opinions, the electoral map is shades of purple with no state borders.

The Veep Shortlist Gets Shorter

There goes the best chance of having an interesting election season. John McCain (R-Ariz) has personally rejected John Kerry's (D-Mass) non-invitation to the VP slot on the Democratic presidential ticket. According to the AP, Kerry did not actually offer McCain the job, so that the rebuffing wouldn't make it look like the eventual VP is a second choice. How anyone comes up with that logic is beyond me.

A Kerry-McCain superticket never really had a chance. What I've heard of John McCain doesn't sound like someone who would be content to wake up every morning and ask if the President is OK. Nonetheless, having a bipartisan presidential ticket was a good fantasy while it lasted.

Timing is Everything

The cosmos has a great sense of humor. On the very day I received my Bachelor's degree in creative writing (with a minor in sociology), I got this reply from the person critiquing my short story:

"I think you're trying too hard to be artsy, too wrapped up in fancy-ing up the telling of the story. Just tell it. Spit it out. The goal is to communicate. If you confuse readers by doing hard-to-follow flashes forward and backward or any other tricky stuff, they'll go read something easier, like Hemingway. When you grow up to be Vonnegut, go for the gusto. For now..."

That might be insulting if he didn't go on to give me better advice in three pages than I got from 178 college credit hours and $25,000 in student loans. In spite of the tone of the above comment, he does think I'm good. The email ends with: "Press on. I wouldn't have spent this much time typing at you if I didn't think you had the goods."

So there it is: an unbiased professional with no reason to blow smoke up my backside actually telling me I have the goods. Strange as it may sound, that carries more weight coming from a virtual stranger, particularly this virtual stranger.

From the Mailbag

The mail today consisted of a Sharper Image catalog, a notice that I can get triple points at Media Play through Sunday and something that says

This diploma makes it known that the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska upon the recommendation of the Faculty and by authority of the State has by its officers specially authorized hereto conferred the degree Bachelor or Fine Arts Magna Cum Laude upon Janet L. Harriett who is entitled to enjoy all the rights, honors and privileges pertaining to that degree.

Eight years getting a BFA in Creative Writing, and I wouldn't even know where to start diagramming that sentence. Nonetheless, I am finally a college graduate. Time to update my bio and go frame shopping.

Recommended Reading

I'm in the middle of The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, a physics professor at Columbia University who has set out to explain to the average person a theory that resolves the fundamental inconsistencies between quantum mechanics and Einstein's special and general relativity (if you didn't realize quantum mechanics and relativity were incompatible, don't worry--he explains all that in Part 1). I haven't had this much fun getting dizzy since I stood smack under the rear end of the Spruce Goose and looked straight up at 80 feet of airplane tail. Now, that's a head rush. I take this as a good sign, since apparently quantum mechanics is supposed to make your head spin. Actually, the quantum mechanics isn't the hard part. The hard part is that the math of the universe works out best when there are 11 dimensions instead of the four we're used to dealing with. Having given the subject much thought before starting this book, I'm OK with second and third dimensions of time, and thanks to The Elegant Universe, I've almost wrapped my brain around a fourth spatial dimension. Dimensions 8-11 still elude me, though. I've got a book on request from the library that should help with that part as soon as I'm done with this one.

The Elegant Universe is #512 at Amazon.com (#5 in Norman, Oklahoma!), so I can't be the only one who finds theoretical physics fun summer reading. However, I do have to wonder: I am the only person on the planet frustrated by her inability to comprehend more than 7 dimensions of spacetime?

The One Thing I'll Say About Reagan

Since people are once again trotting out the idea of putting Ronald Reagan's mug on Mt. Rushmore, I feel compelled to point out that the four presidents who are already there are not completed. They were meant to be busts, not faces, but carving was suspended in 1941 and never resumed. Haven't you ever wondered why Washington has lapels and a roughed-out left shoulder while Lincoln isn't even hewn out deep enough to have ears? If we are going to restart work on the monument that was dedicated in 1991, wouldn't it be peachy to finish what Gutzon Borglum started before we start slapping on other ex-presidents?

D-Day

June 6 seems to have become enshrined as the National Day to Remember World War II. With the utmost respect to those who fought and died on the beaches of France 60 years ago, I do not understand the logic by which we have collectively glommed on to June 6 and the landing at Normandy when so much more of immediate consequence to America's interests happened in the Pacific Theater. America entered the war because an Axis attack decimated our Pacific Fleet. The only civilian casualties on American soil, aside from the territory of Hawaii, were a group of picnickers in Oregon killed by a balloon weapon launched off the Pacific coast. When a Japanese submarine fired on the northern Oregon coast, Axis ordinance made landfall on the American Mainland (fortunately, it killed only a tree).

Given the focus of the narrative on the American liberation of France, our being part of an alliance of many nations to beat back the bad guys isn't the draw of D-Day. The logic behind the collective obsession cannot possibly be the dramatic narrative of our boys storming a beach, facing hostile enemy fire, either, because that happened in the Pacific Theater numerous times. Each island required an amphibious assault against an enemy that finally had its last soldier surrender in 1974.

But D-Day is tidier than the Pacific Theater, and more convenient. The Nazis were bad, and liberating France from the Nazis was good. More to the point, the Nazis were the Nazis. We can separate them from the modern German citizen with just one word, and Nazis are still worldwide pariahs who do not supply us with stereo systems and DVD players. With the Japanese, we have no similar way to avoid combining the military of 60-odd years ago with the citizen of today, and in the intervening years, Japan has become an important ally and trading partner. Celebrating our victory over Japan every year would strain international relations and bring up a few questions about the methods America used to achieve that final victory--questions that are, at best inconvenient, and spark a debate I do not intend to get into here.

D-Day was a fight to liberate our allies; the Pacific Theater was a war to defend our country. This fetish with D-Day is a major disservice to our original first line of defense in Homeland Security.

Strangest Highway Multitasking Yet

Cruising down the freeway on my way to work this morning, I passed a guy driving a pickup truck while shaving. There are cigarette lighter powered electric razors, which are bad enough when you're doing 65 in a construction zone, but this guy was using a blade.

Much more accurate than anything from Cosmo

Postatem obscuri lateris nescitis.
"You do not know the power of the Dark Side." There are two possibilities: you
are a Star Wars geek, or you are unreasoningly scary.

Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You? brought to you by Quizilla

Thanks to Maggie for pointing out the quiz.

Highlight of My Day

Up until five minutes ago, the highlight of my day was going to be successfully setting up the new TiVo we got so we could record the network programming that we cannot get through our DirecTV service with the built-in TiVo. I am not the most ept person with home electronics, so integrating a new component into a home entertainment system that requires seven remote controls to operate is no small feat. (Side note: we've tried universal remotes, but they are never universally compatible with all of our components). Preliminary indications are that I seem to have managed to properly connect the new TiVo box to the cable outlet, connect the TV to the TiVo, program the TV to recognize the TiVo, split the phone line between the two TiVo boxes, activate the TiVo service, and set the new box up to receive two weeks of programming information on only the cable channels we receive so we can easily record programs to watch at our convenience. We'll see tonight when we try to TiVo our first program.

However, all that seems less important now that I found out that while the TiVo was calling in for programming information, I nearly got myself charged with obstruction of justice. A nondescript man knocked on my door and asked if Charles (no last name) was in. It's a side effect of apartment life that you occasionally get people asking for the person who lived there before you. I told the man that Charles did not live here anymore. He asked how long ago he left, and I told him I didn't know, but that we'd lived here for more than a year now. All the while, my mystery guest did not introduce himself, so I was in no hurry to divulge too much information. Frankly, I thought he was a magazine salesman or something like that. I'm not sure what he said that led me to joke, "Well, if he lives here, I don't know about it," but it didn't seem inappropriate at the time. The man thanked me and left, all without saying who he was or why he was looking for the former tenant of my apartment.

I went back to the TiVo setup and thought no more about the incident until one of the leasing agents for our complex caught me as I picked up my mail and asked if I'd really said that. Turns out my mystery guest was a bailiff trying to serve papers. In that context, my little smart-ass comment sounded suspiciously like I was trying to hide something, and compelled him to go to the leasing office to make certain that Charles did not, in fact, live in my apartment without my knowledge. On the bright side, I seem to have found a response that county process servers hadn't heard before, and he seems to have found it amusing after corroborating testimony proved it was a joke and not an attempt to interfere with the operations of the judicial system.

I'm Back!

You may have noticed posting has been a little light here the past couple days. OK, the posting has been nonexistant the past couple days. I've been busily tidying up a short story for someone who offered to critique it. I won't presume to disclose who is doing the critique, but this person is in a position to know good writing and is pretty much a perfect stranger to me, hence feels no obligation to spare my feelings. No offense to my family, but I'm pretty sure none of them would tell me if I'd set a load of hog droppings to paper. This marks the first time I'll get an unbiased, no-holds-barred, pull-no-punches assessment of a piece I've written. I don't recall ever being quite this nervous in my life.

Memorial Day

I don't think I am being cynical to believe that, if it were not for mounting casualties in Iraq, the original purpose of Memorial Day--commemorating those killed in combat--would not get the lip service it is getting in the news this year. Over at Slate, there is an impressive array of political cartoons on the subject of Memorial Day. CNN's front page at the moment runs the headlines "Somber Ceremonies for Memorial Day" and "Tasty BBQ Treats." My AOL welcome page, set to the news, is rotating between "New Meaning for Memorial Day" (which, reading the story, is the same as the old meaning for Memorial Day, applied to recent military losses) and "Secret to Barbecue Success." The ABC News webpage currently fronts "Bush Visits Tomb of the Unknowns" and "Holiday Eatin': Recipes from Good Morning America."

In the spirit of remembering the contributions of our military personnel today, I'd like recognize a few groups who do not necessarily fit into the traditional scope of Memorial Day:

Our soldiers killed fighting for causes that were not as noble as freedom, democracy, or defending the country. Thanking "those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of freedom" is more palatable, but I'd also like to thank those who did their duty when the cause was lost, unjust, or a global game of "Chicken" to prove which world leader would not back down first.

The men who never wanted to go to war in the first place, but who, through the luck of the draw, found themselves turned into soldiers. Thanks to both you who came back and the ones who did not.

And one group in particular: those who went to war and came home without wanting recognition of the service and sacrifices they had made. They would generally be honored on Veteran's Day, but since they seem bent on eschewing the title of Veteran, that hardly seems appropriate. They raised families far away from the VFW halls, and if they have since passed, are buried alongside their families in civilian cemeteries, and only afterward does someone find a box of medals and commendations in the back of a closet. They've done heroic deeds and witnessed things no one should ever have to see, and ask in return only the chance to be able to live their lives like any other person.

My grandpa belongs to that last class of people. He served in the Navy, came home, married my grandma, worked several jobs to raise five children, and has been a model grandpa for 10 grandchildren and an ever-expanding brood of great-grandchildren [note: still none from our end]. To this day, I don't even know what rank he held; only that he was a cook on a ship in the Pacific, though I have an inkling that there was a bit more to it than that. We knew he had been in the Navy in the exact same way we knew he had been a school custodian and packed loaves of bread at a bakery. He never made it seem like his time in the service defined his identity any more than any of those other jobs, hence there never seemed like an appropriate time to say thanks. For that matter, it's hard to know if "thank you" is even an appropriate sentiment.

Semantics

According to this Time Magazine article, George W. Bush has one of Saddam Hussein's pistols mounted and displayed in the Oval Office study as a "souvenir."

A snowglobe from Mt. Rushmore is a souvenir. Decorative spoons from all 50 states are souvenirs. Little resin replicas of national monuments are souvenirs. Keychains, mugs, refrigerator magnets, and postcards are souvenirs. Your enemy's sidearm, displayed in your office, is a trophy.

Yes, I'm nitpicking semantics, but if we are ever to consider the fighting of a war to be the serious business that it is, we need to make a clear distinction between vacation mementos and things we take off our enemies on the battlefield. It's Memorial Day weekend; can't we at least pretend for a couple day to recognize the difference between war and a whitewater rafting trip?

Thought for the Day: What Generation Gap?

In the past two days, I have seen red-tinted chrome windshield wipers on a Ford Aerostar minivan and Kia with a set of those hubcaps that keep spinning after the car is stopped. It's been a couple weeks since I've seen the Camry with a foot-tall spoiler bolted to the trunk, but it is out there, too.

As I was suppressing nausea over the spinning hubcaps--whoever invented them obviously did not take into consideration that the person in the next lane may be prone to motion sickness--and plotted out a blog entry lamenting the complete lack of consideration these people have in just what car to which they are applying all the chrome and neon, Elie had the good sense to reminde me that our generation is the one who thought it was cool to stick a Rolls Royce hood ornament on a VW Bug. Same idiocity, different day. For a brief period about 10 years ago, I learned to drive on a Mercury Bobcat station wagon which had originally said "Mercury" across the hood, but after some strategic additions from a Chevy Nova and a game of Scrabble, became a tarted-up Pinto whose hood read "No Mercy." We got our car modifications from the junkyard; they buy theirs at Murray's Auto Supply.

The only generation gap is the way each chooses to manifest the genetic imperative to do things that we will look back on in 10 or 15 years and cringe. We may wonder how our parents could have bought into Disco, but we were the ones doing the Macarena at our senior proms.

Hello, Mr. Chip!

Glad to see everyone enjoys the comments feature. Unfortunately, it seems that unless you have a Blogger account, you are compelled to post comments anonymously, but you all seem to be working around that. Thanks for complying with my request for overall grammatical correctness. I did not mean that I will split hairs over split infinitives, dangling participles, or even sentence fragments; rather, I hope to discourage people from posting in the code that seems to have arisen from cell phone text messaging. The chimps who surf my blog on their breaks from writing Hamlet have an excuse. The rest of us are reasonably literate human beings.

And now for something completely different...
Sonja got her microchip implanted today when she went for her checkup and feline leukemia shot. The chip is about the size of a grain of rice and emits a signal that can be read by a scanner at shelters or vets if the pet gets lost. The signal contains an ID number that can be traced through a database back to the pet's owners. We chip our cats because, being that they are indoor cats, they do not wear collars. However, we like to have some kind of ID in case they should get out. The chip is a perfect solution. The vet implants it between the cat's shoulders with a hypodermic needle the size of a whale harpoon, which the vet assured me is no more painful than the vaccinations, and it is in for life. According to the literature and registration pamphlet, the pet microchips "protect virtually any pet you love...dogs, cats, horses, birds, reptiles, exotics, even fish!"

You read that right. Fish. Two thoughts come to mind simultaneously on that:
1. That would have cut 98 minutes off the running time for Finding Nemo.
2. How do you lose a pet fish? Guppynapping? [comment courtesy of Elie]

New Function

I've added the capability for you to leave comments here(translation: I finally found out that updates to Blogger allow for comments). I welcome any thoughts you care to leave about what I've written, even if you don't agree. I only ask that you please be polite, reasonably on-topic and grammatically correct whether you agree with me or not. Grammatical errors make my teeth hurt, and if the comments get uncivil, I can and will disable the function.

New Motto: "Yup, That's Michigan There"

After a long dry spell in my state quarter scavenger hunt, I've added Michigan. To see the best that the state could do with the artistic resources of more than 10 million people, click here. For those who don't want to click, the back side of the quarter is a topographical map of Michigan with the outlines of the five Great Lakes and the words "Great Lakes State" blazoned across Canada. Elie observed that it bears a striking resemblance to a dog leaving a pile on the lawn. Given what I learned about the Toledo sewage system and Lake Erie during my stint as a reporter, he's more correct than he thinks.

Canning Spam

Spammers are getting very clever at avoiding email filters with intentional misspellings and advertising products like Xan.ax and Vicod[n. I've landed on a strategy--aside from having four separate email addresses for various functions--that spammers have not yet thought to protect against. On the email for this site (which, owing to the address being posted right over there, tends to attract a lot of spam), I have set my email filters to route to the Spam folder any email with the word "You" in the subject line. It's amazing how effective this has been. I'd say at least 75% of the spam messages are automatically shunted out of my inbox now to where I can skim it once a week for non-spam messages then mass-delete. Try it.

Lofty Goals

I watched President Bush's address tonight from the U.S. Army College. Nice set of goals. No real plan for achieving these goals, but it is a nice set of goals nonetheless. Maybe someday we can get started on some of them here.

For starters:

"The ministry of education, for example, is out of the propaganda business and is now concerned with educating Iraqi children."

"And when they patrol the streets of Baghdad or engage radical militias, they will be fighting for their own country."

"Successful units need to know they are fighting for the future of their own country, not for any occupying power."

"Our coalition has already helped Iraqis to rebuild schools and refurbish hospitals and health clinics, repair bridges, upgrade the electrical grid and modernize the communication system."

"...form an independent election commission that will oversee an orderly accurate national election."

"A representative government that protects basic rights, elected by Iraqis, is the best defense against the return of tyranny. And that election is coming."

Someday.

More from the Penguin Front

I adopted a penguin today. Well, technically, Sonja is a 4-year-old cat, but she looks like a fluffy, 7-pound penguin. I get the sense from the four hours she's been home with us that she'd be perfectly happy curled up in your lap being pet all day. Chessie doesn't quite know what to do with the interloper yet, but I think they'll get along once Chessie gets used to having another cat in her house. They both have fluffy fur and a penchant for finding the smallest space curl up in.

She was named Mattie at the Humane Society, but she doesn't look at all like a Mattie, except for some minor fur issues. We settled on Sonja, after Heathcliff's girlfriend, when none of our other names seemed quite appropriate for a lap cat: Xizor (the empire's #3 guy, under Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader), Vader, Dante (a nod to both the Inferno and Team Knight Rider), and Bastet (a minor baddy in Stargate SG-1). I'm noticing a theme.

Now, That's a Word Picture

I decided a while back that I had said everything I have to say on the subject of same-sex marriage, and would drop it as a blog topic. The debate over same-sex marriage is not to change anyone's mind, for we've all pretty much decided where we will entrench ourselves, but to see whose point of view gets the more unimpeachable legal status first and becomes the de facto point of view for the nation.

Even so, Penguin Perspectives feels the need to link to Dahlia Lithwick's latest article in Slate, which begins:

Since few opponents of homosexual unions are brave enough to admit that gay weddings just freak them out, they hide behind the claim that it's an inexorable slide from legalizing gay marriage to having sex with penguins outside JC Penney's.

Read the article if you want. Dahlia Lithwick is always good for a well-reasoned argument, even if she doesn't change your mind.

Under Construction

My bro-in-law Jay confirms that it is in fact an OSHA regulation to have the cement mixer parked in reverse and beeping at top volume when pouring cement outside my bedroom window at 7 a.m. Apparently sarcastic comments occasionally land on a kernel of truth.

I've lived in this apartment building for three summers now. The first summer, the state decided to add a lane to the main road 100 yards down, requiring the driving of pylons for the bridge over the drainage gully (ever been roused from a sound slumber by a bass drum for two months straight?). Last summer, developers tore up the field across the street and threw up an office, with the unintended consequence of taking away the complex's de facto dog outhouse. This summer, the developers are attaching a second office to the first. Judging by the layout of the office plot, this summer's project is number two of three, so at least I know what next summer holds.

Sure, by waking up at 7:30 a.m., I do waste an hour or so of precious daylight during the summer construction season, and I'm glad these guys have work. But as they say, no one ever looks at it from the early worm's perspective.

Random Daily Thoughts

One year and counting
Star Wars Episode III comes out in exactly a year. We're hoping to make it to the midnight showing. Unless today is your first day here, you already knew I am a Star Wars geek.

Silent Protest
Click here to read Slate advocating a silent protest against the phrase "Make No Mistake." I intend to join the uprising and make a mistake today. I'm not sure I can outdo the University of Toledo's registrar, who told me yesterday that they had not mailed out my transcript because--get this--they ran out of paper. I don't know which is worse: that someone did not think to order an extra ream or two of watermarked transcript paper for the end-of-the-year transcript rush, or that they admitted it. Sometimes I wish people would have the decency to lie to me when they do something that stupid.

Happy Volcano Day
Get some red food coloring, paper mache, baking soda, and vinegar, and celebrate the 24th anniversary of Mount St. Helens blowing her top and much of one side. Alternatively, rent Fantasia 2000 and pay close attention to the crater at the end of "The Firebird." Craters and Firebirds remind me of my old Pontiac, but that's a story for another day.

Time Travel, courtesy of Peter David

In H.G. Wells' novel The Time Machine, Wells makes a big fuss over the fact that the time machine travels through time but not space.

Yesterday at the comic book convention, Peter David pointed out the fundamental flaw with that premise, and it is not with the physics. There are a few theories that could permit time travel, and at least one of them backs up the travel-through-time-but-not-space scenario. The problem is that space doesn't give a rodent's rear end about our quaint little system of latitude and longitude. As time passes, the Earth revolves around the sun (and, I might add, the entire solar system revolves around the center of the galaxy, which is itself hurtling through the universe). If the Time Traveler moved through time but not space, the odds of him reappearing anywhere near the surface of any planet at all are at best astronomical, and good luck timing the trip so he'd reappear on the 25-30% of Earth's surface that isn't water. The odds get even worse yet if our time traveller would want to avoid reappearing in the carpool lane during rush hour.

There are, of course, theories of time travel that require travel through space. These have their own problems, principally that they are one-way trips and you run a very real risk of being torn apart by gravitational forces and sucked atom-by-atom into a black hole. Still, since there is a spacecraft, presumably with life support, involved, the odds are a lot better than the time-but-not-space-travel machines, HOV lane or no.

More Con Report

I tried the Princess Leia Cinnamon Bun hairdo at the comic book convention today, and found out two very important things:
1. Murphy's Law of the Cinnabon-do: the buns will not turn out symmetrical.
2. When you have your hair done in the most infamous Princess Leia 'do, while dressed completely normally otherwise, people notice and remember you.

Lesson #2 brings me to the Panels, and more specifically, to talking to panelists later in the day. These conventions have a steady schedule of discussions with the invited guests--mostly artists, writers, and actors. One of the panels today was a chat with Jim Shooter. In the course of recounting his rise to the position of Marvel Comics Editor in Chief--a job he held when he was my age--he commented that he sold everything he ever wrote, starting with comic book stories to DC Comics when he was 13. That sort of cavalier statement is incredibly depressing for someone whose current publication highlight is news stories about raw sewage issues published in a second-rate weekly entertainment newspaper in a backwater city in Ohio. I asked him, in as many words, "What is the secret, then, of not writing crap?" Presumably, if the man has sold everything he ever wrote since junior high school, he knows something I don't.

He didn't have a secret formula for selling every word he ever wrote, but he did have some motivational advice that, for once, did not sound trite. When I caught up with Mr. Shooter after the panel to thank him for what he said, he had an even more helpful suggestion for an aspiring writer. Making an impression, even if it is as the chick wearing Leia buns with a Wonder Woman shirt, can have its advantages.

Con Report

Considering that my weekend entertainment, the Motor City Comic Con, bills itself as "Michigan's Largest Pop Culture Event," I find it odd that I saw nary a Klingon, Starfleet officer, Jedi, or Stormtrooper today. Usually at these conventions one finds at least one of those four. For those of you who have never attended a con, they are more than just gatherings of people whose social lives revolve around dressing up as fictional characters. Cons are an art show, book sale, flea market, and celebrity autograph party all in one.

The highlight of my day was meeting Tony Amendola, a recurring guest star of Stargate SG-1, which is my absolute favorite TV show. Mr. Amendola is a very nice person, as are most of the people at cons. We had a rather nice conversation about Mondays and how Sci-Fi Channel's four-hour block of Stargate SG-1 on Monday nights makes Monday tolerable. I managed to suppress the squeals of joy until after we had left the convention hall, though I think a few people in the parking lot wondered what was wrong with me. Finally, after four years of attending cons, I managed to have a conversation with one of the invited actors without sounding like a complete idiot. I still have brain cells that are trying to forget what I said to Adam West.

More Con reporting tomorrow.

Scary News

Click Here for a scientific explanation of why my college grades went up after I started playing Tetris.

Researchers at Duke University have found out that lemurs are not so stupid, after all. When they have video games that provide a treat at the end, they "show startling intelligence." The lemurs will learn sequences, strategy, and have even figured out that they can get the sugar pellet if they finish a game that another lemur started. Shrewd thinking, no?

Let's recap:
1. Madagasacarian primates are developing strategic thinking.
2. They're using video games to do this.
3. Researchers are helping these lemurs.

Maybe the lobsters aren't the biggest problem.

Off My Soapbox...

I promise I'm off the soapbox, at least for a few days.

I've been enjoying some TiVoed episodes of MythBusters, a show run periodically on Discovery Channel. Two special effects pros test those urban legends and conspiracy theories that make the rounds. Their method: they re-enact the stories, trying their darnedest to get the results in the legend. Only very rarely do they succeed. In the last few episodes I've caught, they've graphically proven:

Nothing in your house, when poured into the toilet, will explode with enough force to eject the occupant of the seat when a lit cigarette is dropped in the bowl. If a half can of black powder or gasoline wouldn't do it, your household cleaners won't.

A cell phone will not ignite a gas-air mixture, even under optimal conditions. Static electricity generated from getting in and out of your seat will, so ground yourself on the car body before you go for the nozzle.

A bullet that would melt inside a human body would not make it out of the gun.

Pressure conditions under which silicone implants might explode would have killed you long before your implants ruptured.

A firecracker in a trombone will not propel a mute with sufficient force to knock the conductor down. Elie pointed out that their demo on this was slightly flawed, as they used a cup mute when most orchestral works use straight mutes.

Walking in the rain really does keep you drier than running.

If you have Discovery Channel, it's a show worth checking out. I await the rerun of the episode in which they answer the musical question, "Is your goldfish bored, or just stupid?"

Party Line

Click Here
Or Here

How long can the press keep up the wafer-to-wafer coverage of every time John Kerry takes communion? They've already passed the point at which anyone, aside from the Catholic officials who created this flap, cares. Their insistence on keeping the issue at the forefront of the secular media, with the argument that Kerry should be denied communion because some of his beliefs are not ones held by the Catholic church, seems to be just about as bad as anything Kerry did to be denied communion. Fortunately, according to this article at CBS, denying communion based on pro-choice stances would be against official doctrine.

I've been exposed to several sets of religious beliefs in my time, and one of the few things that they have in common is that the fulfillment of religious duties was something between a person and God. Taking sacraments, performing mitzvahs, or whatever one chooses to call it, is not a stage show, and is above all else not meant to show everyone else in the room how righteous one is. And, should a church official find one spiritually lacking, a news conference that does not include the person in question may not be the most appropriate venue to discuss the topic.

Anyway, I'm glad Kerry does not march lockstep with the positions of the Catholic church. I'm part of a generation that feels no loyalty to groups, parties, or affiliations, and I do not find this to be a character flaw. I mistrust anyone who takes a prepackaged set of beliefs--political or religious--and adheres to every last one of them without question. It's one thing to realize that a group's platform is right after introspection and research, and more power to you if that group is one you were born into. It's quite another to adhere to a prepackaged set of beliefs out of the convenience of not having to actually consider and develop one's own positions on a variety of issues. It's been my experience that any time any group has a platform that consists of a wide range of issues, at least one of those positions is going to be completely whacked. Those off-base planks do not invalidate the rest of the platform, but if every organization required every member to believe every last thing that organization stood for, only the pathologically lazy would affiliate themselves with anything at all.

There, But For the Grace of God...

An article in Salon today asks, of the situation in the Abu Ghraib prison, "How Could Women Do That?"

Since it's the 21st century, can we just finally admit that women are not, as a group, any more or less civilized than men? That second X chromosome does not contain the polite gene. Ovaries do not inoculate against boorish behavior. For goodness sake, Comedy Central has an entire show devoted to "Girls Behaving Badly." The question we should be asking is not how women could do that, but how could anyone do that?

I have a very optimistic view of humanity on the whole. I believe that people will do what they believe is right. This is a belief borne out of denial; the idea that people would do something even if they knew it was not right has implications for society far beyond anything I am willing to consider. Dr. Stanley Milgram proved, using experiments later deemed unethical, that people will do pretty much whatever someone in a position of authority tells them to do, even if empirical observations indicate that doing so harms someone else. Of course, I will deny empirical evidence, too. I know about Dr. Milgram's results, and I've heard and seen some of the horrible things people do to one another. I know that the world is not necessarily a safe place, yet I continue to believe in the innate goodness of all humanity--not just women--because to stop believing that, I would have to admit that the only reason for my continued happy-go-lucky existence is that no one has decided to tell someone else to end it. If I had to admit that, I would never leave my house again.

Cheeky

My first solicitation from the Alumni Association arrived in my mailbox yesterday, which was my nominal graduation day, though the school will not confer my degree for another couple weeks yet, as they wait for my final grades to come in. It stands to reason that, for the letter to have arrived Friday, it was probably mailed around Wednesday, before I even finished my classes. This begs the question, "Should the Alumni Association be hitting me up for cash before I become an alumna?"

Name That Context

"Easy access allows someone other than the consumer to buy it and then slip it to a woman without her knowledge or consent."

Believe it or not, the "it" in question is not a new date-rape drug, though the statement sounds eerily similar to an email I periodically get reminding me that, when I am at a bar or a party (two places I never go), I should only accept drinks opened in front of me, and always keep one hand covering the glass so no one can slip me a mickey and have their way with me while I'm drugged and will have no memory of the incident afterward.

That quotation is, I kid you not, cut-and-pasted from the Concerned Women For America's website--specifically, the page titled "Talking Points on the Morning-After Pill." By way of evidence for this potential danger, they cite, without sources, two anecdotes of physicians administering abortifacents to their pregnant girlfriends in some very creative manners. Who knew you could administer RU-486 pills vaginally without the woman noticing?

The dosage instructions for the Morning After Pill are to take one of the tablets within 72 hours, and a second tablet 12 hours later, for the medication to be effective. I'd be very interested to hear a plausible scenario where someone could manage that without the woman catching on.

Name Game

Back in February, I posted the top 10 baby names for boys, as determined by babynames.com through a survey of websites where expectant parents post their favorite names. Now, the Social Security Administration has released the top 10 baby names that parents, in fact, gave their infants last year.

Let's see how good the internet is at predicting actual trends:

Top Boy Baby Name of 2003:
Social Security: Jacob
Internet: Aidan (SSA rank: 39)

#2
Social Security: Michael
Internet: Jaden (SSA rank: 83)

#3
Social security: Joshua
Internet: Caden (SSA rank: 114)

#4
Social Security: Matthew
Internet: Ethan (SSA rank: 7)

#5
Social Security: Andrew
Internet: Caleb (SSA rank 34)

#6
Social Security: Joseph
Internet: Dylan (SSA rank: 19)

#7
Social Security: Ethan
Internet: Jacob (SSA rank: 1)

#8
Social Security: Daniel
Internet: Jordan (SSA rank: 38)

#9
Social Security: Christopher
Internet: Logan (SSA rank: 29)

#10
Social Security: Anthony
Internet: Hayden (SSA rank: 85)

That adds up to being off by an average of about 39 in the rankings. Only one name on the internet list, Jacob, actually turned out to be more popular in practice than the internet survey indicated. So much for reliably predicting this trend online.

My own name, which has never, to my knowledge been among the top 10 (only in my last semester of 18 years of school did I share a class with another Janet), seems to be declining even further. It has gone from 238th most popular in 1991 to 508th most popular now. My new niece Emilia's name comes in at 506th, a steady increase from 935th place in 1991. To see how the popularity of your name has changed over the last 13 years, click here for the Social Security Administration's baby name website. There, you can put in any name and, as long as it is in the top 1000 names, you can see how its popularity has waxed or waned.

Well, This Certainly Sucks Like a Hoover

Got my Jury Duty summons today.

I have long held the belief that, if I were put in the situation, I would opt out of the trial by jury. If my butt is on the line, I want my fate decided by someone whose job it is to know the law and apply it equally and fairly. I do not want to put my fate in the hands of 12 people who couldn't find a way out of jury duty. Yes, I know it is my civic duty to lose two days' pay on top of paying for parking so that I can have lawyers try to use more psychology than law to try to win me over to their sides, and if necessary I will fulfill that obligation. The jury duty system here does not seem particularly onerous; it is only for 2 days, provided I don't get seated on a trial that will take a while. Nonetheless, I find something inherently wrong when a jury of your peers is composed entirely of people who can be replaced at work for a couple of days, and when the most complex cases are decided by the people who have no responsibilities that would preclude them from being sequestered for months on end.

Done...

I just printed out my last final, including an answer to the question the professor said would be on the final but was not: "What would be the biggest problem if we had cars that could travel at the speed of light?" He said it would be that you couldn't pick up comely hitchhikers. He did not appreciate the answer I gave in class, that gas bills would be horrendous, provided we could come up with a way to violate the laws of physics and accelerate something with mass to light speed, so I included a bonus answer on my final: a half-page explanation of why, at the speed of light, you would never be able to tune your car radio.

I hand the final in exactly 8 hours from now. Then we're going out to Coldstone Creamery to celebrate the end of 7 years of college (or 5 years if you don't count the two I took off in the middle after we moved to Ohio). Civilization has now advanced to the point that we have battery-operated dental floss (the link only discusses the manual version, but my grocery store sells a one that takes AAs) and a flavor of ice cream that tastes exactly like uncooked yellow cake batter. Does life get better than this?

Lesson Learned the Hard Way...

It's all fun and games until someone gets hit with a flying DVD.

However, in the process, we also learned that a properly chucked DVD will fly fairly well, though it veers slightly to the left. That is how I found myself staring down the leading edge of an airborne DVD. On the bright side, we found out that the cat goes for anything shiny and flying, and the impact didn't leave a mark.

The alternate lesson comes courtesy of Elie: "I guess this is why they don't play frisbee indoors."

One Down, One To Go...

Finished my Algebra final two hours ago. Now I'm on to finishing the take-home literature final. So far, it's a load of BS, but since I'm supposed to be regurgitate class discussion, that would be just about right.

Bumper Sticker Typos

Driving home today, I saw a van with a bumper sticker that read "Cod Bless America." I stared at it for a full minute as we sat at a stoplight at the offramp. I may misread many things, but I'm pretty sure this one really said "Cod." Are we the chosen people of fish and chips now?

Shot Glass Half Empty?

From an Associated Press article headlined "Study: Ohio Teen Health Habits Improve," reporting the findings of a survey of high school students:

"90 percent said they didn't drink and drive in the month before the survey."

Certainly sounds like good news when put that way. The Ohio Health Department did the study and released the results, and incidentally also sponsors the "Healthy Ohioans Program" (no conflict of interest there), so it's no wonder that they did not choose to report the results in another, equally accurate way:

"In a single month alone, 1 in 10 Ohio teens admit not only to drinking while underage, but also to driving while intoxicated."

NOTE: You may have noticed that I no longer link to the AP stories on which I comment. The AP website has changed how it is laid out, making it a pain in the rump roast to find the articles on a universally-accessible site, as opposed to AOL news, where I read most of them. Be assured that I am not making up the articles.

Blue Car Effect

The Blue Car Effect is that phenomenon by which you don't notice how many blue cars are on the road until you buy a blue car yourself. Mr. Grooism attributes the Blue Car Effect to me, even though I don't quite remember when I would have mentioned it in a context with Larry.

We here at Penguin Perspectives are experiencing the Blue Car Effect--oddly enough, with a blue car, even. Until yesterday, we thought that pretty much nobody in Toledo, Ohio drove Volvos. After all, Toledo is home to the Jeep Liberty and you can't spit in a parking lot without hitting at least 3 Jeep Grand Cherokees. However, since we purchased our blue Volvo yesterday, Volvos are everywhere. There were two, not counting ours, in the Circuit City parking lot when we went in search of a GPS mounting bracket to replace the original one, still attached to the Mustang.

I am going to try to keep up the daily posting in the next few days, but I may get sporadic again before the end of the week, for reasons I will reveal after I have all the details. If I do, check out the links at the right. Not everyone there posts daily (and the shameless commerce page is static), but they all have good things to say.

Yuppies

We've become yuppies. We just traded in Elie's silver Mustang GT for a dark blue 2001 Volvo with beige leather interior and plastic burlwood trim. It also has the latest in cupholder technology: when you press on a panel in the center console, the panel pops up and deploys two beverage-securing arms.

Reference Check

At the moment, I am between interviews on the newest hit TV show, "Who Wants to be Chessie's Pet Sitter?" OK, so we aren't actually taping this for network TV distribution, but we should be. It won't be long until picking a person to feed our cat while we're on vacation will be the only place reality TV hasn't gone.

I've spaced the interviews far enough apart that one potential pet sitter won't run into another one. This has left me with about an hour to contemplate the fist potential sitter's references. The odd thing about references and recommendations (which are, functionally, the same thing) is that pretty much anyone can get two or three people to say, if asked, that the recommendee is a responsible person and provides excellent whatever you're looking for. One simply does not ask people to be references if there is a chance they might say that one smokes crack and hasn't done an honest day's work in one's entire life. At work, prospective students' two required recommendations almost universally say "Outstanding" on all criteria and "would highly recommend." We might as well just print them with all that filled in.

UPDATE: I have fixed some errors in grammar that seem to have eluded my attention, as well as the stupid sounding parts.

I, Robot

The robots are coming.

An assistant professor at, appropriately enough, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has developed robotic highway construction cones that can move themselves, either by remote control or on a timer. Self-motivated traffic cones: somehow, the idea disturbs me.

Thank you all for hanging in here with me in spite of the irregular blogging. Daily, thoughtful posts should replace these sporadic ones very soon.