Are those trees, or a forest?

I might be out of the woods with this dread disease - some sort of viral bronchitis with many other joyous side-symptoms. It's going on three weeks for both my daughter and me. We're still hacking like 92-year-old tobacco junkies, with revisitations of earaches, sore throats, and runny noses. My wife just came down with it today. Gad what a plague. Half of the school, teachers and students, are still out. A friend's kids have all developed pneumonia from it, the baby landing in the hospital. The local children's hospital is so full of kids with this, they are forwarding new cases to a hospital out of town. This is Denver, folks, so think about that: A major metropolitan hospital is FULL and sending kids to the burbs for beds. Why is this not on the news? It makes me wonder if the avian flu or Capt. Trips did sweep the nation, would it be missed because the media was still enamored with political scandals? (Can't you just envision that meeting? "Why are the ratings down so drastically? Go investigate!" ...some time passes... "What? Half the population is DEAD? How did we miss that? Oh, look! Bush is signing a bill that will make all doctors liable for murder if they fail to resuscitate emergency room victims! Especially if they're Republicans! Get the liberal reaction to THAT!")

Of course, the medical story in the news is the woman whose feeding tube was pulled, according to her wishes. My take is this kind of thing is exclusively a private family issue. It's too bad the parents and the husband didn't agree, but they didn't, and now this mess. My family is all on the side of living wills and have signed, sealed, and submitted documents that all scream "KICK THE PLUG OUT OF THE WALL, DAMNIT ANYWAY," so this is just a circus as far as we're concerned. We're all Christians by the way. We don't agree with the fundie and Catholic take on this issue (well, to be fair, there are fundies and Catholics on the other side of the issue, but they aren't making the news). They scream about saving her life. If the brain or the body is damaged to where it can't live on its own without life support (which includes a feeding tube), is that truly life? I would expect atheists to chime in on the side of never giving up since they think this is all there is, but for those of us who believe the soul never dies, why would anyone want that soul trapped in a mindless shell for decades? Especially if we don't know if they are suffering or not inside that shell? For some, this goes back to the question of following God's will. The fundies and Catholics chanting outside of the hospice have decided that any human intervention that causes death is de facto thwarting of the will of God. I dunno. Is keeping a body alive through breathing machines and feeding tubes thwarting the will of God? Because if we weren't there to provide such support in the first place, it would die. These issues are complex, and so I feel this should have remained a family issue. But you can't undo what's done. May she rest in peace.

TLD: By the way, one of the real tragedies in the end-of-life hospice world is that the management of pain, say from cancer or inability to eat or sepsis, is a hit-or-miss deal due to the drug war. Because all drugs that do a great job of managing pain are controlled substances, and so are monitored by the DEA, someone's comfort level will be directly affected by their doctor's views of and fears of the DEA. Doctors have to let the DEA know when and how much of any narcotic they prescribe for any reason, thanks to the drug war. The DEA doesn't really pay attention to what the reasons are, but if a doc suddenly throws a yellow or red light from prescribing close to or above set limits, they get a nastygram, a visit, or even have their license yanked if the DEA is taken with a whim to do so. Some doctors are courageous and will prescribe what the patient needs; others have a reasonable fear of the DEA and choose to be safe, but the patient then usually suffers pain that is unnecessary. If you find a loved one or yourself on the long slide down, probe the doctor on their opinion of this issue and find out whether there will be adequate pain management or not. Get specifics on how they intend to manage it and don't accept vague generalities like "we will do our best to make you comfortable." Also, don't wait until hospice care has started to find this out. America is behind both the first and third worlds in this issue because other developed countries have figured out that if someone is terminal, it doesn't matter if they're on heroin or cocaine (both supposedly superior to morphine for pain control - did you know that our military generals cruise into the void on cocaine rather than morphine, for instance), and hospitals in third world countries use whatever works.

I've had little peace myself in the last week or so, staying up all hours, hacking away on the couch downstairs so as to not wake the rest of the family. From the run of Sat through Tues, I had approx 2 hours of sleep per night, incessantly surfing through the dregs of nightowl TV. It's always been a wasteland, but any more it's just, well, sick. Porn is openly advertised, with barely pixilated blurs pretending to hide the naughty bits. All the condom and lube commercials tout a new "warming sensation" chemical, which just makes me wonder two things simultaneously: 1) Are there really people out there whose genitals aren't warm enough whilst in the act, and if so, shouldn't they be seeing a doctor about it rather than applying heat rub on their pink parts?; and 2) who thinks it's healthy to have a chemical that makes perhaps some of the most sensitive tissue on the body experience burning sensations? Aren't burning sensations in our pee pees something most of us actively strive to avoid? Dave Chappelle, though funny, gets old upon the 5th rerun of "I'm Rick James, bitch!" MTV and VH1 are back to playing about an hour or so of videos in the wee hours, but it's mostly (c)rap and hiphop, with rock getting maybe one slot per hour, which makes the ratio of rockin' time to commercial time 1 to 5; how sad is that? To my dismay I've seen NO movies during this sick vacation because my wife wants to see all the movies we have rented (meaning I can't watch them alone), and since the child is home sick, too, we can't watch them during the day. I am in serious withdrawal. I almost watched a Hallmark/Lifetime Special movie the other day, it's that bad.

Because of lack of entertainment options, I've been reading the paper a lot. The local big deal is this schmuck-on-a-stick "humanities" (Identity Politics, Minority Studies - take your pick, they're all the same animal) professor, Ward Churchill, who labeled the victims of 9-11 "little Eichmanns," which means, for those of you in the cheap seats, he called them Nazis. This guy is a prime example of how fucked up these departments have become. If you can mangle logic to the extent that innocent people blown up at work by terrorists equate to evil bastards who purposely killed fellow human beings they had downgraded to animals through massive disassociations and putrid justifications, to quote the late great Bill Hicks, "You ARE Satan." Yeah, Churchill has the freedom of speech on his side to say such idiotic and cruel things, but he has to expect some consequences for the same. Many want this bastard fired, as do I. I don't want him fired for what he said, but for what he represents. If you identify a cancer, cut it out, I say. (Maybe I should just go up to the Boulder campus, find Churchill and cough on him. With his butt habit, this nasty virus would probably take him out in a week.)

Oh, a couple more notes on Churchill just to further emboss how twisted this guy is: He pretends he's a Native American (or an American Indian if that term does not offend) even though there's damn good evidence to the contrary. His claim for being an NA is based on his grandma telling him he was 1/16th Indian once and some tribe giving him honorary membership. Even the tribe that gave him that honorary membership won't go so far as to claim he's actually a Native American, they just had fun partying with him once or twice. Many suspect that he claims to be NA because it provides him the legal protection of being a minority and because apparently some college chicks dig it. He doesn't have a degree in the field he teaches either; he has an art degree (which he employs to create Native American paintings that he sells for cigarette money, natch). His tribal drumming leaves a lot to be desired by all reports, too, as his talent for rhythm is in as short supply as his honesty. You'd think someone living such a warped, corrupt existence would eventually perish from his own asshole rising up and engulfing him out of utter shame. Apparently his first two wives, including the one who has a restraining order on him, concur with opinions approximating this one. His third wife died by wandering into traffic while intoxicated, which friends say was due to her remorse over her marriage to Churchill.

So some say fire the bastard, but I'd like to take it further: Rout the whole damn department. These Identity Politics/Humanities/Minority Studies departments are all just little bastions of hate mongering, and their profs will stand in front of a class and say shit like: "White people have no culture" or "All of white culture has been stolen from people of color." How is this different from a white supremacy rally? You tell me. (One of Churchill's more odious pronouncements of this type (and I paraphrase) is he recommends that yuppies who push their baby strollers up to him and chastise him about his chain smoking should kill themselves and their children if they really want to do the world a favor, because the resources they consume would help about 70 Chinese people. Think I'm kidding? Search down to "Using this method" and read the two following paragraphs.) A while ago these departments pulled of the coup d'etat of making their classes mandatory for graduation. These departments would shrivel like poisonous mushrooms in the bright sun if they were no longer mandatory. That's all it would take. Let's roll.

The other big deal in the news is Bush baby and his minions are continuing their purging of undesirables from public meetings. (Yes, I actually typed those words in America as an American describing the current American government.) They did this during the last campaign stating that since it was a campaign for their reelection, they were in their rights to purge hostiles, which was dubious enough. But now, these are public meetings regarding proposed policy paid for by citizen's taxes. Any and all citizens should be allowed to attend. Even Al Sharpton or Pauly Shore. (Ow, that hurt.) What we have here is bullshit people. This simply shouldn't be happening. I dare anyone to defend this behavior of our elected officials; but think twice if you do, because you have to consider that it might happen to you.

Now some may think I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance if on one hand I can state that college professors should lose their jobs for controversial stances and on the other condemn politicians for curtailing free speech and fair representation. Well, let's give postmodernism yet another heave-ho and hope it will just wander off and die, because context is everything here. On the one hand you have a group of people so rabidly fucked in the head that everyone who's not a self-proclaimed minority victim should euthanize themselves for the greater good (gosh, who's solution does that resemble?), and on the other, you've got a supposedly democratic government actively excluding from participation citizens with differing opinions. In other words, they're the same thing, the same evil: one group declaring the other group is not worthy, and therefore excluding them or (suggesting) extinguishing them. This is not what the dream of our nation is about. We are about liberty, equality, and justice. Let's try to get back to that, huh?

[Deep breath.]

[Cough. Cough.]

The high spot in all this dross was I finally got a copy of Dean Koontz's How to Write Best Selling Fiction, his long out of print and now expensive second cook book. It's pretty darn good. Stephen King's On Writing is still the best, and John Gardner's The Art of Fiction is the other standard-bearer, but this joins them as yet another must-read, if you are into cook books. ("Cook book" is my adopted term for "how to write" tracts.) Koontz's takedown of "literary fiction" and the myth of "The Great American Novel" alone is worth the read, but the highlight is the chapter on plotting. Lotsa good stuff there; good practical advice on do's and don'ts. For instance, one of main characters has to be likeable to give the reader someone to associate to, something that literary fiction authors just can't seem to understand. (I'm looking at you, DeLillo.) And this seems to be obvious with so many real-life parallels. If you're at a party, do you want to be trapped talking to a boorish asshole who cheats on his wife and suggests that yuppies kill their children or would you prefer someone who's fun, upbeat, and tells good stories? Perhaps I'll put some excerpts from it up later (if I can find a way to boil it down). One interesting note is that all three authors mentioned here have little or no patience for the dreck that academia touts as serious fiction, which alone I think proves their mettle and worth.

And, btw, for all the slamming I've done on college academia, I still think everyone should graduate from college if they can manage to. There are many good professors and classes to be had that are invaluable towards having a good and prosperous life. Just watch out for the poltroons is all.

Cheers!

__________
Addendum:
I suggest you read the first comment to this post. Sharon straightens me out on what should have occurred for Ms. Schiavo in accordance to the wishes of the Catholic church.

Sicker'n Hell

I have been laid low with this evil two-part disease floating around Denver. First you get what seems like a cold for a week, then just as you think you're recovering, it goes into your lungs and you're down for the count. It has been going back and forth across my dept. at work for half a year now, making it sound like a TB ward. My daughter's school is half-emptied at the moment - which is significant if you consider the fact that many of the two-income households view elementary school as day care and dump their kid there regardless of how they feel unless the school nurse puts her foot down.

As if to make up for it, my dreams have been vivid and more bizarre than the court of public opinion these days, what with the poor woman and her feeding tube and Wacko Jacko's pedophile circus (you just watch, if he escapes, he'll move to Sri Lanka with that other famous pedophile, Arthur C. Clarke of sci-fii fame). The press doesn't know which way to point its collective pecker.

Also, I usually take times like this to read a difficult or dull old classic because nothing fosters stick-to-it-ivness like the inability to get up and do something else. This time I'm tackling Dracula. I've already tackled the other two big monster classics: Frankenstein and Moby Dick (though Moby Dick is hardly just a monster story, which is true of the other two, too, come too think of it; and btw, Jaws is a direct rip-off homage to Moby Dick, borrowing the plot and most of the major characters). I'm 3/4 of the way through, and it will be my least favorite of the three as the middle section was really rough hoeing. Once the first newly minted vampire is dispatched, that being Miss Lucy, there's a good 20 pages of "what shall we do next?" until someone asks Van Helsing what to do, and he says, "Kill Dracula now, of course," to which they collectively slap their foreheads to indicate "of course" and go after him, then things pick up again. The beauty (or the drag if you're not so inclined to enjoy it) is these novels take huge side-trips into philosophy about the thing they are battling. In Frankenstein, the most eloquent philosophizing is done by the monster itself (which never gets a name, btw).

My eldest daughter has the same ick I do, so we've been consuming way too much TV. She's again taken a huge interest in the classic Star Treks that I have on DVD. Nothing warms my heart more than to see my daughter embracing the classics. We got the movies from the library, but she wasn't as taken with them, and it's obvious as to why. Though some of the movies are great, they never really captured the tone and pacing of the original series. I think back in the day the joy of having Star Trek back in movie form was so thrilling that we tended to overlook how superior the original series was. You can never go home again, it seems.

Hopefully, when I post again, I won't be a solid brick of snot.

"What's the Worst Green Thing You've Ever Had?"

Last night on the way home, one of the radio stations was having people call in and describe the worse green thing they'd ever had - in honor of St. Patty's day of course. (I was channel hopping over to AM to hear some songs and surfed onto the station (obviously FM since they weren't playing music) in time to hear the premise.)

This stirred a memory that I doubt they'd allow onto the air, so I didn't call. However, for your enjoyment, here's the story of the worse green thing I ever had.

I was never one for one-night stands, though still managed to have a few - almost always after losing all sense and proportion due to being wasted. In this case, I was getting ready to head home as the wedding reception post party had wound almost all the way down, and people had partnered off or passed out - or, comically, both. The bride and groom had rented half a floor of rooms, and I wandered from a room that had collapsed into a grope-fest into the remaining noisy party to grab a cold one for the road. Beer in hand, I parked in one of the few places left on the floor. This girl next to me immediately started chatting me up. (Which should have been my first clue as to her motives. Experience has taught me that women will not usually initiate conversation with a male stranger unless they want something - the obvious exception being if he's a major hunksicle, which I am not.)

After about ten minutes of chatter, she hauls off and plants one on me. Just wham, out of the blue, no warning, no gleam in the eye ahead of time, just a full one-and-a-half gainer with no spotter into my face. Had there been flailing tongue involved, I certainly would have selected another spot to enjoy the final brew of the evening, but she had some talent, which is rare enough to have given me pause. (My wife and I estimate that well over half the population is not very good at kissing.) Anyway, after a little inappropriate public display of affection, someone muttered, "get a room," to which she immediately purred, "yeah, let's." Not many unattached men in their early twenties can turn down such an easy conquest, especially while wearing beer goggles.

Off we went to find a room. Not that anyone's proud of this, but people who were in the thralls of lust that weddings tend to evoke* were pairing off in some of the rooms, one couple to each bed, which was clearly what the betrothed had expected to happen and thus provided accommodations to keep all the horny drunks off the road. An unoccupied room was not to be had, so we claimed the empty bed in a room that already contained a couple in the throws thereof on the other bed, who mumbled without unlocking lips their semi-oblivious consent to our crashing there. To say the least, it's a little disconcerting to be doing the deed in the room with another couple doing the same, unless that's what you're into, of course. I am not, even though the events of this story include that very occurrence. But, with the dual shields of booze and the other couple's intense focus on each other, into the breech we leapt, lads.

*Hint for you young single men out there: Weddings are THE place to score. The whole event just does something to a portion of the female contingent; I've witnessed it myownself many times. As a bonus, the liquor is usually provided. (And I'm sure Jesus will bring up my circulation of that little factoid if I make it to the big pre-heaven life review.)

Let me remind you, dear reader, that while you are sitting there reading this in what I assume is relative sobriety, neither of us had the benefit of clear minds, or else I would have noticed the other warning flags going up in addition to the fact that some girl had jumped me moments after met. Yes, I should have been thinking of possible mitigating factors. (Btw, this was before the specter of AIDs. The herpes scare hadn't started yet. Nor had the outrageousness of abdicating responsibility for one's actions while wasted and charging a consenting partner with rape become even a possibility on the legal radar. I had inquired about BC though, and she said she was safe.) She was bombed, my friends, way more bombed than I had the ability to discern, being in the cups myself. So, what happened next you've probably seen a mile off, where I was completely surprised.

Let us join the mash session already in progress:

Her:
"Uuuuh, <---- the internationally recognized sound of passion
uhh,
uuuuuuh,
HURRRGH!" <---- the internationally recognized sound of an impending power hurl

She leapt out from beneath me (had there been Olympic judges present, she certainly would've averaged a 9.7 score for the maneuver) dashed to the can, slammed the door, and proceeded to ralph her brains out. The couple in the next bed had stopped what they were doing and directly after the crushing silence was broken by my paramour's first resonant retch, they burst into guffaws, replete with snorts.

For years after that, I was trailed at parties with the mocking reenactment of:
"Uuuuh, uhh, uuuuuuh, HURRGH!" Particularly if I were having luck at successfully chatting up a young lady. I would say that my buddies were cruel in haunting me with that particular episode in my patchy love life, but sober reflection always leaves me with a good shot of "what the hell was I thinking?" and so I feel I deserved the ugly reminder. It helped to keep me honest and more aware of what I might be getting into, so to speak, and as proof I can say this is the most tawdry stain on my love life to date, as it will remain.

And it serves as my punch line to "what's the worse green thing you've ever had?": A very green girl whom I should have stayed away from had I managed to produce one clear, prudent thought in my bigger head. I take a tiny bit of refuge in the fact that it's at least a better answer to the query than "too much St. Patty's day beer."

Maybe I should have called the station...

Poets

I'm always torn when I encounter a novel that's named after a classic song. Part of me thinks it's cute and digs the cultural reference while the other part cringes because the work has now inherited the baggage of the song.

TLD: For instance, it irked me for years that the song "Shangri-la" on the best album of all time imnsho - A New World Record by the Electric Light Orchestra - had the lyrics "faded like the Beatles on 'Hey Jude'." Urgh! The past purist in me hated that. I'm no longer a purist because it's a form of anal retentiveness that makes silly things annoy you, like direct Beatles references in a favorite song. About the only purist thing left in me is that I don't like to enter a movie showing after the credits have started, for grown-up movies, that is. I'll do it because babysitters are hard to procure and date nights are precious.

But, Douglas Coupland has proven to be deft handling nearly anything literary and allusionary, so I lunged into his latest, Eleanor Rigby, with glee and gusto. Coupland's writing itself still floors me. About the only word I can conjure to describe it is "profound." He is the master of invoking the background music of the universe through a description of someone making jello.

It's not one of his best, those being Microserfs, Generation X (yes, the very one), and Hey Nostradamus!. But, for even lukewarm fans it's a must - if only, at the very least, to discover why the title is borrowed from one of the Beatle's finest.

For those not into literary fiction, I recommend another fun recent read:

The Poet by Michael Connelly. This one's been out for a while, but if it's not yet shown up on your radar, consider this official SONAR contact (to mix metaphors and technologies all at once!). This was a exuberant read even though I'm tiring of the serial killer genre, not only because half the TV shows out there are retreads of Ed Gein/Ted Bundy inspired tales, but also because there's not a lot of variation to the story. It's almost as wrote as "The Hero's Journey," but it would go more like this:

The initiation:
- Future serial killer is abused as a child, typically sexually, but frequent brutal beatings will suffice. Mocking by peers is common as well.
- Future serial killer is overly intelligent but also overly shy and sensitive, and has trouble meeting gurls, at first. (It's never a woman, btw. Women travel a subtler path to the destruction of a target: financial ruin, social ruin, or both - so said victim can live with the full suffering until the end of their days - no quick and easy out like death. God bless 'em!)
- Future serial killer often expresses his brewing sickness by torturing animals to death or starting fires, or both.

The changeling:
- Future serial killer morphs into full-fledged sociopathy if not born that way already.
- Future serial killer forges outer shell personality to pass through the world with the appearance of normality, correctly sensing that the creature they've become would not be accepted by society.

The rise:
- Serial killer's first victim is usually someone they know whom they have formed a grudge on, deserved or not, or is someone who has rejected their friendship or romantic advances.
- Getting away with this first crime gives the serial killer confidence.
- An expanse of time passes before the serial killer strikes again, but it's inevitable as the pressure builds until the release of a kill is required.

The full bloom:
- Once the serial killer is established, a twisted sense of pride arises from the power to kill undetected, which conflicts with the fact that pride of accomplishment requires acknowledgment.
- The time that passes between killings is either consistent or becomes shorter each time, as continual release of pressure and seeking of pleasure is required.
- If it was not a element of the first killing, the serial killer initiates the use of sexual gratification with the victim, pre or post death, depending on what does it for the freak, as most serial killer's pathology has a sexual component.
- The serial killer, either by purposeful design or unintentional repetition of methods that are needed to bring release but also provide a pattern, becomes known by the police through a "calling card" of identical clues for different killings.
- The serial killer also must keep mementos, usually parts of the body, as prizes and reminders of the killing accomplishments, thus providing identification and proof when and if caught. (Ed Gein made an entire costume out of the skins of the women he killed, in which he would dance under the full moon.)

So, what makes The Poet interesting is that it almost never dwells on the killer, like the great Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs do, but on the inner and outer world of the reporter tracking the killer down. It's a page turner, and one of the better ones I've read, even though the killer conforms to "the serial killer's journey" as outlined here. And while the writing isn't as profound as Coupland's, the style is as deliberate and skillful, and beautifully serves the purpose of the story.

Thumbnail movie reviews of 03-14-2005

Saw, um, Saw. It stars Cary Elwes who was the mysterious stranger in Princess Bride. My wife marveled that he still looks the same, if not a little heavier. We had way low expectations and were braced for over the top gore. Se7en is still the high water, or blood, mark to meet when it comes to sheer "eeeeew" inducing fantods. Saw manages to suggest more than it shows, and it has a truly surprising turn of events. Those who like dark, grim explorations of the depravity of serial killers will enjoy this; casual viewers will not. I don't want to give anything away, but this would have been much better had the pace been a little tighter, and we got to the end about 15 minutes sooner. The collective reviews would have been better, too, methinks. Worth the time on a slow night, imho.

I was unable to make it through Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Who thought this was funny? Dear lord what a stinker. Even the bloopers were dull.

One of the Better Things You'll Read this Month

After I post something like the post immediately below, a screed on an unpopular topic where I'm even taking the designated wrong side (especially for a liberal), I feel I need to offer up something fun, informative - heck, just outright better - to read.

Well, here it is. Note: this does not allow access to non-subscribers, but see below.

David Foster Wallace¹ researched talk radio to bring us one of his stellar articles on the same. Wallace's short fiction can be hit-or-miss because most of his short stories are experimental and many bomb quite badly. His novels are much better, though², and his reports from the front, like this one, are perhaps his best. In the collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, the article that lends the collection its title is about his investigation of going on an ocean cruse. I've been on one, and he NAILS the experience, particularly that weird twilight zone mood where you're trapped on what's supposed to be a party boat but is really just a floating Vegas without the easy access to extreme sleeze, unless you count the topless sunning deck at the fore of the craft, punctuated by blasts of that accursed Buster Poindexter song "Hot Hot Hot." Because he was so close to the bone on that one, I've since trusted him implicitly with any reportage.

I don't listen to talk radio because radio to me is a device that's supposed to bring me an interesting mix of music. When it does not do this, it's merely an annoyance. And, no big secret, the vast majority of talk radio is wingnut Rush Limburger clones screeching at anyone who will call or tune in that they're not Americans unless they buy into the neocon's vision of war all the time, no social safety net, no increase in minimum wage, and their latest trick: making it much harder for the poor to declare bankruptcy while building in blatant loopholes for the ultrawealthy so they can do it easily and protect their money offshore at the same time. Let them eat Twinkies!

But, as the new reality show "The Contender" has demonstrated, you don't necessarily have to give a flying star-spangled fandango about the topic to enjoy the entertainment itself. Wallace's article is a grand entertainment, but informative, too. Further kudos, while I don't even attempt to walk the non-partisan line, Wallace trips down the wire gracefully. I don't believe anyone of any political ilk will object to how talk radio is portrayed here.

So, have a good time. It's long, so it'll take a good hour or two, all of which you'll thoroughly enjoy.³

"But, Yahmdallah," you say, "How can I read this thing if they don't allow you to see the whole thing on the site unless you subscribe?" To which I respond, "Dear, cherished reader, fret not. You can find a copy⁴ at your local library. But, if you don't have the time, or want to read it on the convenience of your own computer, just drop me a note, and I'll forward it on to you."⁵ Who's your buddy?

---

¹ He of the copious footnotes which drive some readers to distraction, but I like them because they're funny as hell. (Well and I do the same thing, just with parenthesis, usually.)

² (Since this is about the DFW, I'll stick these kinds of asides in footnotes as a pale homage to the master.) His Infinite Jest is one of my favorite novels ever, only beaten by A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, and neck-in-neck with the other denizen of my top three, Texasville by Larry McMurtry.

³ It even outs the scam of the herbal concoction Enzyte that's supposed to provide "natural male enhancement." That part alone is worth the read.

⁴ And a photocopier, no doubt.

⁵ See the upper left part of the page for my addy. Don't feel the need to compose any niceties for the request, a "gimme" will do.

Running with Scissors

<screed>
One of the guideposts of raising a child is to not reward bad behavior. Sometimes just attention is the reward when someone's throwing a fit, because the goal is attention, good or bad. Once it a great while, though, you've got to weigh intervention against possible harm, such as a child in full tantrum meltdown who grabs something sharp.

What follows is something like that.

I read this in the Sunday Denver Post:

The Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance bashed a speech by Jada Pinkett Smith on Feb. 26 at a Harvard University Cultural Rhythms show.

Three days after the speech, BGLTSA co-chair Jordan B. Woods said "some of the content (of Pinkett Smith's speech) was extremely heteronormative, and made BGLTSA members feel uncomfortable." Heteronormative, according to Woods, means they implied that standard sexual relationships are only between males and females.

A snippet of Pinkett Smith's speech: "Women, you can have it all -- a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career. They say you gotta choose. Nah, nah, nah. We are a new generation of women. We got to set a new standard of rules around here. You can do whatever it is you want. All you have to do is want it."

You probably noticed that the person who wrote this (unidentified in the article) dripped enough contempt, sparing me the duty.

Which is good because I wanna snark about the big, white elephant in the room. That big bastard over there in the corner double dipping in the guacamole and crapping on the settee.

Homosexuality is not "normal." Let's pause here before the screaming begins and see what Webster's has to say about normal: "a : according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule, or principle b : conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern." No matter which percentage you choose on how much of the population is gay, 3%, 5%, that still leaves a vast majority of folks who are heterosexual. With those kinds of odds, that means heterosexuality is normal.

Again, in attempt to speak over the screaming, let me add further that I don't believe "not normal" is necessarily bad. In America particularly, we like the underdog, the misfit, the rebel - all terms for someone who's not normal. Most of the gay people I know and the ones whose opinions I've read often say they revel in being different, outside of the norm. They consider it a positive element of their identity.

Trying to force this Orwellian/Huxlian monstrosity "heteronormative" into the lexicon will result in little from annoyance to open guffaws, because no one wants it. It doesn't help anyone and only clouds the issue, because it's a lie. It wants to pretend that heterosexuality isn't the only normal there is. Don't we have enough to deal with considering the current administration and its love of Orwellian/Huxlian manipulation of the language? ("Personal Accounts" my ass. "PATRIOT Act" indeed.)

Let your freak flag fly, man, but don't ask me to pretend it's anything else.

Now that I'm all wound up and sloshing around in the verboten topic of the day anyway, allow me to lob another mouse at the elephant.

Most people I know (including me) don't equate the gay rights movement with the civil rights movement. These same people also believe that gay people have the right (and I do mean the right) to be safe from harm and to pursue happiness. They also believe that their orientation shouldn't be a factor in their job, housing, and so on. I don't make a blanket statement on discrimination because sometimes we all face some expected things we can't do; for instance, I can't use the women's sauna or changing room at the gym because I'm a guy - and let's not be coy and ignore the fact that the issue of homosexuality, because it is about sexuality, has some tentacles in that ballpark (to mix and torture a metaphor to death, most humble apologies).

Even gay-friendly Salon.com had an article recently that stated:

To compare these two struggles [gay rights and civil rights] is not to equate them. To say they are the same would be ridiculous. It goes without saying that there are major differences between race and sexual orientation -- and therefore homophobia and racism. [snip] To ignore the parallels would be no less ridiculous. [snip]

Hell yeah!

But, being Salon.com (when it comes gay issues), after it makes this bold statement, hauls off and messes it right up again:

There are two main reasons why this comparison jars with many. The first is blatant homophobia. It is far easier to marginalize the lesbian and gay agenda if you can sever any association between it and other struggles for equality. The second is latent homophobia, which argues that such comparisons trivialize racism, as though the right to love who you want and still keep your job, your home and sometimes your life is a trifling matter.

Well, no.

It's not homophobia, either the wax-on or the wax-off type as defined here, when folks just don't see the equals sign between gay rights and civil rights. It would be homophobia (how I hate that inaccurate, silly word) if someone said, "You shouldn't have a job here because you're gay." (With the possible common sense exceptions like the monitor behind the two-way mirror in a changing room.) It is not homophobia if someone says, "Y'know, I don't want my children's cartoons to explore the concept of homosexuality." Because what's really going on is the parent wants to decide how and when the child is educated concerning ALL sexuality, part of which is homosexuality.

This is where most draw the line: Our kids. In the adult world, nearly all of us agree that what consenting adults want to do with and for each other is their own damn business and no one else's. When kids come into the picture, the rules change.

Now, before anyone thinks this is just about homosexuality, let's trot out another example. I think that polygamy is not a good thing; I don't approve of it. I think it's an archaic form of marriage that no longer (if ever) serves a purpose, other than allowing a guy to legally get some strange once in a while (I've never heard of a woman having a harem of husbands). Our society allows all the strange you want, and the economic reasons for polygamy are non-existent, so I like the fact that it's not recognized in the states. Thus, when and if I have to discuss it with my children, I throw in my opinion that I think polygamy is wrong. For the record, I tell them Veganism is unhealthy, too. (And immoral since the philosophy and premise behind it would condemn most of the world to starvation; Veganism isn't sustainable as a primary diet anywhere but wealthy countries with efficient distribution systems.)

How and when I choose to divulge these adult things to my child is entirely up to me. And that's the way it will remain.

For the record, my wife's and my stance on homosexuality that we will communicate to our children is that it's just how some people are. It's not bad, it's not necessarily good, it just is. We will also say that gay people can have a hard time because of prejudice and that they encounter special problems that heterosexuals won't. It never hurts to be honest. This, of course, does not tow the GLAAD or BGLTSA line, but too damn bad. I won't tell my kids that being gay is a big rainbow Disneyland A-ticket ride. But then I won't tell them that it's inherently evil and wrong either. This will not set well with some, but there you are.

Oh and I wish whichever gay organization attacked the Boy Scouts would leave them the hell alone, just like PETA should leave kids fishing on the local pier alone. Yes, Miss Natalie Merchant, if I'm beating my kid in a grocery store, you can come up, stop me, and sing your sanctimonious little ditty, and I'd deserve it. But, don't force my kid to read "Beeboo Has Two Mommies" or scream at them that meat is murder. It's hard enough to get them to eat right in the first place. Crikey.
</screed>

I believe it...

Napoleon Dynamite

When folks around the office started quoting lines from Napoleon Dynamite, (well, quasi-quoting: "Get your own tots" was really "Get your own" - the tots being implied), I figured I needed to break down and watch this cult sleeper. I originally had put it on the "not enough time" list because the previews just depressed me, and Ebert, my guiding light with the exception of foreign films, didn't like it. But, when I praised Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle in front of some of the young-uns in a hallway gathering, I got a Napolean-esque: "Dude, Harold sucks. See Napoleon. Gosh!" And that clinched it.

Nonetheless, I sat down expecting an excruciating evisceration of that particular clique of nerd-dom (there are many stratified layers of that world, a few of which I eternally belong to). It ended up being excruciating, but wonderfully so and only because it was so honest and accurate about the kind of nerds Napoleon and his brother are. Which points out a truth about fiction: If a character or situation is portrayed honestly, then you needn't worry about it being exploitive, mean, or voyeuristic. Ebert's problem was he felt it was all of those - that we were meant to laugh at Napoleon and his gang, not with them. This film manages to deliver both kinds of laughs, but what's magnificent is all the laughs at Napoleon's expense are really boomerangs, and eventually you realize you're laughing at yourself, whether you know it or not.

Stephen King once wrote, and I paraphrase badly here, that every character, and every real person for that matter, is the star of the story in their own mind. Thus, when writing bad guys you have to realize that to themselves they're not bad and that their actions are justifiable. Napoleon - not a bad guy by any stretch - sucks you into his world, and that's why the laughs come back at you. In his world, he's the normal one, with the right viewpoint, and everyone else is messed up. It's a rare film that can do that. Try to list a few for yourself, and I bet you don't get past your fingers to your toes, or perhaps you won't even leave one hand.

I think the honesty of Napoleon Dynamite is proven by the fact that anyone who sees it can immediately think of the Napoleon from their high school. The Napoleon in my school was named Rodney, who oddly enough had a white-guy fro like Napoleon. One of my fonder memories of him was he was being mercilessly teased at lunch (as usual), this time about the sheer amount of food he put into his mouth for each bite. After a few minutes of this, with simple aplomb, Rodney opened his mouth as wide as possible, and the whole bolus dropped out of his mouth and hit the plate with a wet whack. It was still in the shape of his mouth, the ridges from the roof of his mouth clearly visible with teeth imprints lining each side. Totally gross. His tormentors left the table nearly immediately (perhaps they only paused long enough to stave off vomiting). Rodney popped the mass back into his mouth, and chewed on as if nothing had happened. I've always admired him for that.

Napoleon Dynamite is also universal in its appeal, and is a kid-friendly PG. My daughter, who's eight, laughed so hard at a couple scenes that we had to stop the DVD to allow her to recover. What's also telling is that during many other movies, if something is oblique or confusing - like a social situation or a story development - she'll ask us what's going on (for an interpretation). She didn't have to ask a single question during Napoleon Dynamite. The filmmakers have simply nailed Napoleon's world, simply and directly - right down to the 80s decor.

If you've got the time, an interesting set of bookends for a movie festival would be Napoleon Dynamite and Forrest Gump, in which the nether ends of the spectrum on the theme "misfit meets the real world" are presented in their most realistic and most idealized forms.

It's the Smell of Corruption

Big blog daddy James Lileks - everyone's favorite, including mine (don't feel bad Dooce and Blowhards, you're my vice-favorites) - wondered the other day:

I just find it amusing that people think that because I support less aggressive taxation and the War I must therefore believe gays should be driven into a pit lined with sharp stakes, and therefore I’m a hypocrite. How does that work? It’s like saying “you oppose partial privatizing of Social Security? Well, then you obviously want abortion legal up the moment when the baby crowns.” Doesn’t follow.

Well, he's right. It doesn't follow.

(Warning: Obligatory big but to follow.)

But, I spent most of the last election cycle getting told by the punditry I wasn't a patriot, probably wasn't even a worthy American, because I don't support the war and think gutting Social Security is wrong because I don't want to see little old ladies living on dog food.

Recently, the boys who brought us Swiftboat Assholes for Propaganda have been tasked with taking down AARP, as the administration sees AARP as the biggest hurdle in partially privatizing Social Security, and here's their first volley:


Cute, eh? There's that message again: You're an anti-American who hates our troops, and worse, you're a fag. (And this ought to get interesting; everyone knows that you don't fuck with the gray panthers.)

A good buddy of mine (Libertarian by bent) recently emailed me with a link to an article recently where a tighty righty pundit wheezed about German women being forced into prostitution because of their evil socialist unemployment system, which of course ended up being false, and about a boy somewhere in American who did a dynarama equating Bush to Hitler, which of course leads to the immediate application of Godwin's law. So I wrote him back and said pretty much that, and that I liked Social Security, unemployment benefits, and the safety net in general because it saved half of my culdesac in the waves of layoffs a year or so back. My spider-sense tells me it pissed him off royally, and I hope I haven't endangered the friendship by being honest, but I may have.

So, see, we can both play that game. And Lileks is right, assumptions on one's whole gamut of political views derived from one or two positions just don't follow. (Frinstance, I'm totally on the Republican side regarding gun laws, a strong military, and 2nd or 3rd term abortions - I don't like abortion at all, but I don't like what happens when it's illegal.)

The name-calling and the opposite views on governing and policy aren't the major issue for most who dislike this administration. Social Security doesn't really appear to be in danger of getting gutted. The Rove machine managed to insert a Stepford Reporter into a press conference: BFD. The war? I care about the kids getting killed for a futile reason, because the Arabs don't think like we do and I don't know if our actions over there will make a bit of difference as there has been unrest in the middle east involving Arabs my entire life. So, outside of the lives, I don't care, really, about the war, either. Further, I think the Republicans getting control of things once in a while and the Democrats doing the same in cycles is nothing but healthy; it keeps America balanced and on course; the excesses of one side are corrected by the other.

And here we happen across my point: The reason why those who oppose this administration do so is because they believe it is corrupt to its very core, because, after all, it really is Nixon redux. I don't think we'd mind (much) if it was Reagan redux, but it's not. It's all the bad boys who didn't get their dirty work done the first time before Nixon imploded. Overreaching secrecy is back in black, and Karl Rove is the ultimate puppet master who doesn't even bother to cover up his dark mutterings on his schemes when reporters are within earshot, and who openly attempts to destroy the careers (and by extension, the lives) of those who cross him and this administration. So, we who aren't happy with Bush are unhappy because we think he's as crooked as Karl Rove's colon. (Well, actually, most of us think Bush is too stupid to really be more than a puppet. The machine behind him needed a Dan Quail, but since no could keep a straight face when proffering him for president, someone must've said, "You know, George has a boy who's not very bright...")

Now, those interested in the tit-for-tat game will howl about how corrupt Clinton was. To which I respond: Bullshit. Of all the crap the wingnut echo chamber threw at him, the only thing he did was fall into a perjury trap because he didn't want his wife or American to know that Monika sucked his dick (and apparently flavored his cigars - which has always bothered me because everyone knows the perfect accompaniment to a cigar is a good scotch, but evidently being "hand rolled on the thighs of nubile virgins" just wasn't close enough for Bill). (And not to say cheating on your wife is OK.) So, let's not pretend that the whole "Slick Willy" fiasco was anything other than a smear campaign because the neocons wanted to be in power.

Long story short:
It's the smell of obvious, well-documented, and proven corruption, not so much the actual politics. That's the problem. I can't get behind that.

Back to AM

Remember in Monty Python and the Holy Grail the little cartoon segment that summarizes part of the quest where, intermittently, there was "great rejoicing" marked by a less than enthusiastic "yay"? Well, that's me these days when it comes to radio. There is great rejoicing, but it's definitely rates just a lowercase, no exclamation point yay. Here's why...

I've was trapped in our mommy van lately with the new sprout, as mom did some past due shopping, as she has been laid up with the pregnancy until now. We have to stay close so mom can nurse upon demand, and babeh is still only 3 weeks old and can't go into public places yet. So there I sat.

Silence in a car is as alien to me as a paisley sky (note to those who care: I have always avoided hallucinogens as reality is interesting enough already), so I turned on the radio and began to hunt for something out there.

The hunt across the FM dial was as futile as ever. Denver radio sucks so badly, there's a web site dedicated to it. Clear Channel has decimated our airwaves to the extent that the little FM radio station located in my teeny hometown in the middle of nowhere that's primarily a big honkin tape made somewhere else (you can drive by the building and see the huge reel-to-reel cranking along) is way better than anything in the huge Denver market, which makes absolutely no business sense. We do have one of the nationally known stations - that being KBCO, home of the mellow yet occasionally rocking set list; I believe this is where "Adult Oriented Radio" was born. However, Clear Channel owns them, too, and if the jangly-guitar-centric sound doesn't bore ya, the over 25 minutes of commercials and blabber in each hour will. C'est la vie.

We have a comically reverent (the DJs speak in hushed, PBS tones as if they were sneaking up on a sleeping Yeti) "classic rock" station called "The Mountain" which refers, again, to the commercial content one has to scale to hear an oldie moldy you own anyway. We also have "Jack" (whose name is possibly trying to evoke the hipness of Jack Nicholson), which is probably one of those national stations that broadcasts the same main programming in many major cities with locally tailored station identification, which plays a slightly different set list of "classic rock" than "The Mountain", but with even more commercials and blather.

I kid you not, you can sit in front of your receiver and surf Denver FM from station to station hunting for songs, and maybe you'll find maybe 17.5 minutes worth of music you'd actually want to hear in an hour.

So with a weary sigh for the world of radio my new babeh been born into, I flipped over to AM to find something, because at least there's an old, established WAY oldies station there (I'm talking pre-40s oldies) that is interesting if not evocative.

We also have a new station which plays "Americana" which translates to bluegrass-tinged country rock and hardcore blues and, inexplicably, Tom Waits. Like most men, I had a blues phase, but I've passed out of it as most of us do when the 213th stroll through those 8-bar blues just, well, gives you the blues. Bluegrass has always vaguely annoyed me, maybe because I've never been a fan of tunes comprised solely of 16th and 32nd notes, primarily constructed to show off how fleet of finger the picker is. (I like the Edges (U2) of the world more that I do the Eddie Van Halens.) (And to be fair, this station has in the last couple weeks updated its format a little bit, and it plays some decent mainstream rock and pop, now, too.)

After briefly visiting those two tiny oasis (oasi?), there it was, an AM station playing eclectic - and imagine this! - GOOD rock and pop. I thought perhaps I'd used too much oxygen from the confined environment of the mommy van and was hearing things, so in order to protect the babeh and myself, I rolled down the window, until a car alarm three cars over began its futile attempt to alert the owner deep in the bowels of the store, who was affixed to a cell phone anyway, and wouldn't have heard her own cat getting run over by a steamroller. But, lo and behold, after the oxygen levels had been restored, the radio station was still good, and the DJ came on only to identify songs, give the temp/time, perhaps roll a commercial or two, and then back to music! When it's been a while since you've had a particular kind of endorphin rush, it can be as mesmerizing as a boa constrictor who's singled you out as a snack.

Today, on an errand, between those three AM stations, I was able to hear damn good music - and new music - for the entire run. That hasn't happened in years. Literally. I nearly wept.

There's also a nostalgia component to listing to buzzy, fuzzy old mono AM. As with nearly everyone who grew up in the vast Midwest, my sole connection to new rock and pop growing up was KOMA in Oklahoma, which turned up the wattage at night and supposedly could be heard all the way into the hinterlands of Canada. So it's kinda like being back in my big old boat of a gas guzzler car with my buddies, cruising around looking for chicks and/or something to do. I am 17 again in the AM zone.

For those of you in the Denver area, here are the station settings:

- Great eclectic new rock/pop: 1150 KNRC? (no web site yet)
- Americana: 1510 KCUV
- Way oldies: 1430 KEZW

Put those three on the presets, and you'll be crusin'.

TLD: Whilst researching for this post, I came upon this little item:

The Grammy Awards may have been a critical hit, but they got their worst ratings in a decade; the show's estimated 18.8 million viewers constitutes a 28 percent drop from the 2004 Grammys. (Associated Press)

Could it be that perhaps NO ONE who likes music can find any to listen to on the radio anymore? And therefore doesn't give a flying star-spangled flip about who might win an award, because they don't know who the hell they are anyway? Me thinks so.

I keep wondering how long it's gonna take the conglomerates to figure out how much they've screwed up.

Heck, the only reason I knew to look on the AM dial in the first place was because my town is blessed to have an old fashioned record store still in operation, and the owner clued me into 1510 KCUV. (Thanks Steve!) So, think about that, we have one institution that's nearly gone - the mom and pop music store - recommending another, an AM STATION, so I can find decent music. In this day and age. Sweet screaming Judas on a Vespa, mang.

Crikey!

I think I would pass the hell out if this popped out of the ground near me:


I knew moles were ugly, but fer cryin' out loud.

Garden State

What a charming film. It was written, directed, and stars Zach Braff who is the main goofball doctor in the midst of his residency on the TV show "Scrubs," which is a new favorite of my wife's and mine. (We only found it last season, which is a DRAG, as we've missed the first few.)

Zach's character returns home from LA (where he's trying to make it as an actor) for a family event. He bumps into old buddies and new ones. Hilarity ensues (and this time I don't mean it ironically).

Two intriguing things about this flick are:

1) It's essentially plotless, like American Graffiti or The Graduate (which this movie most resembles), but it's compelling anyway. The writing is really good, which is unexpected since the star wrote and directed it. This should be a sucky straight to video vanity project, but it's not.

2) The visuals, achieved through the direction and design, are great! This film is fun to look at. Make sure you're seeing the widescreen version (if different versions exist), and have the lights down low.

Top that all off with Natalie Portman playing a sweet misfit, and you got yourself a popcorn and date movie extraordinaire.

Check it out, mang.

Outfoxed

For the most part, I have avoided news stuff related to Democrat vs. Republican cooties. It's one of the blessings of being in a post presidential election year. We have sent the roller coaster clicking up the first hill, and what happens from here on out is just what will happen, barring the thing jumping the tracks.

My wife and I joined Netflix recently, because our last good video store in town closed their doors, and we have nothing but Blockbuster now. Like most movie lovers, I don't rent at Blockbuster unless I have no other alternative. A while ago I put in my queue Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism and forgot about it. But it hit my door, and while my lovely wife was out running errands and the baby slept, I gave it a spin. "Outfoxed" demonstrates - Shock! Horror! - that Fox "News" is just a propaganda arm of the neocons. It's not like anyone paying attention didn't know that, but to have it spelled out in neon and indelible marker is partially fun and partially excruciating.

Like many liberals, I'm just trying to grin and bear it during the next four years, hoping Bush baby doesn't do too much damage to our nation, doesn't get too many of our kids killed in bullshit wars, and doesn't manage to dismantle Social Security. Our nation has survived worse, so I'm hopeful. And, who knows, there is a tiny, miniscule, itty-bitty chance that Bush's war on the Middle East will cool their jets on trying to kill us. If that ends up being the case, I'll take my crow with BBQ sauce, thank you very much.

Our national politics aside, something needs to be done about Fox "News". A simple truth in advertising suit might be in order, though it would be hard to win. As one of the commentators in the film points out, if someone has an established record of lying (he was referring to loofah boy Bill O'Reilly, though Rush "as long as it's pharmaceutical" Limbaugh would fit the bill, too), it's more difficult to prove that they KNOW that they're lying, and thus nearly impossible to prosecute them in the courts over the same. Ain't that a pickle?

The end result of watching "Outfoxed" for me was just getting pissed off all over again about something I can do nothing about. As long as people tune in to the propaganda network, and the advertisers know this, it will survive. Making laws about what's new and what isn't would never work, so really, this will only go away when and if folks who watch it as though it were real news eventually recognize it for the crap it really is.

About the only practical thing I can think of that can be done is the legitimate news outlets simply downgrading Fox "News" to an unreliable source, and never giving it any traction outside of its channel on TV. This may occur as a natural progression, actually, because lies and deceit are usually eventually uncovered. Let's hope, eh?

Tadaaa!

My wife and I had a healthy, happy baby girl two weeks ago. I have been home enjoying her fully, hence the dearth of posts.

Similar in concept to that great lament of Willie Nelson, "Pickin' up hookers instead of my pen, I let the words of my youth slip away," I picked up my baby instead of the pen, so some of the more potent moments I made a mental note to record once I got around to writing this post have disappeared down the memory hole. Of course, I consider it time well spent, even if some thoughts died before being recorded.

I do have some random thoughts that have stayed with me, though:

- She had a lot of nightmares her first few days of life, and as I sat there holding her, watching the fear and dismay play across her freshly minted face, I wondered what in the world something so new and pristine could have nightmares about. And it began to worry me that she appeared to have only nightmares - no happy, serene dreams. After all, hadn't she just spent months in a spa with all the amenities? Surely good times were had. About day 4, though, the most beautiful smile blossomed across her dreaming face, and soon thereafter she smiled more than she frowned in her sleep.

- It's striking how much personality and behavior comes built in. As your child ages (we have an eight year old girl, too), you tend to forget all the little habits and flourishes that were there from the very start. This baby huffs and complains differently than her older sister did. She has this little annoyed hack she makes before she really hauls off and wails. The older one's eyes would roll (alarmingly) into her head when she would fall asleep, and they would go walleyed, like a Simpson character. This one goes cross-eyed when she gets tired and is about to drift off.

- Babies actually say "wah" when they cry. They form the whole word.

- Babies fart like weightlifters the day after Oktoberfest.

- Both the dog and the cat had to figure out what this new entry into the household was, and where it stood in the pecking order. Animals are cautious about their species' politics, so both remained ciphers at first. After a couple days, though, they had figured it out, and both animals made a show of licking the baby on the head in front of us, showing acceptance of the new whelp. The cat took longer, and acted as it was more of a blessing than an acceptance, of course, but I was surprised how similar cat and dog politics are in this regard. They know this is a new boss and not a new flunkie. (The dog proceeded the cat, but is still the flunkie in their little clique.)

- It's difficult to photograph something as tiny as a newborn. I had to discover all new settings in my camera just to let me get close enough, and to not dazzle her with the flash so she would close her eyes tight thereafter. I still have yet to get a good closeup.

- You know all those tribal tattoos that the female young'uns are getting directly under or around their navel? Imagine how those might look after one pregnancy. Or three. (For the record, untattooed tummies, like my lovely wife's, usually recover quite nicely, since there's no artificial pigment to throw off the aesthetics. Girls, take note.)

- Baby technology apparently grows in leaps and bounds. The swings, toys, and devices now available for babies are phenomenally improved from their state a mere 8 years ago. Strollers alone are a work of art and convenience unto themselves, with the cupholders and storage places and the ride that's smoother than a new Mercedes. Baby monitors are now so sensitive and modulated, I could tell which child was smacking her lips in her sleep from two floors away. I could hear the cat pass in the hall outside, even. Freaky. When I enter our bedroom now (where she'll sleep until she's big enough to move to her room), and the monitor's on, I automatically go into "cone of silence" mode, for fear that one of the neighbors might have a baby monitor on our frequency and could potentially hear me absent-mindedly scratching my ass.

- The processes and mysteries of lactation are something to behold. My lovely wife will be just standing there, minding her own business, and suddenly pools will form (more like "erupt"), and she'll say, "Oh, the baby must be getting ready to wake up and nurse," and sure enough, the pre-wail "I need attention" hack will arise within moments from the babeh. It reminds me of that old thermos joke: How do they know?

- Even if it doesn't stay as pure, everyone is blessed with complete and unconditional love for their child from the moment they arrive. It is quite the emotion to be in the thrall of. The intensity and depth is as frightening as it is exhilarating. You can sit and gaze at your baby for hours, and your stomach might rise and fall as if you were strapped into an actively rocketing roller coaster. Then you gaze at your other kid(s) and realize that emotion is still there for them, even if you're somewhat more accustomed to it. Ask any new parent, and they will be unable to describe it properly, but will know exactly what I'm talking about.

Welcome to the world, little one. I'll show you everything.

Mini Movie Reviews, 02/07/2005

Saw some flicks!

Door in the Floor

Premise: A husband and wife are in the final stages of grieving the loss of their beloved sons.

John Irving is my favorite writer, and Jeff Bridges is one of my favorite actors, so I had little hope that this would be any good at all (through the law of inverse hopes in proportion to quality of participants - sort of a critical weltschmerz if you will). I watched merely to note the level of suckitude, not the presence thereof. Well, heck, I love nice surprises, and this was a good movie. Not a great one. Not one you'll carry to your grave as a fond memory. No, it's just a good two hours spent. You'd be better off reading the book, natch, as with all Irving properties, but the movie will do, pig, it'll do. (Don’t take that personally, it’s a movie reference, babe.) In my opinion, the only truly enjoyable adaptation to an Irving novel thus far was The World According to Garp, but that's because George Roy Hill had a talent for adapting unadaptable novels. Yes, some folks like Cider House Rules, and it was a good adaptation, but it still pales in comparison to the book, as it has a tone that cannot be transferred to cinema. Mild warning: "Door" is rated "R" for all the right reasons, and besides, I think it would bore the hell out of anyone under 30 anyway.

---

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle

Premise: Two pothead buddies decide they must have sliders when they see a commercial for the same after a couple post-work tugs from a bong. Hilarity ensues.

Cheech and Chong would have enjoyed this movie very much, that is if Cheech wasn't embarrassed about his stoner movie past and if Chong wasn't a political prisoner over having an online bong store land him in jail (and hopefully since Ashcroft has slide down his Crisco trail into the sunset, maybe that kind of shit will stop). It was a fun, lightweight flick if you enjoy pothead humor, which I do. Many reviews have mentioned the refreshing take on race in the movie, where it acknowledges, exploits, and defies stereotypes all at once. I would agree, but would say that it has a realistic take on race that's more in line with real life, and not like the after school special identity politics crap most movies indulge in.

---

Control Room

Premise: An "inside look" at Al Jazeera, the pan-Arabic CNN.

Boring, sloppy, and not worth the one bit of information you get from it, which I'll proffer here, so by reading this, there's no point to waste the hour and a half of your life: Pretty much everyone in the middle east now lumps us in with Israel; they view us as one and the same. No matter that it's not the case by any stretch of the imagination. So, just understand we are all Jewish in the eyes of the Arab nations, and therefore considered fair targets.

---

Before Sunset

Premise: A man and a woman meet again years after spending an intoxicating night together after meeting on a train.

Before Sunset is the wonderful sequel to Before Sunrise, which you don't have to see before seeing Before Sunset, but you should. If you've not seen the first, you should rent these together and watch both at once for a pretty cool movie experience. Be aware that these are just walking and talking movies; you could almost turn your TV off and just listen. I know a lot of folks who could never make it through a film that's just dialogue, so of you're one of those, do avoid. The rest of us will dig how profoundly right the exploration of new love and lost love are in these two (now) classics. Can Linklater (the director) do any wrong? (I just noticed through the All Movie Guide that he's remaking The Bad News Bears, so we will probably have the definitive answer to that question when it's released.)

---

The Village

Premise: All who dwell in the Amish-esque village are afraid of the monsters in the forest who attack anything of the "bad color," which is probably an oblique jab at Baz Luhrmann's "Red Curtain" series.

Shyamalan is still a wonder, as far as I'm concerned. The secret behind The Village is ultimately somewhat silly, but the script is still full of small, real observations about love, fear, and commitment. As long as you don't expect the big "so that's what's going on!" bitchslap of his first three films, it's a decent flick.

---

Ladykillers

Premise: A group of bank robbers take up residence in an old woman's house, as it is adjacent to a vault. Hilarity ensues.

Ladykillers was OK, but merely so. There are two burst-out-laughing gags, but the rest is kinda tedious, which is amazing considering the combination of Tom Hanks with the Cohen brothers. Also, both my wife and I quickly tired of the foul language. One character can't open his mouth without dropping multiple f-bombs. It might be amusing to watch this if it's ever broadcast on TV, just to see if they can reasonably loop (replace) all of the swearing out of it. It'll probably feel like a spaghetti western or an Asian flick, since the motion of their lips will not often match the dialogue.

---

Alien vs Preditor

Premise: The monsters from Alien and Predator open cans of woop-ass on each other in an ancient pyramid buried under the ice at the South Pole, which completely contradicts the premise of the original two films. Hilarity ensues.

Well, of course, and as has been noted elsewhere, this is a must see for all geeks, even though it had absolutely no chance of not sucking out loud. And suck it did. Sadly, the most egregious trend that took hold of the "Alien" series, that being an odd permutation of identity politics blended with gangsta faux badassness - to the point where a previous installment included a guy in a wheelchair being part of a band of rough and tough space vigilantes - has come to full odious bloom. In "AvP," we get Dora the Explorer all grown up and tougher than any guy (she likes to climb ice mountains when she's not training a bunch of Navy Seals), who represents and keeps it real, so that even the Predator gives her props and drafts her to help clean up the 'hood, rather than use her for target practice or sighting in a new weapon. The plot ticks along like so many predetermined puzzles in a video game that it becomes apparent that's all it is - especially when some scene elements are clearly gratuitous because they look good, like when they're running through mazes of frozen whale ribs - a video game that was filmed rather than coded and put on a chip. The only thing that's shocking about that fact is that the writers of Alien itself were involved for the first time since the original film. Well - surprising until I remind myself that this hybrid of fanboy wet dreams never had any chance at being decent, regardless of who was at the reins and the whip.

---

Envy

Premise: A modern day Ralph Cramden actually has success with a silly idea for a spray the makes poop evaporate, and his resulting wealth makes his best friend envious.

Envy needed to wink at the audience more often than it did. It's played as a straight-up comedy about a buddy jealous of his best friend's success. No Jack Black riffage. No Ben Stiller riffage. No poop joke riffage even though the door was wide open for just that! As such, it's pedestrian and predictable. I kept wondering, how can you get both Jack Black and Ben Stiller in a comedy and not kick out the jams? And how can you recycle a joke from Animal House so brazenly? The one saving grace is, surprise and yet again, Christopher Walken. Walken has a similar blessing/curse that William Shatner has in that his acting style is so distinctive that it easily lends itself to parody, and you'd think it'd limit the parts he could play, but he mixes it up so well and puts such a great spin on his persona in all of his roles that it's always fresh and believable. If you find yourself trapped under something heavy and this comes on the tube, make sure you regain consciousness for the Walken parts.

---

The Forgotten

Premise: A woman remembers having a son, who disappeared in a plane crash, but everyone around her insists she made it all up and is really a (real) red-headed actress who typically stars in sexually charged dramas and wherein she gets naked a lot.

The Forgotten should remain so. This is essentially an "X-files" episode wanna be. The primary difference is that the "X-files" managed to remain interesting over several seasons, where this movie is so tedious it's hard to sit through all 100 minutes of it.

Perhaps the problems are related...

A woman was walking along the beach when she stumbled upon a bottle. She picked it up and rubbed it, and low-and-behold a genie appeared! The amazed woman asked if she got three wishes.

The genie said, "Nope, sorry, three-wish genies are a storybook myth. I'm a one-wish genie. So... what'll it be?"

The woman did not hesitate. She said, "I want peace in the Middle East. See this map? I want these countries to stop fighting with each other and I want all the Arabs to love the Jews and Americans and vice-versa. It will bring about world peace and harmony."

The genie looked at the map and exclaimed, "Lady, be reasonable. These countries have been at war for thousands of years. I'm out of shape after being in a bottle for five hundred years. I'm good but not THAT good! I don't think it can be done. Make another wish and please be reasonable."

The woman thought for a minute and said, "Well, I've never been able to find the right man. You know, one that's considerate. And fun, likes to cook and help with the house cleaning, is great in bed, and gets along with my family. Doesn't watch sports all the time, and is faithful. That is what I wish for -- a good man."

The genie let out a deep sigh and said, "Let me see the frigging map again."

My Favorite Part

There's an article circulating the new sites from AP about the "Jury pool from hell." Quite the snort.

My favorite part is:

Another would-be juror said he had had alcohol problems and was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover officer. "I should have known something was up," he said. "She had all her teeth."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

When I was a kid, I used to carry around the Sears December catalogue (the one with the huge toy section in the middle) after I had marked it up with multi-colored circles (representing changes of mind over the course of time - like a movie script - I had to create a color key for Santa to understand which selections had been abandoned and which ones were the most current) as if it where a magical totem capable of fulfilling all desires. Because, of course, for a kid, it was.

This past weekend I have discovered that I have not lost that behavior. Apple has finally come out with a $500 Macintosh. It's not all that powerful, and it doesn't come with anything else - that being a monitor, keyboard, or mouse. (The assumption is you have those already, so just re-use them.) But, being a fan of Mac from the beginning, and horsing around with Wintel machines most of my professional career, I pine for the simplicity and sleekness of a Mac. (Especially since I spent the weekend re-loading drivers on our home Windows machines, just so the damn things would recognize standard devices, like a monitor.) So, I printed the pages that describe the MacMini, and found myself orbiting back around to where I set them down, picking them back up and re-reading the same few pages over and over. I am in the full throws of techno-lust. I want a MacMini BAD!

Hmmm...

If a person has ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), but they haven't paid attention long enough to hear the doctor's diagnosis, do they still have the condition?

Random, Passing Thought: The Best Kind of Life

Been listening to William Shatner's Has Been, which is really pretty good. I'll admit right out loud that I'm a fan of Shatner, and not just because of the Capt. Kirk thang. No, he's always seemed to me to have both a fearlessness about his career, and an ability to realize who and what he is in relation to the culture. (His series of "Trek Memories" autobiographies are a hoot.) Yes, Has Been is funny, but intentionally so...or at least intentionally ironically so. Anyway, there's a song called "You'll Have Time" which offers a new twist on the old concept of "Carpe Diem" (which means "Seize the Dazed," as I've come to think of it). The refrain in the tune is, "Why did I waste it, why didn't I taste it?"

The implication, in both the tune and "Carpe Diem," is that you should be hang-gliding nekkid from atop the Opera House in Sydney, Australia while planning your next deep-sea voyage to spelunk in treacherous underwater caves that are home to exotic glowing jellyfish, which you'll photograph and put in your next best-selling coffee table book, which will inspire Pink Floyd to reform simply to produce an "inspired by" soundtrack, causing you to be credited with single-handedly saving the recording industry, meriting a Nobel Prize and a personally autographed picture from Britney Spears whereupon she has scrawled that "You Rock!"

This has always cramped my process because it values X-TREME! Mountain Dew adrenaline experiences over the quiet joys that most of us experience every day. If you have the desire or ability to leap from a snowy cliff with only a parachute, a snowboard, and a power drink clutched in your mutant little fist, somehow it's proffered that you're living a fuller life than the new mother who is taking her wobbly toddler around the block for her first time, or the man who is reading the blog of a kindred spirit, or the child who is watching an ant travel across the back yard.

I dunno. I think when we're lying there, ready to pass - assuming we get the rare experience of foreknowledge thereof, or a relatively painless passing - it might feel more full to have had the companionship of a loving spouse and good friends, happy children, the experience of a few great books, and yes maybe one experience jumping out of a perfectly good airplane just for the hell of it. But I think a chain of dim memories of vast travels, screaming adrenaline overdoses, a cascade of random fucks with nameless strangers just might seem a little thin and pale at the end of a life.

I still like the song, though.

Q: What do you know but can't prove?

A: There are a lot of idiots filling the halls of academia, and I'm not talking about the students.

A buddy provided a link to this blog post the other day that ruminates essentially "Where have all the intellectuals gone?" I read it with interest as it was thoughtful and stated well, but surfed away with a mental shrug, as I typically do with most posts lamenting the good ole days of any sort, because the good ole days for us are pretty much any moment in the past when we were happy, and the good ole days for our kids are probably happening right now. Things are not necessarily getting worse or better on the macro level of human existence. They are pretty much chugging along with the same constant that has pretty much been the case for all recorded human experience, pretty much: we are born, we grow up, find a way to survive, have children, enjoy some things while enduring others, then we die, leaving others to carry on in life. Cha cha cha.

Yet, I read this monster of collective thought with a continual sinking feeling that perhaps the fellow I reference above might be right. If this represents the core of our intellectual thought these days, dear Lord we are in an intellectual drought! (Intellectual ice age?...) (And why is it overloaded with scientists? Science is only one aspect of the exploration of the human condition, and therefore only one way out of many towards understanding it.)

Belief in God is attacked over and over as a self-delusion, which once overcome, will result in the Star Trek universe of universal human achievement and cooperation whose monetary system is knowledge and not money, where hopefully the girls will take to wearing spandex 24/7 and actually date us. (Sigh.) Granted, the nature of the question posed typically leads to ontological thrashing about. Still, the utter lack of understanding of belief in God is as tiring as it is troublesome. The straw man that belief in God somehow is the main obstacle to human potential needs to go up in flames like Burning Man doused with gas and stoked with a flamethrower. Yes, fundamentalists of all ilks (including atheism) can be a problem, but they are not THE problem. If these poltroons can't get past that one simple realization, how are we to trust anything else they say? (To put it simply, boiling down everything to the supposed veracity of one's belief system is bogus reductionism that will only lead to false assumptions and results. Stop it, ya'll.)

Some of these folks are still struggling with the Descartes mind/body dynamic, for crying out loud! (The world outside of me DOES exist! It's not just an illusion of mine! .... Gad.) Which reminds me, what the hell is Susan Blackmore doing on this list? Her attempted scientific explanation of the near death experience was just goofy. I wrote her personally to ask that if the white light at the end of the tunnel is really an illusion caused by our visual cortex as the neurons are firing randomly in the throes of oxygen deprivation death, how does the brain manage to create and store clear memories of supposed events that occur after the person goes into the white light? Her response was (and I paraphrase) "I am no longer exploring that topic." Perhaps she just wanted to avoid a protracted debate with someone she supposed was a crank, but still, what a silly response. Said cranks would be more likely to leave her alone if she merely wrote, "You have a point. Now go away."

That larger critique aside, I totally agree with Kai Krause's post. (There is no direct link to each person, so just plug his name into "Find" to pop down it.) Oh, and I also agree with Elizabeth Spelke's suppositions, but not her conclusion. Differences will always remain differences no matter how much we are alike underneath.

I specifically disagree with all those who suppose we will "figure out" the mechanism of human consciousness in any re-creatable way, meaning I'm sure we will not be able to create a sentient machine. The mysteries of the construction of a well-balanced, reasonably sane human mind (or any self-aware consciousness) are so vast (with thousands of physical and experiential puzzles to solve, just to get started) that it is an intractable problem, imho. We will come up with a machine that mimics a conscious being, but it will not actually be self-aware. To put it another way, we will have robots that talk to us and do housework someday, but it will be no more of a being unto itself than the typical automobile is.

Again, to be fair, atheists believe there is enough inherent self-organization in nature that allowed us to evolve from, well, lumps of mud, to what we are now, so it follows that we can discover or at least leverage enough of that inherent self-organization to recreate ourselves in mechanical/artificial form. I submit that even if inherent self-organization is the case, the complexity of a human mind, which is forged partially from inherited features and partially from experience and learning, is not something easily duplicatable, since the mix of hardwiring and experience has to be more or less precisely right. If not, you get insanity, autism, or a mind so hopelessly scrambled as to be useless.

To follow that vein, say we did create something that was able to do abstract thinking on its own and form some sort of consciousness. Since it would not have our emotional structures, our instincts for seeking of pleasure and avoiding pain, and all of the other built in, little understood mojo that gives us enough intellectual oomph to stroll out to the car, check for children in the way, and drive to work whilst combating road rage and gray panthers whose licenses should have been yanked long ago, what kind of alien mind would it be? Would it be even something that we could relate to, or that could relate to us? I have my doubts, obviously.

But then, to property qualify or disqualify myself, I am one of those who think that some problems are so complex as to be intractable. Even though they are solvable somehow, because we exist after all, we have limits to our perception and therefore our ability to work with and influence things (and don't even get a quantum physicist started on THAT), so we probably won't be able to do the things required to achieve the desired result. For example, the limit of our perception "upwards" is about 80 billion light years across, which is the observable region of our universe (according to one of the guys in the monster article), and "downwards" it stops at the molecular level. We can sorta take pictures of atoms, but not really, and we can mess with them to a pretty amazing degree, but what we don't know about their behavior and structure is still vastly outweighs what we do know. And, I don't think we can ever get to a sufficient understanding to influence and understand matter to the extent we need to in order to create sentient life ourselves. I think we will figure out fusion to the extent that we can use it as a power source. I think we will eventually understand biology enough where we can fight (but never "cure") cancer in more humane ways than we do now, and with greater success. We might figure out how to fight viruses directly, and not rely on triggering our immune systems to do it for us, but that is way off, and it will be about as far as we can go in that direction. And, we will make marvelous machines; they just will never swing their baby blues our direction and ask to be picked up and held - unless we program them to do it.

Note that I haven't dragged God or miracles into any of that discussion. When it comes to our ability to understand our world, I don't think God comes into it, really. Yes, He created it and influences it, in my opinion, but He does not intercede when we are trying to understand and influence the atom. He's got bigger fish to fry. As far as our scientific endeavors go, we're on our own.

Geek Nirvana

Via Slashdot I discovered a book written by Andy Hertzfeld about the creation of the Macintosh computer, entitled Revolution in The Valley. Which is nice; I'll pick up a copy at the library. What's, like, totally awesome and cool is that via an interview with Andy, I discovered his site, folklore.org, dedicated to relating the history of the creation of the Mac. (The book was cobbled together from the posts on this site.)

<valley girl>OMG!</valley girl>

I blanch at trying to describe the enormity and the wonderfulness of the existence of this information trove.

Imagine if the process of the invention of the combustion engine, or heart surgery, or the Apollo space program, was archived, described, and commented on by the very teams that accomplished their creation - for free on the web and you could peruse it at your leisure. Folklore.org is that very thing for the Macintosh desktop computer. The Macintosh simply defined how computer interaction is accomplished in our age. Though Xerox Parc came up with some of the initial concepts borrowed by the Mac team, the Mac team created the reality you have before you, even if you're using a Microsoft Windows or Linux system. (Yes, Unix existed before it all, but the graphical interfaces laid on top of Linux are still largely derivative of the Mac.)

For instance, here is a description of the evolution of the user interface, replete with Polaroids of each breakthrough. How cool is that!?!?

Too cool, imho.

So I'll shut up so you can get right over there and have some fun!

More thumbnail reviews

Apologies for posting just reviews as of late, but life's been kinda sedate recently (which is nice). Both my lovely wife and MPC (most precious child) were sick all the way through the holidays, so we didn't do much. We even missed the much-anticipated New Year's Eve party thrown with our buddies, alas. So, we've watched a LOT of movies, and have remained planted at the homestead. Thus, review-o-rama:

The Bourne Supremacy was touted by most professional critics as a decent movie. So, while watching, that's what I kept anticipating, and at about the hour and a half mark, I decided my mild disappointment was real and that the movie just wasn't all that.

Now, most of those same critics that liked Bourne II didn't like the films of Michael Bay (Pearl, Harbor Armageddon, The Rock), for precisely the same reasons they mentioned liking Bourne - overly short and hyperactive cuts throughout the whole flick. So, I'm puzzled.

There was no story, as far as I was concerned, because the movie starts where the original left off: Bourne has no idea who he really is and why he can't remember anything. The whole movie thereafter is a chase for Bourne who's been framed for a whack job, the only plot developments being the deaths of those around him.

My wife noted that you (the audience) were given no more reason to care for Bourne than you did for any other good guys or bad guys. I hadn't noticed this until she pointed it out, since the rapid cuts keep you mesmerized enough where you don't really notice anything but the flow of images. Then she noted how little acting that Matt Damon had to do for the role of Bourne (largely because of the dearth of character development), and she's right on that count, too. This thing's essentially a long music video, sans good music.

So, that leads me to suggest a game. If by chance you find yourself having to watch The Bourne Supremacy, and if you actually catch Matt Damon acting, have a drink! I guarantee you'll be sober at the end of the flick. Heck, you won't catch even the hint of a buzz at any point. (Which leads me to conclude my game sucks as much as the movie did. Oh well.)


Shaun of the Dead

"Shaun" joins An American Werewolf in London on the 'til now lonely shelf of movies that are as scary as they are funny. Like "Werewolf" it takes a while for "Shaun" to creep up to the creepy, but once it starts it's relentless.

Shaun himself is a guy in the McJob stage of his life, rooming with former college buddies, taking his dedicated girlfriend for granted largely because he's still more dedicated to his lout of a childhood buddy, and generally spending too much time at the pub pounding pints. At first he notices people dropping on the street, but his natural state of oblivion returns and he makes it all the way to the store and back barely noticing all the havoc and zombies wandering in the street. I've had days like that.

Which is why "Shaun" is so funny. (And for the grammarians out there, I know that sometimes I italicize the shortened title, other times I put quotes around it - I have no consistency - and I don't rilly care.) This is sorta, kinda how a bunch of dazed twentysomethings would deal with a zombie epidemic. In my opinion, the best comedy arises out of how real people would respond in bizarre circumstances. "Shaun" delivers on that level.

Another delight of "Shaun" is that it gets right the appeal of the loutish buddy. All guys have that one friend (or more) that their SO's just hate on contact. He's rude, crude, sometimes smelly, always somewhat of a leach, but he gets away with it because he so much fucking fun and can belch the entire chorus of the latest hit song (or fart percussively to it, take your pick). Ed, the loutish buddy, is played perfectly by Nick Frost. You're repelled and amused by him in the proper amounts.

That said, I want to warn you, dear readers, that "Shaun" contains the most graphic and disturbing evisceration scene I've ever seen anywhere. I'm not often compelled to look away from the screen because I'm too shocked, grossed out, and appalled at what's unraveling, so to speak. I instinctively raised my hand and shielded my eyes from the screen when my brain finally registered that I was seeing what I was seeing. I said things like, "Holy Cow! Jeez! Cripes!" right out loud. I did NOT back it up to watch it again; once was enough. Wowsers. Dinna watch this one during dinner, lads and lasses.

Make sure you check out the extras, especially the storyboards on Plot Holes, but only after you watch the flick, natch. The storyboards where so good, I almost wish they'd made an animated film that looked just like the storyboards.

Because it's rated "R" for language (all the worst words are trotted out regularly, which is realistic for twentysomethings with no kids) and the one amazing evisceration scene, this movie should be OK for strong-stomached teens who don't scare easily. Sensitive kids (such as myself as a lad and my MPC) and pasta lovers should avoid until they're about 15 or so. Don't say I didn't warn you about that one scene.

A Little Help

Hey, someone, anyone, could you post a comment so I can see if it's working?

Now, Blogger prompts you to log in to make a comment, but you can bypass that by clicking "Or Post Anonymously". Even so, you can sign your post just by typing in yer name/nick.

So, would someone put one out there?

Thanks!