Category: Uncategorized

I had an entertaining conversation with my 4-year old daughter and her 4-year old friend yesterday. It occurred to me that in order to have an engaging story with a strong plot, it helps if you have a bad guy. So, for several minutes, I would ask the two young’uns, “where would Cinderella be without…” and they would yell “the evil stepmother!” Where would The Little Mermaid&#153 be without Ursula the Sea Hag? Where would Little Red be without the big bad wolf? Well, you get the idea, but it’s a fun game, the girls enjoyed it, and you can go on as long as you like. Heck, you can even do voices like Darth Vader, if you’re into that sort of thing.

So… where would Dubbya be without Saddam? He tried to work his white-cowboy-hat hoo-doo using Osama bin Laden, but when he realized the improbability of successfully tracking him down, he had to shift the embodiment-of-evil a little ways down the axis to land on Mr. Hussein. Now, I’m not saying the guy isn’t evil. I’m not even saying he doesn’t deserve to die. I’m saying I don’t like our new big-stick foreign policy, and I don’t approve of the way the sons were handled – I find it hard to believe that there couldn’t have been a better opportunity to take them alive and take them to justice.

On a related note, here’s a good article from The Guardian U.K. called America Is a Religion.

On an unrelated and lighter note, here’s a fairly convincing argument that Paul really is dead.

OK, I hate stealing ideas from other blogs, but this one, from w=uh is just too cool to miss. Be sure to click on ‘view clip.’ Canesta, Inc. — Products

Out here in California, we have a $35 Billion deficit. That’s about $800 a head, which means my family owes somebody about $2400. Of course, that’s still less than our $1500+ per capita share of Bush’s (probably understated) expected deficit, and he’s passin’ out checks!

You’ve probably heard that they’re gonna try to recall Gov. Gray Davis, but we don’t know who would replace him. Last I heard, Arnold Schwarzenegger says he doesn’t want to run, which is good. I mean, that makes as much sense as an out of work actor becoming president, or electing a current president’s son a few years later. Oh, wait…

Anyway, I’ve taken way too much effort to create a nifty little picture thingy, so click on Gray’s picture, and I’ll show you something kinda cool.

Oh, I had a little fun with some Dubbya pics too…

I’ve had a problem with Blogger for a couple days now where it won’t build a valid archive file, so it looks like the archived blogs are all missing, but the good news is that they’re all really here. If you back up to the weblog directory, it’ll give you a list, but I’m sure hoping they get it fixed – I sent them a trouble report, but with over a million registered bloggers, I’m not holding my breath!

Here’s a decent little poem from the Darwinian Poetry site – I think they’re getting better:

twilight eyes self deceive

the soullessness

one wept the glimpsing

one wept enough

Here’s a camping update. Janet has e-mailed me two representative pictures from our camp-out:

1. Aftermath of the in-tent tickle fight.
2. Chris flipping Emily’s friend.

Here’s an interesting thing I ran across through a newsletter from New Scientist – a website where 1000 randomly generated poems are forced to evolve and recombine through visitor votes: Darwinian Poetry: Home. Here’s a representative sample I happen to like:

old hex nebulosity be excellent

you preclude they excelled sunshine

he he rebellious spinsterish me

down hit muddling restore to

hour

Last weekend, our family went camping for the first time, overnight, in the woods, in a borrowed tent. I was, how shall I put this? OK, I was so not looking forward to it that I was looking backward to it, but it was a planned outing with the other families from our daughter’s home preschool group, and it did turn out to be fun.

A couple of nights before, as I was putting Emily to bed, I warned her that ‘it’ll be really different from being here at home, like there won’t be a TV or VCR,’ and she had a good long cry because ‘I want to watch Caillou!’ – I guess I’m just mean that way.

There was plenty of other stuff to do up there, though. We went to a place around Soda Springs on the small, cold, but pretty, Kidd Lake, and we swam quite a bit and got a little sunburned. Well, Emily had on SPF 1024 sunblock or something, of course, because we’re such responsible parents, so her skin didn’t change color except for the blue lips.

I’d have to say the highlight of the trip was either a) the posted warning not to interact with the squirrels and chipmunks because they have the plague, or b) one of the other fathers, who’s a CHP officer, asking me if I’d ever sniffed a Johnson Pine – turns out they smell like pineapples and vanilla, which is quite a bit nicer a smell than it sounds.

As if last week’s titillating news that frequent masturbation prevents prostate cancer wasn’t enough, a new study has revealed that pizza prevents cancer of the digestive tract. I’m going to live forever!

And today in health news: Google Search

Here’s a pretty cute one: The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation