ask dr. science...

2006-12-24T11:46:00.000-05:00

to celebrate jesus's (metaphorical) birth...

Tonight, Jennifer has decided that she wants to attend Church at our old UU congregation at 7:30 and then bring the kids hoome and put them to bed, after which she will head to a midnight mass with her parents at the Catholic Church nearby.

I dunno... I think the only thing worse than being a "C&E Catholic" may be a "C&E Unitarian"!

Sorry - "S&E Unitarian". **

Maybe we'll sing some of my favorite Unitarian Christmas Hymns like "O Come, All Ye Doubtful" or "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman, Women, and Transgendered Individuals" or perhaps "Angels Some Claim To Have Heard on High". That one's always particularly moving.

Anyway... Merry (insert-festive-december-occasion-here) everyone!

(**"Solstice and Equinox")

2006-11-02T19:46:00.000-05:00

boys are weird...

At this very moment, the Boy is in the bathtub singing a song of his own devising which combines the melody of the My Little Pony theme song with the repeated lyrical motif - "Boba Fett".

"Bo-Boba Fett Fett,
Bo-Boba Fett Fett,
Boba, Bobaaaaa - Boba Fett.

Boba F' Fett Fett,
Boba F' Fett Fett,
Boba, Boba, Boba Boba, Boba Fe-e-ett..."

I'm not even going to ask.

2006-10-26T11:59:00.000-04:00

what size do those "Emily the Strange" t-shirts start in...?

I was getting ready to leave for work this morning and I spotted this drawing in one of Katie's open school notebooks...

I'm not sure what to make of it. Isn't 7 years old a little young to be getting this "goth"? (The text reads - "Belongs to dark woman.")

The "glyphs" are just.... creepy.

2006-10-19T22:53:00.000-04:00

a very bizarre afternoon...

So... I'm giving this talk in the Hamptons tomorrow, which means I had to drive to the city today. That's a bad enough way to start the day, sitting in traffic at the Lincoln tunnel. But the fucked-uppedness didn't even BEGIN until I tried to LEAVE work.

Around 3:00 I go to get my car from the parking garage... it's one of those inner-city elevator garages... I park in the same one every time I drive to work. (Once a year, basically) The guy takes my tag, I pay my 20 bucks, and he goes to get the car. I walk over to the sidewalk beside the elevator door, see the thing coming down, the doors slide open and just before he pulls the car out of the elevator, I notice that there is a 12" high steel barrier at the bottom of the elevator that hasn't retracted yet and...

Crunch.

The parking attendant drives my car right into this steel barrier. The bumper crumples like a plastic cup. The guy quickly backs up and gets out of the car and runs his hands over the bumper, which has popped back into shape... "No damage, is fine, see? No damage." he says in a Caribbean accent of some sort. I just shake my head... fine, whatever, my wife already drove the fucking van over the TOP of the bumper, what does it matter if there are a few more creases on the bottom. I grumble into the car and drive away.

Halfway down the block, I hear it... the sound... the unmistakable sound of things scraping on the road that should not be scraping the road. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck...

I quickly pull over to the curb and jog back to the garage. "I'm going to have to fill out a damage claim", I say calmly, and the attendant predictably begins to flip out. "What damage? No damage! I see!! Small bump! No damage!!" I explained about the large chunk of car dragging the ground. "You show me! Where is it? You show me!" Ok, mon... I show you... I just have to drive it around the block.

I slowly circle around.. down seventh back up sixth to the garage... drag, drag, scrap, scrape... and go to pull back into the garage entrance. When I get there, there is a guy trying to cross the sidewalk... older guy, 50's maybe, unshaven, glasses, flannel shirt, cargo pants. I was going to let him cross in front of me, but he stopped and let me pull in. There was something... odd about him... I took a second look...

It's David Letterman.

My brain takes a moment to process the sight of a bearded Dave Letterman (clearly on hiatus this week) here on 13th street.

Dave (me): Oh, umm... Hey, "Dave"...
Dave (Letterman): Howzit goin?

Ok. Well. This is not the time to chitchat with late night talk show hosts... I have to go yell at someone. I get out of the car and show the attendant the bit of dangling vehicle. He seems to accept it happily now, with a smile and a nod as if to perhaps suggest he knocks bits of cars off all the time. He walks off, I'm not sure to where. I walk into the garage office, where someone is standing at the counter.

Yeah. It's David Letterman again. Or it's him still, I should say. He's picking up his car.

Dave (me): These guys busted my car Mr. Letterman, are you gonna let them get away with that?
Dave (Letterman): Don't worry about it, I got it. Forget the insurance, I've got it covered.
Dave (me): Heh, right. Thanks.
Dave (Letterman): What did they do?
Dave (me): They pulled it out of the elevator before the gate was all the way down and... [mimes "smack" with fist]
Dave (Letterman): Ooooh, yeah. Heh, heh...

I go back to quibbling with the parking lot attendant, who comes up to me with a handful of plastic clips that fell off the plastic piece hanging from the underside of my car and tells me that he can fix it, or take it off, or I can bring it back some other day and they can have a guy...

No. There is no "other day". I live three hours away. I drive into the city once a year. I know you guys have insurance, I know there is a procedure for this, I just need to know what it is. He wanders off again.

Dave (Letterman): [surveying damage] All these scratches on here? Did they do this?
Dave (me): No, that's from when my wife backed into it in the driveway with the minivan.
Dave (Letterman): Mmmm...
Dave (me): They crumpled the bumper like a plastic cup, though... now there's a big chunk of the underside handing off.
Dave (Letterman): [peeks under car] Oh, yeah. Nice.

The parking lot attendant returns with a incident report form for me and a silver Porsche Carrera for that OTHER guy.

Dave (Letterman): Well, good luck...
Dave (me): Yeah, I'm not expecting much.
Dave (Letterman): Heh...

So, I fill out the form... Dave Letterman drives off. I spend 15 minutes yanking the big dangling piece of plastic the rest of the way off my car, and then put it in my trunk.

End of story.

So. This goes on my anecdote shelf right next to the Thunderbird that burst into flames and the Chevy Malibu that lost a front wheel at 55 mph. Why do all my good stories involve vehicular mishaps?

2006-09-10T10:09:00.000-04:00

fun in the car with the morgan family...

Katie: Ew, quit it, that's disgusting
Ian: What?
Katie: Ew, MOMMY!
Jenn: What? Oh, hey buddy, we don't put toes in our mouth.
Ian: Why?
Katie: Because it's gross
Ian: But it tastes EZACKLY like my 'fumb!

2006-09-07T18:28:00.001-04:00

the thought that went through the head of every woman in Manhattan this morning...

"Well, it's been chilly all week, but today it's going to be 85... it may be the last nice day before fall starts... now... let's see... where did I put the shortest, sluttiest skirt I own?"

Jesus...

2006-09-07T18:28:00.000-04:00

a message to the model-type chick who only briefly took off her giant dark sunglasess on the subway...

Holy shit, woman... are those dark circles from all the sleeplessness and heroin, or are they bruises leftover from the nose-job?

2006-09-07T18:27:00.000-04:00

12. across (4 letters) shut the ____ up...!!

There are few things that people do on the train that annoy me more than DOING THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE TOGETHER OUT LOUD!! Jesus Christ people. "A divining rod is also a... do___ing... do... dolling rod? It's a dolling rod or something, right? Doh-? Dolling rod?"

DOWSING ROD!! IT'S A DOWSING ROD!! PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP IT!!!

2006-09-05T22:48:00.000-04:00

"i" is for...

2006-06-25T20:25:00.000-04:00

musings occasioned by the 200th viewing of "high school musical"...

Two things bother me about the logic of this movie.

1) The basketball kids constantly try to dissuade Troy from trying out for the stupid school musical by - how? Performing lavish musical numbers, of course.

2) Despite the title of the movie, we never actually get to SEE the actual "High School Musical". It should be called "High School Audition".

I wonder if the latter issue might be intentional, to leave plenty of room for a sequel. They could call it "High School Musical II: The Actual Fucking Musical"!!

2006-06-02T03:06:00.000-04:00

apple store... 3:03 AM...

Concert went late... trapped in city until 8:00 AM... posting from the new apple store... open 24 hours... IT"S THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS... and apparently... tonight... neither do I.

2006-05-20T22:44:00.000-04:00

"... and an A for YOU... next...?"

Well, it took until the last week of the semester, but a few students in my Modern Physics class figured out how to guarantee themselves an "A" on an assignment from Dr. Dave. One student opened her final paper on "Quantum Weirdness" with a quote from Carl Sagan. Another student... with a quote from Yoda!

Congrats, kids... you've cracked the code.

2006-05-12T19:06:00.000-04:00

new books! new books! new books! new books! new books!

(Sorry. The phrase always puts me in the mind of Paul Schaeffer c. 1990)

So Jennifer and I drove to Connecticut today for the "Scholastic Warehouse Boooksale"... a whole giant warehouse crammed with 50% off books. We spent $105. That's a crapload of books.

But I'm pretty set for the summer now as far as summer-fiction-reading goes. I always try to put aside the science-geekery for a little bit during the summer and read some fiction and/or littra-chaw, and this is what I have lined up so far...

"jPod" - by Douglas Coupland, which comes out next week and I'm REALLY excited about because it's over 400 pages and sometimes his books can be really short and I wait for 3 years for them and then read them in an afternoon.

"Dharma Bums" - by Jack Kerouac, because this summer it'll be 10 years since I read "On The Road" for the first time. I was alone in Switzerland for a week and I found it really depressing. I figured I'd give Kerouac another chance.

"Dune" - by Frank Herbert, because I have an embarrassing Dune-hole in my geek cred.

"The Subtle Knife" - by Philip Pullman, because I read the first book in the series and it didn't suck, and when that happens I feel compelled to read the whole series until they DO start to suck, and sometimes even that doesn't stop me. (See Rice, Anne)

"The Historian" - by Elizabeth Kostova, because I heard a story about it on NPR a year ago, and NPR can make anything sound good. I don't even remember what it's about, except that it sounded kinda like the Da Vinci Code... only with Dracula.

We'll see how much I actually get read. I could list the NON-fiction titles I have piled on my nightstand as well, but... that would be a much longer and much more boring list!

2006-04-26T18:00:00.000-04:00

please don't talk to me...

I need to put my headphones on to discourage this guy sitting next to me... some kind of stoned-Giovanni-Ribisi-type guy... from talking to me any more. He's not getting the hint. He's asking me about my laptop. "You do like... WORK... on that, or what...?" No dude... it's just to keep guys like you from striking up inane conversations with me. You can see how well that works.

Right now I'm enjoying a wonderful story about how this guy and his friends would cut school when they were 14 and take the train into the city and get drunk and go to Yankee's games. And then drink all day. And then go to a bar and get drunk. Mm-hmm... and how did those life-choices work out for you, Mister "Ask Everybody on the Train if you Can Borrow Their Cellphone to Call Your Buddy to Pick you Up From the Train Station and Drive You to Court"? That good, huh?

At least I know he's getting off halfway through my trip.

Oh My God...

"And I used to take the taxi up there all the time cuz my license got suspended a few years back from a DUI (pronounces it "dewey") and I had to get up there to Newburgh... there's nothin' but criminals up there, it's like a mini South Bronx man... nothin but fuckin' drug dealers... they should put a cop on every corner and clean that place up... it's all crack too, you can't even get cocaine... well... I know a coupla places you can get cocaine, but it's almost all fuckin' crack dealers up there... and heroin costs $20 a bag man, I told my friends that... back when I was using I got into selling for a while and I told them heroin costs $20 a fucking bag up there and they were like, no WAY man..."

What could possibly make you think it's a good idea to be telling me this? Is my body language not "closed" enough? Are you interpreting my monosyllabic grunts and forward gaze and vague head-nods as encouragement? Jesus Christ on a Crackpipe! Please stop!

Anyway, he finally bummed 3 bucks off of me for a cab and got off. Thank god my cellphone battery died a couple of hours ago. I'd hate to be getting the callbacks from unsavory characters that the woman whose phone he borrowed is going to be getting tonight.

Hey lady... when the phone rings, tell them - "$20 a bag"!!

2006-04-18T08:23:00.000-04:00

or maybe it was a capybara...

There are power lines that run over the front of our yard... a few feet in from the property line. There are also power lines across the street. This morning I was sitting in the living room checking my email, when I saw something moving... "scurrying" if you will... out of the corner of my eye. There was a tiny gap through the open-backed bookcase where I could see out the window, out to where the power lines are. And because of the angle, I thought I was looking at the powerlines way across the street rather than the ones in my own yard. As a result, I perceived the animal scurrying across the power lines as being far away, when in reality he was quite close. The upshot of this perceptual misalignment was a very convincing optical illusion that had me convinced, for a brief moment, that I had just seen a beaver run across a power line.

Turns out it was just a squirrel, so... no need to be alarmed, kids... there is no highly-evolved commando-beaver uprising going on.

Not YET anyway...

2006-04-08T20:29:00.000-04:00

i'm sleeping with a lifevest...

So, Jennifer booked a cruise for us for this summer. Four nights... Key West and Cozumel. The ship we're travelling on has been recently "refurbished". Which means they sawed the fucking thing in half a few years ago and added a couple hundred feet of hull in the middle.

The thought of this process makes me uneasy. Our room is going to be located right on the fucking weld, I know it.

2006-04-08T20:28:00.000-04:00

breathing life...

So, I've been meaning to start writing here again, but never seem to get around to it. I have a bunch of ideas for posts jotted down somewhere... maybe I'll try to find those.

2005-10-31T11:20:00.000-05:00

"help us, obi wan kenobi..."

For your viewing pleasure, here are some pics of the kids' Halloween costumes...

In case it's not obvious... I was in charge of one costume and my wife was in charge of the other. Who did a better job? It's not for me to judge. Although I will say, only ONE of the costumes won First Place for "Most Original" in the town Halloween Parade this weekend...

Oh yeah, baby...

(PS> Yes, that IS an actual color-changing LED light on Artoo's head. Thank you.)

2005-10-17T10:09:00.000-04:00

and the "parent of the year" award goes to...

I was trying to give the Boy medicine this morning, and the Dimetapp was empty and I couldn't get the cap off the Sudafed, and I don't even remember saying it, but I must have, because while I was checking on the dosage for 3-year-olds on the bottle, Ian picks up the bottle of Dimetapp and says...

"What... da hell... is... UP wif yis?"

Me: (calmly) Ian, don't say that.

(thoughtful pause)

Ian: ... shit.

2005-10-17T10:02:00.000-04:00

"that's a perfectly good bike! who would throw that away...?"

The third Monday of the month around here is "bulk trash pickup" day. Which means that all over town, curbs are piled high with mattresses and lounge chairs, bikes and microwaves, bookshelves and treadmills. And I can't tell you how hard I am fighting my genetic predisposition towards driving around town and loading up the van with stuff. I swear to god... this would be like CHRISTMAS for my Dad!

2005-10-08T22:40:00.000-04:00

choosy dads choose...

I made the kids lunch today and then cleared the table of all the bread and stuff and went to check my email. After I while I noticed that Ian was sitting at the table going... "J...A...I...F! J...A...I...F!"

OK, I'll bite... "Whatcha spellin', Buddy?"

(I was pretty sure I knew what was coming...)

(pause) "Peanut Butter!"

Yes, yes you are. My only question is how he knows what a lowercase "f" looks like.

2005-10-01T11:38:00.000-04:00

is he strong? listen bud, he's got radioactive blood...

I've decided that one way Netflix allows you to SAVE money is by allowing you to rent extremely silly DVDs that, despite their silliness, you've been tempted to actually drop $50 on everytime you pass them in Target. Case in point... last week I Netflicked the first disc of "Spiderman - the Complete '67 series". As much as I enjoyed some of the groovy music, I'm somewhat disappointed that overall, my tastes weren't quite as discerning when I was EIGHT as I remember them being.

One amusing thing... a large number of the voices are from Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer! Example... J. Jonah Jameson - Donner... his secretary is "Mrs. Donner" and every random child and paperboy sounds suspiciously like Rudolph himself. Worse yet... you'd never know when he's Spiderman, but when he's Peter Parker, the voice becomes a little more tenory... it's HERMEY!!

I feel betrayed somehow...

2005-09-30T13:37:00.000-04:00

hey kids! what's the best kind of night...?

A VOMIT NIGHT!!

Ah well... it was one kid, one vomit, before bedtime, well foreshadowed, and mostly trashcan-contained. This, I have decided to label a "Category One Vomit". (One step above an "Intestinal Depression".)

This is what parenting does to you. You can actually find yourself fairly pleased whilst cleaning up vomit.

2005-09-28T08:22:00.000-04:00

O, Alabama... Where Art Thou?

Hey... I have a question. Didn't there used to be a season between summer and winter that lasted more than 4 days? Because it's FORTY-ONE FUCKING DEGREES THIS MORNING!!!

Also. Can I just say how much people who SNORE on the train piss me off? I mean... dozing off a little is fine, but there is no excuse for a non-homeless person to be in such a deep sleep on public transit.

2005-09-26T12:46:00.000-04:00

white stripes concert review...

It was a good concert, all in all. I wish I hadn't seen the "Blackpool Nights" DVD... I would like to have been a little more surprised by the tone of the live shows. The mix of songs was good. The live "arrangements" (if you can call them that) were good. The "sound" was about as good as you could hope for / expect... given the fact that the band consists of essentially a really distorted guitar and a bass drum.

There were more than a few screw-ups, musically... and not just the Jimmy-Page like sloppiness, which is part of his "technique"... A few places where Jack's fingers were in the wrong place... and a missed cue by Meg which earned her a positively withering look from Jack. But the interplay between the two if them is really nice, most of the time. It seems really loose... the way he cues her on all the accents. He even chokes her cymbals for her sometimes, which I think is really... cute? I dunno... it amuses me.

I have to say I can do without the thing where he just unstraps his guitar and drops it on the floor between songs... letting it feedback for 20-30 seconds while he switches instruments. I know it's part of his bad-boy-rock-star "schtick", but really... it pretty fucking obnoxious.

There is very little between-song-banter. I think he spoke to the audience 3 times. One of the exchanges went like this...

JACK: Meg had breakfast with Dennis Hopper today.
AUDIENCE: (applause)
JACK: (pause) ...that's not true.

He was also dressed like some sort of satanic bullfighter. You really have to be a "Rock Star" to pull off wearing a hat like that.

The crowd was far more diverse than I expected. I thought it would be all black-clad greasy-haired hipsters, but no... there were both younger AND older people there than I expected. It's nice to see that they have such a broad appeal.

(I also ran into a former student from the college there, which is always good... helps to reinforce my 'cool prof' street cred!)

Anyway... it was a long night. I didn't quite realize that the drive would be THREE HOURS. Plus, lots of standing around. Fuck "general admission"... I want a CHAIR!! I'm taking many naps today in an attempt to recover.

2005-09-24T20:35:00.000-04:00

cans't thou heareth me now?

It's been a few years since I've been to a Renaissance Faire, but I'm pretty sure there weren't *quite* as many period-inauthentic tattoos and body piercings peeking out of all the costumes the last time... and I know I didn't see nearly as many people in full garb talking on the cellphone.

2005-09-16T17:27:00.000-04:00

kids these days...

It's another sign.

I try to keep up with new music. I listen to "Alt Nation" on Sirius... I try to watch all the new bands on the talk shows... I periodically steal music by new artists when I read about them. But I find myself always having the same reaction when I see one of these bands of youngsters performing...

"Uhhh... Is this a joke?"

It's not that the music is BAD... it's just that... these bands just all seem... flippant. And not just the intentionally flippant bands like Weezer... bands like "Death Cab for Cutie"?? I mean... the music is kinda nice, but... they can't be SERIOUS, can they? I just get a weird feeling like the whole band is just some kind inside joke that I'm not in on. I saw "The Arcade Fire" on Letterman the other night, and I couldn't even pay attention to the music because I spend the whole time going - "Is that a French Horn? Why is that guy banging on a marching band drum? Is that all he does? Why is the singer looking like that? Why is he pretending to play his guitar backwards? IS THIS A JOKE??"

Maybe it's because I grew up in the Pre-Irony Age, or maybe the whole point of being old is not being able to understand anyone under 20. (Or conversely, maybe the point of being under 20 is behaving in such a way that old people don't understand you.) Either way... it's kinda sad that pretty soon all new music is going to seems as stupid to me as mine did to my parents. But in the meantime, I'm a'gonna go see that-there Jack White feller with the red dungarees next weekend. I just hope it's not too loud.

2005-09-05T20:23:00.000-04:00

first day...

Well, school starts tomorrow. Katie is starting first grade at a new school... first time on a school bus and all... very exciting. Tonight she and Jennifer have been laying out outfits and sharpening pencils and stuffing backpacks and pencil boxes with the prescribed allotment of crayons and markers and glue sticks. The funny thing is... I'm doing pretty much the same thing... washing the new shirt, delinting the new blazer, packing my coffee mug, making sure the laser pointer has batteries...

That's the great thing about being a college professor... you can extend your adolescence right on into your 40's.

2005-08-19T13:24:00.000-04:00

celebrity time capsule...

I've been watching old episodes of "Late Night with David Letterman" on the cable network Trio recently. They are from around 1989, and I keep encountering this fairly creepy phenomenon where there will be a guest on the show who is now known for some other cultural association, and seeing them absent their modern-day cultural referent is quite jarring. Just this week, I've seen a pre-Parkinson's Michael J. Fox... a pre-9/11 Michael Moore... and a pre-double homicide OJ Simpson.

It's just weird to watch them and think... "Wow... look at them... they don't know." Or in the case of OJ... "DAVE! LOOK OUT!!"

Anyway... creepy.

2005-08-11T09:56:00.000-04:00

the boy is strange...

The other day, Ian emerged from the bath, wrapped in his yellow bath towel, and stated... "I AM A LEMONTROOPER!! I shoot LEMONS!" (pause) "Do we have any lemons to shoot?"

I'm still not sure if he shoots AT lemons, or shoots lemons AT things. I was too tired to pursue the ambiguity.

2005-08-04T13:21:00.000-04:00

and it only took a MONTH...

Not that anybody reads this at all, but I figure I can't just start writing again without briefly commenting on the move.

The drive was hell. The two weeks without furniture was hell. They broke all our stuff. Our house up here is kinda of a dump. And speaking of dump, we dumped our realtor in Alabama because the damned house down there still hasn't sold.

That pretty much covers July... we now return to our regularly scheduled ranting.

2005-08-04T13:20:00.000-04:00

it's pronounced like the brits pronounce "MANchester"...

My 6 and 2 year old were playing with stuffed animal pets, and I asked what the dog's name was, and the 6 year old (used to the expensive Beanie® Brand) naturally checked the tag, only to be met with a bunch of indecipherable fineprint. She stared at the tag for a while and finally said - "I think is name is Polchester"

No, Katie... that says "Polyester".

It is a good name for a dog, though. Or a butler.

2005-06-30T15:01:00.000-04:00

everything's better with dad in charge...

DAY 1: Dinner at Pizza Hut. ALL YOU CAN EAT! Hey kids... have a SPRITE!
DAY 2: A trip to Target, then... out for ICE CREAM!
DAY 3: I know... let's go rent a MOVIE!!

Who knows what tomorrow has in store? I'm running out of tricks.

2005-06-23T08:08:00.000-04:00

most pointless souvenier... ever!

One of the places we went on our road trip was the Abraham Lincoln Presidential LIbrary and Museum in Springfield, IL. It was a pretty nicely done museum... the multimedia shows were cool. I'm not much into the history stuff, but I had a good time.

Anyway, whenever we are on vacation my wife insists on picking up these souveniers... I think it's a leftover thing from childhood or something. It's this machine that you put 2 quarters and a penny in, and you turn this big wheel and it squishes the penny flat and imprints it with a picture of Niagra Falls or Royal Gorge or the Louvre or wherever you happen to be. We get one of these everywhere we go, then my wife puts it in her purse and it gets lost before we even get back home. Whatever...

But the point of this story is... what can you get for 51 cents from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential LIbrary and Museum in Springfield, IL?

An ABRAHAM LINCOLN SOUVENIER PENNY!!

Hell, skip the machine... I'll sell you five for a quarter.

2005-06-17T22:20:00.000-04:00

take that, marketing bozos...

The highlight for the 6 y.o. for this trip was a promised trip to American Girl Place in Chicago. I have mixed feelings about the status-symbolness of these little historical dolls, but the wife thinks they are borderline educational, so we let our daughter Katie save up her money for one.

It's very clear that the historical dolls were created so there would be one redhead, one blonde... one girl with glasses... one black girl... a latina... even a native american doll. That way every girl would find a doll who looked enough like her that she could "identify" with it. And so what doll did our pale, blonde, freckled Irish-Welsh & German little moppet choose...?

Josefina!

Priceless.

2005-06-15T21:12:00.000-04:00

from the back seat... how to end any argument...

6yo: ... because all of the planets are the same age.
2yo: Pluto is not da same age.
6yo: Yes, all of the planets are the same age.
2yo: Not Pluto.
6yo: Yes. Pluto was the last planet to be SEEN, but it was made at the same time.
2yo: Pluto was not made at da same time.
6yo: Daddy, weren't all the planets made at the same time?
Dad: Yes, all the planets are about 5 billion years old.
6yo: See? Pluto WAS made at the same time.
2yo: (pause...) I have a giant FOOOOT!!

2005-06-11T13:27:00.000-04:00

smells like global ecological irresponsibility...

I was looking through the paper the other day... Father's Day is coming up you know... so the department store ads all have ties and cheap cologne on sale. There are all sorts of weird "sponsored" colognes out there nowadays... named after car models and such. One of the brands on sale was "Hummer" cologne.

Hummer...

I'm sure it smells great... really manly and all... problem is, you have to use a whole gallon of it every day to get it to work.

2005-06-06T14:58:00.000-04:00

the rumors were true..

(Most of you can safely ignore this post) I was skeptical, but it turns out all of the leaks for the past few weeks were right. Apple Computers are dumping IBM and making the transition to Intel/Pentium chips over the next two years.

How will they do it? Well, it turns out there have been guys in a bunker in Cupertino compiling the MacOS to run on the Intel architecture FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS!! In fact, Steve Jobs stopped in the middle of the Keynote address to mention that - oh, by the way... this presentation I'm been giving has been running the MacOS on a 3.6GHz Pentium 4 all morning. IT'S ALREADY DONE!! Then they brought over a guy from Wolfram to announce that it took them 5 days to port Mathematica to the new architecture. FIVE DAYS.

Steve Jobs, you are a fucking genius.

I don't know HOW he's going to brush aside all the negative "RISC is better than CISC" propaganda of the last 10 years, (**) but... if anyone can do it, it's The Steve.

Fuck, this doesn't mean I have to have one of those ugly "Intel Inside" stickers on my next Mac, does it?? Maybe he'll loan them some designers to come up with a spiffier logo.

A good report of the keynote can be found at engadget.

Dr. Dave

(**) Actually, I do know how. LIke the article above says - they'll simply keep repeating "Pentium runs cooler than PPC" and even though hertz-for-hertz, PowerPC still beats Pentium (as in a 2 Ghz PPC actually runs more instructions per second than a 3 or 4 GHz Pentium) IBM hasn't been able to deliver a G5 that will run in a notebook without causing it to burst into flames. Steve will simply stress that portables are an important part of Apple's business, and that if they don't make the change NOW, they are in danger of falling behind Windows in the portable market. And we'll all smile and nod, becuase He's Steve and we're not.

2005-06-03T14:08:00.000-04:00

i'd rather pay off my CAR, thanks...

We got a catalog in the mail from this pen place yesterday. I assume it's because we're on the Levenger mailing list, but this place makes Levenger look like Office Fucking Depot. I'm sorry... I'm as much a materialist as the next guy, but... anybody who spends more than $5000 on a fucking PEN deserves to be STABBED TO DEATH WITH IT!

2005-06-03T13:45:00.000-04:00

the good, the bad, and the puffy...

I TiVo'd that show "Hit Me Baby One More Time" last night. At least I think that's what it was called. The premise was that they resurrect some has-been artists to perform their big hit song, and then have them cover a current pop song and then... well, I don't know... maybe they pick a winner or something... I never made it past the first segment because it was so HORRIFYINGLY BAD. It was like karaoke, only worse... because you expect the person who actually wrote and performed the song to NOT suck as bad as a karaoke performer. But you'd be wrong. After watching the puffy lead singers from Loverboy and Flock of Seagulls grunt thier way through "Workin' for the Weekend" and "I Ran" respectively... I couldn't bear another minute of it.

Then later I was flipping channels and I came across the Eagles "Farewell Tour #1" on Bravo. I was pleasantly surprised and a little befuddled. It sounded far better than it had any right to. Apparently, musicians with TALENT can manage to NOT SUCK when they get old.

I especially enjoyed the guitar solo to Hotel California... not a single note out of place, man... cuz you know... any improvising on THAT number and people would be demanding their $300 back!

2005-06-03T09:28:00.000-04:00

navigating the fantasy/reality line with toddlers...

Ian wakes up from his nap yesterday...

IAN: "Me. Haff. Bad. Dream."
ME: Aww.. you had a bad dream?
IAN: "Ya."
ME: What was your dream about?
IAN: (pause...) "Tigers!" (makes clawing hand motions)
ME: Oh, no... tigers? Were they SCARY tigers?
IAN: "Ya."
ME: Oh no. Were they chasing you?
IAN: (pause...) "No, Daddy... It was a DREAM."

Right. Of course. How silly of me.

2005-06-01T11:58:00.000-04:00

i suppose we should be proud of him for trying, at least...

From the President's press conference on TUESDAY... in response to a question about the Amnesty International "gulag" allegations...

In terms of, you know, the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees.

It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of and the allegations by people that were held in detention, people who hate America, people that have been trained in some instances to disassemble [sic], that means not tell the truth.

Actually, George... "disassemble" means "to take apart"... "DISSEMBLE" means to not tell the truth. You know how I know?

Dictionary.com's word of the day for MONDAY? Yup... dissemble!

Coincidence? Right.

Now I ask you... how cute is it that the President subscribes to the Word of the Day email to try to improve his vo-cab-u-la-mary, and then tries to use the new words in a sentence the very next day? Even if he does bungle it up. Isn't he a lovable little chucklehead?

2005-05-30T10:01:00.000-04:00

the davinci code? 454/105=4.3

Yeah, I'm a year late getting there, but since I'm unemployed, I figured this summer would be a good time to read some fiction... a rare event for me. After spending 1600 pages or so catching up with the Harry Potter series, I picked up my wife's copy of "The DaVinci Code". I ask you... what the hell kind of 400 page book has 100 chapters? Dan Brown seems to think readers don't have patience to worry over a puzzle that isn't resolved within 4 pages. I'm so-far unimpressed.

I suppose one positive to Brown's writing style is that I can make significant progress through the plot every time I go to the john.

Perhaps I should line up some "classics" for the remainder of the summer instead.

2005-05-25T09:06:00.000-04:00

i think once i got some brownies...

There has been discussion on one of my Wife's mom-talk-groups about end of the year gifts for teachers. It seems some ClassMothers are taking up collections asking for as much as $20 from each student in a class of 20. Do the math, folks... that's $400!!! Four hundred fucking dollars for a teacher gift?? Shit, I taught High School in the fucking HAMPTONS for 4 years... I never got a fucking $400 present at the end of the year.

Of course... my students didn't really like me very much. That could have been a factor.

2005-05-23T10:57:00.000-04:00

money for nothing...

Even though I have a job starting on July 1st, we decided I should probably try to apply for unemployment in the meantime... just on a whim, really. So I called today. Next Wednesday I'm supposed to call them back and they'll send me my first check. Just like that! They send me MONEY!

I'm now officially suckling at the teat of the welfare state! I'm a leech feeding off the blood, sweat, and taxes of hardworking Americans!! AND IT FEELS GOOD!!

2005-05-23T00:04:00.000-04:00

oh...umm... hi...

We went to a pool party today for my daughter's Girl Scout troop. There were the 6 girls, and assorted younger and older siblings and parents with whom I had to make small talk all day. (Yay.) There was also one girl who was older than the rest who was playing around with them and generally supervising the younger kids, but who clearly was not a sibling of any of them (Hint: six Girl Scouts, white... older girl, black.) The mystery was solved when her Mom finally came by to pick her up, and turned out to be none other than Jackie the "Power Yoga" teacher from the Y.

Jackie has filled in for my regular yoga yeacher a few times. Jackie is a Pusher. As in... you'll be doing some pose and stretched out to your limit and she'll walk up behind you and physically PUSH some part of you even further, and you just kinda go... "Oh! Ok... WHOA...OW!" That's alright... Who needs ligaments anyway?

Anyway, it took us a second to recognize each other out of workout clothes. Can I just tell you how strange it is to have someone show up in a social context who has had her hands on your ass in a professional context?

Very.

2005-05-20T10:51:00.000-04:00

good ear...

I was watching Letterman on the TiVo this morning, and Ian was spinning on a Sit-n-Spin in the middle of the living room. Not 60 seconds into the segment with Dave's first guest, Ellen Degeneres, the boy stops spinning and pipes up with...

"Ah. Me. Watch. Finding. Nemo??"

Coincidence? I think not.

2005-05-19T23:45:00.000-04:00

coming to a galaxy not so far away...

A NY Times article published yesterday is reporting that the US millitary is about to start seeking permission to build space-based weapons systems. The best quote from the article...?

General Lord said such problems should not stand in the way of the Air Force's plans to move into space. "Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny,"

Holy crap... "General Lord"? Sound like anyone you know??

2005-05-19T10:52:00.000-04:00

because inquiring minds want to know...

The beloved Mimi Smartypants wrote in her blog yesterday regarding the question of washing one's hands after using the restroom, and whether or not it was really, strictly speaking, necessary. The post included the following curious statement...

You don't touch anything in there other than toilet paper and flush-handle. (Well, girls don't. Men, do you have to handle the johnson in order to pee? I am not familiar with Male Pee Procedures.)

I was somewhat shocked that an adult woman would be unclear on such a simple matter, so I decided to set her straight this morning via email. I include the essay below for the benefit of my other curious female readers...

Of Course You Don't Have To Touch It Mimi!

First of all, it is important to note that a Men's room is entirely covered in porcelain from floor to ceiling with a big drain in the middle. It's like being inside a giant sink, really... so it's not necessary to aim.

To begin, you need to get everything out in the open. As you know, the penis naturally seeks out light... so all you have to do is unzip your fly, and out it comes! There is no handling necessary!!

Next, there are The Straps. You see, if the penis simply hangs there, you may just pee on your shoes, or worse - your pants leg... So there are straps hanging from the ceiling, like in a subway car. That way you can hold onto a strap and leeeeeeeean waaaaaaaaay over so that the stream descends at a more favorable angle.

Then there is the issue of residual dampness and lingering drops afterwards. This is where the Hot Air Penis Dryers come in. You may have seen hot air dryers in Women's restrooms used for drying hands. These Men's Room appliances are very similar, only they are mounted at waist height, and the air is somewhat cooler, as you can well imagine. At very fancy hotels and restaurants, there may be an actual Human Penis Dryer right there in the Men's room to assist you. (A tip is customary.)

Finally the penis must be returned to the pants. This can be accomplished by a rapid and vigorous squat.

So as you can see Mimi... a trip to the Men's room involves NO HANDLING OF THE PENIS WHATSOEVER!! I hope this clarifies things for you.

2005-05-18T16:57:00.000-04:00

helpful parenting tip...

If a half-hour-long screaming-crazy-berzerk-tantrum-fit ALWAYS results in a four-hour nap...? It might not be such a bad idea to get him that pissed off every day!!

2005-05-17T16:37:00.000-04:00

and it's SO OBVIOUSLY what Hasbro planned...

Anyone present at the local Target this morning would have witnessed the amusing spectacle of a 35 year-old supposed adult trying to talk a 2 year-old child INTO buying a number of Star Wars Galactic Heroes preschool toys.

Adult: Check it out, it's like a space-rocket-plane with a robot and lasers.
Child: I. Don't. Know...
Adult: How about this... look, it's Chewbacca!!
Child: I know Chew... Bacca!
Adult: Yeah. So.. what do you think? Do you want Chewbacca.
Child: Chew...Bacca... pwetty... CWAZY!
Adult: Look, do you want these toys or should I put them back?
Child: You. Put. Dem. Back.
Adult: Ok... no toys for you today.
Child: No. Toys. Fo. Me...
(pause)
Child: Toys. Fo. Daddy??
Adult: No... apparently not...

Maybe I can convince my daughter to want them.

2005-05-16T22:38:00.000-04:00

general update...

I just had a fairly crappy weekend (I'll spare you the details, or rather, I'll spare myself the task of writing OUT the details) and now It's leading directly into the dreaded semi-annual stressfest known as The Week Of Grading. My online class (which was an unmitigated disaster, I might add) just wrapped up and now I have a week to grade 24 term papers, and review 300 discussion posts and figure out some way to assign grades to them. Should I have thought about that before now? Shut up.

So that's the kind of week it will be.

In other news, no news on the house. We had a nice Indian family come by and look at the place. They really liked it (having just looked at houses ourselves, you can definitely tell) but the father said it was too big and a little out of their price range. Yeah, well... so was the house we just bought in NY, chump... make us an offer.

In moving news, we donated and/or gave away our big faded, cat-scratchy sleeper sofa and loveseat. Meaning... we tried to donate them, but when the truck came to pick them up, the guy said they couldn't take stuff with scratches on it because it wouldn't sell. (REJECTED!! BY THE POOR!!). So he took the old computer desk and left the receipt, but the receipt still said sofa/loveseat on it. Aha! So we gave them away on "freecycle" and we're still going to write them off on our taxes.

Nobody who works for the IRS reads this weblog, do they?? IT WAS MY WIFE'S IDEA!!

2005-05-16T22:36:00.000-04:00

really... which is worse...?

I saw a news story today from the Telegraph in the UK stating that a study revealed that...

"Hospitals are dirtier than food factories, Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, suggested yesterday as she acknowledged the extent of the MRSA crisis."

And of course, the immediate reaction to that is - "Yeech!" Of course, that's only until you realize that, had the headline been - "Food factories have more germs than hospitals" - your reaction would have been EXACTLY THE SAME!!!

2005-05-08T17:25:00.000-04:00

price for dave's "will-to-live"...? $629...

We had our yard sale yesterday. Next time I have a yard sale, the first thing I'm going to do is set up a table full of watches and clocks. This is so when people come at 6:30 in the morning while I'm setting up to ask "Do you have any fishing tackle?" or "Do you have any collectible spoons?" I can say, "NO but I do have some quality watches and clocks... and they all keep perfect time... see? They all say SIX-FUCKING THIRTY!!! Come back in an hour and a half when the yard sale actually starts and they will say 8:00 and you can BUY ONE since you are clearly MISTAKEN about the hour of the day."

In other news... do you have any idea how hot it can feel in Alabama at 9:30 in the morning?? I swear, 9:30 in the morning and I'm wearing sunscreen and sweating and the Sun is beating down from directly overhead like I'm in the Saraha at noon on the solstice and I'm on the ground crouching in the shade of a loveseat like Gollum under a rock. "The Yellow Face! IT BURNS US!!!"

Anyways... we've still got a vanload of rejected items to haul to the Goodwill, and we need to call someone to get these damned sofas, but overall... a successful and fairly profitable purge. It's funny, when having a yard sale, you frequently have the thought - "God, I can't believe people will BUY this CRAP". That is until you realize - "Wait a minute... WE bought this crap!"

2005-05-02T10:29:00.000-04:00

suspend thy disbelief, ian...

Ian just watched "The Jungle Book" for the first time. The whole movie went like this...

"Takking Effants! Daddy! Yook at dem! Takking bwack CHEETAH! (that's a panther, buddy) Yook at it, Daddy! Takking MONKEYS!!

Dude - ALL THE ANIMALS TALK!! GET OVER IT!!

2005-04-29T23:23:00.000-04:00

come sit on grampa's lap kids... it's eddie vedder on the tee-vee...

I was flipping channels tonight and I came across a Pearl Jam video...

On VH-1!!!

How the fuck old AM I??

2005-04-22T20:28:00.000-04:00

a rare sports entry...

You won't hear Dave blog about sports that often, so take note, and bear with me.

I saw some news story about some baseball team breaking a winning streak, and it occured to me to check the standings in the AL East, so I went over to mlb.com only to find that The Orioles are ahead of the YANKEES in the AL East. Ok, they aren't in first place, they are a game behind the Sox, but still... they are ahead of the fucking YANKEES and I can't even REMEMBER the last time they weren't 20 fucking games behind the Yankees.

Wouldn't it serve me right... after living for 6 years in NY and ignoring sports entirely, I had made the decision that, now that I was moving back, I was going to put aside my childhood alliances and become a Yankees fan... wouldn't it serve me right for the fucking O's to be in the running this season?? TAKE THAT, TRAITOR!!!

Not that I'm a huge baseball fan anyway, but... it's my home team, y'know? I saw Jim Palmer play his last game at Memorial Stadium. I saw Earl Weaver coach one of his last times. My high school band played the national anthem at a preseason game once. And I went through some phases... like the year I worked construction with may dad's company after high school... I paid attention to baseball just so I'd have something to talk to people about. And I mean attention, as in... listening to baseball games on the RADIO and having pitchers' ERA's memorized and shit. Yeah... ME... hard to believe, I know.

Anyway, the Orioles have sucked so bad for the last... hell... DECADE, that I haven't paid much attention, so I figured switching team loyalties would be no big deal. But... the YANKEES? God if my grandmother saw me in a Yankees cap she'll keel over dead right there.

So, now... I'm sorry for even considering it. I TAKE IT ALL BACK!! GO O's!!!

2005-04-19T13:27:00.000-04:00

what's in a pope-name...?

Well, it looks like our new Pope is going to be Benedict XVI, which I have to admit is a pretty cool Pope Name. It got me wondering though... once you get to be a big-shot Cardinal - do you start dreaming about your Pope Name? Trying to pick the perfect, coolest one like teenage boys name their imaginary rock bands? Or doodling it in the corner of your notebook in big loopy letters like a lovesick 13-year-old girl does with her name and the last name of some unattainable boy?

Pope Honorius V... ... Papa... Honorius... the... FIFTH...

Or even worse... is one of the guys who was in the running for this election just FUMING now, going - "Dammit, I was going to choose Benedict XVI!!! Now I can't use Benedict XVII or I'll look like a copycat!! You SUCK Ratzinger!!"

2005-04-04T22:38:00.000-04:00

dave finds religion... almost...

Whilst surfing the web today, I spotted the following headline on Yahoo News...

Pope's Body Moved

"OH MY GOD!! IT'S A MIRACLE!!"

Oh, wait... that's probably not what that means at all.

What a difference transitive vs. intransitve makes.

2005-04-04T10:52:00.000-04:00

like abu graib, only with monkeys...

Yesterday we went to visit the local ~~animal concentration camp~~ zoo. What an awful place. It's way out of town in Trailer Park Land down a dirt road. There was a weird, sparse assortment of animals - most either housed in chain-link cages or in smallish fenced-in areas. Zebras rooming with donkeys. Six emus and an ostrich who are probaby destined to be someone's dinner someday. A bunch of depressed-looking retired circus tigers. A really sociopathic baboon. An arthritic cougar. A pair of agitated, pacing wolves.

The highlights, if you can call them that, were a Nilgai and a patagonian cavy neither of which I've ever seen before in a zoo. Also we got to play with a chimpanzee, which was fun. He was an adult male, and he was maybe 3 feet away from us behind 2 chainlink fences. He would stamp his foot, and then Ian and I would stamp OUR feet and then he'd stamp his foot, and then we'd stamp OUR feet, and then he'd do that crazy-toothy-chimp-smile thing and nod his head vigorously, as if to say "Hey, fellow primate - that was a fun game". I felt just like Jane Goodall.

Anyway, the kids had fun and got to run around a lot. Jennifer and I found the whole thing a bit depressing, and I couldn't decide whether it made me want to donate money to the zoo or to PETA.

2005-04-02T22:27:00.000-05:00

for god's sake, someone imdb "The Man from Atlantis" already...

We Tivo'd "Grey's Anatomy" last week. Tonight we watched it. One of the first names to pop up in the creadits was "Patrick Dempsey"

DAVE: Patrick Dempsey?
JENN: Oh, who is that? He was in that movie...
DAVE: Isn't Patrick Dempsey the guy from "Dallas"?
JENN: No.
DAVE: Well, it was Patrick somebody...
JENN: Patrick... Ewing!!
DAVE: No... JR Ewing. Patrick Ewing is a basketball player.
JENN: Oh. Well Patrick Dempsey was in that movie...

Patrick DUFFY. Jesus. How fucking long did these conversations used to last before the Internet was invented?

2005-03-31T20:20:00.000-05:00

don't know what this means, but it can't be good...

Overheard from the other room, during bathtime tonight...

"Today we get out of the bathtub - Circus Style!!!

2005-03-29T21:53:00.000-05:00

fun in the sun...

We took the kids to the beach today. Now, I'm not much of a beach person. Which is strange, because my family went every year when we were kids, and I think I enjoyed it then. But somehow that enjoyment seems not to have trickled into my adulthood. I think we must have stopped going to the beach just before I reached puberty. I can tell this because on the rare occasion that I DO wind up going to a beach, I'm always surprised and delighted to find that there are half-naked women there. It just never occurs to me until I get there that there will be all kinds of almost-naked women, and when I get there... well, it's a nice little unexpected treat. "Oh, hey... look at that! I forgot about those! Whoo-hoo!"

(Feel free to check out The Wife's Blog for the details of the trip that did NOT involve bikinis.)

2005-03-25T16:24:00.000-05:00

finger lickin' good...

As if anyone needed another good reason not to eat at Wendy's...

My favorite part of the article...

"[...] the woman, who asked officials not to identify her, is at minimal risk of contracting illnesses from the finger.

"It's an extremely low chance because the chili was cooked at a very high temperature that would have killed anything in the finger," Alexiou said. Still, she said health officials would ask the woman's doctor to test her blood "to make sure nothing got passed to her."

I'm sure that really puts her mind at ease. Yes, here at Wendy's we're always sure to cook our stray human body parts thoroughly, because food safety is our #1 concern!!

2005-03-24T22:32:00.000-05:00

oh yeah, "ooh! ahhh!", that's how it always starts, but then later there's the running and the screaming...

I'm no paleontologist, but THIS just does not seem possible. And you KNOW the scientists are going to try not to talk about the obvious implication, but come on. Some nut at that lab is sneaking home a tissue sample to try to impregnate his pet iguana right now!!

2005-03-12T13:41:00.000-05:00

it's a psalm, if you must know...

How to tell your daughter's religious school is starting to have an influence...

Her: Daddy, how do you spell "panteth"?
Me: Umm... what? (looks at paper... sees it has something to do with deer.) Do you mean "panther"?
Her: No... "panteth"!
Me: Honey, I don't think that's a word.
Her: You know, like in - "As the deer panteth after the water, so my soul longeth for thee.."?
Me: (blinks) Umm...oh. "P-A-N..."

I'm very afraid.

2005-02-18T09:28:00.000-05:00

survivor is going to be GOOD!

Not only was Jeff extra mean to the contestants, not only did we totally predict who would be voted off first (and second!), not only is there a really bitchy gay guy, but...

The tattoo girl...?

Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot!

(Dave eagerly awaits Angie's inevitable pictorial on Suicide Girls once the season comes to an end.)

God, I love this show...

2005-02-16T23:12:00.000-05:00

at least the knob goes back ON fairly easily...

You know... democracy and "free markets" are great and all, but... seriously... I bet in Soviet Russia and Communist China, ALL the washers and dryers you either PUSH to turn them on, or you PULL to turn them on.

Mine are from the SAME FUCKING MANUFACTURER, PEOPLE!!

What the hell??

2005-02-16T12:33:00.000-05:00

still in the "denial" phase...

As I was getting the kids fed and dressed this morning, I caught a glimpse of the driveway through the front window out of the corner of my eye, and my immediate, automatic, unconscious first thought was...

"Oh look... company!"

No, Dave... that's YOUR minivan.

Oh yeah... right.

2005-02-13T17:28:00.000-05:00

freedom is on the march... and on the bus...

Ian has a Fisher Price talking school bus toy that, on top of being irritating as hell, must have been designed pre-9/11, because its most frequently uttered catch-phrase is "Let's roll!!", which might at some point in the past given the impression that the little bus was ready for an afternoon of driving fun, but now just implies that the little scamp is out to thwart an imminent terrorist hijacking, or perhaps just intending to invade a foreign country under false pretenses.

Either way, it seems inappropriate.

2005-02-12T22:19:00.000-05:00

at least they come by it honestly...

Took the kids to Target today, so Jenn could get some freelance work done. At one point the Katie asks - "Can we go to the toy section?" and I said... OK, but what do I NOT want to hear? To which she correctly replied, sadly..."I wanna, I wanna..."

She kept to her promise, even though my hardline position was hardly defensible after I bought myself one of these.

Sometimes I just realize... "Hey, I'm 35 and rich... I can buy myself toys whenever I want!"

2005-02-10T15:19:00.000-05:00

the opposite of writing...

I'm supposed to be writing a script. Instead I'm reading. Read...read...read... you know... "research"? Because the thing I'm writing isn't exactly my field... which means I'm having a tough time getting an "angle" on the whole topic. It's not the factual information that's the problem, it's putting it all together into something coherent... something with a POINT.

Anyway, so I sit in my office and read...read...read... for three days now, and something's got to give, because I'm driving myself crazy and my head is just a big jumble of IDEAS and yet nothing comes out when I stare at the paper/word processor.

The whole thing brings to mind a quote I've read by Aaron Sorkin about the agony that is his writing process...

"I have a real schedule, too. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday I freak out cuz I haven't thought of what next week's show is. Thursday I start yelling at people because I haven't thought of what next week's show is. Friday I go, 'Ohmigod, there's going to be a half hour of dead air on ABC next week,' and then it finally gets done."

This, too, is me.

In other news, we got Sirius satellite radio the other day, so... scratch one more techno-gadget off the list. (Do we have them all yet?) I also got a car kit for my iPod, so... say bye-bye- to the front seat full of loose CDs that fly around the car like little silver frisbees everytime I turn a corner.

I think that's it... at least, nothing else is going on that rises to the level of rantworthyness. I promise to deliver something anecdoty soon...

2005-02-08T08:34:00.000-05:00

how to bait and switch an entire country...

Term One: "We have a surplus! Look at that surplus! That means we're taxing too much! It's not the gubmint's money! It's YER money! Here, take it all back!

Term Two: "We have a deficit! Look at that deficit! That means we're spending too much! Gotta cut 150 gubmint programs. But not the War on Terr'rr! Freedom is on the march! Gotta spend more on that. Buy your own damned heart pills, Grampa!

Huh? Wha? What happened there? We weren't listening...

On another note, about the only program Bush isn't cutting is NASA. He's giving NASA even MORE money. And yet there is no money in the budget to save the Hubble... they're gonna let that crash into the ocean. Where is all the NASA money going? To the Manned Mission to Mars of course... because, why spend money to fix something we already have, that already WORKS, when we can blow it all sending people to Mars to wave a 'Merrican flag and kick around a bunch of rocks?

Stupid...

2005-02-08T08:33:00.000-05:00

There's a new player in the pherma biz! member...

There's a new player in the hood - and you're gonna like it.
Yep, nomore the old fashion, this one is new, good and will
give it to you like with prjjces you never knew you can get.
I'm talking about the new shoop.
Come iin to observe more!
We can't wait till the winter comes :)

I love spam. Seriously.

2005-02-07T11:16:00.000-05:00

like father like daughter...

We went to Target yesterday, and I don't know if maybe the impending Super Bowl has us feeling particularly "sporty" or what, but we bought cute little baseball mitts for the kids. Then when we got home I took them out back to play catch.

The first toss, my daughter missed. Darn!

The second toss, my daughter caught! Yay!

The third toss hit my daughter smack in the nose and reduced her to a hysterical sobbing heap and cemented the inevitable truth that her future will be free from organized sports activity of any kind.

Oh well... it was bound to happen soner or later.

2005-02-02T13:54:00.000-05:00

dave gets all semantic with the appliances...

Our dryer has the little lint-trap thingy inside, as most dryers do... and on the edge of the trap is says "PLEASE EMPTY BEFORE EVERY USE"...and I never really noticed it or took issue with it until last night. Not that I DO empty it after every use... that would be extremely anal and deprive me of the pleasure of peeling off a big 1" thick pillow of compacted blue-gray fuzz after every 6 or 7 loads. I never FOLLOWED the suggestion, but it never bothered me either.

Until now.

Because last night the question arose... Are you emtpying it BEFORE every use, as the label says... or are you emptying it AFTER every use? I contend that it is the latter, because the FIRST time you used it, it had never been used... therefore, you didn't need to empty it before THAT use... you began emptying it AFTER the fist use, and continued to empty it AFTER every subsequent use. Am I right, people??

This is what it's like to live inside my head, folks. Be thankful...

2005-01-29T08:05:00.000-05:00

freedom is on the march...

Is everyone else as excited as I am about tomorrow's Iraqi election? I can't wait to see who wins. We should know pretty quickly too... since I can't imagine it will take too long to count the 300 VOTES cast by the people who manage to NOT be terrified of getting shot or blown up while voting.

Did everyone see John Stewart's recap of the Inauguration Speech that kept score of Bush's masturbatory use of the words Freedom (20-something times) and Liberty (17 times)? I don’t know whether to me amused by it or just frightened by the doublespeakyness of the whole thing... when Freedom and Liberty mean, "do what we say" and "or we'll make you."

When does the campaigning for 2008 start?

2005-01-27T22:43:00.000-05:00

pissing off the physicist once again...

We were watching Queer Eye and Ted was helping some football fan guy buy a new grill for his tailgate parties, and they were discussing buying a particular gas grill, even though charcoal cooks better... and the guy at Grills-R-Us starts salespitching for this gas grill and says...

"This penetrates the food right away, it cooks the food a lot more quickly, but it also cooks in the infrared spectrum, just like charcoal..."

Which is important, you know... because most gas grills cook using, ummm... COSMIC GAMMA RAYS!!

What the FUCK?

Infrared = HOT. Coals are hot. Gas is hot. Hot is hot.

If there is a difference between the quality of charcoal and gas cooking, it's about SMOKE... not about... the infrared fucking spectrum.

Jesus.

2005-01-12T21:19:00.000-05:00

Macworld-Expo inspired gushing...

Have you seen it? Have you seen it?

The Mac Mini?

Must have one.

The iPod Shuffle? No... it's not a new dance... it's a whole new mp3-player paradigm. All storage, no interface. Brilliant.

Software? GarageBand 2 does real time music notation. iMovie now handles hi-def resolution. iWork? A new productivity suite with a wordprocessor that mimics the interface of Keynote. (I switched from PowerPoint to Keynote two years ago, and I get more compliments on my presentations than you can imagine.) And the awesome thing about my job is... I know I'll have my hands on ALL of it in a week or two, and it won't cost me a nickel.

Giddy as a schoolgirl!

2005-01-12T21:13:00.000-05:00

ESPN inspired gushing...

It doesn't matter how skanky the videos on MTV are, it doesn't matter how naked they get on Desperate Housewives, there will NEVER be anything hotter on television than women's billiards.

And it's not about the bending over and it has nothing to do with how they LOOK... it's all about the skill and the focus and the ability...

Ok, sometimes it's about the bending over.

But really.... god damn... watching a woman run a rack of 9-ball, I would so totally do them RIGHT THERE on the table.

2004-12-31T22:50:00.000-05:00

and never brought to mind...

Happy Holiday-That-I-Couldn't-Possibly-Give-A-Smaller-Rat's-Ass-About, everybody!!

Dave

2004-12-24T01:05:00.000-05:00

i wouldn't exactly call it a "retraction" of my earlier stance, but...

... after my rant a few weeks ago about the pants, I have to say... these size 38's sure are comfortable. Plus, now I can eat as much as I want. Look how loose they are!! Pass the Doritos!!

2004-12-21T07:29:00.000-05:00

Now just the Jews!! "Then one foggy Xmas Eve, Santa came to say..."

I was reading an article in the local paper this weekend about religion and public school. There is a local school board memeber who is putting together a legal team to study the question of just how MUCH religion can be legally tolerated in school, because he wants students to pray at the start of every day. More on him later.

The rest of the article discussed when can and can't be done in schools. You can pray, but the teacher can't tell you to pray. Or NOT to pray. You can draw a Nativity in art class, and a teacher can hang that on a wall, but the school itself can't display a public nativity. You can sing "traditional" songs, even ones that may have a religious element, as long as they are sung in the context of "cultural history"

And here is where we get a lovely quote from a local teacher about how she handles the issue in her class. (Imagine the Southern accent, it helps...)

"Well, I try to stick to songs like Frosty the Snowman, or Let it Snow, or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, that way nobody has to feel left out."

Totally. Without. Clue.

After I picked up the pieces of my exploded head, I decided to write a letter to the editor about the school board member who wants to dust off daily school prayer. The letter will read...

"I think the idea of instituting a daily prayer is a wonderful idea. Maybe the students could pray for books. Or well paid teachers. Or that they will miraculously receive a proper education despite being stuck in the 48th-ranked state school system in the country. Or perhaps the school board would be better off trying to actually DO something to address these problems DIRECTLY instead of wasting their time making itself look even MORE foolish and assbackwards to the rest of the fucking country"

I might add that the letter is from an ATHEIST who is sending his children to a RELIGIOUS SCHOOL just to escape the fate of Alabama Public Education.

Medieval-minded assbackwards redneck idiots...

2004-12-19T17:41:00.000-05:00

finally...

Lo! The playhouse roof is be-shingled!

And there was much rejoicing...

2004-12-12T10:54:00.000-05:00

time is on my side...

Well, Ian turns two in a few weeks. That means it's time to put an end to all this waking up at 4:45, 5:00 in the morning. How, you ask? By teaching him how to tell time.

Skeptical? Ha! We did it with our daughter when she was 2. Here's how it works. Buy an LED digital clock, and cover the "minute" digits with electrical tape. Now you have a clock that just shows the hour. Now say your kid wakes up at 6:35, and you want them to sleep until 7:00... grab a piece of paper and draw the following picture. On the left side of the paper, draw a large digital "6", and a picture of a child sleeping. Then on the other half of the paper, draw a digital "7", and a picture of a child who is awake and happy and smiling. Now, hang this picture on the wall over the clock and tell the child they can wake up when the clock says "7", but they have to go to sleep or rest quietly if it says "6".

Totally, totally works! Katie would be absolutely quiet until 7:00, then she would say "Mommy, it say se'm on my clock!" And the boy? Well, we've had to use a "5" and a "6" instead of six and seven, but still... it is totally working!!! I woke up at 6:05 today. SIX-O-FIVE!! You have to get yourself past the idea of 6:05 counting as "sleeping in" to grasp the importance of this, but I can assure you - THIS MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE.

Next step... slowly set his clock back 5 minutes a day until he's sleeping until 10:00!!

2004-12-07T09:32:00.001-05:00

38... it's a size, not an age...

I did it. Ok? I did it. I was down four or five pounds, but nothing I do can combat a visit from the in-laws, which involves many restaurants and nearly constant baking... not to mention the Sudden Presence of Many Bags of Minty Holiday Candies. So the four pounds came back, then I ripped the knee out of my last-good-fitting-pair-of-jeans building this playhouse (more on the playhouse later) and when my wife and I went on a date Saturday night, I had, quite literally, no pants to wear.

So I bought them...

Thirty...

Eight..

I don’t get depressed about losing my hair. I don’t get depressed about driving a boring car full of Cheerios and animal cracker crumbs. I don’t get depressed about the wrinkles or the odd gray beard hair. But the pants...

And it's not even so much the 38" as it is the Spectre of Forty. Because once you buy those 40" jeans - I'm sorry, but you are officially a Fat Guy... one of those guys whose belt buckle points DOWN and whose pants still somehow manage to defy the laws of physics and stay up. And I've been fighting it... oh, how I've been fighting it! Going to the gym, people... THE GYM. I don’t think words exist in the English language to describe the hatred I have for the gym. (The Germans probably have one. "Bikenvalkenhätzen" or something.) But apparently age 35 is another one of those metabolic milestones like 25 and 30. Once twenty-five hit, I could no longer eat an entire bag of Doritos daily without consequences. Once thirty hit, I said goodbye forever to the 34" jeans. And now, at age thirty-five? Bring out the Fat Guy Pants.

I suppose I should be happy that they are at least LOOSE. But still. Looking down the gaping maw of the Fat Pants as I was about to put them on this morning, I think I saw something at the end of those two dark denim tunnels. It was the last vestige of my youth.

2004-12-07T09:32:00.000-05:00

2004-12-03T09:57:00.000-05:00

dave is full of xmas cheer, among other things...

Christmas is upon us... and you know what that means? A naked 8 foot fir tree in the living room and giant plastic crates of decorations all over the damned house. What a wreck! Somehow we have to get the place semi-straightened out by the time the in-laws roll in this evening.

In the meantime, I have to go home at 10:30 to watch Ian while the wife goes to Katie's school to read a story at storytime. (Don’t ask why *I* don’t just go read at school... it never occurred to us until the plans were already made. Draw whatever sexism conclusions from this that you wish.) And sometime during business hours we're getting a giant pallet full of lumber dropped of from Home Depot for the impending Playhousepalooza.

I would like to say more, but I'm having some digestive issues this morning. You can find me reading Isaac Newton's "Opticks" in the last stall in the men's room for the next several hours.

2004-11-24T11:34:00.000-05:00

anybody want a used tv? or a used cat...?

How does a 9 pound cat ruin a $1500 HiDef TV? Well in involves a careful alignment of television, coffee table, full Diet Coke can, and a stack of magazines. If you still can't imagine it, this handy sketch might help you to visualize the situation...

2004-11-22T09:28:00.000-05:00

save me a talon, please...

Every year around this time, one winds up being reminded somewhere about Ben Franklin's campaign to make the turkey our "National Bird", and we all get to have a little laugh at our founding father's expense. For me, the most disturbing part about this alternate history is not what it would have meant for our currency. (Big ugly bird on the backs of all our money.) It's the implications it would have had on Thanksgiving. Because we certainly couldn't EAT the National Bird! No, if Ben Franklin had had his way, we'd all be popping down to the market every November to pick up a 12 pound Butterball Eagle.

Mmmm! It's Raptorlicious!!

2004-11-20T23:36:00.000-05:00

the odd couple...

There was this "couple" traveling together a few rows in front of me on the plane... and I use the term loosely, because I couldn't for the life of my figure out their relationship. The guy was tall (6'3"?) young, blonde, and very, very, very gay. The woman was short, old (50-ish) and looked like she has had copious amounts of plastic surgery - approaching Unnatural Joan Rivers PlasticFace. She's also wearing a fur.

They kind of reminded me of Waylon Flowers and Madam.

Dave

( PS> If you have the faintest idea who that is - congratulations! You are OLD like me! Watch a lot of Hollywood Squares when you were home sick from school, did you?)

2004-11-16T23:29:00.000-05:00

the amazing race...

The premier of the Amazing Race was on tonite. The "Entrepreneur" guy Jonathan may be, quite possibly the most odious human being I have ever encountered.

And there are wrestlers. Professional wrestlers!!

This is gonna be SO good.

2004-11-14T10:58:00.000-05:00

dave takes the conspiracy angle...

You may have heard that VP Dick Cheney was recently released from the hospital after undergoing some "tests" following some "shortness of breath" he suffered the other day.

Dave's prediction?

It's all a fake. A setup. Soon after the inauguration, Dick Cheney will suffer his fifth heart attack (faked!) and be forced to resign, after which the president will appoint a new VP, hand-picked by Karl Rove, so that the Republicans will be able to run a sitting VP for the presidency in 2008.

Wait and see!

2004-11-13T20:57:00.000-05:00

no future to speak of...

We went to the Chinese buffet place next to Target for the first time last night. It was REALLY good. Surprise! Good Chinese food in Alabama!

Dinner went well until it came time for fortune cookies. I opened mine up and found...

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

"Ummm... does this mean I'm going to DIE on the way home tonight??"

2004-11-12T09:14:00.000-05:00

rationalizations...

With all this talk about minivans, you may find yourself thinking - "Ummm, why do you need a minivan? You only have two kids!" Which is true. You don’t need a minivan with only two kids. Unless you want to carpool to school. Or take one of your kid's friends out for a playdate. Or take your parents out to dinner. Or ever buy something bigger than 3 feet long. Or go on vacation with more than three days' worth of suitcases. Or drive cross-country without feeling like you are locked in a tiny cage with two animals and a ton of fucking GARBAGE.

Look - it's KILLING me to buy a minivan. And not just because of my "image" - all that talk is just me and my funny little blog crap... It's because it KILLS me to drive a vehicle that gets less than 20 mpg. I feel like I'm contributing to a trend that I DESPISE and that I think is going to be the death of our fucking planet. But I'm trying to buy the most fuel-efficient minivan I can. (The Odyssey gets 20/28 courtesy of an engine that shuts of 3 of the 6 cylinders when you're not accelerating.) And I drive a little car on the side that I PROMISE to replace with a hybrid when the time comes, OK?!

Anyway, say what you will about the minivan thing, and I'll probably agree with you. But I'm buying one anyway. There's plenty of room in the back for all my Liberal Guilt.

2004-11-11T22:17:00.000-05:00

and the winner is...

It looks like the Honda Odyssey is currently in the lead in the mini-van shopping extravaganza.

I can't believe I'm about to spend $35,000 on a vehicle, and it's not a convertible that goes from 0 to 60 in 5 seconds. That's an awful lot of money to spend on a fucking ugly, Cheerio-filled, CUBE with leather seats.

D.

2004-11-10T10:52:00.000-05:00

belated music review...

Something I saw online today reminded me... I saw "The Donnas" on Letterman last week and I wanted to write a review. This is another one of those bands that I head about and heard about... and everything I heard about them was good, and so I really wanted to like them.

Than never seems to work out.

I mean... I have to give the bass player points for her funky-pawn-shop bass, and I have to give the lead guitarist points for her shaggy Malcolm Young hairstyle (And matching Malcolm Young stage presence, or lack thereof) and the drummer had a sort of Meg White enthusiasm (with a little of the Go-Go's drummer's chops thrown in)... but the whole thing didn't really add up to much more than a medicore garage band. Which I know is the sound a lot of these bands are going for, but... there's a reason garage bands never get out of the garage. It's because they suck.

Now, I'm not saying the Donnas "sucked" exactly, but they came pretty close. Especially when the guitar chords dropped out during the "solo" (such as it was) and there was literally nothing propping up the song from underneath.

Anyway - one more band to cross off my Download List.

2004-11-09T21:56:00.000-05:00

the beginning of the end...

Jennifer and I are going minivan shopping tomorrow.

sigh...

I think it's officially "midlife" now. Where do I sign up for my crisis?

2004-11-07T18:14:00.000-05:00

why dave is not exactly cut out for the whole "Man of the House" position...

"Giant flying roach! "There's a GIANT FLYING ROACH in the house!!"

If this is what fall in Alabama means... that the giant flying roaches start sneaking into the house to get warm, I'll take the fucking 90 degree heat back, thanks.

2004-11-03T16:29:00.000-05:00

looking ahead...

I saw yet another person talking about an Obama presidential candidacy in 2008. First of all, I want to apologize for the un-called-for dig at Barak Obama in my previous post... I think he's an amazing guy, and hopefully a big part of the future of the Democratic party. But I still don't think they'll run him in '08. Not without even letting him complete a SINGLE TERM in the Senate. I think that looks bad. I think that's the only reason Hillary didn't run this time.

I'm terrified the Dems will be dumb enough to let Hillary anywhere near the election next time. There is just TOO MUCH of a legacy of hatred towards the Clintons on the right. But I don't think we're smart enough not to do it. My prediction for the '08 ticket? Edwards/Clinton. (And just maybe Clinton/Obama, but I doubt it) Whoever is on the ticket is going to lose to John McCain (McCain/Schwarzenegger in '08 - you heard it here first!) and then Obama wil be a serious contender in 2012 or 2016.

Oh Jesus - did I just write the year 2016?? Now I'm starting to get REALLY depressed.