A Couple of Rock Band 2 Notes

First, has anyone seen this Rock Band show that VH1 did leading up to the release of Rock Band 2? I hadn't seen it until I tripped over it on InDemand just now. Sebastian Bach and Alice Cooper judged a competition to whittle 15 RB2 players down to (I don't know? One band? Two bands?) Weird. The "episodes" are really short, and I wish they were full-length 22 minutes instead of the 7-8 minutes they are.

In other news, I played a little RB2 over the B's nap today with the sole and vain intent of gold starring as many songs playing Vocals on Expert as I could. I got a few! (Some of them are DLC and not RB2 songs, and these don't count the DLC that I'd already gold starred in RB1, as I didn't re-do those.) I am confident that many of these that I succeeded on would be the LAST ones you all would guess.

I now have gold stars on:

1) Come Out and Play (Keep 'Em Separated)
2) Drain You
3) Give It Away
4) One Way or Another
5) Hangin' On the Telephone
6) Today
7) You Oughta Know
8) Limelight (Original)
9) Tom Sawyer (Original)

Yeah, um...hmm. You gold star what you can, you know? Not necessarily your favorite stuff. You Oughta Know is actually ridiculously easy to gold star on vocals. I got a 97% and I didn't even think I was perfect on when to use overdrive and I still got the gold stars. Thanks Alanis!

Third Birthday Party

The party was great. Everyone was lovely to come on out and help us celebrate and it made the day very special for B. She was so excited to have everyone over.

(If you are reading this post in a feed reader, you are missing the widget in it that has all the pictures.)

I Did It!

I will post tomorrow about the B's lovely third birthday party. I haven't had time to go through the pics yet, though I will say that it was great and I really appreciate everyone who came comin' on out to have a slice of Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake.

On a much more selfishly personal note, I have written more than 50,000 words for a novel exclusively during the month of November. I undertook the NaNoWriMo challenge this year and committed to reaching the suggested goal of 50k words in one month, or a pace of just under 1700 words per day.

I am happy beyond belief to report to you all that I just went over that 50k mark a few moments ago, trying to squeeze it in before the NaNo servers get slammed tomorrow with people trying to verify their word counts to be dubbed an official "winner" of NaNo. The official count as of this moment is 50109, but my book is probably only about 60-70% complete at that point. I will finish it, but possibly not at the clip that I've been trying to keep up with in the past 29 days.

I think I will leave OpenOffice closed for at least a few days and bask in the gloriousness of not typing as fast as I can between 9:00 p.m. and midnight every night, trying to get my words out after I put the B in bed but before the official end of each day.

Neat Surprises Just Before You Go To Bed

I would just like to say that the new theme feature in Google's Gmail (if you don't have a themes tab under your settings, you soon will get one as they roll out the new feature) ROCKS. That is all.

Okay, Let's Think of a New Way to Market Toys

My daughter is tall. She's always going to be tall. I wouldn't be shocked if she was the tallest person in her class for the rest of her life. That's person, and not just tallest girl. I know this will cause her some moments of pain, but there's always something.

I don't want to be too egotistical here, either, but I have an inkling she's going to be one of the "smart kids", and will catch some flack for that over her academic career.

She's going to be different in enough ways that might cause her some trouble over the course of her life. Given that, I really wish we could start this evolution away from being so stuck in our ways as far as gender typing is concerned.

It's time for us to let go of all those primitive preconceptions, relax, and let our kids explore the whole world with fewer needless labels. Nothing they play with when they're three or five or seven is going to make them anything other than what they intrinsically are and will be no matter what.

I am so sick of this obsession with "boy toys" and "girl toys". Yes, I understand that there is a phase that most kids go through when they first begin to understand gender and they become either hyper-feminine or hyper-masculine while they try to wrap their brains around this new idea and what effect that has on their place in the world. I just don't understand why we take this one phase of child development and blow it out of proportion. Kids are obsessed with gender roles for a year or so. Their parents, many times, are obsessed with them from the moment they discover the gender of their baby until, oh, ever.

Here is just one manifestation of this phenomenon:

First, here's something subtle you might not have noticed. There is one more item in the "boy" list than the "girl" list. This tells me that things left off of the girl's list were left off on purpose and not due to space constraints.

Also, this graphic (taken from a major online retailer) appears on their 3-4 year old toy guide page. At ages 3 and 4, many, many kids are not this gender specific. Their parents might be, pushing cars on little Johnny even though he might be asking for a doll (a perfectly normal form of pretend play, especially if he has a younger sibling) and putting princess hats on their daughters who might be more interested in trains or blocks. The fact that they're pushing such baldly obvious gender typing on kids in an age group that predates the typical age range where awareness of gender roles comes into play just shows how much of the gender differences and gender gap is nurture and not nature.

Further, the very idea that the only toy that boys and girls can agree on is "music" and that universal things like "building sets and blocks" are the exclusive playground of boys is frankly, offensive.

There's an expression I hate that says, "Boys will be boys and girls will be either." In other words, boys play with boy toys and girls play with girl and boy toys. Maybe you think that this means that girls are able to look at their world from more different and varied points of view, but I think it's more true that the toys seen as exclusively for girls exist in a sort of "not good enough for a boy" gulag, looked down on by the boys who play with the sort of toys that introduce them to a more realistic version of the world (compare playing with cars and trains during imaginative play and playing princesses, and then consider which one is more likely to prepare them for the world we live in.)

When you further consider that the foundations for interest in math and science are laid in play with blocks and interest in things like dinosaurs (which spark trips to natural history museums and the like) and trains (which can be turned into an interest in mechanical engineering as they grow older and want to know how things work), labeling those things "for boys" is a disservice in every way to our young girls.

I was once kept out of an algebra class in the eighth grade by a male math department head, despite the fact that I had the highest score in my grade on the test used to place us in the "right" math class. His excuse was that he "thought I'd want to be with my little friends." The principal backed him.

My friends were guys. I didn't know a single person in the eighth grade pre-algebra class I took, which bored me so much that it's the closest I've ever come to getting trouble for spacing out in class and not paying attention. My friends were boys, by the way, because they didn't seem as affronted by my interest in math and science as the girls were.

Maybe it was because the girls were brainwashed by gender stereotyping, and my insistence on ignoring the boundaries made them uneasy. Maybe we would never have gotten along anyway, and it was immaterial.

But you know what? As long as we keep brainwashing our kids to stay safely in their assigned gender roles, we're never gonna know.

Why I'll Be Buying Some Presents from Amazon.Com This Year

The end of last year, frankly, was a mess. We were getting the house ready to sell, we were getting ready to do some holiday traveling, and some horrible things had recently happened in our family. We weren't putting up a Christmas tree for several reasons, some due to the stock advice not to put up anything personal in a house you're trying to sell, but also partially because we weren't in a frame of mind to celebrate.

Everything I did around then just seemed more difficult. The last of the weights that were pushing down on us just fell at the end of last month, in fact, when the house finally sold. Things just weren't going well, and I just kind of knew that things would be a struggle for us for awhile. The last thing I needed was a new problem, the sort of random thing that can happen to anyone.

I bought a digital photo frame for my parents for Christmas, loaded it with pictures of our daughter, me, and the mister, wrapped it up, and sent it. I reused a shipping box that had held something I purchased from Amazon.com, a lovely boxed hardcover set of Calvin and Hobbes that was the mister's present last Christmas, bought at such a steep discount on their Friday sale that I doubt they made that much profit on the sale. I carefully covered over the shipping info from Amazon to send the box to my parents, taping a piece of heavy construction paper with their address on it over the top of the box.

What happened to cause the random problem that I needed like a hole in my head was this: somewhere between Missouri and Virginia, the piece of paper ripped somehow and the address information was separated from the box. It still apparently had the sticker that was printed by the shipping machine I used at the post office that directed it to the right zip code, but the street address was gone.

When too much time went by before the package reached my mom and dad, I dug out the receipt with the tracking number on it and set about trying to find the package. It had a weird status when I checked it online, and I ended up making phone calls that ended with the postmaster of the post office where the package had apparently been at one time, but no one seemed to be able to put their hands on it.

I was so upset over this package being missing. Part of it was the money, because it was a kind of expensive present. Part of it was the work I'd put into choosing the pictures and putting them on the memory card, pre-programming it so it would be easy for my parents to use. But part of it was that it was one more damn thing that wasn't going well.

I made, at the postmaster's suggestion, about three more calls to him while that post office tried to figure out what had happened to this package. I was losing faith that anyone I knew would ever see it again. I even began to wonder if someone had opened the package, unwrapped the present, saw it was a larger-ticket item, and decided to keep it.

Then one day, my doorbell rang. I went to the door and found a package UPS had left on my doorstep that had shipping labels from Amazon, along with a neon yellow sticker on the outside saying something about an item that was being returned to me because Amazon didn't know why it had been sent to them.

I opened that box and found MY box inside. That box had clearly been through a LOT, dinged and ripped and dented, but inside THAT box was the digital photo frame. It wasn't wrapped (I imagine Amazon had to take off the gift wrap to figure out what it was) but all of the pieces were safely inside the box.

There was a note inside the box saying that they had sent me back my item because they couldn't locate an RMA involving that item. I thought it through for a few minutes and then figured out what must have happened.

The USPS must have seen the old shipping label on the box, the original one from Amazon when they sent me the books I'd ordered. Having no other solid info to go on (I'd ripped off the part with our address), they sent the box to Amazon in the hopes that the puzzle would untangle somehow.

Amazon then got a box with an item that I don't even think they sell, but they looked up the shipping information from my original order, probably the UPS tracking number that I'd sharpied over but was probably still readable from the barcode. When they got the shipping info, they sent the box to me at their cost, along with their note about not having a matching RMA request.

I felt horrible that Amazon had incurred a cost in helping to get this box back to me. I went on a mission to find someone in their customer service to explain the whole debacle to, finding someone in the right department after a few stops and starts. I explained what had happened, how they'd come to be in possession of a product I hadn't even purchased from them, and that I wanted to reimburse them for the shipping costs.

The lady sent me an email back in our little chain of replies back and forth that basically said, "Don't worry about it. Just think of us in the future when you're shopping online. Happy Holidays."

I'm not a member of Amazon Prime, and while I've bought my share of things from them in the past, I doubt I'm even in the top 70% of sales for private individuals. There was nothing in my account that could have persuaded this woman or Amazon in specific to give me special treatment. This was just how the company treated me when I approached them to tell them how they'd helped me. They did me one last favor and told me to forget the shipping cost, which was extremely generous, considering that they were the last step in a chain that helped me find this gift that went astray and get it back to my parents.

That, both the effort they took to ship the box back to me and the kindness of their customer service agents, means that I am now going out of my way to find the presents I'd like to buy on their site. That's how you turn a customer into a devoted repeat customer. I'm happy to thank them with my purchases and my loyalty. Thanks again, Amazon, for making a really difficult holiday season that we had last year just a little less stressful.

Possible Breakthrough?

Even with all the news from the election swirling through the media, I can hardly believe that the only place I saw this story was Slashdot.

The work of a doctor named Gero Hutter may have saved the lives of millions of people. If these findings can be replicated on a larger scale, there's another man who has shown this week that he might be able to change the world.

Campaign Ads

Ah, now that the election is over, I just realized that I can go back to being annoyed at those inane Mac vs. PC ads.

UGH.

Two Speeches from 11/04/08

This Service Brought to You By Google and Me!

Tomorrow it will be OVER

Whatever we have in store for us for four years, the best thing I can say at the moment is that tomorrow, it will at long last be done with.

That all being said...

Anyone saying that Barack Obama hasn't released his "real" birth certificate? I get to kick you right in the face, because not only is it the stupidest lie I've ever heard in my entire life, it is the dumbest possible knock on a candidate I can think of. Argue platform or qualifications, but when you have to degenerate to trying to allege that he isn't a natural-born citizen when he has provided the same documents that all of the other candidates have, you really can just kiss my ass.

Though I am about as far from a Sarah Palin fan as you can possibly get, the same goes for people who are out there yelling that they think her most recent baby was actually her daughter's. It just doesn't matter. It's a smokescreen. An obfuscation, just like so much of the utter sewage that has been flashing across our televisions and thrown out from the speakers at political rallies.

Elections should be about the platforms and capabilities. If you want to try to paint someone as a remorseless liar to try to knock their character, do it with something IMPORTANT. Something that matters. Something that can be proven, not just a nasty allegation that you can throw up like last night's rum and coke and hope that enough other people believe you that you can use it to engineer the outcome you want. It's just ugly smearing, and honestly, it does little else other than make you, personally, look like a complete moron.

I really just can't figure out why people aren't pointing those laser-sharp capabilities to decide if someone is lying or not at their campaign promises or at the allegations they throw at the other candidate. I guess that would be thinking, and darn it, thinking is hard work. Why not just pick something easy and start screaming, without any evidence at all, that it means that person is a dirty liar that we can't trust?

Don't you people who indulge in this ugly business see that this turns the electorate at large into the equivalent of the average Jerry Springer audience? Talking points get lobbed out into the fray and no one seems to spend any time thinking about them, if they make sense, and if they are accurate portrayals of whatever the candidate is talking about. People are too busy repeating the easiest lies they've heard, the ones that let them stop thinking about rather tough issues and go back to watching reality television.

Every four years, I get physically ill at what has happened to democracy in America. Why is it this way, when there is a better way? When did we let go of the curiosity and thirst for figuring it all out that we had when we were toddlers? If your random voter had to prove that they've given as much thought to their decision to vote as my daughter does to telling me which lower case letter we're showing her on her flash cards before they could cast that vote, I think a lot of people would have to go home from the polls and do a little reading and thought before they were allowed back.

Someone wake me up on Wednesday morning, please, and tell me that this every-four-years bad dream is finally done.

Yet Another "Hey, you kids, get off my lawn!" Moment

I'm not going to say I've never talked into my phone while driving, but I'm not going to do it anymore. I'm not going to say I've never used it while out and about, say inside a store to call someone to ask a question about what to buy or something. I understand that some people are bothered by other people doing this, though that is a head-scratcher to me. That, at least, isn't endangering anyone, and it's the same conversation you'd presumably be having if the person was with you. I do know that some people think that's rude, though, but I think they're missing the mark. If you're going to be exasperated with mobile phones, pick the right target. Pick the target that has a body count.

Text messaging is getting out of fucking control. Studies have shown that merely talking into a phone while your eyes are STRAIGHT AHEAD at the road still impairs your driving, specifically your reaction time and concentration. The fact that there are morons out there driving while staring AT THEIR PHONE typing in a text message (don't try to tell me you can do it without looking, because that's complete bullshit) is absolutely insane. You would think that's about as insane as it can get.

You'd be wrong.

Because now, train engineers who are on the job are doing it. Well, at least one, anyway. People are dead because some moron was typing in "i duno wut im doin 2nite, u?" or some other similarly literate missive when he should have been watching the tracks to see the red "stop" signal light that would not have put his train in the path of the train that had been given the right of way.

Put the phones down when you need your full attention directed at another task. I am so sick of seeing people glued to those stupid things when they should have their mind on what they're doing. There is nothing, nothing that can't wait until you aren't driving (especially driving a freaking TRAIN) to take care of.

The fact that anyone needs to say this is completely maddening. You aren't immortal, people, and nor are the people whose cars you're going to crash into.

Homeowners No More

For those of you privy to the more mundane aspects of the day-to-day stresses and strains of my family, I would like to announce that the house that was on the market since last November 27th is now officially no longer ours.

It perhaps didn't happen in quite the way we'd like. The outcome wasn't perfect. It is, though, the outcome we have, and I am grateful that it is finally at an end. For all its faults, this end is a relief, and one we needed before we could ever, ever move on unfettered.

Now the barking dog next door is someone else's problem.

Playing to the Crowd

You have to appreciate a group of people who see a need and then fill it. I was watching our local ABC television station, and as the last "ad" in a group of commercials, they put up video of a hummingbird feeding on a lovely purple flower and the text "Election Ad Break" at the bottom of the screen. Soothing music played in the background. It was wonderful.

Well played, local ABC affiliate. Well played. Thank you for giving us a break from the constant ads that all of us, whether we've voted yet or not, are sick of listening to.

Can't Take It Anymore

Let's just have the election already and get this OVER with. It gets uglier everyday.

Denver Question

Does anyone know of an independent computer parts/electronics store in the Denver area?

You know. Not a Circuit City, Best Buy, or Radio Shack. There are some smaller computer repair places, but the ones I've called don't seem to carry very many parts in stock. I'll order what I need if I have to, but I'd much rather go the instant gratification route if possible.

This is HILARIOUS

From this Wired article:

After seeings its videos repeatedly removed from YouTube, John McCain's campaign on Monday told the Google-owned video site that its copyright infringement policies are stringent to the point of stifling free speech, and that its lawyers need to revamp the way they evaluate copyright infringement claims.

So, the presidential candidate from the party that just introduced a US Copyright Czar post similar to the oh-so-effective Drug Czar post, a new post that will certainly be used to stifle Fair Use and fine people ridiculous amounts of money for doing the equivalent of making a mix tape is now crying that his videos where he appropriates music from artists that don't support his candidacy are being removed even though the use of the music is Fair Use.

Well, cry me a river. If you won, I'm 100% sure you'll sign every piece of legislation lobbied for by the RIAA and the big entertainment companies, regardless of any Fair Use considerations.

From his own "tech policy" (which mentions little to none of the concerns of the tech workers of America, I might add):

John McCain Will Pursue Protection Of Intellectual Property Around The Globe. Intellectual property protection is increasingly an issue for U.S. innovators operating in the global economy. John McCain will seek international agreements and enforcement efforts that ensure fair rewards to intellectual property.

Kids, this is code language for "Hey RIAA guys, I've got your back, so don't worry." It's not "Hey moms, don't worry about posting to YouTube that 17 second clip of your five year old dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" because I'll make sure that they understand Fair Use." John McCain didn't give a rat's about Fair Use until the music he used without permission caused his campaign videos to get caught in the copyright takedowns that his political party is a vocal supporter of. In fact, he still doesn't care one whit about the Fair Use rights of you and me. He thinks that he should get special treatment, and the rest of us should still be nickle and dimed:

[W]e believe that it would consume few resources--and provide enormous benefit--for YouTube to commit to a full legal review of all takedown notices on videos posted from accounts controlled by (at least) political candidates and campaigns.

So we're not ALL entitled to legal Fair Use. Just politicians. Let me know when we officially convert to a caste system so that I can read about which of my rights I get and which ones are only available to castes above mine.

This would all make me laugh if it didn't make me want to cry a single perfect tear of frustration.

No, Really..."No Thanks!"

I got an email from my cellular provider last week. Apparently they've been wringing their hands together, worried that my current mobile phone isn't everything my heart wants and desires. Now, I am on a very simple plan. A modicum of free minutes, nationwide long distance, and that's about it. No built-in text messaging plans, no web access plan, nothing like that. Nor do I really send text messages or use the web access built into my phone, and not just because it's not covered in my plan. I just don't use or need it. So there's nothing about my usage patterns that would make them think that I require a new phone or new packages to add to my service.

However, there is now a year left on my contract (I should have long since been out of contract, but there was some shuffling that went on last year before we moved and I knowingly consented to a two year extension to make them easier and less expensive) and I guess they're staying up nights fretting that I might leave once the contract is up. You know. IN A YEAR.

(Note to cellular providers: if you all didn't suck at least a little bit on service, pricing, and general customer service, you wouldn't have to use contracts to lock people in. They'd stay on their own. It's a terrible way to do business, it truly is.)

So I ignored the email last week. I don't want a new phone. This one calls people when I type in numbers and press send, and it lets me talk when other people type in my particular numbers and my phone rings, and that's all I'm really looking for out of, you know, A PHONE.

Apparently they were so concerned with my lack of immediate contact when they made their generous offer to charge me money to replace something that still works fine and lock me in for three more years instead of just one more short year of my life, and they sent me a text message to alert me to this wonderful deal that awaited me. In the text message, they lovingly described what I was entitled to indenture myself to, and then at the end, they included a brief, annoyingly txt-speechy description of how to reply to the unwanted text message to tell them that it was, shockingly, UNWANTED.

I worked out the instructions and replied back to get them to never text message me again, and I got a CONFIRMATION text message that I had to reply to AGAIN to confirm that I didn't want such vital messages as "please give us $79.99 so that you can throw a working piece of equipment in the trash in the name of keeping up with everyone else's pieces of beeping plastic."

I replied to that one, and my phone has now blessedly stayed silent. FOUR text messages to say, "No, thank you," and get them to actually go away.

It could be worse, though. They could have had a telemarketer call me and insinuate that I'm a dinosaur because I don't want a phone that will play MP3s at me and show me my email and generally annoy me because the main function of the phone has been nearly lost in the morass of other functions that are built into the damn thing, and the whole thing will cost me three or four times what I currently pay per month.

In fact, I think they would have done that, but I already opted out of marketing calls. That's what must have gotten them so concerned. They must think only a terribly depressed person wouldn't want to hear about their amazing offers. I really should be grateful that they care.

Really, I think I'll see if another company has better coverage out here among the horses and switch when my contract's up next year. So THEY can annoy me with emails and calls and text messages anew, I'm sure.

Let Me Help You Out

I have two suggestions for a couple of websites. I see no better way to voice them than my sparsely-visited blog, because surely word will get back to them somehow, right?

1. Alton Brown. Your personal website and the Food Network website offer no way to contact you. You seem like a personable guy, so I can only assume this is because you feel you would get too many comments to respond to personally, so you've left off a contact link to keep people from being disappointed.

That's too bad, though, because I have a really good show idea. I define "really good" as "I need the hell out of this information, and I think he's the right guy to present it." I mean, yes, it's full of self-interest, but...well, it's really just full of self-interest.

I (somewhat) recently moved to a location that is considered "high-altitude". All my life I've vaguely noted the high-altitude directions on the recipes that include them, but it never occurred to me that one day, I would be the one needing them. Baking here is a mess. Pretty much anything with a mixture of wet and dry ingredients seems to be affected, and nothing seems to come out quite right, even when you have high-altitude instructions. Cookies are flat. Brownies too. I haven't even attempted a cake or bread or something a little more complex, but I can only assume that they would also be affected by the curse of the mountains.

Yes, there are other sources that lay out the concepts behind high-altitude cooking, and I've tried to get into several of them enough for the information to sink in. It's either my usual state of sleep deprivation or the fact that they're as boring as plain white rice, but I can't stick with any of them long enough to learn anything.

What I figure I require are puppets and skits and some sort of illustrative use of styrofoam balls and yarn. Surely, if Alton Brown can't teach me how to make good cookies at altitude, it is a lost cause.

But I can't ask him to do this show, because there is no known way on the internets to get a message to him. If I had a homing pigeon, I would use its services. If anyone reading this post can find a link I couldn't find, I will bow to your superior internet kung-fu if you take pity on me and leave it in the comments.

2. Very simply, to all brick and mortar store websites: you are not allowed to have a website unless I can go there and find out when your store is open. If you have a store locator and there are no store hours on each location's individual page, you fail and you have to start again. In this information age, I shouldn't have to pick up a phone and derail one of your employees just so they can tell me that they'll close tonight at 7:00. That is 20th century thinking, which would be great if that was the century we're living in, BUT IT'S NOT.

Let me know when your outsourced website vendor figures their shit out and puts ALL the basic info on your website, because that's when I'll bother to go there again. When I make a wasted trip to your site, all you do is teach me not to waste my time in the future. In this economy, I don't think you can afford to do that. Just some love from me to you.

Craftiness

I finished two projects recently, making some new toys for the B out of some pretty basic supplies.

Project 1: Lower case letter puzzle



We have a Melissa and Doug upper case letter puzzle that helped me teach her the upper case alphabet pretty quickly, but I'm always worried that we'll lose a letter or two and you can't get replacement letters for those puzzles. As much as I love our Melissa and Doug puzzles, I decided to try to make a basic one that would be easy to make replacement parts for if something went missing in the depths of the house that only a two-going-on-three year old can find.

I used clear packing tape, a cardboard box, one sheet of green construction paper, a sharpie, a pen, a pair of scissors, some glue, and an exacto knife. I drew the letters with a sharpie on the smaller pieces of cardboard salvaged from the old moving box that had come apart, making them nice and round and easy to read. Then I cut around the letters, trying to make the silhouette of the piece look as much like the shape of the letter as possible without getting too ornate. (Because then making replacement pieces would seem difficult when it's time to make them, and the likelihood of getting it done would be lower.)

Then I took the two long sides of the cardboard box body and cut them to the same size. I put the green construction paper over the piece that would be the "bottom" of the puzzle and taped it in place. Then I laid the cut-out letters on the piece that would be the "top", trying to arrange them evenly from side to side and top to bottom. I drew around the pieces with the pen and then used the exacto knife to cut out squares that were just larger than the pieces. (I used all the scrap cardboard under the piece to keep the exacto knife from cutting, for example, the carpeting, or my leg.)

Then I glued the two pieces together, the piece with the holes on the top and the piece covered in green construction paper underneath. I taped the sides for good measure, and ended up using the packing tape over the top (cutting out the holes with the exacto knife) just to make it more durable.

I drew the letter in each hole so she could match up the shapes of the letter pieces with the puzzle, and she was ready to play!



Total cost: We actually already had all of the parts I used for this project around the house. It was probably about a dollar's worth of tape, a little bit of household glue, and then a cut-up moving box that had fallen apart under the weight of the items in it when I tried to move it from one place to another in the garage. So basically, this one was free because of what I had around the house.

Project 2: Felt play food



I saw a post on the CRAFT magazine blog where someone had made some play food out of sheets of felt, and I thought I'd give it a go, especially since I finally got the front bedroom, where we are storing a lot of boxes and things, straightened out enough to set up my sewing machine.

For this, I just got some different colors of felt sheets at the craft store and then cut out food shapes freehand. Then I went to the sewing machine and sewed them together with appropriate colors of thread, stuffing some with polyfill to make them puffy and leaving others just a flat two-ply of felt.


Left column: bread slices
Top right: bacon
Bottom right: pepperoni pizza slices


Top: carrot
Middle: lettuce
Bottom: tomato, slice of cheese


Left to right: orange, banana, apple, watermelon



Total cost: About 8 sheets of craft felt at 20 cents each: $1.60 + tax. One bottle of puffy fabric paint for the tomato: $1.49 + tax. I also want to go and get a bottle of orange to make lines on the carrot, a bottle of black to put seeds on the watermelon, and white to put a little shiny highlight on the apple and the orange. I already had the polyfill, but that's not too expensive if you needed to buy it, and I already had a set of different colored spools of thread that came with my sewing machine when I bought it. If you didn't have the colors of thread you need for the different foods, that part could add up a little because those spools of thread are always more than I think they'll be whenever I look at them in the store. But still, a lot less than buying play food from a store, and most of that stuff is plastic and not really as fun to play with than fun, soft, squishy food.

So there is a record of my recent craftiness. Both projects were fun and the B seems to enjoy the end products, so it seems like time well spent.

Blech

Why are my glasses getting so schmutzy lately? I don't remember cleaning them this often before, and finding so much crap on them each time I clean them.

Is it the altitude? Am I messier than I used to be? Am I fussier than I used to be? Did something else change?

I just don't get it.

Yo Melora Melora

Let's say, hypothetically, that you have a child who saw a commercial for the utterly-surreal kid show "Yo Gabba Gabba", so you put it on for her so she can watch it while you try to pick up the wreckage of toys in the house.

Then let's further say that you looked up at the television and saw someone you could swear is a dead ringer for Melora Hardin, known to many as "Jan" from The Office. And you think, "That can't possibly really be Melora Hardin dancing with these weird characters and singing songs and stuff."

But really, truly, the person looks and sounds exactly like her. So what would you do? Would you be thoroughly freaked out to google "Yo Gabba Gabba", find the official site, and then find this:

I mean, I know people guest-star on shows for kids. Goodness knows that most of the people who were celebrities when I was very young or before I was born are known to me mostly because a lot of them were on Sesame Street when I was a kid.

What's weird about this is that I don't think they called her "Melora" or anything, so any adults watching with the kids who recognize her from something else she's been in were really left stumped unless they went and looked it up like my obsessive nature forced me to do.

Looks like I can catch Amy Sedaris if she wants to keep watching it, but I'm not sure it really held her attention. Perhaps that's all for the best.

Palin Was Picked Because...

...I honestly think John McCain wasn't and isn't bothered by the amount that it's clear that she's in over her head. I think *this* is because he doesn't believe there's a woman anywhere who could do any better. We're all not as good as men, so isn't any random female Republican politician as good as the next?

(And if you're about to argue her abilities or credentials with me, go to YouTube and watch that interview she just did with Katie Couric. Or any of her interviews, when they've allowed her to speak, for that matter. Her lack of readiness for the job she is up for is beyond any argument at this point.)

There were better women for the job, and I can't believe there are any women left out there who are willing to support her merely because she's a woman. The very choice that was made is insulting to all of us. The Republican ticket picking her is a slap in the face to any woman who would normally be proud to see a woman up for such a vital and important job.

What's Cindy's Last Name?!?

I drowsily looked up at the television one Saturday morning a month or so ago and the credits for "The Early Show" were rolling. I saw this:

Poor Cindy. Surely someone knows her last name. She's a stage manager, for heaven's sake. It's not like she doesn't work with a bunch of people if she's managing the stage.

(And thank goodness I got around to snapping a pic of this so I could finally clean this off of our TiVo.)

To the Airline Industry

Reading a story on the Consumerist today about United raising their charge for a second bag from $25 to $50 reminded me of something else.

After staring at Google maps for about fifteen minutes last night, the mister and I determined that we will be driving to Wisconsin from here the next time we go to visit, which will probably be sometime around the holidays. Yeah, between gas and a couple of hotels there and back, it will probably cost somewhere in the neighborhood of what flying would cost. Yes, that's true, but that's not what this is about.

We won't, however, be supporting an industry that insists on continuing to treat their customers like cattle, nickle and dime us and act like we should be thankful for the opportunity, and the overall airport security system that believes that acting like bullies and treating everyone like a criminal is an acceptable way to keep the peace.

When you drive, you're on your own terms. You stop and eat if you want to (paying what you choose to pay for a wide variety of foods which are either in the car with you in a cooler or the stuff that's available at restaurants along the way). You take as much or as little as you can fit in the car you've chosen to own, and no one has the right to stop you and paw through your things to take away dangerous things like water, sterile feeding tubes, knitting needles, or tweezers. No one can check your name against a list of people to determine if you have the right to travel on the conveyance you've already paid to use. (Don't get me started on how easily a terrorist can get fake ID and subvert the no-fly list.) Even if something goes wrong with your car, you still have control over how it gets resolved and what happens to you in the interim.

No one hates being stuck in a car for long trips more than me, and I'd still rather drive just about anywhere than take a plane flight, even if the stupid thing was given to me for free.

I'm sure this information comes as no surprise to anyone reading this, as you've all undoubtedly heard me complain about the decline of the airline industry and the violations of privacy and decency endemic in the TSA "system" before, but when I see things getting worse and not better, you can believe that I'll probably just keep bitching about it more.

Stupidest Website Registration EVER

I couldn't get through to the automatic account information for one of my utility bills to verify the balance I should pay and so, like a good web user, I went to their website to see if I could get an account there and see the balance via that interface. When I went to the page to begin account registration, this is the help text next to the form I was asked to fill out.

Username: AT LEAST 10 characters please. No, forget the please. 10 character minimum. MINIMUM!

Password: At least 4 characters, and NO MORE THAN 10 characters. No specs on whether you have to include letters and numbers, or letters/numbers/mixed case like most sites that are concerned about account security.

You put the security on the PASSWORD, morons. Not the username.

How many people routinely use a username that's at least ten characters? Ridiculous. If this wasn't a one-shot usage (I don't anticipate having to use the site again, even to verify account balance) I would be seriously ticked off.

I Won't Now, Nor Will I Ever Vote for a Book-Burner

quoth Time Magazine (via Boing Boing):

Time Magazine says that when Sarah Palin took office as mayor, she approached the town librarian and asked how to go about banning books from the town library:

[Former Wasilla mayor] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

Even if you take out every other philosophical difference between the Republican ticket's platform (and the individual platforms of their presidential and vice-presidential candidates) and my own thoughts about what's best for the country, this alone is enough to put me off them for good. I will never, never, ever vote for a book-burner.

So here's your chance. If you can show me any time (reputable sources please, FoxNews doesn't count) that Obama or Biden has led some sort of book-banning campaign (I'm not holding my breath) then I guess I won't have anyone to vote for in November, and I'll have to stay home and knit.

I despise censorship and the tiny little minds behind it in any arena. There are amendments to the U.S. Constitution other than the second, notably the first, the fourth, and the sixth. (Cheat Sheet) I really wish that it seemed like some of our politicians would fight just as hard to uphold the entire document as they do to argue for the amendments that speak to them the loudest, or, more likely, are more attractive to their constituency.

From Camel to Duck

I made such a rookie parenting mistake—I asked my two and a half year old what she wanted to be for Halloween. I asked so early because I'd like to make most or all of her costume, and one needs a bit of lead time for that sort of thing.

It took a bit of time to explain the dress-up bit, but she understand pretending, and I told her there was a day when she could pretend to be something or someone and she could dress up and have a lot of fun.

"So what would you like to be? An animal?"

"Yes! Animal!"

"How about a kitty?" (I said, envisioning making her a black hat with two little kitty ears on it, and some sort of tail.)

"Kitty! Teddy bear!"

Ah, teddy bear. That's not so bad. Brown hat with round ears, brown sweater and pants. Maybe some felt spats to cover her shoes...

"Camel!"

Camel. Ah, well. I guess I could...or...um... Knit some humps? Rig up a hat with a nose on it that spits at people?

"Are you sure? Wouldn't you rather be a kitty? Or a duck? Or a teddy bear?"

"Duck!" (relief) "No! Camel!" (aw, darnit)

I'm still hoping to turn her to kitty or duck. Teddy bear would be all right too. And she can be a camel if she wants. I'll come up with something. But still, it won't be as comfortable, so she'd probably wriggle out of a camel costume and then not have as much fun dressing up.

In my first salvo in the skirmish to change her mind, I made a hat she could use if she agrees to dress up as a duck.

Come on. Wouldn't you be a duck if you had that hat?

Building with Duplos

(Yes, I realize it's probably "Duplo" in plural and not "Duplos". I just think it's a little silly.)

One of the great things about having a child is watching them gradually learn how to do things, and to realize how many of the more creative impulses we have are innate. I never told her to build animals out of the various Duplo blocks she has. Some of them have eyes on them, and she took it from there.

The creations so far:

And there was another red animal of some kind that was demolished before I could get to it with the camera.

I'm pretty amazed at how creative they are, but that they are still recognizable as animals. Why do we become less brilliant and freely creative as we get older?

But You're Not There on Saturday and Sunday, Morons!

You know what ticks me off? When people who send you bills give them due dates on a Saturday or Sunday. Listen, I know the bills are auto-generated, but it's not hard to code it so they check to see if the due date falls on a weekend. It's really not. If it's Saturday, make it due one day earlier. If it's Sunday, make it due one day later. Then hard code in all the bank holidays each year and change the dates for those, too.

You know I'll pay you on the earlier day to avoid late charges, even though you should round up to Monday for a Sunday due date. You might even do that, but I don't know and I certainly refuse to navigate your phone tree to ask you, only to have your CSR probably give me the wrong answer so I get hit with a late fee anyway.

Bills are soul-suckingly annoying to deal with anyway (and before some helpful soul tells me to have them auto-debited, HELL NO. There is no way I'm not going to go over the bills with a fine-toothed comb, and you have a much better position to argue with them over a bad charge when they don't have your money yet and they only get it when I okay the bill and send in payment) and then the companies go and give them impossible due dates. Don't make me come over there, billers. I'm going to count to ten!

I Guess I Have to Buy Singstar Now?

Good news: Queen music in a video game. Bad news: It's for Singstar.

So, hey, the good news is that there's now a music game that features Queen. The bad news is a) it's apparently for PS2?!? (wtf) b) there's no track list for it yet c) it's singing only and not for one of the "whole band" games. Not as fun, Sony, NOT AS FUN.

I suppose there's a few upsides. It's not going to be in Guitar Hero, thus forcing me to buy it, because, you know...Queen. I lied. There's only one upside, and that's it.

Does anyone know what the chances are that a PS2 Singstar game will run in emulation mode on PS3? I mean, I read an article on the Playstation blog that makes it sound like I can play songs from a PS2 Singstar game if I own a copy of a PS3 Singstar game, but DO NOT WANT. I just want to buy the one game with my Queen happiness in it. (I also know that the 40gb PS3 doesn't have any emulation software on it at all, but I'm pretty sure we just have a puny 20gb PS3 that should have it.)

**shakes fist at the world...why didn't Rock Band get there first?**

Best Timing Ever

The B and I walked up to the community poolhouse for her to play in the kiddie pool after she woke up from her nap this afternoon. The clouds looked a little gray, but it didn't really look or feel like rain other than that.

We got there (after I had to yell "No! Go home!" at a dog that got out of its fenced-in yard on the way there, but the 'Everyone in Colorado has to own a dog and then get a shitty fence' rant is for another day) and she played. It was a random amount of time; nothing that was planned ahead of time but something that seemed long enough for her to play but not too long.

We left (with no tantrum, yay!) and walked home. I even took my time when we got to the house pulling a couple of weeds out of the rockbed next to the driveway, and then I walked under the alcove at the front door of the house. I heard a funny noise behind me and turned just in time to see the skies open up and a veritable deluge of water come down. It's like it was waiting for us to get under cover and then it all was released.

Weird, but it made me feel oddly lucky, like I should go buy a lottery ticket or something.

Ant and/or Dec

Ant and/or Dec

Turned on the first ten minutes or so of the newest television reality offering. I admit that I was drawn in because the people playing were "celebrities" (as in, I knew who one of them was) and they were playing to win money for charities, and not for themselves. I think it was called "Bet You" or something like that. I could look it up, but eh, my kid's still restless in bed and if I have to listen to her fighting sleep by singing and kicking the bars of her toddler bed, you should have to do your own damn research if the exact title means so much to you.

Anyway.

The hosts were familiar in that I've-seen-them-in-one-other-place sort of way. British, so that was a bit of a clue, and helped me rule some possibilities out. Suddenly, I wondered aloud, "Hey, I think that's Ant and/or Dec!"

My husband, though he may deny this, has seen the movie Love, Actually nearly as much as I have, which is to say, far too many times. My favorite character from that movie, personally, is Billy Mack. Those of you who have also seen the movie might recall an appearance Billy Mack makes on a talk show (chat show, to you Anglophiles and/or actual Brits) where he writes naughty things on a picture of the group Blue, his main competition for the Christmas Eve #1 single. He referred to the host he addressed directly as "Ant or Dec", meaning that he had no idea which one the guy he was talking to actually was, and furthermore, couldn't care any less about whether he ever found out. Interchangeable little talk show hosts.

So, back in the Real World, I hit the Info button on my remote to see if the, well, 'info' there would tell us who the hosts of this (fairly wretched) new show were. Damned if they weren't Ant and/or Dec, whom I recognized ONLY from their brief appearance in the movie Love, Actually.

The mister opined that we should actively avoid for the rest of our lives discovering which one is actually Ant and which one is Dec, and I think that's a valid tribute to good old Billy Mack. I'll start with not watching their little betting show again, regardless of the fact that I think it's nice that one of those shows is giving money to charities instead of out to regular people who will only go spend it at Wal*Mart on stuff that will break three months from now. The show was that silly.

But I love ya, Ant and/or Dec. But really only because you were in Love, Actually.

Can't Buy Me Kite

So, let's assume that you have a yen to go kite flying. It's windy. You'd like to go that day. There's not a specialty shop near you, but you have a big-box toy store and a Target somewhat nearby.

Would you be kite flying later that day, or not?

That would depend on your timing and which employee you ask at the correct store, but very possibly, you would not be kite flying that day.

It's such a basic toy, isn't it? Target has whole aisles dedicated to Pla-Doh and things that buzz and tweet and toot, but I dare you to find a kite in Target. Perhaps at the beginning of whatever season is considered kite flying season (I honestly don't know...but aren't there windy days in every season?) then there MIGHT be a novelty kite in the seasonal row, but you'll get nothing but blank stares from the (usually helpful, 'round these parts) Target employees if you ask.

We made a special trip (~20 minutes each way) to a Toys'R'Us and looked around on our own before inquiring with an employee, and we lucked out and picked the guy in the store who has a crazy ability to remember the locations of even the most incidental of items. He remembered two sorta goofy pseudo-kites that they only had in stock because they were character-branded, and they were stuck on an endcap in the seasonal section among the pool stuff. You actually had to look quite closely to figure out was in the packages. We bought them and went kite flying with mixed results (wasn't quite windy enough) but if it hadn't been for that employee and some buyer who stocked the item because it went with the other seasonal stuff for that franchise's characters, we would still be kiteless.

They're sort of cheesy kites, really, so we still are kind of kiteless. It's weird to think of such a basic childhood toy as something you just can't find anywhere but a specialty shop. I'm trying to look for something close by that I can get something sturdier, but I may end up buying one from Amazon or something. Still...strange. Who thought kites were so scarce?

Pants -> Skirt

So, you all know the B is tall. She outgrows her jeans in length before the waist is too small. What's a mom to do?

So of course, I cut em' off, got a bandanna from the $1 bin at Target, and made a skirt out of them. Just the tiniest pain in the butt, but I finished it in one 1/2 hour session of cutting and pinning and then about an hour of sewing today.

It's not perfect, the enormous pockets on the original pair of jeans didn't help at all, and she keeps saying, "No!" when I ask her to put it on to have her model it for a picture, so, though I think they came out fine, perhaps it isn't the rousing success that I was hoping for.

Two Meditations on Replacing a Cable Box

There was all manner of cable company weirdness at the homestead yesterday. It was like a semi-self-correcting cascade failure: first the internet connection, then the phone, though television service was still fine. I busied myself resetting modems (cable and phone) and eventually it all worked itself out.

Then the oddness started. We lost our HD channels, so I switched to the 'regular' version of the channel to wait it out, see if it would correct itself again. About ten minutes later, though, the box itself started to make some alarming clicking noises. I mean, Poltergeist-style. (Combine this with my daughter's latest habit of randomly proclaiming, "It's coming!" and you can see why I was momentarily freaked out.)

I tried to power it off with the remote to no avail, so I got up and yanked out the power cable. In the vain hope that a power cycle would somehow help things, I plugged it back in, only to observe the problem even worse than it had been the first time.

A call to Comcast, with a remarkably laid-back customer service agent (which I thought was a thing of the past, as those CS agents seem to be judged on call length more than customer satisfaction) led us to the idea that the construction in my area had caused my intermittent outages, and also a surge of some kind when the cable was fully restored that one of my boxes survived, but the older, more beat-up looking of the two, did not.

I got the address of the "closest" service center (if you, like me, can observe that they're never close to where you live, that's actually a good thing, which I'll get to later) and planned my route for after the B got up from her nap. The good thing was that the office was open until 7:00, so it allowed me, home-bound during her nap, to still make it there after she got up. Thumbs up on the office hours.

It came time to head over there and we took off, GPS and Google Maps-assisted. The neighborhood got worse and worse as I got closer and closer. I had used street view to look around where the office was so that I would more easily recognize the office once I got there (unnecessary, as it turns out...there was a huge sign that even my sense of direction-impaired butt could see) and the building opposite the cable office, whose sign was too blurry to read in Google street view, turned out to be a "Gentleman's Club". Ahem.

I went in to retrieve my new box and was asked for my saga yet again, but it was, I think, just conversational. The content of my story didn't seem to be a contingency on getting my box, but a way to pass the time while he brought up my account and switched the old box out and the new box in. Interestingly, I was told I was getting the last one, and it was indeed the only one of its kind in the stack on the table behind him. I mentioned that the phone agent had told me she thought they had "plenty", since, as the agents can't see inventory for the different offices, they are supposed to send an email to the phone center when they are running low. This apparently reminded him of what he was supposed to do (though that hadn't been my intent, I just mentioned it in stream-of-consciousness mode) and he was working on it when I left with my prize.

So my first meditation, for those scoring from the title, is that cable service centers are always in the Bad Part of Town.

On the ride home, I decided to actually listen to the GPS and take the highway, instead of the side streets I tricked it into on the way there. There were many changes from one road to another, and in those merges, I realized the second of the things I learned on my trip yesterday.

By far, and I mean a very wide margin, the drivers of cars bearing a specific sort of Colorado plate seem to be the ones most likely to try to run you off the road, stay ahead of you on a merge at any cost, or refuse to let you switch lanes. That plate is this one, initially added to the roster after the Columbine school shootings, but now seems to be in use more by abortion opponents more than people concerned with schoolyard violence:



Not one, not two, but three cars with this type of license plate messed with me on my way there or my way back. I assure you, with my two year old in the car, I err on the side of caution, so I was not driving so aggressively as to anger everyone around me. One of them was clearly behind me as I tried to merge onto I-270, with plenty of space ahead of them for me to come in and still leave him sufficient following distance, but he sped up and paced me, forcing me to slow down to merge in behind him.

He was, of course, one of those Colorado drivers (and yes, I say Colorado, because this is more prevalent here than ANYWHERE else I've ever driven) who, once all the merging and whatnot is done, they drive along the highway at LEAST ten miles per hour under the speed limit.

I guess there were sort of two driving meditations there at the end, the first about the Respect Life plate and the second about the Colorado Sunday Driver phenomenon, but I'm far too lazy to change the title now.

Crap

I took the B to a "pick your own" farm today, where I was nervous the entire time we were in the flower patch picking flowers (none of the good veg is in season yet, I guess, and the only fruit you could pick yourself were pie cherries, and the last thing I need is cherry pie) that she would get stung by a bee or a hornet. We made it out of there okay, got some beans (they had yellow, green, and purple) and checked out.

On the way out to the car, we walked across a little bridge thingie with hollow piping used as railing, and when we got to the far side, the B must have patted the piping or something and a swarm of hornets flew out. One of them was on her hand before I could react, and she started crying. I looked at her hand and there was a little bloody spot on it with the skin around it starting to swell.

Crap.

It appears she has no bee sting allergy, which is good. I cleaned it out well at the car (with the doors closed, thankyouverymuch) and drove home, where I put insect sting/itchy skin cream on it and then gave her the band-aid she kept asking me for in the car. (We put them on her mosquito bites after the 4th to keep her from scratching, so she knows what they're for.)

I know there's nothing I could have done to prevent it. Even someone with my level of persistent paranoia couldn't have imagined the pipes were housing a hornet's nest, and the sting happened so fast after I realized they were there that I couldn't have done anything about it anyway.

Still, seeing her little swollen hand and the band-aid makes me sad.

I Hope She's Not On To Something

For about a week, the B (now two and a half, for those of you who don't know) has been randomly, out of the blue, saying, "It's coming."

Now, we've said this to her when we're waiting for food at a restaurant or something like that, so she is just mimicking what we've said, but it's been a little like starring in an independent horror film for the last week or so.

Add to that her alternate names for shadows, which are "monsters" and "aliens". Where she got this, I don't know. She doesn't seem to be afraid of the "monsters" or "aliens", so I've been letting it slide and just saying, "Yes, that's a shadow," and hoping she embraces the right word on her own.

But when you put those two things together, and you get a child who says, "It's coming," and "Look, aliens!" and "Monsters!" while she points at, you know, NOTHING but some shadows on the wall, and it's honestly hard not to feel a little creeped out.

Manditory Intelligence Testing Proposal for the TSA

First, please read this.

Then tell me why the people who decide who is and isn't 'tall enough to ride this ride' and what they are allowed to bring onto the plane shouldn't be tested for a certain baseline of intelligence, and if a reliable test can be devised, for common sense as well.

I mean, come on. It was the SAME KNIFE the airline gives out with its meals!! And he was the frakking PILOT! If he wanted to harm the people on the flight, he could point the nose of the plane at the ground and wait. He doesn't need a knife with microscopically-fine serrations on it so he could paper cut someone to death.

My eyes just sprained from rolling too far.

Songs I Wish Were In Rock Band

Now, please keep in mind that I don't listen to a lot of rock music. This list is going to be heavily weighted to the paltry number of groups that I enjoy, but here goes.

(No whining that the songs would be "too hard" to sing. Not everything should be able to be sung and five starred by everyone on Hard or Expert. Singing is hard, dammit, and a few of the songs in the game should be for the Big Kids who can do them.)

First, let's get the Queen out of the way. That there is a game called "Rock Band" that DOESN'T have a Queen song in it is pure madness. Here's my wish list for Queen songs for Rock Band. (Thank you, Wikipedia, for the handy list to jog my memory.)

1. Another One Bites the Dust (c'mon, EVERYONE would fight to play bass on this)
2. Bicycle Race (for the WIN)
3. Bohemian Rhapsody (stop laughing, everyone loves to sing along to this, and the keyboard solos on a song already in the game...you all know the one I mean, BOSTON...are at least as long)
4. Crazy Little Thing Called Love
5. Don't Stop Me Now
6. Fat Bottomed Girls (a two pack with Bicycle Race!!)
7. Flash (if only for the comedy value, and yes, this one's a bit of a joke and I don't really want it)
8. Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy (how anyone ever listened to this and didn't suss out that Freddie was gay is BEYOND ME)
9. I Want to Break Free
10. One Vision (thrown in here for my husband)
11. Play the Game
12. Save Me
13. Stone Cold Crazy
    
14. The Miracle
15. These are the Days of our Lives
16. Tie Your Mother Down
17. Under Pressure
    
18. We Are the Champions/We Will Rock You (two-pack!)
19. Who Wants to Live Forever
    
20. You're My Best Friend

Okay, I forgot two songs originally, but I just added 'em. Anyone who gets this on a feed reader can see the edit. For everyone else, I'm not tellin'.

Styx songs:

1. Too Much Time on My Hands
2. Don't Let it End
3. Heavy Metal Poisoning
4. (Heck, I'd be pro-"Mr. Roboto", but I don't think many people are with me on that.)
5. Why Me

Other Blondie songs:

1. Heart of Glass
2. One Way or Another
3. Rapture (if I have to rap through Sabotage, you bastards have to rap with Blondie)
4. The Tide is High

Misc:

1. I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones (hey, we've got Blitzkrieg Bop already, right?)
2. One Week - Barenaked Ladies (heck, ANYTHING by BNL would be okay by me)

So, what else do we want?

Help Me, William H. Macy, You're My Only Hope

I'm going to wager that the next bit of information that I type in is going to be something that no one who is likely to read this will already know.

William H. Macy provided the voice of the Narrator on the first season of the current PBS Kids show Curious George. It shouldn't be surprising that he was really, really good at it. It helps that the writing on that show, especially for the narrator, includes the occasional bit of irony, wry humor, and absurdity, but a great deal of the "hey, this is better than I thought it would be, and GREAT for preschool television" impression the first season episodes leave you with was due to William H. Macy's delivery of the lines.

For whatever reason, there was a new narrator at the beginning of the second season. Now, I don't have anything AGAINST the guy, but the whole show just doesn't have the same snap that it had before. The writing doesn't even seem as snappy (again, for a preschool-aged children's show) without him delivering it.

I don't know if he got busy with other projects, if they wouldn't pay him enough, or if it was something else, but I honestly wish he would come back. The hijinx of a monkey and his man with a yellow hat just aren't the same without him.

R.I.P. George

I've just stumbled onto the news that George Carlin died yesterday at age 71. We'll miss you, you hilariously foul-mouthed, deliciously controversial guy.

There's some hour-long Carlin vids on Google Video. Here is a link to one of them if you want to reminisce.

Rock Band Online Play, Plus One Funny Link

First, the link. Halloween is only months away, so if you have a 5-6 year old, consider these costumes when your child is trying to talk you into letting them be a firefighter or a princess AGAIN.

("Trick or treat" sounds a LITTLE like "exterminate", doesn't it?)

Also, I've been playing some Rock Band online multiplayer. When you can 95%+ songs as a singer on Expert, I've found that's pretty much like being a healer in an MMO. There's no chat (come on, PS3, even Mario Kart Wii lets me choose phrases from a rotating menu so that we can have some sort of rudimentary communication system) so it's hard to tell, but I do get a fair amount of friend adds after playing as a singer.

There are some fairly well-established proto-communication techniques at work in PS3 Rock Band, though. One of them was told to me by the good Dr. Heimlich, which is the idea that you waggle up and down on the difficulty setting menu when you don't want to do the song the leader has chosen. It's also interesting to watch (or be involved in) the delicate negotiations that occur between the two people using the guitar to see who plays guitar and who plays bass. That's usually a pause-move to the one you want-wait to see if the other guy moves there too sort of affair. I actually prefer most of the bass lines so most of the time I would imagine the other person relieved at 'getting' to play guitar when I indicated that I wanted bass, although I did get overruled a couple of times. Frankly, if you can play on Expert on the guitar, I'm fine with you taking whichever one you want and I'll play the other one on Medium.

But still, frustrating to play and have no way to communicate other than by waggling on menus, just out-and-out leaving the group, or adding someone as a friend if you enjoyed playing with them. Seriously, how hard is it to add a menu of prefab phrases? Please? Otherwise, it's pretty fun, especially when you get to watch someone kill songs on Expert, which I normally only get to see when I play with the aforementioned Dr. Heimlich.

And yeah, though there are a lot of power players there playing on Hard or Expert, there are a lot of people who play on Medium, too, which makes it less embarrassing when I want to play guitar or bass and have to play on Medium if it's anything higher than the first two difficulty categories.

It's a good time, really. As soon as we get our drum pad replacement (It broke on day 60 of its 60 day warranty, which EA is now enforcing! Yikes, that was close!) I might give them a go, though I still find the placement of the first two drums disorienting. But that's the subject for another whiny post.

If You Haven't Seen This Man, Watch Him Now

This is Bryan Gaynor. He auditioned for the third season of So You Think You Can Dance, and he also happens to have a very pronounced case of scoliosis. Not that it seems to matter once the music starts. I dare you to watch him and not be affected.

Wii Fit Loses One Customer (Me): Cue Rending of Garments at Nintendo HQ (Not Really)

I learned this morning that the sophisticated calculations of fitness and overall health done by the Wii Fit and its balance board include, nay, depend heavily on BMI, or the "Body Mass Index".

See, now that's where they lost me. WiiFit has apparently already started telling little children that they're "fat" based nearly solely on BMI.

Let me just tell you right now that BMI is a deeply-flawed measurement. Muscle weighs far more than fat, and most, if not all, professional athletes would probably come up as "overweight" when measured by the BMI stick. That probably includes even sports like cycling, where no one in their right minds could look at those riders and say they were overweight by any stretch of the imagination.

See, when I was riding and racing before I had the baby, I was wearing a size 4 or 6. I would challenge anyone outside of Project Runway and America's Next Top Model land to call anyone who can legitimately fit into a 4 or 6 of just about any clothing brand "overweight", but my BMI at the time nudged me just out of "healthy" and into "slightly overweight".

It's just a flawed measurement, and it's bullshit to use it anymore. Especially when there's software out there spinning in a Wii with little girls standing on a glorified scale in front of it, already bombarded by retouched and 'shopped images of impossible women in the media, and they're being called "fat" when they could just as easily merely be committing the sin of being athletic. Lord forbid. I'm just as concerned about childhood obesity as everyone else, but name-calling kids who are playing a video game is probably not the most productive way to combat it.

And I really was going to buy that game, too. I think I'll buy a USB converter for my DDR pad instead and start playing that again. At least when DDR makes fun of me, it's because I legitimately missed steps, not because I failed against an inherently flawed measurement system. Tsugaru heavy, here I come.

You May Have Played Too Much Rock Band Around Your Toddler When...

...she looks at you, says, "Sing...Maps?"

And then sings, "MaaaAAAaaaa--aaaAAAaaa--aaaAAAaaaps!"

I Made CK Do It, So Shouldn't I? or, Eating My Own Dogfood

So when a friend asked for a post topic, I piped up with "If you were a character on 'Lost', which character do you think you would be?" It popped to mind because I'd just spent my daughter's nap that day reading theories on how 'Lost' "works", how it will end, and what it all means, so I had the show on my brain.

It's sort of an obnoxious question, really. "Please pigeonhole yourself based on characters on a television show who are in an extremely extraordinary situation." But I asked it, so I'll answer it too.

I cribbed this list of "players" from a March Madness-style bracket game the Washington Post presented. There's 64 of them in the bracket, but I eliminated the ones who are total stretches, like one of the flight attendants from the plane who never made it to the island, people obviously added just to pad out the bracket.

Jack, Jin, Sun, Sayid, Michael, Locke, Walt, Aaron, Kate, Claire, Rose, Bernard, Hurley, Sawyer, Charlie, Ana Lucia, Daniel Faraday, Mr. Eko, Arzt (the guy who went boom with the dynamite), Shannon, Boone, Libby, Ben, Juliet, Mr. Friendly, Jacob (ha), Penny, Desmond, Rousseau

Okay, here are a list of characters I don't particularly think I'm like: Jack, Jin, Sun, Sayid, Michael, Locke, Walt, Aaron, Bernard, Hurley, Sawyer, Charlie, Ana Lucia, Mr. Eko, Shannon, Boone, Libby, Ben, Juliet, Mr. Friendly, Jacob, Desmond.

That leaves: Kate, Claire, Rose, Faraday, Arzt, Penny, Rousseau.

Yeah, mostly women, but I don't really identify with the male characters on this show.

Kate is in the list because if someone hurt my mom, I can see myself being driven to an extreme reaction. I don't think I'm particularly Kate-like otherwise. I'm certainly not as blindly brave as she is, for one.

Claire parallels are slightly less slim, as she sort of twisted around in her life until she had a child and found a direction for herself. I wasn't quite as shiftless and purposeless as Claire was, though, so I think I'll have to eschew Claire as well.

Rose is in the list just because she's the married lady. She's pretty set, she understands where she is and what she has. She wants to help out but has reservations and worries when Bernard is in harm's way. Some of that reminds me of me, but not much else, in the final analysis.

Faraday is weird and spacey. He has strange ideas and pursues them, usually not connecting with most of the people around him unless they intersect with the ideas he's pursuing in his own mind. I've been like that at times, but I don't think I'm quite the misanthrope that he is.

Rousseau is in the list solely because I know I'd be completely crazy if someone took the B from me, especially if I knew where she was but just couldn't get her back. Other than that, though, I don't think I'm that similar to Rousseau. I would never have taken the chances that she's taken, and I don't know if I have her savagery in me.

Arzt is included because he was sort of on the outer orbit of things. He wasn't right in the center of stuff, but interjected himself when he felt he had something relevant to do. I'm frequently more of an outside observer who sometimes sticks her nose in to say something relevant and then skitters off to be more on the outside again. And of course, he had horrible luck, which is the way I've felt many times as well. There's another character on the show who can sort of be described this way, though, but with some important differences that I think I'm more similar to.

And that's Penny. I'm the one who's usually close to things without being directly involved. I think I have her capacity to get angry and act on it, to become tired of someone's shenanigans and hold a grudge, but I think I also have something like the determination it's taken her to keep looking for Desmond.

But I dunno. Maybe I'm totally off. Maybe the characters on 'Lost' are too strange to resemble anyone in the real world.

Idle Wondering

If there was an alternate system of airports and airlines that did the sort of screening that was being done, say, in the 1990's and not the type that is being done now, and assuming that the safety rating of the airlines themselves (working equipment, competent pilots) was adequate, would you fly that one instead of flying within the system that the U.S. has now?

Seriously, think it through. Would you fear that someone would sneak through with something really dangerous like her nipple rings on, or with their sterile feeding tube still in its wrapper, or would you believe that your trip would be within a reasonable, acceptable "safety" range?

Mind Blown...Would Have Made Me INSANE Before the Prequels

So, go to this thread on rebelscum.com, whose emissaries are going to present the results of this poll (about which new figures to make) to Hasbro. CK, note the Tonnika Sisters winning the ANH poll. Ha. Now scroll down to the second post, tallying up votes for ESB, and note that there are a measurable amount of votes for a Lt. Sheckil figure.

Those of you who know where that name came from, a story probably best not retold in its entirety, can probably figure out why I think this is pretty funny. The rest of you, I swear, unless you already knew how the name came about, retelling the story of it would make the whole thing unfunny. It's one of those things.

Stickers

Let me tell you an odd little fact—my daughter seems to be afraid of stickers.

Sometimes when you go into a store that caters to kids, like a children's shoe or clothing store, they have stickers stashed behind the counter to give out. However, I noticed her aversion to them first when I went to vote in the last primary. I put the "I voted" sticker on my jacket, and then the nice lady behind the check-in table offered one to the B. She took it, but resisted any attempt to put it on her jacket like mine. It was funny at first when it stuck to her finger, but then, once we were in the car, she wanted it off of her.

Ever since then, when she waves and says "hi" to the employees in the store and ends up getting a sticker offered to her, she might giggle a little, but we have to take the sticker from them because she won't touch it. It takes too long to explain that she doesn't seem to understand what the stickers are all about, so we take them and move on. Any attempts on our part to get her interested in the sticker are met with a well-practiced, two year-old's "no!"

Considering the fact that modern bathroom learning techniques seem to be focused on using stickers and sticker books as rewards, I realize now that we're going to have to think outside the box where that is concerned. I don't see this sticker aversion going away anytime soon.

Mall Madness

This game, Mall Madness, came up on my RSS feed for Amazon deals.

Funny thing about this game, from when it was published when I was a kid. Now, we didn't have allowances, nor did we save up for the things we wanted. We pretty much asked for things, and if there was any reason at all for us to have them, we'd get them...sometimes right away, sometimes at the next 'gift holiday' like a birthday or Christmas. If there was no reason for us to have them, or if my mom and/or dad thought the particular item was without virtue for us, we obviously didn't get it.

There were just a few times in my childhood that I look back on and think, "Oh, that's where I found out what sort of stuff annoyed my parents." Wanting the game Mall Madness was one of those times. I can't remember which one of us asked for it, but I distinctly remember the tirade launched into about the subject matter of this game. The gamer in me wonders what the engine behind the subject matter is, and whether it's a good game or not, but I think, regardless of whether the B ever wants the game or not, I'll never be able to buy it. I think I'd always hear my mom in my head telling me she didn't think I should play it.

For the curious, I was also not allowed to see the movie Xanadu as a kid...not because the subject matter of the movie was deemed too 'adult' for me, but because my mom had seen a commercial for it and thought it just looked dumb.

I think this is why subject matter in things tends not to bother me, but if something is just straight-out dumb, I tend to shun it.

Adding to the Discourse on 'Cool'

I have a wonderful friend who recently insinuated that the Wii is not cool because it is a...wait, let me quote this directly:

...a little, plastic-looking white thing...

I think that probably makes all this crap uncool too:








And that's just what I could grab from the VERY FIRST PAGE of some guy's Flickr set of all of the Apple front pages in recent memory. In fact, the only thing that distressed me at first about the Wii is that it looked like Apple made it.

Now I'm completely confused about what is cool... ::scratches head::

Bedtime Struggles Begin

So, the B, induced most likely by the stress of our recent move, can now climb out of her crib and does not want to be put there to nap or sleep overnight. Our kid who we used to lie down in the crib and she'd put herself gratefully out...that kid is gone. This one just wants me, but oddly, I don't want to go to bed at 8 for the rest of my life.