Ripe plantains (totally black) make regular ripe bananas taste like dirt. Plantains taste like Dreamsicle. I highly recommend going out and buying a plantain right now. If it's green, you may have to wait two weeks for it to ripen (seriously), but it will be well worth your time.
I just bought red bananas for the first time. Once they ripen and I eat them I will be back to file a full report.
If Ariane gets embarrassed by this, it's her own fault. I'm referring to the garbage TV she watches, but specifically Toddlers & Tiaras on TLC. In her defense, she watches for the shock factor, like it's a train wreck (it is!), but when that comes on I find something more entertaining to do, like washing the dishes or hitting my head with a hammer.
Who are those people? I know that this is some pathetic vicarious grab for something that these women (and a few likely not-being-honest-with-themselves gay fathers), but egad. You know what I want my daughter to do when she is five? Come home with grass stains and mud on her clothes, and deny deny deny any knowledge of how it got there. Things like that. Maybe I'm a weirdo, but I don't plan on placing veneers on her teeth, putting extensions in her hair, smearing an entire Maybelline factory on her face, and forcing her to do some song and dance routine while wearing a sequin-covered cowboy hat. Again, call me crazy, but I just plan on taking her to Sesame Street Live, a task that has already been assigned as my job despite the fact that I know I could be a better Grover than the guy on the stage.
I don't think I could ever enjoy Little Miss Sunshine again, because I'd be convinced that Toni Collette was trying to repair her own childhood failures, Greg Kinnear was a painfully closeted father, and Paul Dano was just biding his time, waiting to ask Abigail Breslin if she would like a Smirnoff Ice and some free candy. Steve Carell's Proust-loving, depressed, suicidal character would seem like a ray of light compared to them. Thanks, TLC. First you bring me the insane Duggars (their son had never even kissed his wife before they were married!) and now this. I swear, you are quickly becoming the next Bravo.
On the plus side, if you're too tired to go out and play with your kids you can send them out during this hour with no supervision and they'll be A-OK, as all the pedos are glued to their couches, possibly while IMing someone from Perverted Justice or Dateline.
One of the many reasons for my well chronicleddisliking of Christmas is that I hate receiving gifts. Hate. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. No, I can't explain it. That wasn't the reason that I didn't enjoy registering for Ariane's baby shower, though. I conveniently uninvited myself/declined a non-existent invitation, so Ariane is in charge of receiving the gifts, and the none to trivial "having to be the center of attention," which I avoid like the plague unless I can get others to laugh at me (or if I am performing incredible feats of strength). The reason I didn't like registering for the shower was that I had no idea what I was doing. In my nearly 27 years, my interaction with babies and related products is nil. I can't think of a thing. I do know that I am not stupid enough to realize that all baby product prices are jacked up insanely.
However, I must say that by far I enjoyed registering at Target more than Babies R Us, partially because I never understood what in the world Babies R Us is supposed to mean, but mostly because Target's scanning device was much easier to play with like it was a ray gun.
I can't be the only one who spent 90% of the time zapping things, pretending they were Zerg or Storm Troopers or something of the like, while my wife was doing the important work of selecting which organic cotton pajamas she prefers or looking for anything that wasn't made in GD China. If you are wondering, yes, I did "fire" too many times (and, yes, I was making "pew pew pew!" sounds and ducking in between aisles, and I think I almost accidentally "shot" an Asian lady) and I drained the batteries before I could get it back to the front desk so I got The Look™ when it ran out. We thought we had lost all the work we had already done, but it was all good. Luke is in control here. Awwwwwwwwww yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh.
Ultimately, we registered for (I think, and hope) most of the stuff we need. Plus, I see someone has already purchased a Baby Bjorn for us, which means someone is being very generous or someone has already pictured me wearing it and enjoys my pending public humiliation. Possibly both. At least I won't have to do make one on my own.
Have you ever had someone call, look at your phone and see it is one of your friends from your rugby days, pick up, and have him ask if you know where he can do inductively-coupled argon plasma analysis of a solution? Then you obviously never played rugby for a team comprised of graduate students.
This is something that actually happened. The nerdiness went to 11.
The first time I've wanted to watch it in years, with a President who a.) doesn't rely on scaring the shit out of you for support and b.) speaks English well. Plus I missed the Bobby Jindal FAIL speech, which is disappointing, I needed a good laugh. Too cool.
Edit: I mean, on Jindal (which I watched this morning), how retarded does a Republican governor of Louisiana have to be to point to the government's response during Katrina to show the ineffectiveness of government.
Edit II: (For Andy, if you haven't seen the Jindal speech) Here is Bobby Jindal's speech in its entirety.
Back in kollij I was fortunate enough to be one of (about) two people in my small circle of closer friends to not be referred to by either a nickname or my last name. There aren't a lot of Lukes, so why would I need one; it's not like the ten Matts I knew. Unlike RK, the other who didn't have a nickname but quietly wanted one since he had never had one, I was quite content without. I think this drove my certifiably insane roommate (whom we only slightly jokingly referred to as "Killer") crazier, so he set out to give me a nickname. Nothing stuck until one day my senior year when over winter break I read the LOTR trilogy, and somehow he got the nickname "Books" to stick. What a lame nickname. The irony is that I only read a total of four books during college: the trilogy and the Silmarillion (I was a hit with the ladies).
If I remember correctly, I read a lot of books for fun before college, I just didn't have the time nor the desire to read during college. Now that I've had time to read (half hour bus rides twice a day are fantastic), I've rediscovered the joy of books and have gobbled up dozens in the last few years. (That's a lot for me, because I read slowly - I might as well move my lips because I read out every single word in my head. Hopefully that is driving you crazy. Also, you are now aware of your blinking and breathing. I win.)
I figure I have about four more months to enjoy my own books... and then we all know what's going to happen after that. No more joy for me. I will be forced to read *gasp!* fiction. Oh, I've worked my way through some fiction here and there. I forced myself through Don Quixote, I enjoyed every page of The Brothers Karamazov, I just finished a science fiction book, although I still can't explain why I was compelled to purchase it, I even re-read that awful novella your had you read in high school, Heart of Darkness.
The only two books I have been unable to finish were both fiction: Ulysses, which I have started three times, getting as far as page 120 of >700, and Nostromo, which I will probably try to fight through some time this year despite pretty much having decided that I can't read Joseph Conrad. I just have difficulty with fiction. I'm not smart enough to "get" it, I think. Unless the themes are completely obvious (think: Dostoevsky with sin and redemption), I usually finish thinking that I probably missed the point.
My other major problem is that I cannot suspend my disbelief. This is going to be my major problem with children's books (which is what I'm talking about, if that wasn't clear... and it wasn't). You're going to start a cold war over which side of your bread is buttered? O RLY? Brother Bear was given his name, although his parents couldn't be certain that he would ever be a brother? How, exactly, would one steal Christmas, Mr. Grinch? (Please, I'm actually begging to know that one so we can end the stupidity once and for all.) What kind of sociopath advocates hopping on pop? Pop is getting old, and his bones hurt because of his bonitis!
I am going to completely - unintentionally - ruin these books for my daughter. I can see myself now, reading Dr. Seuss, taking care to point out the obvious (WTF, cats can't talk!) and not-so-obvioius flaws (and they don't even like multi-colored top hats!), and I'll suggest alternative directions that the author should have taken the story to make it more believable, you know, because as someone with a strong math background I am such a great writer and so artistically creative.* (The cat should have come in the house, demanded to be fed, pooped in some sand, vomited, and then ignored the children completely before falling asleep.) Plus, I also plan on introducing the story like this: "Let's read The Cat in the Hat by Theodore Geisel, because it's not a good idea to lie about your name, sweet baby, especially to cops."
In all seriousness, I also plan on reading her big fat books with no pictures that cover very boring topics that I like so that she will actually learn things. My baby will be the world's foremost toddler expert on Classical civilization on the Iranian plateau.
A real Iranian man I saw in a documentary once
This was too long. I should have just written, "I dislike most works of fiction, so I'm going to have to read Dr. Seuss books through clenched teeth before going ahead and reading my daughter books that I enjoy."
*Psych!**
**I really want to bring "Psych!" back into the lexicon of the cool kids
I have used Nasonex and generic Claritin to handle my allergies - really bad tree pollen allergies - for the past few years. Typically, that's 3 1/2 months of Nasonex per year and probably 100 Claritins, and it still isn't totally enough to get me through unscathed. Now, make a long farty sound with your tongue and lips. I'll wait...
...
...
OK, now that's how I've felt for about the last month and a half. I can't taste anything, I don't feel hungry, I'm not sleeping well, I can't smell anything, I still get stuffy/runny noses when it's not as dry as the Atacama. I thinkknow it's the Nasonex, so I'm dropping it. Anyone else have this problem with it? (Anyone else use it?)
I'm going to try Zyrtec, and I've heard that Benadryl is kind of sweet, but maybe makes you drowsy(?). Do these work for anyone else?
Edit: Don't ever treat anything in here too seriously.
Not "meh," just "kind of 'meh,'" which is kind of like waiting just to get into Purgatory. I feel like we are in some kind of holding pattern; something is going to happen soon, I just don't know what it will be. It's just my luck to be awaiting my first child while I am getting close to graduation and looking for jobs at the onset of the Next Great Depression. It'd be nice to be in Canada right now, aside from the freezing weather.
I am 100% sure I could get legal status in 2 minutes, since their immigration policy is (get this!) not insanely retarded like the U.S.'s - Ariane actually had to jump through a flaming hoop to get her final Green Card, I don't know why I haven't mentioned this. Canada: Making even the sane parts of the U.S. look stupid since whenever it was they kind of decided to just be friends with the UK.
I think I am looking at fairly poor options for the next couple of years, at least.
1.) Stay in school until December. Pros: Economy may begin to get better, perhaps more jobs available? Get an extra publication or two (which doesn't really help). Better chance of staying here, which gives Ariane a better chance to graduate whenever she may get to it. Get some time to work in a relatively low-stress environment while learning how to be a dad. Cons: Duh, still don't actually have a real job, and no guarantee of improvement. Paid in beans. In the red every month.
2.) Look for jobs with oil companies Pros: Pays insanely well Cons: Live in Houston, sell my soul. Really, why does it have to be that the only companies that seem to be hiring are the only companies I have ethical problems with working for? I'm still not even going to look. Luckily I have a wife who is supporting this decision.
3.) Look for a postdoc Pros: Umm..... uh..... available? Actually, I think if it's not a university postdoc it would pay well, plus it would be incredibly awesome science. (I read yesterday that they melted diamond and found an all new phase of carbon. Excuse me sir? Your badassery is showing.) My advisor may be able to help me get something at Sandia in Albuquerque, since he did a sabbatical there in '07.
Example of badass science
Cons: Not happening in Austin, probably have to work long hours, don't know where I'd go from there
The other options are applying for jobs for which I am unqualified (which I will be doing, and happily accepting rejection notices), look for research positions with the military, and collecting cans and bottles for scrap prices. Seriously, $0.25 per pound of plastic is looking mighty fine right about now...
My baby is taking after me in this regard already: She is a master of poor timing. Maybe one day she'll make her ol' dad proud by picking the wrong check-out line at the grocery store every. single. time.
What little girl with a German mother could resist her own Angela Merkel Barbie? (Remember, even though our media tends to pronounce it "Ahn-hay-lah," it's "Ahn-geh-lah" because she is not Spanish. I know, it's stunning.)
That Barbie doesn't even look like Merkel. They gave her a hairstyle, a blazer, and put a German flag behind her. They are obviously missing subtle details, like having Georgie Porgie creeping her out at the G8.
I've heard through the years that there were claims that vaccines were the root cause for the uptick in autism in recent decades, I believe that the claim was it had to do with a small amount of mercury required to preserve it, or something of that sort. I've not been quick to embrace the claim, and besides I figured that I'd rather risk that then leave any of my children unvaccinated against virulent diseases, which could hurt others as well as themselves. I'm not sure why the numbers are increasing. Some are working to show that we're just better at diagnosing it, when in the past we would have just considered these children retarded or something else. Some have correlated autism with TV viewing during infancy (i.e. when the brain is still programming itself), but correlation is far from causation. But the one that got the most press was that vaccines were causing it. The problem is that the "breakthrough" study on the topic was faked. The researcher cooked the books. While I wasn't worried about this in the first place, it's good to know the truth. I just hope others who were duped, and campaigned so hard based on the claim (like Jenny McCarthy) will believe the truth and work with it, although they were done a terrible disservice (putting it lightly) by Andrew Wakefield.
As an aside, I can't figure out what it is that is driving so many people to make up the science. Well, actually I know that its the insane pressure to publish and fame - I can't imagine there's much fortune, though. Disproving something is just as valuable as proving something, in my opinion. The whole point of science is to test, observe, report, and explain. Maybe not everyone agrees with your explanation, maybe they think your method was flawed, but this is what I did, this is what happened, here's why I believe this is the case. Yet time after time after time after time they get caught and that's it, career's over. Idiots.
Update (9:02 AM): Sometimes, good news comes at the least expected times. It's a start.
Update II (4:39 PM): While I have no intentions of turning this blog into a "Daily Ragefest" kind of thing (there are tons of those, plus you have Fox News, CNN, and most of MSNBC to provide you with that if you want), I came across something today that is - in my opinion - quite relevant to this post and the situation we're facing. The problem we are dealing with (with great frequency in this country, to some extent everywhere else) is very strongly related to an anti-science faction that has a disturbing amount of clout here.
Consider the survey results: of those who believe in miracles, 84 percent say they happen because of God. About three quarters further identify Jesus and the Holy Spirit as sources of miracles, while lesser numbers attribute them to angels (47 percent), saints (32 percent), deceased relatives or others who have passed on (19 percent), and other spirits (18 percent).
So what’s going on? Wouldn’t the Creator of the universe have better things to tend to than pulling off the occasional miracle? It depends, of course, on whom you ask.
To a scientist, events that many would consider miracles are not only explainable, they’re inevitable—because in a universe of nearly infinite possibilities, outrageously unexpected things have to happen at least occasionally.
“The Law of Large Numbers shows that an event with a low probability of occurrence in a small number of trials has a high probability of occurrence in a large number of trials,” says Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer, author of Why People Believe Weird Things (W.H. Freeman, revised, 2002). “Events with a million-to-one odds happen 295 times a day in America.”
Seriously, I mean come on. Believing in miracles problematic because it provides people with an excuse to not understand something. It's the lack of intellectual curiosity that fuels the blanket distrust of science among those who would deny climate change in the same way that people deny the Earth is billions of years old. That doesn't make me anti-religion, it makes me anti-anti-science.
As I said in the comments,
[If] all of these people who believe in miracles or creationism or whatever took a fucking moment to look at the science and see how unbelievably complex and perfect (for life) the universe is, I would have a hard time believing they wouldn’t see God in science, too. I doubt any of them have ever heard of the fine structure constant, much less have any understanding about the ramifications of changes to it or other things we know about the universe, but if they did, and if they wanted to tell me that God essentially "programmed" the universe, then I think I could get along with them much better… so long as they don’t think it was "programmed" 6,000 years ago.
It's not just that. It's the value of G. It's the rotational bonding possible around carbon. It's 10 gazillion other things that have to be juuuuuuuuust right for us to be here. And if you are inclined, you could easily interpret this as God's work. I can disagree with you, but I can't argue with you. We have no way to disprove that at the moment (we have no way to prove it, either, and without a test that claim resides fully within the realm of philosophy and not science). We may know where life came from, but not why (if there is a "why"). But if you believe in miracles, then you are not concerned with real-world solutions to real-world problems; perhaps something miraculous will happen. I strongly hope that we aren't relying on miracles to get us out of this climate change mess, but my fear is that this crowd won't even believe that there is a problem.
OK, sorry, like I said. This is not indicative of the direction I'll be taking this blog, and I hope that on the basis of the last 50+ posts you can see that (the actual direction is: shitty jokes and lame anecdotes). There was just a confluence of events over the past week that sent the needle on my rage-o-meter to 11 and I had to get this out there. We're all friends here, though.
One of these days the morons who continue to deny climate change are going to come around, but it's going to be too late. Typically, these horrible people (usually the pathological Fox News) offer some kind of anecdotal evidence - like a record snowfall on a particular date in Whitehorse - to say that, "Obviously there is no Global Warming!" even though people who live up there see the changes firsthand, even if it's still cold as all hell. They're doing nothing but taking advantage of an unfortunate moniker. It's climate change, you nitwits, not "Global Warming." But, no. They'll take what they can get now, future of the rest of us be damned. (By the way, how's that working out for you?) Whatever, they don't care. It's mostly just going to be those poor 150M+ Bangladeshis, who don't count. That is, if you completely ignore the loss of the U.S. coastline, which is probably going to be worse than expected if we don't stop what we're doing like rightthisveryinstant. Obviously, we need a carbon tax levied at the point of extraction. Gas taxes won't cut it. If Exxon is calling for it, you know it's bad (although I am wary of every proclamation Exxon makes - somehow they'll find a way around it or something like that). Unfortunately I have no faith in our policy makers. What is needed is too radical to even be proposed by people who are only interested in being reelected, and what we might even get will be too watered down to be effective (as you might predict based on the bizarre machinations of the Republicans and "centrist" Democrats concerning the proposed stimulus). It's too bad we didn't invest in these things while the economy was good, but now that it's bad and everything is cheaper and we could do a lot of these projects we need, we are given trillions of dollars in... tax cuts. Oh, great. Tax cuts, there's your solution. It's so insanely stupid on so many levels.
Either way, it's this kind of thing that has made me decide that I could not work for an oil company (or any subsidiary or vendor or whatnot) or coal company or natgas company, etc. Oil companies come in here to Austin and hire dozens of people away from this very university, and to say they pay handsomely is the mother of all understatements.
Nope. Not going to do it. I wouldn't even work for one of their alternative energy divisions, like BP's. Why? Let's say I am involved in the next great energy supply. What's to stop BP from getting their IP rights and sitting on it? Nothing.
No. If I'm going to feel like I'm going be helping make the world better for my daughter, then I have to play an active role, even if it's just my small part. I can't passively wait and just cast votes. I'd rather roll the dice with a local start-up like Heliovolt, or do advanced materials research for the military, or even work with the TCEQ. All of those would be infinitely more justifiable than working for Exxon.
This just grinds my gears to no end. Build nuclear plants now. Recycle the waste. Use it again. Store it in a salt mine when it's done. Build windmills in the Midwest now. Build tidal power generators now. Build a smartgrid now. I know part of the problem is also a liquid fuels problem, so let's end our stupid corn ethanol mandates and price guarantees and let's put money into hydrogen generation from water and plug-in cars. We're in an insane amount of debt now anyway. It's been going like crazy since Reagan and getting worse under both Bushes with some small headway made under Clinton, although they've all presided over some deficit spending (Clinton being the only one really to eek out a surplus). We're going to have to inflate it away, so what's another trillion? At least we'd have a planet to work with in that scenario. I know that Obama is actually much savvier than any of us ever give him credit for (and I think we're learning to give him a lot of credit already), so I'm just hoping that somehow he'll be able to get all of this done smoothly and still have a smile on his face.
That's not much to ask, is it? /sarcastic
Protip: there is no longer any such thing as a fiscally conservative politician; government will always be expensive when it's set up like ours is, so let's demand that they at least spend wisely.
---
Well, this turned into an incoherent screed somewhere in there. FWIW, this is actually about my daughter, at least tangentially. Somewhere in that rambling, the point is that people are constantly, continually, and knowingly hurting future generations. For some reason they don't care. It's times like these that I lose all faith in people (but not my readers, all two of you of great!). I'm trying to figure out how to financially support her without selling her out. Ain't easy here in Texas.
I guess it's pretty easy to discover the days when I have almost nothing to do at work. I hate when packages take too long to deliver.
tl;dr: We're doomed, so here's something that always makes me laugh.
Oh, did I tell you that I'm going to be a good dad because I can totally cook? Well I can. Perhaps you would like to try some of the delicious baked acorn squash with mushroom, onion, mascarpone, emmentaler, and parmesan stuffing? Or perhaps some fried black plantain? Well, too bad, so sad. You should have come to visit.*
Does that look good, or what? Please ignore the bottle of Tylenol, which somehow always ends up in the background of our pictures. But I must say that the recipe that I followed from Molto Mario was supposed to stuff two squash. So I halved it to stuff just one, as Ariane was unsure if she liked squash (how a vegetarian can go 25 years without knowing if she likes squash is beyond me). But after I stuffed the first I had to walk back to the grocery store and buy not one but two more squash, and I still had stuffing left over. Molto Mario: Unfamiliar with weights and measures. Trust me, it tasted better than it looks.
Plus I kind of burned a some of the plantain, but it was still good enough that I will forever be disappointed by the flavor of Cavendish bananas. As a matter of fact, I have another one ripening on my counter right now. Hopefully it'll be black in a week.
Pshaw. Who says I can't feed my baby (starting sometime next year)? If there's one thing I know about children it is that they are not picky and love vegetables, especially green ones.
I had no plans to write about sports, but after the weekend we had the topic seems appropriate. Specifically, I mean girls' sports, because this weekend (for the first time in my nine years [Ed. note: sweet jeebus kill me] of college, mind you) I attended some of what you may call Athletic Competitions Between Squadrons of Female Players. That's right, a women's basketball game and three (count 'em) three softball games. Free student tickets are overflowing with win. I know this is years in the future, and I really should be concerning myself with figuring out how to do things like bathe a baby, or maybe not misplacing her for hours on end, but whatever, this is on my mind and this is my blog.
I found myself thinking that if Girl ends up interested in sports, I am not going to have any clue as to the best way to support her in that endeavor (this falls under the umbrella of "Having a daughter, now what do I do?"). With boys it's easy: you support them athletically [Ed. note: tee hee!] by questioning their toughness and manhood. That fires up their lizard-brain into the "fight" response. Plus, it has the added bonus of teaching them a life-lesson, namely I am the boss and even if you go all Oedipus on me you still lose because dude you just totally married your mom. Case closed, I'll take my commission now. Girls' sports are a completely different beast. Just this weekend I noticed the many contrasts between women's and men's sports. Women:
1) Cheer for each other openly and un-self consciously 2) Don't frequently yell at teammates 3) Don't spit 4) Don't scratch 5) Don't take cheap shots 6) I assume minimally swear 7) Lack an intent to injure
The "Rah rah" attitude is nonexistent in men's sports, where the only acceptable cheering is that which is tagged with an insult, e.g. "Let's go defense, you're getting blown off the ball!" Seriously, do a Google Image search for "girls sports" and the first thing that comes up is a drawing that says "Rah Rah! Go team go!" (Hilariously, the second is two Sports By Brooks girls.) The Florida State softball team started their own Tomahawk Chop - complete with singalong - a couple times this weekend. You think any men's team would cheer like that?
Additionally I had to turn off my normal fan response. During one of the softball games the first basewoman (right, my sistahs?) dropped a throw from short and someone in the stands (a fan of her own team, actually) yelled, "Can we please get a first baseman who can catch the damn ball!" And let me tell you I was shocked. I didn't know you could do that, because they are girls and you are supposed to be nice to them. That's what I always learned. Does it not apply to girls' sports? And if not, how bad are you going to feel if you make them cry? Do you have to apologize? I really don't know. I would have thought the proper reaction would be (WARNING: GROSS OVERGENERALIZATION TO FOLLOW) to immediately freeze up uncomfortably worrying that she would cry after making the error, and then tell her that it's all right, despite the fact that you know you can't give the opposition extra outs. Obligatory Adam Morrison crying picture:
There's no way I could ever be involved with any girls' sports teams. The coaching psychology has to be completely different. Down at halftime, what do you tell your team? From my experience, you yell incoherently about not being tough enough and blah blah blah. I don't think you can do that with a girls' team.
Plus, it's not like I know a single thing about the actual sports that girls play. I am going to guess that the most popular sports for young girls in the U.S. are soccer, basketball, and softball, in that order. To me, those might as well be Calvinball. I played sports specifically where I could play and have a very low chance at actually touching the ball. I touched the ball zero times in four years of football (including the one play where the coach let me play fullback for one down in practice, which was my dream... and oh by the way we ran a sweep to the left against our defensive starters and I sealed our end and the running back busted it for a touchdown but NO BIG DEAL OR ANYTHING COACH). I touched it maybe twice in two (three?) years of lacrosse where I played defense and got a 6' long metal stick and the go-ahead from the rulebook to whack people. Wrestling has no ball. And my season and a half at rugby was a disaster when I played 12 and wing in the backfield, but was surprisingly delightful when I shifted to 6. And what do all of those have in common? Essentially, all my job was was to hit people, and the harder the better. Girls don't do that.
Plus injuries, dear lord the injuries. Girls hurt their knees all the time, despite the fact that they don't injure themselves in other ways by doing dumb alpha-male things, like punching each other while wearing football helmets. I would wager that 100% of female basketball players above the age of 14 tearanACL. Women's ligaments are made of overcooked spaghetti. Then after they rehab, they'll immediately tear their meniscus. Ariane said something about having never hurt her knees, but I am convinced that she actually shredded them and didn't feel anything because the pain in her ankles from however many surgeries she had overpowered it.
If someone gets hurt, I can't see a girl down on the field and point and laugh like I could if it were a Nebraska football player or such. I can't even look at her and think "Awesome, that was their best player!" I would feel bad - and I don't like that women have successfully managed to mix hypothetical feelings into my sports. The only three feelings that should be associated with sports are a.) rage when you lose reducing to emptiness if the losing is perpetual, b.) contentment when you win (not happiness, though; there's another game next week and you could lose that one), and c.) (for Mizzou fans only) a sick feeling in your stomach wondering why you are losing so badly or on special occasions how you're going to blow the lead you have.
Don't watch this:
Side note: Turns out I love watching softball (at least in person). There is something about stick and ball sports that make them infinitely enjoyable in person and bo-ring on TV. I will be dragging Ariane to softball games now, provided they don't conflict with baseball. I'll also be signing Girl up for this when she's old enough. No soccer for her, soccer is boring. tl;dr: Girls' sports are weirder than I had previously thought, and I hope my daughter doesn't tear up her knees if she plays anything.
And Ariane is getting laaaaaarger! (Points if you can name the movie and you aren't my brother.)
For comparison, this was about two weeks ago. I'm not sure pictures do justice to the change, really. And good gracious does this little girl kick like it's her job. (It's not, her job is to grow organs.)
Do you get a weird feeling of superiority when you find something on the webternets and then you see it on a popular blog a few days later? Because I do. I feel awesome all over.
Maybe we have a name. I wish it were Sumerian or Hittite so that we would have to file a clay tablet as a birth certificate, but sadly no. We'll have to nom on it for a while before we say for sure, but just maybe.
Loyal readers (all two of you) can expect some srs essays this weekend. I've got some hi-larious comedy bubbling up in my noodle.
Since there's not much to this post, I will link you to the very, very NSFW (that means not safe for work, Mom) remix of the (highly offensive) Christian Bale freak out that I can't stop laughing at.
We've been off-and-on doing some thinking regarding names, and let me tell you that it ain't goin' well. It is, frankly, impossible. Deciding upon names you don't like is easy, finding one you do is difficult. We have some rules to start with: No A names, nor L, nor H, and it shouldn't end in an N. Also, we're trying to give her a name that not every other kid has. That doesn't mean we're going to name her Vercingetorix (who was a dude, anyway), but I don't have the heart to name her Emma, Madison, Katie, etc., and besides I don't actually like any of those names enough to do it. Other than that, it's up in the air.
We've both agreed so far that there are at least three names that we like, but each has major problems that are pushing us away.
1. Jack - It's a boy's name. Either way, somehow we were talking about this name and we both liked it. (I told you it was rough going when one of the three we like is a boy's name.)
2. Grace - Classic. Sounds good. It is old, but older than your grandparents' generation so you don't associate it with "old" names like Ethel. What's bad is that it is way too popular right now.
Blah. Number 20 most popular name in 2007. Not "Emma" levels of awful, but bad.
3. Malia (or Malija) - This is one that Ariane has liked since she was young and there was some MTV Germany host or something with the name. We like the sound, think it goes well with our last name, I'm not quite sure if it's too "black" sounding, especially with our last name being frequently black (but not "Washington" levels of black; I think our last name can swing either way, depending on the first name, but it's actually uncommon enough that it may not actually have a racial expectancy associated with it.There's just one big problem with Malia right now:
Seriously, Barack: I voted for you three times last year. Why do you and Michelle have to make this hard for me?
Solely because of Malia Obama I am pushing hard to exclude that name from consideration. It's going to be in the top 20 by the end of the year, and it will become the black Madison.
I think it would be cool to give her a Croatian name, but Heavens to Betsy do they mostly sound awful.
We're open to suggestions in the comments, if you'd like. And "Data" has been suggested and overruled, but thanks Coop.
Has anyone else seen the newest crap product ShamWow Vince is peddling?
Am I the only one who didn't realize that he has a thick and awful accent?
"Ya ginna be slappin' ya troubles away!"*
He must be a pimp in real life, that's the only explanation for that phrase. Potatoes and cheeses have never been considered troubles by this humble writer, and if they were I wouldn't consider slapping my potatoes or cheeses.
I am spending an unbelievable amount of effort trying to decide upon what my daughter will spend the first years of her life pooping on. I have sat down on two separate occasions to do some research, and I have logged at least five interweb-hours researching, and I'm still not sure if we're making the best choice. As of right now, we've settled on gDiapers (no, not that kind of G, this kind). I have 10+ years of chemistry-heavy education, and I'm still mostly in the dark. I kid you not, I even did some Google Scholar searching. I won't do it now, but expect a 10,000 word diatribe against the entire industry in the near future. This post is mostly just a flimsy excuse to introduce the Poop tag, which I assume will be getting a lot of use in the next several years, especially if this recession continues.
Here is an approximation of what is going on inside Ariane's belly now:
That baby kicks like nothing else. According to the book, if a baby is kicking about ten times every two hours while the mother is lying down and feeling for movement we can consider that to be normal activity. Our baby kicks - seriously - two or three times a minute when Ariane is lying down. And I am talking big kicks. I've tried to get video so you could see some movement, but I haven't gotten any yet. There's still time, though.
We're fairly confident of the following: she will be loud, she will break things. I also am under the impression that she'll be athletic, like her mother was. I'll push her to take on mankind's greatest athletic endeavor: Global Guts.
And when she wins that piece of the Agro Crag, you better believe I'm going to ride those coattails of athletic glory like Richard Williams. I'll claim it was all me, then irresponsibly blow through the millions she'll certainly earn in endorsements (we can name everyone who ever won Global Guts, right? hint: purple never won) so she won't have a chance to be self-destructive with it. Just looking out for my daughter.
I figure I have about four more months to enjoy my own books... and then we all know what's going to happen after that. No more joy for me. I will be forced to read *gasp!* fiction. Oh, I've worked my way through some fiction here and there. I forced myself through Don Quixote, I enjoyed every page of The Brothers Karamazov, I just finished a science fiction book, although I still can't explain why I was compelled to purchase it, I even re-read that awful novella your had you read in high school, Heart of Darkness.
A real Iranian man I saw in a documentary once
Example of badass science
