What's been happening

There's been nothing noteworthy going on in these parts. We're finishing getting everything we need for the baby. About nine weeks to go...

The gift that keeps on giving

You're welcome.

Do you want to rescue a dog?

Big Hatt is looking for some help for his friend Jewles.

And I'm back

Visited the shiny new niece. Smelled the nastiest baby farts ever.

Spent two days in Minneapolis after voluntary bumps. Made $600 towards flights.

Moved into a new apartment. Soreness is evidence of aging.

But I'm back and won't be neglecting this any longer.

PBS doesn't love me this much

If Sesame Street were like this every day, I would gladly watch without a child.





Ricky Gervais: The only reason I sat through all of Ghost Town (well, plus I was on a plane over Greenland, but whatever).

Baby or watermelon?

I don't know how a baby that is supposedly only about 2 lbs makes a belly so big.




Here is February 7 for comparison. Hard to believe there's still about three months to go. She's scoring a full Eight Bottles on the Prego Ranking scale. I think the scale might have to be revised to go to 11, a la Spinal Tap.

Additionally, we have lost a belly button. If found, please contact me via the comments. It's nice to have the second-largest belly around here for at least the next several months.

Red bananas

As promised, a full report on red bananas:

I had two. Simply put, they are delicious. Sweeter than regular boring bananas. I am buying more ASAP. I already have another plantain ripening on my counter.

By the way

I am on day three of using (store-brand) Claritin-D, as recommended by Mr. Buff himself, and let me say that I am really disappointed that I let eight years pass before I discovered this stuff. It's ten times better than my old prescription crap. I am convinced that I tried this at one point, but I'm not sure. I have no idea why I would have stopped using it, unless it was just too expensive back then.

Whatever, I can breathe, I can smell, and my eyes and mouth aren't itchy. Huzzah.

RAEG TIEM NAO

Topical Edit: This. Read it all. All the comments, too.

Remember this rant, where I mentioned that Fox News and other right-wing morons love to use cold weather to go "What global warming?" Well, they were back at it again on Sunday with that dolt Sean Hannity pretending (I hope[?]) to deny anthropogenic climate change based on a blizzard in the northeast. I caught about ten seconds before I was able to change the channel and let me tell you that I raged SO hard. And *bonus* he included in his discussion... Lou Holtz? WTF? Why can't intentionally disseminating false information be illegal? This is not First Ammendment-protected speech. This is lying. And the scary part is that there is a significant slice of the population that believes this drivel.

If you get your news from TV (especially, but not limited to, Fox "News"), you are doing yourself a severe disservice. You are actively melting your brain. For example, maybe you have heard that the stimulus includes $8B for high speed rail connecting Los Angeles to Las Vegas? Just one problem, it's an outright lie. Go ahead, read it yourself. Want to know where we might build rail? Here are the corridors of interest. John Boehner is in a tizzy over it, but you know who gets disproportionate rail service? OHIO.

The stupid makes my head hurt.

Also, let me add that there are so many stupid people out there on other fronts, like grasping a progressive tax system. For example, if your doctor who wants to take fewer patients so that he makes less money because he doesn't understand the concept of tax brackets, get a new doctor. (Equally inexplicable is the fact that ABC News doesn't seem to understand.) And these are the morons who are running around screaming "Socialist!" because the marginal rate on the >$250k/yr bracket is increasing from 35% (which was designed to be temporary, so it's not really an "increase" at all) to 39.6%. Well, then I suppose that uber-lefty Nixon was a dyed-in-the-wool Red Commie with his >50% bracket. As John Cole wrote,

39.6% = socialism
35% = capitalist nirvana

I am in the world's lowest tax bracket, and despite no experience with higher brackets even I understand the system. Idiots. Tax brackets do not make the system complicated. If you hear someone say we need a "fair tax" (i.e. flat tax rate) to simplify the system punch them in the face. Tax brackets are the symplest math possible; the IRS provides you with tables showing how much you owe depending on your income, so you don't even have to do math. Complications in the tax code are elsewhere, not with rates. And I haven't even mentioned that the stimulus that passed included tax cuts for 95% of people.

What really frightens me is that these are the morons who decide elections. They are the ones who up to a couple of days before the election hadn't decided between McCain and Obama, who are polar opposites. Listen, if you supported McCain, and in your own mind you have a philosophy that you adhere to, that you believe, and that you can support using empirical evidence, more power to you. I happen to disagree with you, but at least you are justifying your choice. But if you don't understand how progressive taxation works, if you think that climate change isn't real, if you buy into the concept of a flat tax rate because Mike Huckabee calls it "fair," if you think the world is 5,000 years old, or if you're a dumbass like Joe the Plumber and can't understand that your small business is taxed on net and not gross, please I am begging you to never vote. And I think it would be in your best interests to never actually speak. As the saying, often attributed to Mark Twain, goes,

It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

Christ on a cracker, the only thing that I cannot stand in this world is stupidity. Sadly, it's what humanity creates most efficiently. If you do one good deed today, please inform an idiot that they are stupid and need to learn about things before they open their pie-hole. Luckily, most idiots are fundamentally incapable of and downright allergic to learning. Unfortunately, they will not shut their yap, but you might feel a little bit better. I never fear to inform someone that they are deficient in the neural area.

Oh hey, look! Someone is angry on the internets! I've now gone cross-eyed with rage. I know, no one wants to read my complaining about people, especially if you fall into one of the categories I'm raging against. So that's enough raging for this week or month... basically as long as I can avoid repugnant thugs, like Hannity or O'Reilly or Glenn Beck.

Let's call it practice

Neither of us are sleeping well right now, and it's been that way for a few weeks now. Ariane is pretty much uncomfortable no matter how she lies, even if she puts a pillow under her belly to support it. I am still adjusting to sleeping next to someone who snores. That's not easy. We are both waking up a few times per night, and then I, at least, am having serious difficulty going back to sleep. This problem is compounded by the fact that there is a retarded bird that has decided to make his home in a tree right outside our window and begins calling every day at 4 am. It doesn't stop for two or three hours. And it's not just any bird, it's a blue jay. It sounds like a fire alarm.


For some time I have seriously contemplated how I could kill this blue jay. When Derrick was here last summer he had plans to off it, but never got to it. This morning it had me up from 4 to 5, maybe 5:30 (I can't really read the clock from four feet away without my contacts). Seriously, it's 4 am. I know it has a brain the size of, well, a blue jay's, but how many blue janes are awake and feeling randy at 4 am? Considering this happens every morning, I am guessing zero. Ugh.

I remember a couple years ago when a dozens of birds were found dead throughout downtown. It was mostly pigeons and grackles (this species, I think; they are the ugliest birds I have ever seen, and that includes vultures), so I was like "Huzzah! Dead birds, kill them all!" but somehow this blue jay slipped through the cracks. I see like ten hawks or eagles or something a day around our neighborhood (Derrick can correct me on the species), so can't just one of them take out this blue jay?

I have ~13 weeks of sleep left for the next five years of my life. I need it. Death to blue jays, comrades; death to blue jays.

Updated: I messaged Derrick about this, but he says he first has to deal with a screeching red-tail hawk that he wants to kill in Shreveport.

Seriously, we had to give up kick-ass dinosaurs to get these pests? We wuz robbed.

Live shot

This is what it feels like that little girl is doing all day long.





I honestly can't believe how much she moves sometimes. She will bounce off the walls. She will also be the end of me. I can't keep up with that kind of energy. I'm almost 27.

Also, StarFox was so awesome.

Is Detroit even a city any more?

Good news! We can buy a house in Detroit!

Bad news! Detroit.

Clearing it up

If you have watched any TV in the last few weeks, you may have seen this:





I don't know how badly you have to lie or stretch the truth in a drug ad to have the FDA force you to mount a $20 million correctional campaign, but it's got to be a lot, considering Enzyte and Extenze are still allowed to sell their obviously fraudulent products.

I find the "correction" lacking, as they have forgotten to include that potential side effects of using Yaz are actually a short-term case of pregnancy followed by chronic homo sapiens, with a high probability (50%) of attending a Jonas Brothers-like concert twelve years from use, which itself is often accompanied by deafness.

You can't see it now, but I'm shaking my fist at Yaz's general direction.