So I’ve finally hit the final Age Related Legal Milestone.
35. I can finally run for President of the United States.
Who wants to be my running mate? I’ll even be the V.P…. I’m not in it for the glory.
Verbally Generic
| Your Linguistic Profile:: |
| 80% General American English |
| 15% Dixie |
| 0% Midwestern |
| 0% Upper Midwestern |
| 0% Yankee |
Wait a minute… there’s 5% missing there. Am I speaking 5% French?
This and That
‘Twas a busy weekend.
We had the final Scandal! on Friday night, which actually went
pretty well. Since we really had no real plotlines to resolve, they all
just played each other’s characters. It was fun, and I’ve suggested if
they ever bring Scandal! back we should do that all season long.
Saturday morning I went to breakfast salon with
others, where we discussed cheating (academic primarily, though also a wee
bit of relationship-style cheating).
I came home around the same time as Rocket, Jr. and
who had gone to Rocket, Jr.’s last Music Class. While they headed back
out to a birthday party at Monkey Joe’s, I tackled the clogged shower
drain.
3.5 hours and a trip to Lowes later, I was covered in foul, black drain
grease (nobody tell me what that residue in drains actually is, I just
don’t want to know) and the basement smelled like something died in it,
but the water was back to draining.
After I showered for a long, long time,
dinner with a friend, so lil’ Rocket and I hung out for the evening doing
those various things that 3 year olds like to do.
Sunday morning,
Rocket and I walked down to the pool for the first time this season. He
starts swim lessons in June, so we did a little work with the kickboard.
He spent some time playing with a little red haired girl in the under 6
pool and then we cut out around lunchtime.
The rest of the day was spent resuscitating the propane grill and removing
evidence of the Great Drain Unclogging of 2006 before
Dinner was salmon steaks grilled using something called a grill basket
that
managed to char the outside of the steaks pretty well, and then performed
a bad Abbott and Costello routine with
unstick the salmon from the grill basket:
gl5: Why don’t you try opening up the basket from that side?
me: If I do, it’ll open from the bottom and the steaks’ll fall out on the
ground.
gl5: Oh.
me: Maybe if I shake it a bit, they’ll come unstuck from that side.
(shakes, causing the latch to unlatch and the steaks fall out, some on the
grill, some on the ground)
mayonaise, and a good time was had. Lil’ Rocket spent a lot of time
trying to pull focus from the adult conversation by singing nonsensical
songs very loudly, as is his wont.
On a side note, thanks to the double whammy of the Signing Times
ABCs and They Might Be Giants: Here Comes the ABCs DVDs, Lil’
Rocket has become obsessed with letters. His conversation is almost
totally comprised of asking what words begin with a given letter, or what
letter begins a given word, or how to sign a given letter that begins a
given word.
Not that I’m complaining. It can only be a good thing.
Last night, wee Rocket was more wired than I have ever seen him, something
akin to the cornholio episode of Beavis and Butthead but less
annoying or offensive. I’m sure someone injected sugar directly into his
veins.
“Book” Log – The Onion’s Finest News Reporting, Volume 1
The Onion’s Finest News Reporting, Volume 1 by Scott Dickers and
others
Such a mind-candy quick read, I hesitate to call it a book, but it
is in book form, so there you go.
It cost me $1.00. It was about $2.00 worth of silly, so I’m ahead.
unfill houses
Someday, I would really like to live in something like a Tumbleweed Tiny
House.
Wouldn’t it be awesome, in my neighborhood of knock-em-down developers
building McMansions, to knock down our ranch and put up a tiny, tiny 100
square foot house? I would love that.
Like a gas, I think our stuff expands to fill the space we’ve got. The
reverse could be true in a tiny house… paring down to the bare
essentials. Simplify, simplify, simplify.
I want one made of stone.
Book Log – The Fabulous Riverboat
The Fabulous Riverboat: Book 2 of the Riverworld Saga by Philip Jose’ Farmer
The second book was fine, but there was not a lot addressed regarding What Is Going On with the Riverworld. (Why is everyone who lived on earth reincarnated along a hugely long river?)
This one features Mark Twain in his efforts to build a riverboat to make it to the headwaters of the River and solve some mysteries.
Among the things I found strange was the people’s ability to build some fairly extensive technology from raw materials, including, most amazingly, video screens.
An okay read.
—–
On the Reading Table: Nothing! Arg!
Book Log – “What Do _You_ Care What Other People Think?”
“What Do You Care What Other People Think?” (Further Adventures
of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman
The first half of this book is more adventures akin to the first Curious
Character book. Sad and witty in equal parts.
The second half recounts his adventures as a member of the
Challenger disaster investigatory commission. This was
fascinating. I hadn’t really followed the story in detail… I had
vaguely heard of the infamous “failed o-ring”.
But Feynman’s account from within the investigation is very disturbing.
You see a lot of the same bureaucracy going on that appears in other
technical companies of much less importance (no lives at stake).
I went back a re-read the results of the Columbia disaster
investigation and saw those findings in a sadder light after having read
Feynman’s actual appendix to the Challenger report, which he had to
fight so hard to have included. There simply could not have been a
clearer warning of exactly what lead to the Columbia disaster:
complacency over failure. “Well, yes, the design didn’t work the way we
liked, and could fail, but it didn’t last time, so we’re good to go!”
whole shuttle system should be mothballed. At the time I read his
comment, I thought that was extreme. But now I’m of the same mind.
Feynman’s investigation showed that the shuttle was not designed following
the good practices used in comparable endeavors like airplanes. It’s
filled with hardware bugs (though Feynman praises the software
development).
Scrap it, start over, do it right. Or let private industry do so.
In the meantime, keep sending those cool Mars images.
Slandering The Wild
Okay, I’m just appalled at how people have dissed the movie The Wild by saying it’s basically the same as Madagascar. I’m here to set the record straight.
They are very different movies. To wit:
The Wild (TW) doesn’t have a zebra, a hippo, a lion and a giraffe as the main cast. It has a Koala, a snake, a squirrel, a lion and a giraffe.
In M, the zebra longs for the wild. In TW, it is a lion.
In M, a lion figures out how to steer a boat bound for the wild. In M, it is a penguin.
In M, when they are first wandering through the wilderness, the lion steps on a thorned vine. In TW, it is the koala.
In M, the group encounters a group of dancing Lemurs who have a secret agenda that involves the lion. In TW, the group encounters a group of dancing wildebeasts who have a secret agenda that involves the lion.
The wildebeasts are choreographed, the lemurs dance freeform.
In the Madagascar christmas short, the heroes are terrorized by a poofy, white, bloodthirsty poodle in a New York apartment. In The Wild, the heroes are terrorized by a poofy, white, bloodthirsty poodle in a New York alley.
In Madagascar, the heroes are aided by psychotic penguins who believe themselves to be secret agents. In The Wild, our heroes are aided by psychotic chameleons who believe themselves to be secret agents.
So, there you go. Completely different.
Well, the animation in The Wild is more realistic. There’s that, too.
Book Log – To Your Scattered Bodies Go
To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Riverworld Series Book 1) by Philip Jose’ Farmer
Scenario: You’re dead. But you wake up naked next to a bunch of other people, next to a river, a plain, and impassable mountain ranges on either side. There’s a mushroom that provides food, smokes, and clothing. As far as you can tell, everyone who ever lived has also appeared next to this extremely long river. Also, everyone is 25 years old or younger.
What’s up with that?
I see from the bio that Philip Jose’ Farmer was born in 1918 in Terre Haute, IN, which is 5 years after and 20 miles from the time and place when my grandfather, Floyd Lucas, was born. I wonder if they met at a barn dance.
I’ve got Book 2 queued up.
Book Log – Interface
Interface by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
Originally published under the name Stephen Bury, they rereleased this and The Cobweb under Neal’s real name and that of his co-writer, a historian named J. Frederick.
This was written about five years before Cryptonomicon. The plot is not as tight, but the writing is still very engaging. It’s kind of a “missing link” between his hard-core science fiction like Snow Crash and his only-vaguely science fiction works, like Cryptonomicon.
The plot revolves around a presidential campaign, a secret society called the Network, and chips implanted in brains. Good fun, a worthy read.
I wonder why he published it under a pseudonym?
On the bookstand:
To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Riverworld Vol. 1) by Philip Jose’ Farmer
What Do You Care What Other People Think? (Further Adventures of a Curious Character) by Richard Feynman