Watchin' Armageddon. Wouldn't be easier to teach astronauts to be drillers than drillers 2 b astronauts? This movie sucks.

Ben Affleck got the biggest teeth I ever seen. Dude's got Barbaro teeth.

Armageddon got a whole cast of people w/ crazy teeth! Steve Buscemi...you make 2 much money 2 look like Baraka from Mortal Kombat.

ESPN Hood - all the phones got 3 minute ringbacks of Jodeci songs.

Yo North Korea, check yo self. I'm from a lil town over there. It's called Fresh Off A North Korean's Ass and you makin' me homesick.

Don't know if N. Korea's on Twitter but, Obama said he's sending me, DMX, 50, Ray Lewis and that brutha from Green Mile, in to regulate.



Oh man. The mind of LA Laker to-be Ron Artest is the reason Twitter was invented. That, and your standing-in-line habits. Tell me, what line are you standing in right now? How do you feel about that line you're standing in? I'd love to know.

A Chinese kid reviews Robot Sequel.

Brilliant.

Running Aground on Reality

Senator Grassley's solution to the healthcare crisis -- everybody should work either for John Deere or the federal government.

I took Yoko to the hospital this morning. She had been having some lower back and abdominal pain over the weekend, but for the most part lying down or taking a bath relieved it. She woke up sore this morning, and had some bleeding right before we were to leave for work.

The doctor can't give any real specifics, but she's hooked up to some sort of pre-natal heart monitor, and the baby is kicking like normal. She's still feeling "swollen" (I don't know the precise term, as I didn't do any obstetrics when I was working in the hospital), and the baby is riding pretty low. However, her cervix isn't dilated and she's not feeling contractions. Her Ob/Gyn is keeping her for observation, and depending on what happens he may transfer Yoko to the university hospital for higher-level care.

I'm typing this from work, and I think I can get through my morning classes without wigging out. I'm taking the afternoon off so I can pack a bag for Yoko and just sort of be around if needed. Everyone cross your fingers.

I really miss being able to post with Deepest Sender. I wish they'd hurry up with that update.

Anyway, one of the cooler things about having a DVR now is that I can record various specials on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel about prehistoric life--cavemen, dinosaurs, giant scorpions, you name it. Today I was catching up on a show called "Prehistoric Disasters" that covers cataclysmic events millions of years ago: The Permian extinction, the Chicxulub impact, the formation of Earth's moon, etc. This episode was about the events that killed the dinosaurs and naturally concluded with a look at what sorts of life forms survived to evolve into present-day species. In particular, they pointed out that in contrast with dinosaurs, mammals protected their young in the womb and primitive reptiles buried their eggs, and flying reptiles laid their eggs in trees. When they said "flying reptiles" they showed a flock of birds.

Okay.

Since I was a kid, I have read and watched anything pertaining to dinosaurs, so I'm familiar with the theory that all birds are descended from dinosaurs (specifically theropods, but let's not quibble), and that this remains somewhat controversial among scientists. Personally I think it makes sense, at least until or unless some better theory comes along. But what bugs me is when I'm watching something about dinosaurs on TV (which is, like, all the time), and the point is made that birds are dinosaurs. Not because I don't take the point, certainly, but because it feels like dinosaur experts are really, really desperate to make sure I don't forget it.

The whole "birds are dinosaurs" thing is one of several key points that comprised the Dinosaur renaissance that began in the late 1960s, which changed the way scientists thought about dinosaurs, leading them to accept points such as:

• Dinosaurs cared for their young
• Dinosaurs could be quite intelligent
• Dinosaurs held their tails up for balance rather than dragging them on the ground
• Dinosaurs were probably warm-blooded
• Birds are dinosaurs

I'm familiar with all of these points because by the time I was about seven or eight years old I could get my hands on dinosaur books with more current information, and I soon found scientists were constantly up my ass about these things.  I was like "OK, I get it, we're cool," but they never stopped.  Go back and watch Jurassic Park with the above points in mind, and you'll notice the movie just beats you over the head about them.

So anyway, I don't dispute that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but I take issue with the idea that birds then are dinosaurs, mostly for semantic reasons.  When I was a kid I also got very familiar with Linnaean taxonomy, so I was clear on there being five classes of vertebrates: Fish, Amhpibians, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals.  So it doesn't make any sense to me that birds can be in their own class and then also be part of a suborder within the reptile class.  Seems like the whole idea of classifying these things is that at some point a kind of animal evolves so much from its ancestors that it becomes a whole other kind--that is, at some point you stop calling the animal an advanced reptile and start calling it a primitive bird.  If birds are still dinosaurs, wouldn't that mean they're still reptiles?  Wouldn't that then mean humans are still synapsids, or that frogs are still fish?  It's just nuts, amirite?

I suppose that if scientists want to get together and decide birds are still reptiles, that's their business, but if they're gonna do that they need to agree that birds aren't, well, birds anymore, or at least that birds don't rank as a separate major class of vertebrates.  I mean, pick one.  As it is, reading about this stuff on Wikipedia is almost as confusing as reading about "holobaramins" on Conservapedia.

Apparently Palin has resigned in order to become the Duchess of ButtHurtopia in the Whutistan:

How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country. And though it's honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make. But every American understands what it takes to make a decision because it’s right for all, including your family.

Sarah? The "countless others" who stepped down without getting elected or appointed to another office were forced out by scandal or illness. Not because they've decided to echo EvilWillow with "bored now."

Palin's speech included a cryptic references to "I think much of it had to do with the kids seeing their baby brother Trig mocked by some pretty mean-spirited adults recently." The full story is an awesome tale of Palin vs. the lulz resulting from her trying to silence criticism with bullshit about her kid.

A common form of political mockery is to depict political allies or rivals as parent and child. Some obscure blogger took a photo of Palin and Trig and superimposed the face of Alaskan right wing talk show host Eddie Burke - who was suspended for calling organizers of an anti-Palin rally maggots and broadcasting their home phone numbers on the air. The joke was obvious, and clearly not an attack on her kid.

In response Palin released a statement which began: "Recently we learned of a malicious desecration of a photo of the Governor and baby Trig that has become an iconic representation of a mother's love for a special needs child". Why yes, you can now light a candle under a gold inlaid version of it at the Wasilla Eastern Orthodox Church.

And from there the lulz flowed.

Meanwhile, this Saturday Palin used twitter to threaten legal action against, as Wonkette put it, "MSNBC, the New York Times, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, individual bloggers in Alaska, and other such anti-Palin forces such as 'rain on your wedding day' and static cling."

Some of the best photoshops are below the cut. ( Aren't we clever then? )

I was wondering if I could try and pass this one off as Chupacabras, or a skunk ape.

Our Hero: Oh, GOD. That cough medicine tastes like DEATH.
Pater: And your comparitive for this is...?
Our Hero: Well, it's what I imagine Death tastes like, if it has a taste.
Pater: *knowing smirk*
Our Hero: I mean, Death comes in many flavours. So this one is the kind of Death you catch from drowning in a toxic bog. That's been used as a latrine. For the past six hundred years.
Pater: Most bogs have been used as a latrine by various animals since time immemorial.
Our Hero: >.< You just CAN'T let it go just ONCE, can you, you grandiloquent old egomaniac?!?
Pater: Say something, son?
Our Hero: No.

Our parents' house is painted the same color as the mountain, a mixture of soft greens and grays. You reach it first by driving a long, winding road up, then taking a long, even more narrow and winding private drive with a slope on one side and an apparently bottomless pit of brush and trees on the other, then a dangerous hairpin curve onto their own driveway, down to the little pocket of their property nestled in the side of the mountain. Visitors are always announced by a slow crunch of tires on gravel.

Inside are a vaulted ceiling, wooden floors, furniture and decor that is not merely old. Every other object has meaning, requires some sort of explanation to do it justice. The long dining room table, with its comfortable matching chairs with clawed armrests, belonged to Dad’s parents. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting at that table in the house on Bayou Deseird back in the early ‘60s, listening to the adults talk politics and share anecdotes and enact their own dramas. A plate decorated with a small purple crown hangs on the dining room wall. It’s not visible to the casual visitor, but we insiders know that if you lift it from its holder and turn it over, across its back you’ll see a piece of tape scrawled with the words, “I want Butterfly to have this.” This plate has a certain significance, but I hesitate to share it. I’m half-convinced that if the truth got out, we could get in trouble not only with England’s navy, but with the British royal family.

A bust that Jim Barnhill did of me, back when I was a pretty, swan-necked artist’s model, stares blankly out over the main room from a high shelf, a Stetson cocked on its ceramic head. A mural of the Blue Ridge mountains, painted by my brother J., hangs on the wall of the stairway landing. On one of the bookshelves in the living room is a polished wooden box of ivory dominoes, (unfortunately minus one domino), yellow with age and probably over a century old. My mother remembers hearing them rattle late at night as her parents played after the children had been put to bed.

Practically the entire rationale for the house’s existence is the broad back deck, which overlooks a rolling ocean of trees. That ocean has a sound as constant as a real ocean’s surf, a never ending breath moving through leaves, rising and falling, sometimes a sigh, sometimes a roar. The deck is where you sit, (when the trees are sighing rather than roaring) to read a book or sip a drink or talk about the day and inhale a scent that’s not mint but slightly cool and spicy, not flowers but still sweet. The closest visible signs of civilization are on the mountain on the other side, where a few of the buildings of Blowing Rock are visible as half-seen squares through the trees during the daytime, and distant lights at night.

There is wildlife, of course. Birds flutter at the feeders. Hawks wheel over the trees in the valley. On the little dirt road that leads down to the trout pond, Deer pause to mooch on the apples my brother T has scattered there for them. When the sun goes down, things edge closer. Raccoons invite themselves onto the deck – my mother can sometimes hear the little thugs rearranging the outside chairs. One evening, sitting out on the deck with my parents, I looked up to see an opossum staring moonily down at me from where it had tucked itself just under the eaves of the house. A bear tried to climb onto the deck shortly before midnight two summers ago, seen by my parents through a sliding glass door as a lunging shape with teeth before it pulled off one of the deck railings and tumbled down the slope. And late one evening, as we were driving away from the house, on that narrow tree-crowded private road, we heard something shriek. It sounded like a man screaming – not shouting, but screaming – briefly and hoarsely. Conversation in the car stopped, we listened, and then we heard it again. And then, after another pause, again, exactly the same short scream after exactly the same interval, very purposeful, the sound of something communicating.

Download ITunes and do some searching.  Jerk.

The Hubby and I have decided that when we win the lottery and it's time to buy a travel camper, we are going to go with an RV. The pull behind 5th wheel type just won't work.

Well, I'm glad THAT decision has been made.

I've seen Jon out the door. He's on his way to play in the dirt and, more likely tomorrow, mud, and find all kinds of relics and artifacts and neat things. He'll be gone for two weeks, be here for a weekend to get the move done, and then be gone for another week. This will be the longest we've been apart since before we were dating (since I totally lived in his room a week or two before we actually dated = P ).

I get to stay up 'til midnight tonight and see if I can add/drop one of my classes for an online one and maybe have some job prospects. Financial aid shenanigans. Driver's test. School, school, and lab to pass the time.

So suddenly my iPod has two separate calendars in the Calendar app, and I can neither delete nor rename this new second calendar. It's blank. I can see where having multiple calendars would be useful - for example, family stuff, work stuff, and volunteer stuff could be separate - but not if I can't add, delete or rename these separate calendars. WTF?

The other new thing annoying me about my iPod is that it used to have an automatic shutoff; after a few seconds, I think the screen would go shades darker, and then if left unused, the screen would shut off. It was something I got used to and now that it isn't working, I can't find a setting to reactivate it.

These two things happened at different times, I think; the calendar thing is new, while the shutoff stopped happening after Steph's baby was here - I did let him play with the iPod, but I don't know if he managed to press some mysterious combination of settings that deactivated the automatic shutoff. I mean, babies + iPods = who knows, right? He's pretty smart, though; he headed straight for things that were fun, and couldn't be bothered with boring old text.

Incidentally, Steph, he really liked the free Motion X Dice app.Seriously, he rolled dice for like, an hour after we ran out of Thomas videos online.

Anyway, my iPod is still awesome, but y'know - little things annoy me about it still.

I used to write for a site called Paper Thin Walls, which stopped publishing last year, and subsequently the server with its archives melted down, apparently; in any event, its content is no longer online. So I'm going to post a couple of my reviews here, the first being this review of and email interview with Nicole Atkins, her responses being something special, I think:

( Nicole Atkins' The Way It Is )

( Interview with Nicole Atkins )

( Video )

The New York Times actually had an analysis piece with the following:

Assuming her departure does reflect a strategic decision to prepare for a presidential campaign — Republicans have been wondering why she quit so abruptly — Ms. Palin may be looking to the next few years to do what Nixon did to prepare for his successful run for the White House in 1968.

This sort of near pure speculation avoids any mention of potential scandals past and present is left to the less savory types like the AP and the Denver Post.

Happy birthday, kixie and misachan!

Oh, look, I missed posting on the 1/4 of July. Despite the complete absence of fireworks, there was too much going on. For one thing, there's a big dead bird on my back porch. A pigeon, I believe. I know the striped cat would eventually start bringing fresh kills for the kittens, but I wasn't expecting anything that size, and certainly wasn't expecting that she'd leave it within inches of my back door. The kittens have gnawed at it a bit, but seem to prefer the dry food I leave out. I think I'll cut down on the dry food for a couple of days so mom can get them used to the sort of provender they'll have to be eating eventually anyway.

Also, the day was somewhat truncated by the fact that I didn't wake up until four o'clock in the afternoon. That's the result of being shorted on sleep for three days in a row. I'll probably have a hard time getting to sleep Sunday morning. When I do get to slep, I hope I don't dream about pigeon cadavers.

Shower off the lingering heat.