The dotter and I went to the bookstore a week ago; I wanted a specific title.  She kept asking if we could buy her a book, and I kept grumbling that she didn’t bother to read the ones she already had, so why should I buy her a new one?!  But, in the end, I bought her…

A Hannah Montana “what’s your rock star style?” activity book, to wit, the Hannah Montana My Secret Superstar Syle Book.  (This is, interestingly enough, not locatable on the Amazon site by searching on “Hannah Montana Secret Superstar Style” (no quotes), or “Secret Superstar Style” (again, no quotes), but only by searching on “Secret Superstar”.  No, I can’t explain it, but did find it very frustrating.)

Much to my surprise, she is actually wanting to do the things in this book.

One of the activities was (of course) a quiz to determine your rock star style, just like well-known and loved Internet memes!  As I was reading the questions, I knew what her answers would be, though she surprised me with a few.  (For instance, she chose the “golden sling purse shaped like a guitar” over the “pink rhinestone and glitter handbag”.)  She ended up being “Rock Royalty” instead of “Pop Princess”—which, if I had to peg her pre-quiz, would not have been my choice.

So one evening this week, we managed to dig out two single-color T-shirts and do the “Tear ‘Em Up!” “punk” look mixed with the “sassy” look.  I thought it turned out pretty well!  When I wanted to do pics, the dotter insisted on putting on her ratty old capri jeans, which she adores and I refuse to let her wear to school or summer camp.

Here are the results; this pose shows the cute rucked-up sides:

Another view, showing the asymmetrical sleeves (one side was laced, the other side was plain):

And then a third view, where the dotter did a back bend into a bridge, just because:

She wore it to sleep that night.  She wore it to summer camp the next day.

BUT.  She wouldn’t take her sweatshirt off.  By the time I picked her up late in the afternoon, the sweatshirt had come off, and her 20s-ish camp counselor gushed over how rockin’ the style looked.

Anyway, the end result is that the Sekrit Superstar Style book is actually kind of fun.  Who would’a thunk it?

(ETA:  Oh, just an FYI.  The price of the Amazon Kindle has dropped to $189—the result of competition from the Apple iPad.  Anyway, if you’re interested in a Kindle now that it’s almost worth while buying, if you use my Amazon search link, or the links above, I get a leetle referral $$.  Hint, hint.  )

We like to play “The Animal Game” at dinnertime.  It’s a variation of Twenty Questions “made up” by OmegaDotter.  Her buddy A. enjoys playing the game when he’s spending the night, which he is doing tonight.  Thus, we had a round of The Animal Game to enjoy.

A. started off, but the dotter guessed his animal in record time—an owl.

“It’s a screech owl!” quoth A.

“Oh, then it’s Lady Gaga!” quoth OmegaDad.

I slapped OmegaDad on the arm.  “She doesn’t screech,” I said.

“She does too!” was the response.

Next up was OmegaDotter.  She always starts with, “This animal has eyes.”  Which makes OmegaDad and I roll our own eyes, because it’s useless as a clue.  But we moved on…does it live on land or sea?…is it bigger than A.?…does it have fur?

“Yes,” answered the dotter.

“Oh, then it’s Lady Gaga!” shouted OmegaDad triumphantly.

I slapped him again.  OmegaDotter rolled her eyes.  A. fell down laughing.  (Hey, it doesn’t take too terribly much to amuse 8-year-olds.  Or fifty-year-olds, for that matter…)

The dotter stumped us with that one, because we forgot to ask if it was extinct or not; it was a mammoth.

She went again, starting—of course—with “this animal has eyes.”  There was a question as to whether it ate other animals.  A. wisely recited their teacher’s rhyme about how to distinguish predators from prey (“Eyes on the side, they like to hide; eyes to the front, they like to hunt”).  Then he took to helping the dotter, because she wasn’t very sure about aspects of her animal.

Somewhere along the line, of course, OmegaDad had to ask if it was Lady Gaga.

OmegaDotter got very frustrated at this point, and proclaimed that he was no longer allowed to use those words together for at least two hours.

OmegaDad won that one, at which point the dotter and A. both grumbled, because they knew his animals are hard to guess, mostly due to tricksy initial clues that send you haring off in the wrong direction.  Luckily, because my husband’s mind is an open book to me, I was able to guess his animal—a pine bark borer beetle.  Both the dotter and A. were disgruntled at this, saying that they had no idea what that animal was.  So OmegaDad got to go again.  But he passed his turn on to me.

I took a cue from the dotter:  “This animal has eyes.”  Hah!

So they asked if it lived on land or sea—land.

They asked if it was a mammal—I said yes.

They asked if it was a wild animal—I had to think about this, but eventually said no.

Did it live in trees?  No.

Did it have fur?  No.

Did it have hair?  Yes.

Was it bigger than A.?  Yes.

Do people own it as a pet?  I answered no.

Are people allowed to own it as a pet?  No.

At which point, OmegaDad, having seen my slight smile while I was debating the “wild animal” question, asked, “Is this animal a human being?”  Yes.

And A. burst out, loudly, “Is it Lady Gaga?!”

Yes.

Har.  That’s my tale of our brush with the Fame Monster, and a slice of (silly, pointless, fun, and boring to those outside the family) life around our dinner table.

I bought a Very Special Gift for OmegaDotter this Christmas.  It was very small.  So I decided to do the box-within-a-box-within-a-box approach; I wrapped the VSG, put a bow on it, and a note saying it was the last box, dumped it all into another box, gift-wrapped that one with bow and note, etc.  The end result was nice and big.

I was actually rather nervous about doing this:  either she would think it was funny, or she would get horribly frustrated, and I had no idea which way she would lean.

Anyway.  Since she opened it first, I wasn’t ready with the camera, so the settings were wrong for the first box:

Second box—she was kind of perplexed:

Third box—she was getting the hang of it, and was amused.  I have a picture of her laughing, with the box already unwrapped, so we’ll use this one:

Fourth box—she’s giggling:

The VSG revealed—I think she likes it:  she screamed!

What was it?  An iPod nano, filled to the brim with songs I knew she liked.  She has since wandered the house with it connected by umbilical cord, belting out various songs—in particular, Fireflies by Owl City, which has been an earworm for both of us, as well as various Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus songs. 

Now, onto the consumer review:  OMG.  Apple has the “user-friendly”, ergonomic approach down to an art.  Or a science.  When I was setting it up for her, I pulled it out of its little box, plugged it into the computer, and *boom*, it hooked to my iTunes and started walking me through it.  Once it was loaded with music, *boom*, I was using it.  I am truly, truly impressed with the ease-of-use of this gadget—the dotter had figured out all the buttons (in particular, how to replay Fireflies over and over and over again) within a short time.  Now I want one…or maybe an iPhone, which does all the same stuff, plus.

Our snow on top of melting snow and ice produced a phalanx of icicles hanging down from the roof beside the kitchen.  I liked the repeating vertical lines behind and in front of the fluffy snow-draped firs.

For your viewing pleasure:  The Big Picture once again does a Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar for December; go enjoy the purty pictures and remember to check back each day!

For more viewing pleasure:  absolutely incredible renderings of a 3-D Mandelbrot set.  Think of a 3-D fractal…Mathematics made beautiful!  I particularly like this one, which the creator has described as “shell life“.

I am enjoying the new C-Pop singers–thank you very much for your suggestions!  Since the dotter is mostly into bouncy dance-type music, I will wander through them picking and choosing (no Deserts Chang, alas!  But I think she’s groovy!).  Fantasia is also a great idea.

To finish things up, here is the world’s very best Poker Face parody, called “NeutraFace”, starring bearded designer geeks having fun.  Enjoy.  (I now want to have bearded nerds emerge from my bathtub):

I’ve got a little list of music to buy the dotter for Christmas, to go with her Big Present from me.  We’ve got some Don Henley, Elton John, Trisha Yearwood, Tom Petty, Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, Feist’s “1-2-3-4″, Queen’s “We Are The Champions”, Taylor Swift, Kidz Bop, a Beyonce, some Chris Rock, a Sean Kingston, some High School Musical and Shrek…and to fill in the Chinese pop section, we have some Wilber Pan, Angela Zhang, S.H.E., and Jolin Tsai.

But I need some suggestions for classic or older rock, more C-pop, and new American stuff.  So, parents of 8-9-10 year olds:  What are your kids listening to?

One of the joys of Teh Intarwebz is that you can hover on the cusp of current culture, dip in and out like a hummingbird, and still live your own old boring everyday life.

For example:  I have taken to watching shows on Hulu.com.  Alas, I am also aware that Hulu.com is talking about becoming a subscription-only (that means $$) service come sometime in 2010; having found Hulu, I am about to lose Hulu.  Anyway, enough grief; I have found that I can watch Glee and Stargate: Universe on Hulu if I miss those shows the night before, and am happy.

In addition, when brouhahas such as Kanye West’s drunken outburst disrespecting Nice Girl Taylor Swift at the MTV Music Video awards occur, I can scour the web the day after to (a) see what actually happened, and (b) get down with all the nominated music videos.

Which leads me to my headline.  Actually, “led me to my headline”–I watched the nominated videos and found…

There’s a new Star (use your joisey accent on that:  “Stah!”) in the pop music firmament name of Lady Ga-Ga.  Lady Ga-Ga sings catchy pop songs that drip sexual innuendo in music videos that are pop art celebrations of out-and-out (::gasp!:: ::OMG!:: ::catch me while I blush and faint::) lewd sexuality.  She wears nude body suits.  She feels herself up.  She feels up guys.  They feel her up.  She wears outre makeup.  She wears outre clothes.  It is a wild Warholian act; it’s also a wild dionysian act.

And damn.  I love her.

I am aware that some of my readers absolutely positively thoroughly despise her.  (I’m talking to you, PAgent!)  I am aware that my cachet as an intellectual pseudo-counter-cultural ex-almost-hippie is tarnished beyond repair by saying it, but there it is.

I think she’s hilarious.  I love her over-the-top persona, her over-the-top hair, her over-the-top makeup, and her over-the-top music videos.  (I will admit, however, that these are music videos I do not want the dotter seeing.  When the dotter arrived home one day humming the tune to “Poker Face” and saying she had to show me a video, I practically plotzed.  Who the #@!& was showing this smutty stuff to my seven-year-old daughter?!?!  And then she started singing the words, and I realized that she was smitten by a parody video.  Whew.  Crisis averted!)

Then I discovered some interviews of her.  And I loved those–she’s snarky and snotty and playing the interviewers and leaps upon sexism.  And I discovered plenty of YouTubery where she’s doing her hit songs in live venues, small clubs or radio stations, one-on-one, just her and her piano.  I loved those, too–she sings like a torch singer, then switches off into a staccato singing silliness, then back to the torch singer.

Lady Ga-Ga is a mix of early Madonna, Elton John at his most flamboyant, and…and…oh, damn, give me a name of a torch singer from the forties, please.  She is a character and a half, and I go ga-ga over her.

Here’s the parody:

Here’s the original–no embedding, bah.

And here’s a live version:

OmegaDotter long ago decided that she wanted to be a Rock Star for Halloween.  This would be, thankfully, a generic Rock Star, not, say, Miley Cyrus or Lady GaGa or anyone in particular.  We tossed around ideas for a while, finally settling on a long-haired wig, an electric guitar, camouflage pants, and a jacket.

All, of course, in the dotter’s favorite color:  PINK.  (Oy.)  (But, hey, someday she will decide that PINK is, like, so totally boooring–like her mother–and come to like some other colors.  There are hints that she will welcome other colors beginning to burgeon, so I have hope.  Maybe by the time she is 13 or 14…)

I had seen pink camo pants on Target.com, so assumed they would be available at our local Chez Target.  We set out for a shopping trip.  Much to my dismay, there were no pink camo pants to be found.  So we scrounged around the store and finally settled upon a pink and black leopard dress, and the Rock Star transitioned from a hard-rocker (though PINK) to a more glam-rocker.

The dotter had been hankering for months after a Barbie play electric guitar; I sniffed.  Barbie.  Humph.  Play guitar.  Humph.  So, to counteract this, I told her she had to buy it herself.  Our shopping trip was her chance; she raided her money jar and quite happily purchased this plastic faux confection.  Much to my amazement when we got home and I had liberated it from its multiple-tie-down jail, it turned out to be fairly cool–once one got past the huge Barbie logo and the PINKness and the whiteness and the daintiness.  It has pre-loaded tunes.  It has the ability to do some rockin’ screamin’ guitar noises.  And it has a “wa-waaaa” lever to emulate the guitarist sliding her hands up and down the guitar strings.  All in all, much more tolerable than I had expected.

Then there was the wig.  We purchased a wig, even though I knew it wasn’t what she wanted.  But it was blonde and it was curly and it had some Disney princess or other on the package, and the dotter oohed and ahhed.  Hey.  It was nine bucks; what harm was there in purchasing the darned thing so that she could try it on and discover it was…well, not the look she wanted.

So the question remained:  what to do about the wig.  Amazon, of course, came through with a long-haired hot-pink wig with bangs…but I forgot to order it.  The dotter kept reminding me at the wrong time–say, as we were getting out of the car at gymnastics, or as she was doing her daily homework, or while we were out shopping.  Since my mind is a sieve these days, these reminders didn’t do much good; she would tell me, I’d nod and say “Yeah, will do!”, and then, a few minutes later–Oh!  Look!  Something shiny!

Somehow I managed to remember it last week; I believe the dotter wised up and reminded me as she was falling asleep, so that I would get online afterwards.  So after getting her down to bed, I wandered down to the office and ordered the thing, paid for it, and then figured all was well.

Until I bothered to actually read the confirmation email, which mentioned, rather nonchalantly, that the delivery date was anywhere between October 27 (good) and November 3 (ooops!).  I read the email on Tuesday, when I was wondering when the darned thing would arrive.

I didn’t tell the dotter about that November 3 date.  Nope, nosirree.  I figured if it didn’t show up, we would figure something out.

But today it arrived, and as soon as the dotter arrived home from school we went into full-fledged dress-up mode.

She tried it on first, of course, in her school clothes, then I had to try it on while she dashed upstairs to get the rest of her outfit:

And then she pulled everything together, like so:

The pink flannel pants are more orange-y, so we’re considering whether leggings might work instead.  Anyway, there you have it, the Saga Of The Rock Star.

We have also carved the pumpkin, OmegaDad and the dotter have been putting together a gingerbread haunted house, we have made fondant ghosts, and it seems that A. is on for Trick-or-Treating again, thus allowing me to avoid the whole K. question.

(Oh, yes.  The dotter did deliver her apology notes this evening at gymnastics, which went over very well.  She got an approving nod from Coach John and a hug from A.  Afterwards, while she was starting her session, I saw them comparing notes and chuckling over the idiosyncratic spelling…”Couch John”, and she was sorry she “heart A.’s arm”…)

If you can see me, you will see me waving a little white flag of surrender.

We none of us had the flu–officially.  Luckily, the dotter’s pediatrician eyeballed the accuracy rate of the rapid flu tests as determined by the CDC (40% to 70% accurate–almost as good as tossing a coin) and her history of pneumonia, and prescribed Tamiflu. 

Alas, the same did not happen for OmegaDad and me.  OmegaDotter started feeling sick on Sunday (with a bang!), OmegaDad and I started feeling sick on Monday.  We are now eyeing Day 8 of fever and/or general illness.  The dotter, who started one day earlier, and got Tamiflu, has been fever-free for three days, and had energy enough to do cartwheels, handstands, and walkovers today.

I, on the other hand, managed to do dishes and check the chickens in a fit of woohoo-I’m-over-it! energy, which promptly depleted any vestige of fuel my body still contained and I collapsed for the rest of the day in bed feeling like death warmed over.

This is seriously nasty stuff.  At the height, I was running a fever of 103.5F.  The one good thing about the Not-Flu?  I had no hot flashes, ‘cuz I was hot all the time!  Har.  (There was another good thing about the Not-Flu that I thought of, but it has vanished into the mists of vagueness that surround my brain these days.)

You may have noted that I am very dubious about the claim of Not-Flu.  You betcha.  Reading that the flu tests are essentially no better than flipping a coin is enough to tilt my skeptical eyebrow up, sure ’nuff.

In my quest for mindless entertainment, I searched Twitter for H1N1.  (For reference, it’s actually 2009 (a)H1N1.)  Oh, boy.  The woo is strong on this subject.  Let’s see:

• Various claims that a “friend” got the H1N1 vaccine, then promptly came down with it and died.  Let’s just avoid the issue that the vaccine is just now being delivered across the U.S.  There’s a little timeline problem there.
• A person saying she wouldn’t get the H1N1 vaccine because a little kid died of H1N1 around here the other day!!!!  Folks.  That’s what the vaccine is supposed to help prevent.
• People saying they would get the seasonal flu vaccine, but not the H1N1 because it’s too “new” and hasn’t been tested enough.  Okay, this one requires two sub-points:
• FIRST:  Take a look at CDC data.  Ninety-nine percent of the flu cases that are being diagnosed are H1N1.  One percent is “seasonal” flu.  If you were asking me, I’d go for the H1N1 vaccine, not the seasonal flu vaccine.
• SECOND:  Okay, this takes a little longer.  Flu vaccines in general have been around since World War II.  The way the vaccine is developed each year is that WHO epidemiologists take an educated guess as to which flu strains will be prevalent in the upcoming flu season.  This happens around January.  Then it takes the manufacturers of flu vaccines about six to eight months to create a vaccine and get the production rolling on it in time for seasonal flu shots.  This time around, H1N1 showed up in April–months after the regular seasonal flu vaccine process gets going.  However, they had plenty of good virus samples very quickly, and epidemiologists from across the world were rapidly made aware of how novel this one was (like within weeks).  So, the only difference between the H1N1 vaccine and the “normal” seasonal flu vaccine is that (a) they knew exactly what flu they wanted to vaccinate against, rather than a crap shoot of three guesses, and (b) it was a few months later than normal.  But there were a lot of scared governments that pulled strings to get some of the production switched over to H1N1 rather than the seasonal flu.
• Why were they scared?  Because this is a “novel” flu, meaning there are very, very few people who have any immunity to it.  Apparently there was a similar flu in the mid-1950s, so people who are older than that may have native immunity.  But everyone younger than that?  None.  Nada.  Zilch.  The seasonal flu that we normally contend with is usually similar to a flu from the previous year or before, so that most people have had some exposure to it.  This time, a similar flu hasn’t been around for more than sixty years.  To get an idea of how it’s affecting people now, take a look at this chart of “influenza-like illnesses” reported to the CDC within the past few weeks.  I look at the down-tick at the very end of the red line and am hoping it continues, but the kind of upswing shown in the past few weeks is what normally happens in December/January, not September.  So far it seems about as virulent as normal seasonal flu (this is good!), but given the possible numbers of people who could get it at once, the end result could be bad.  Imagine all the hospital ICUs filled with folks on ventilators from the H1N1, and then, oh, a school bus crashes into a tour bus and those people need ventilation and the ICU…where do they go?
• OMG, it contains SQUALENE!!!  It causes CANCER!!!  It kills people!!!!  It has mercury!!!!  And on and on.  Sigh.  Oh, yes, and it’s all a PLOT by the NEW WORLD ORDER…I can’t address them all.  A good resource is EffectMeasure, on ScienceBlogs.

The end result:  the Internet is a marvelous tool.  But if you’ve got no ability to sort B.S. from real information, you’re a sitting duck for the more scary memes out there.

I personally think we all had the flu.  Given the percentages, if we had the flu, we all had Teh Swiney FLOO.  But when that vaccine comes around, I am dragging the dotter in to get it first, and then myself and DH when we’re in the ranks of those who can get it.  (It seems that they’re going to be giving it to kids and pregnant women first, as those are the folks who are most susceptible.)

Anyway, this is just a lot of rambling.  It’s taken me about six hours to write this post, because I have to keep stopping to rest.  Hah!

Hopefully, OmegaDad and I will also soon be feeling better, and no longer like a pair of old damp washrags that have been wrung out and hung out to dry. 

Our (green)house is a very, very, very fine (green)house

So the greenhouse is complete, except for some trim work, as of today.  We happily lugged our two “baby” chickens into the greenhouse to provide a contained greeting spot for old hens and new chickens to get accustomed to each other, in preparation to migrating the new birds into the large coop.

I have to say, the greenhouse is awesome.  OmegaDad did a wonderful job.  It’s neat, tidy, sunny, light and warm inside, roomy, has lots of beams to hang plants from, and looks like it may provide a very nice spot to hang out on chilly days that have some sunshine.  Not that I’m thinking of lazing about there in the dead of winter, mind you.  But it’s really, really nice.

To refresh the memory, here’s what it looked like before:

And this is what it looks like now:

(Pay no attention to the detritus in the foreground of the second picture–there’s a pair of sawhorses with plywood making a work surface, which is covered with paint cans, tools, scrids and scrads of lumber and foam molding, and it provides a nice place to lean rakes, shovels, brooms, etc. while they’re in use.  The whole affair is due to be removed Very Soon Now.)

I am most satisfied.

The bunny…the bunny…oh, I love the bunny

The day after our baby duckling died (I am still sad about that), OmegaDotter went off to play with some neighborhood friends.  An hour later, one of the girls poked her head around the back of the house to ask if we, by any chance, had some carrots?  Why?  Well, see, there’s this bunny that we’re trying to catch…

So I provided some carrots, and figured they’d have a grand time unsuccessfully trying to attract one of the wild bunnies that hang out in the neighborhood (some of them are very interested in our veggie garden, but we have netting over it to deter moose, and it seems to deter the bunnies as well).

An hour later, three girls show up in our backyard lugging the world’s most enormous bunny.  OmegaDad and I take one look and know it’s someone’s pet bunny, but whose?  So we stash the bunny in our downstairs bathroom, animal refuge par excellence, I print up a bunny flier with a picture, and we send the girls out armed with fliers and tape to attach same to mailbox clusters around the neighborhood.

This is the bunny:

You can’t tell, but he’s HUGE.

A day later we get a call from Kelsey, who says she thinks it’s her bunny.  Since at that point I had no idea where the bunny was–A. and G. had taken it home, then A2 and her sister had taken it to their home–I asked her to call later when the dotter was home, so we could return the bunny.

A few hours later, she called and asked if we wanted the bunny.

So now we have a bunny.  His name is Copper.  He’s 7/8ths Belgian giant, 1/8 satin, three years old, and “frisky”, according to Kelsey’s dad.  “Frisky” means he’s not neutered, and thinks people’s legs are sexay female bunnies.

He, too, is moving into the greenhouse as soon as we get the (utterly gross yucky stinky peee-yew) bunny cage and shelter that we got from Kelsey’s family cleaned up.

Fame!

In my last post, I talked about Michael Jackson’s death and how I thought it was tragic.  Please understand, I am not trying to make him out to be any sort of hero.  To me, “tragic” does not necessarily correlate with “heroic”; I was thinking more on the lines of “tragic waste”.  I just think of a boy star who grew up surrounded by people who wanted a piece of him, and not having the maturity to realize that your friends are the people who will pull you up when you’re doing something stupid and say, “What on earth are you thinking, man?!”  There you are, young and rich and talented, and you’ve got people who call themselves “friends” who are not “friends”, but enablers, and they poison your mind against the ones who want you to stop and think for a few moments…to the point where all you have around you are the sleazebags, the sycophants, the wimps who *do* like you for yourself but aren’t strong enough to pull you back.  That is the tragedy to me, that someone with so much promise went off into La-La Land.

Oh, it’s not a new story; it’s so old it shows up in fables and folk tales and (no doubt) the Bible.  But it’s still a sad story, to me.

I’m leaving on a jet plane

The dotter and I board a plane very late this evening to head off to visit GrannyJ for a few weeks.  We leave poor OmegaDad behind to cope with introducing chickens to each other, figuring out how to make a bunny hutch out of the plywood and lumber we have left over, and being left alllll alooooone.  Right now, I’m in that state of semi-frantic obsessive list-checking.  Alas, some things on the list were destined to not get done.

I’ll try to post some entries, but am not sure how often.  The first week coincides with a visit from my bro and his family, so you’re more likely to see stuff after the end of the week.

Pop culture icons of my childhood and early adulthood are dropping like flies.  Ed (”Heeeere’s Johnny!”) McMahon, Charlie’s Angel Farrah Fawcett, and now–in a real shocker–Michael Jackson.

Fawcett repositioned herself from pop-actress and B- or C-movie star to tragic figure by chronicling her death to anal cancer in a documentary that was shown this May on TV.

Ed was, of course, Ed, all the way.  Like many others in these uncertain economic times, he was facing foreclosure on his mansion last year, but managed to re-negotiate with help from friends.

And Michael…sigh.

What can one say about a guy who started out with an angel’s voice, moved on to pop-music stardom and creative risk-taker with “Thriller” and its associated music video–which was a ground-breaker when they made it–and then became a mockery for multiple alleged cosmetic surgeries and accusations of pedophilia…?

A tragic figure all around.

I am finding all of this somewhat shocking, and a nasty reminder that we’re all getting older.  McMahon was 86 and had lived a long and full life; Fawcett was 62; Jackson…?  How old was he?  Oh, that’s right, he was 50 years old.

Wait a minute.

I am 50 years old.

Whoa.

So there it is:  my youth is officially over with.  I can start reading the obituary pages of the newspapers, scanning them for names I know.  Next up is starting to drive slower.  Then I’ll be saying, “Eh?!  What’s that?!  Speak up, sonny, I can’t hear you!”  One foot in the grave already…

(That last part is mostly meant in jest.  Mostly.)

Life has been busy here, Chez OmegaFamily.  I have tales of the China Camp finale, the sad tale of how Ruby the duckling died, the rockin’ and rollin’ earthquake (5.4 magnitude) we had this morning that actually caused me to duck down beneath my desk, the bunny that OmegaDotter and her neighborhood girlfriends found, and further progress on the villa/greenhouse complex.

But right now, I just want to protest.

Remember how I gushed about Mr. L., the elementary school music teacher who is leaving for greener pastures, and how worried I am about who will replace him?  Well, we have now encountered a music teacher who is diametrically opposed to him in personality. 

I have been taking OmegaDotter in to summer camp around 9 a.m.  The first day of the second week of camp, as I chivvied the dotter in to the facility, we were greeted by all the kiddos lined up, hands on their hearts, and a middle-aged battle-axe of a lady playing the national anthem on the piano.  Now, I have little against the national anthem aside from the fact that it’s horrible to sing, and it actually makes me sad to hear it played so…so…mechanically is not quite the word I am looking for, but it comes close.  Every note played perfectly, but no rhythm, no swing, no soul.  Give me a musician who botches notes left and right, but does it with verve and joy any day!

I stood there with the dotter, feeling somewhat awkward, while the kids and counselors sang.  Then this lady moved right into a lecture about how it’s our duty to remember all the sacrifices Our Men In The Service have made, and that they have fought for the Right To Sing This Song.  And then she led everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I am not what you would call a highly patriotic person in the normal sense of the word.  I really love my country.  I love the fact that we change governments every four to eight years with an overall smoothness (in general*), and regard countries such as Italy (which had something like 40 governments within the space of six years at one point) with pop-eyed sympathy and a genteel shudder about the instability of it all.  I don’t like totalitarian governments, and cheered with everyone else when the Berlin Wall fell.

But bombastic “My country, right or wrong!”, “America!  Love it or leave it!” patriotism just isn’t my schtick.

So Miss Liza has two strikes against her in my book from the get-go:  she radiates rigid self-righteous belief in country, and she massacres music.  She sets my teeth on edge.

In other words, I took an immediate and violent dislike to the woman.

The problem is, it turns out that she is the “music teacher” for half an hour every morning at camp.

I am hoping and praying that she doesn’t kill all the joy in music for these children while she has them in her oh-so-patriotic clutches.

Today was the dotter’s first day back at her regular summer camp.  There was a handout next to the sign-in book.  I grabbed one and glanced at it.  It was a letter from Miss Liza.  It ensured that I think not only is she an uptight bitch who slaughters music, she’s pompous to boot and can’t write well (though she probably thinks she can).

The subject of this letter was first off how “we are gaining an understanding of rhythm and melody, by taking notice of the various applications and integrations, of those two fundamentals”, and how important music is in our lives.  So she asks that children bring in a CD each week to share with the class (just part of one song).  BUT…Miss Liza will judge the appropriateness of the music, and expects parents to help out by making sure their children avoid music with “inappropriate language, or subject content”.  This includes such things as (of course) drugs and alcohol, and also “mutilation” or “death”.  THEN she adds that they are “exploring musically the area of service and the effect it has had in shaping our country”, so the kids are asked to bring in pictures of family members who have been in service in some way.

Well.

I’m sorry, folks.  A lot of these are things that I think are just fine and dandy–that I agree with if presented thoughtfully and allowing questions–but this woman has set my back up and the entire tone of this letter set the hackles on my neck rising.  So of course, I had to show it to OmegaDad.

Have I mentioned how much I love this guy?

Y’know why?  The very first thing he did after reading it was to tell me we needed a good selection of protest songs to send in with the dotter.  Then he googled “protest music for kids”.  Then we spent an hour batting around songs that we thought we might be able to get in past the “inappropriate language” taboo (alas, they probably wouldn’t make it past the “mutilation or death” filter).  We thought of some classic folk songs from the 30s, war protest songs from the 60s and 70s, I tossed in U2’s “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” and Midnight Oil.

OmegaDad really wants to do this.  I just feel like withdrawing the dotter from camp…

(*Yes, there’s a certain amount of irony in that “we change governments every four to eight years with an overall smoothness” statement coupled with a protest video portraying the Chicago riots in 1968.  But–hey.  Look.  The riots died down, people voted, Nixon won, and America went on.  And when Nixon was brought down by Watergate, the country didn’t dissolve into chaos–Jerry Ford moved into the White House, Chevy Chase made a fortune with his “bumbling Jerry” routine on SNL, and America went on.  Part of what made it go on–perhaps–were these very protests.)

A few months ago, yet another TED talk came across my radar.  This one was given by Aimee Mullins, a young lady who was born with missing fibula bones and had her legs amputated at age one.  Mullins went on from there to become a super-achiever–she received a full scholarship from the Department of Defense to attend Georgetown University, and became a record-winning athlete in Georgetown’s track team.  She competed in the paralympics, received modeling contracts, has acted in motion pictures, and is a motivational speaker.

At the TED talk, she spoke of disability being a chance to be “more”:

I came away from this video excited, thrilled, wondering “what’s next?!”

At the same, time, however, in the midst of all the gosh-gee-golly-wow that I felt, there was also an overwhelming feeling that this woman’s excitement for the future of prosthetics and the possibilities they open up for her and other was…well…a function of a position of privilege.

See, she’s young, she’s beautiful, she’s obviously wildly intelligent and vividly motivated.  She has people falling all over themselves to show her their latest-and-greatest prosthetic advances so that she can be a spokesman–albeit tangentially–for their new product.

Let’s look at a different amputee, shall we?

Let’s talk about D.  D. came down with diabetes–severely–in his thirties.  It could have been due to his addiction to Dr Pepper (doubtful, but it was a serious addiction!); one version is that his diabetes was caused by a severe blow to his abdomen from his on-again, off-again common-law wife and mother of his children, which deposited him in the hospital with trauma to (among other things) his pancreas.  But diabetes definitely runs in his family; his father had Type II, his grandmother had Type II, his cousin developed it in his forties, and no doubt there will be others.

Although the doctors were–as I understand it–overwhelming in their insistence that he needed to care for himself as a severe diabetic, including watching his blood sugar with an eagle eye, D. lived in denial, continuing his Dr Pepper addiction and sort of waving the diabetes away.  In his forties, he began getting severe foot infections.  He didn’t take care of one, and didn’t go to the doctor for a long time, and then there was a question of whether his doctor was a quack (one point of view) or whether he just wasn’t following doctor’s instructions very well (another point of view).  Anyway, as is common among diabetics, the infection in his toe turned gangrenous, it had to be amputated, and then things didn’t heal, so he had to have the foot amputated.

A year or so later, the other foot had to come off too.

D. was on Medicaid (I believe).  The insurers were reluctant to purchase prosthetics that were any good; oh, they’d buy the cheapest of the lot, but those (as I understand it) didn’t fit very well, were hard to walk with, and, what with one thing or another, D. ended up wheelchair-bound.

D. was not young.  He was not attractive–not ugly, but not attractive.  He was definitely intelligent, but rather than being a go-getter, he was the kind of guy who was always looking out for ways to “get around”, “get by”.  (This was, I must say, a severe frustration for the remainder of his family.)  He was the kind of guy who was irritated by other people trying to make him do things, like, say, the cops; but when someone else trespassed on his turf, he was indignant when the cops didn’t do anything.  Nobody was pounding on his doors offering him bigger-better-faster-more prosthetics.  And his insurance certainly wouldn’t offer anything but the basic.  In the end, his being wheelchair-bound cost him his life; his house was set on fire, he was upstairs and unable to escape, and he died.

There are 80,000 to 84,000 foot amputations each year in the U.S. due to diabetes.  A basic leg prosthesis starts at $2,000, with additional costs from physicians and prosthetic specialists raising the cost up to $10,000.  As someone commented on a Digg posting about Mullins’ TED talk, “most of her prostheses are likely already on the market (all except the arty ones, which appear to be custom designed). no prosthesis is “mass produced” they all have to be individually fitted and cast, sometimes more than once… below the knee prostheses average $8,000 - $16,000. the ones that are for running start at around $22,500. prosthetic limbs are horrendously expensive. an above the knee prosthesis can cost as much as $32,000. it is a huge problem facing the disabled community because health insurance almost never fully covers it or repairs, alot of coverage is as low as a $1,500 annual limit for prosthetics, which in most cases doesn’t even cover repairs.”  Steve, at My New Leg, takes you through the process of (a) getting a new prosthesis, (b) the complications, (c) dealing with insurance; his process starts here.  All the comments I read from either amputees with prosthetics or health professionals who deal with them made it very clear that it’s very expensive to get good prosthetics and it’s very difficult to get insurance to actually cover it.

Aimee Mullins is excited by the possibilities in prosthetics.  She has twelve pairs of legs; she can switch between any pair any day she wants.  (Which sort of reminds me of Princess Langwidere from Ozma of Oz (chapter here), who was able to switch heads depending on what she wanted to look like each morning–Langwidere wanted Dorothy’s head for her collection…)  Mullins is passionate about the future, about how people who need prosthetics can pick and choose what their new abilities are going to be.  But in her talk, she glosses over–actually, she leaves out entirely–the fact that her situation is far from the norm; she, by virtue of her go-getter personality and good looks, has a much better prognosis, prosthetics-wise, than, oh, 98% of the amputees out there.  My brother D. was one of those 98% who live in the real world.

Other commenters on the issue…

Reminds me

Andy Warhol famously said everyone is world-famous for 15 minutes.  Ah, fleeting celebrity!  I have touched upon it.  Yes, me–your very own OmegaMom–I have been mentioned by pseudonym in the New York Times.

Okay, it’s not like I was interviewed or anything (thank the Kozmik All!), and in context it sounds like the dude writing the article assumed that I was some type of epidemiologist or physician or something (I don’t even play a doctor on the Internet, folks!), and it was merely cribbing a comment I wrote on someone else’s blog.

How-some-ever.  It’s pretty cromulently KEWL to see my very own ‘nym on the pages (hey, a web page is, technically speaking, a “page”, right?) of The Gray Lady herself.

The context:  Towards the beginning of the whole swine flu H1N1 pandemic, one of my Twitterers asked if it made sense to deliberately expose oneself and offspring to the new flu now, since it seemed like a mild flu here in the U.S.  At the time, I thought it was a totally, absolutely, horribly lousy idea.  Now I just think it’s a lousy idea.  Anyway, knowing that Revere at Effect Measure was a Good Source of epidemiological answers, I asked in a comment if he’d speak to the “insanity” of doing such.  I got a bunch of responses that boiled down to “NO!  DON’T DO IT!”

Apparently, now that the swine flu H1N1 pandemic is really seeming to be a generally mild virus (so far) (cross your fingers, knock on wood, throw some salt over your shoulder, and maybe even pray to the Kozmik All), the whole “flu party” idea is spreading, enough so that the NYT got wind of it and decided to check it out with The Experts.

Being a modest sort, I didn’t find this thing on my own; however, Effect Measure got a trackback link out of it, so decided to check it out and report on it.  So here’s his take on the question, in more depth.

There it is:  My brush with fame.  Excuse me while I go hide from the paparazzi.

We spent the weekend doing weekend-ish types of things, including OmegaDad replacing the tree swing out front (it had an untimely demise due to rotting rope, which resulted in OmegaDotter being dumped and getting a small rope burn on her fingers).  And while this was going on (and laundry and cleaning and luvvin’ on chickens and stuff like that), I was watching the flood of information on swine flu on the Internet blossom and spread like fungus spores.

Watching the Twitter feed on the search term “swine flu” has been fascinating. 

Some utterly baseless rumors and misunderstandings (these are all things I have personally read on Twitter):

• Since this new version contains elements of avian influenza, swine influenza, and human influenza, it can’t possibly be natural; it’s been cooked up as a biowarfare weapon.  (Flu viruses swap DNA all the time, it’s why they mutate and we need new vaccines every year.)
• It’s a plot by Barack Obama to take attention off of the economy.
• It’s a plot by Barack Obama to force through his national health care agenda.
• It’s a plot by the libruls and Barack Obama to extend government control.
• The meeting between Barack Obama and Felipe Solis, director of Mexico’s National Anthropology Museum (Solis died the next day) was an attempt to assassinate the President.
• Sasha Obama has the swine flu.
• The reason the swine flu has shown up in the U.S. is because of illegal immigrants.  (Let’s just ignore the fact that the majority of the cases identified so far have been due to–eek, gasp!–tourists returning from Mexico.)
• It’s a plot by Big Pharma to drive up medicine sales.
• It’s the result of a slow news week and all media hype.
• It’s the END OF THE WORLD!!!!!!
• You can get swine flu by (eating/fucking/looking at/smelling) pork.
• The governments of the world are overreacting.
• The governments of the world are underreacting.
• It’s the fault of big, bad factory farms.
• I am sick–it must be swine flu!
• I am sick–I wish everyone would stop saying it’s swine flu!
• OMG, I am afraid to leave the house because of swine flu!
• Dudes, just chill out–x people die each year because of ordinary flu/because of car accidents/because of poorly prepared medications/choose your pet issue–so we don’t need to worry.
• Fifty kazillion riffs on the xkcd web comic related to swine flu and Twitter.
• Another fifty kazillion bad swine flu jokes (oinkment, kids kissing pigs, when pigs fly, etc.).

The psychology of the Internet rumor mill is just amazing to me.

Now, I have been reading the blogs of people who are actually involved with epidemiology (in particular, Effect Measure and H5N1), and they are confronted with two choices:  Either react now, or react later.  If they react later and the flu fizzles, hey, it’s okay.  But if they react later, and the flu doesn’t fizzle but turns into a pandemic akin to the 1918 flu, we’re all in deep kimchee.  If they react now, and the flu fizzles, well, it’s like the boy who cried wolf.  Do it too many times, and the one time it’s needed is the time that everyone will yawn, go “Ho hum, another flu panic…”  React now and the flu is a baddie?  Then everything is in place to stage quarantines, border closings, flu meds, and more when and where it is needed.

Right now, it’s really too early to tell.  The reports from Mexico are not good.  What I’ve read is 1600+ sick, with 150-200 deaths so far.  (Actually, what I’ve read in some places is 1600+ hospitalized, which is a major difference.)  By the end of this week, there should be much better data, including how fast it is spreading outside Mexico.

And, of course, maybe by the end of the week, they can figure out just what the major differences are that are causing fatalities in Mexico, but mild cases elsewhere.

Tea parties have been in the news; they were organized to occur on April 15–Income tax day.  “TEA” in this case stands for “taxed enough already”, and the intent was to riff off the Boston Tea Party.  There’s been lots of discussion in the ol’ blogosphere, so I thought I’d just chime in.  (Those of my readers who have already read my post on the subject on the debate board can skip this, even though I’ve fleshed it out considerably.)

A bud on a board wanted folks to view the protestors’ views as “equally valid”. 

Some (most) of the folks at these “tea parties” were protesting bailouts. I happen to agree with this, thinking that the big banks, financial companies, and insurers were allowed to grow too big in an unregulated manner, and it’s a cryin’ shame that these companies are now considered “too big to fail”. I also think the banks that were teetering on the brink should have been allowed to go over that brink.

Unfortunately, if that were done, a helluva lot of people would be seriously hurt as a result, much more seriously than the general populace is hurting at the moment.  Pretend that Bank of America went under.  And Citibank.  And Goldman Sachs.  And some others.  These are big financial institutions; the FDIC would be paying out boatloads of money to depositors; there would be panic in the streets and riots and disruptions of trade in basic staples and OMG NO DEBIT CARDS WORKING–EEEK!  Much though it pains me to say it, I think throwing the TARP money at the banks and financial institutions has smoothed the disastrous results out.

So right now, what we’re getting is a lot of smoke and mirrors that claims the banks are profitable, but then you take a look at how much they got in TARP $$ (which began under Bush) and you realize that the “profit” is illusory.  One example:  there’s this cute and funny little thing about assets and liabilities where you can either “mark-to-market” (i.e., assume in your spreadsheets that these various assets and liabilities are worth what the current market says they are) or you can “mark-to-the-future” (i.e., assume that your assets and liabilities are worth…oh…whatever you think they should be worth).  Seems that the Financial Accounting Standards Board “eased” the rules early in April, allowing banks and other financial institutions the ability to track the market more closely when things are going well, but less closely when things aren’t going so well.  Which means, in the end, that the banks and financial institutions can decide that their devalued assets aren’t so devalued after all.

Another example:  Wells Fargo rejiggered its fiscal year, and just dropped December–it’s worst month ever–from its calculations for first quarter results.

The bailouts began under Bush, as I noted…No-one was organizing big protests then. Small protests, yes, and a groundswell of emails, phone calls, and letters stopped Congress from agreeing to Paulson’s attempt to run a three-page, oversight-free bailout bill past them–thank heavens. But no more protests after that until now; why when Obama does it, but not when Bush did? Our kids will be paying for this for a long time.

Some (most) of these folks were protesting the stimulus dollars.  I think the stimulus bill was either too much (it should have been zero) or too little (it’s not gonna be enough to accomplish what it set out to do).  In any case, once again, I think our kids will be paying for this for a long time.

Some (most) of these folks were protesting higher taxes.  It leaves me wondering why, because from everything I’ve heard, ninety-five percent of the people out there will get lowered income taxes as a result of Obama’s tax plan, and it’s only businesses that make a profit of $250,000 or more  and people with incomes of more than $250,000 that will see higher taxes.  I have read commentary from folks who are trying to curtail their earnings so they don’t go over the $250,000 threshold, and it just baffles me that they’d deliberately take a (in some cases) steep pay cut to avoid paying a little more in taxes.  Kinda like cutting off your nose to spite your face, IMO.

Some (most, it seems like) of these folks got angry only when the bailouts started including assistance to people who were getting foreclosed on. It appears that to them it was okay that corporations got bailed out, that’s okay, but when you start talking about your next-door neighbor losing his house, well, gosh-darn it, that’s socialism!  Or, perhaps they’re not thinking it’s their next-door neighbors, but “those people” in the poorer parts of town.  I gots news for them:  latest reports in California say that foreclosures are moving up the market ladder, hitting higher-priced areas of town.

Some of these folks are wanting to “go Galt”.  Oy.  Let ‘em.  If they were providing an essential service and made lots of money from that, if they go away, some other bright-eyed, bushy-tailed entrepreneurs will step up and take their place.  I mean, really.  Let’s be realistic here.  They think that they are irreplaceable.  No-one is irreplaceable.

And then…Some–not a lot, but enough–of these folks paraded around with signs that say things like:

• “Stand idly by while some Kenyan tries to destroy America? Wap! (in comic-strip style POW cloud) I don’t think so! Homey don’t play dat!”  The birthers are insane.  Really.  Or just dreadfully deluded.  Seriously:  Do people think that the Republican Party wouldn’t have been all over that if it were true?!
• “My tax dollars pay for illegal immigration”…um…and for that hundreds-of-miles-long border fence, but, hey, let’s not confuse people.
• “Constitution = Liberty Not National Socializm” and “The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama’s Oven” and “The new face of Hitler”  These are the Obama-is-Hitler-born-again folks.
• “Obama Bin-Lyin Free The Market Not the Terrorists”  Guantanamo was A Good Thing, dammit!
• “One nation–UNDER GOD!!”  “Speak for yourself OBAMA - We are a Christian Nation!”  Let’s just ignore the Jews, the atheists, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Ba’hais, and the rest.  They (we) don’t count.
• Bitching about Obama (eek!  gasp!) bowing to the Saudi king.  Let’s not mention Bush kissing the Saudi king, y’know.
• The ones who want to secede from the union.
• The ones who claim that Obama is going to take away their guns and ammo…which he hasn’t done yet, surprise, surprise!  (News flash!  Obama “will not seek the reinstatement of a U.S. assault weapons ban“) 

So. Some of these experiences and grievances are, in my mind, “equally valid”.  SOME. But I’ve got a helluva lot of scorn for many of these folks who are protesting. Especially since they were all yelling and cheering when the framework of all the disastrous economic policies were being enacted towards the end of Clinton’s presidency (with a Republican Congress–remember that?! In 1994?!) and the regulations were being cut to the bone early in Bush’s presidency and the SEC was gutted by Bush’s administration and the FBI was told it was more important to investigate terrorism than organized, systemic mortgage fraud and on and on and on…

Let’s put it this way: Eight years of Bush’s policies helped fuel this grotesque economic meltdown.  Where were all these tax-party protestors when it all started?  I’m so glad they’re protesting the guy who got voted in to clean things up.  Gosh, golly, he’s only been in office for 96 days and hasn’t solved things and we’re still spending billions upon billions of dollars to prop up the banks and financial companies and insurance companies that got into this mess…when did things start to fall apart? Oh, yes.  Starting in late 2006.  That’s when the folks who had been told that they could afford half-a-million dollar shacks in California by using no-down, Alt-A, pick-a-payment loans and then selling in a year or two when their property value went up (because everyone knows property values always rise)–that’s when they suddenly discovered that they couldn’t sell their houses and, oh, by the way, the bank is about to jack up your payments.  Which sent the whole stupid deck of cards tumbling to the ground.

But, yeah, for some it’s all Obama’s fault. That damned Kenyan socialist Hitler-wannabe.

Look.  When the Omega Family went to wave signs on a busy highway in Suburban Alaska to support Obama, we made damned sure to not make signs that denigrated the opponents.  I’d appreciate it if the new-wave protestors did the same.  Protest the policies, please.

Some asides–I note that in all the pictures I’ve seen (Flickr, blogs, etc.) I have seen a noticeable dearth of people of color, remarkable considering where some of these protests were held (D.C.?  Atlanta? Memphis?).  Folks…yeah, I know you’ll say I’m “playing the color card”…but Jeez Louise, it’s pretty hard to miss, kinda like the National Republican Convention was.  Just sayin’…The folks in Oceanside actually purchased real bags of loose-leaf tea and dumped them into the ocean.  Woot!  Now that’s authenticity!…I liked the folks whose signs indicated that it was both Democrats and Republicans who have voted for the bailouts.

While I recuperate from the dread Wading Through Of Documents for the taxes (only to discover that this year we made out better with the standard deduction!), compose a mental post about Empowerment and another about tea parties, I have been reading blogs and what-not.  On one of those blogs, SciCurious’s Neurotopia, I encountered a music video that made me remember that I have been collecting science rap and pop music videos.  What better time to dump them all on you at once than now?

I do this for your own good, so that you can learn obscure scientific trivia the same way I did when I was young…I still remember the difference between a meteor and a meteorite from this:

A shooting star is not a star
It’s not a star at all
A shooting star’s a meteor
That’s heading for a fall

A shooting star is not a star
Why does it shine so bright?
The friction as it falls through air
Produces heat and light

A shooting star, or meteor
Whichever name you like
The minute it comes down to Earth
It’s called a meteorite

Alas, the friction part is apparently a fiction; the latest explanation is that it is the shock-wave compression of the air in the atmosphere that causes the heating and light.

So, without further ado, let us explore the wonderful world of modern science music.

First up–The awesome rap “Regulatin’ Genes”, complete with subtitles, which teaches you all about HOX genes:

Regulatin’ Genes is the product of a Stanford biology instructor; read about it here.

Next up, mathematics–Harm N Phirm talkin’ ’bout Pi.  If you listen to it often enough, it is rumored you will learn Pi to 200 decimal places:

This is supposed to be a parody of Kate Bush’s song p. 

We move on to the world of high-energy physics, with the “Large Hadron Rap”:

Yeah, it’s a little long, but, hey, this is high-energy physics we’re talking ’bout here.  It takes a while to get into all the nuances; remember, folks study for years to understand this stuff!

My next three are produced by manufacturers of biological scientific equipment that happen to be corporate possessors of a sense of humor.  First, a soulful rendition of “The PCR Song”, from Bio-Rad:

I particularly like the guy who sounds like Bob Dylan…Alas, I can’t figure out whether these are real scientists or not; I think so, but am not sure.

Then we’ve got “It’s Called The EpiMotion”, a paean to avoiding carpal tunnel syndrome while using pipettes to do…well, whatever you need to use thousands of pipettes for…from Eppendorf:

To wrap things up, another entry from Bio-Rad, a lovely take-off of The Village People’s YMCA, “GTCA”:

I hope you’ve enjoyed this foray into –>SCIENCE!!!<– as much as I did.

I am no longer “forty-mumble” years old.  Today I hit the official half-century mark.

I can remember years ago, when I hit twenty-five, having a phone conversation with my dad.  I told him I didn’t feel like it was possible that I was twenty-five.  At the time, it seemed “old”…He told me that he couldn’t imagine being in his fifties, and that all the time he felt like he was still in his 20s or 30s.  Now I know how he felt.

What has gone on in those years?

In no real particular order:  Sputnik.  The JFK assassination.  Martin Luther King Jr. being shot.  The Civil Rights movement.  The Apollo program and the moon landing.  The Summer of Love.  Riots.  Woodstock.  Kent State.  Watergate.  Gas lines.  Jimmy Carter sitting in the White House wearing a cardigan sweater.  Huge computer rooms filled with spinning tapes morphing into 8-1/4″ floppy drives morphing into boxy 10-MB hard drives morphing into the first Apples and PCs morphing into desktops and laptops and netbooks; cabling turning into wi-fi.  IBM Selectrics being perfected and then *poof* disappearing into the mists of time.  Reagan being shot.  The first shuttle take-off and landing.  Saturday Night Live.  The Iran hostage crisis.  Northwestern University, Loyola University, community college in Arizona, California State University.  The Blue Angels performing in Chicago, and San Francisco.  Three loves and one husband.  MTV.  A shuttle exploding.  Another shuttle exploding.  The Loma Prieta earthquake.  The Oakland Firestorm.  Usenet.  Mosaic.  Netscape Navigator.  The Internet.  Bulletin boards.  YouTube, Twitter, blogs.  The dot-com crash.  Bush I.  Dubya.  Clinton.  9/11.  Weddings.  Births.  Funerals.  Amazon.com.  Chicago, Arizona, the Bay Area, Lubbock, Arizona, Alaska.  The invention of in-vitro fertilization.  The Beatles, the Who, Jefferson Starship.  Heavy metal.  Punk.  Rap.  Hip-hop.  Grunge.  Us trying IVF.  Adoption from Korea fading, adoption from China growing.  Us adopting from China.  Gay rights.  The first black president of the U.S.  The Segway.  Hybrid automobiles.  Hubble telescope.  Katrina.  Glasses, contacts, LASIK.  Mini skirts, maxi skirts, the Marcia Brady look, tunic sweaters with legwarmers and straight-leg jeans.  Star Wars.  Cell phones as a status symbol turning into cell phones in the grocery store checkout line.  Mix tapes turning into Walkmen turning into iPods.  Sushi, tapas bars, Pop-Tarts and GoGurt.  The Food Network, Bobby Flay, Rachel Ray.  Congresscritters Twittering.  Three hundred and forty four extra-solar planets known so far.

It’s a weird, wonderful world.  I wonder what the next 50 years will bring?

My mom blasted me with a series of “happy birthday” YouTubes in my email today.  She was born shortly after TV was invented.  I have a seven-year-old; who knows what she will see in the years to come?

Fifty years ago, a long-distance phone call was expensive.  Yesterday, I was able to share a scary moment with friends across the world, and they were able to reply to me in seconds, minutes, hours. 

Dudes.  What is with our culture?!  Seriously.  Isn’t it good enough to be invited to participate in the state science fair?  Does every damned thing kids participate in require that every tender ego be protected from negative vibes?

All the kids at the State Science Fair got “participant” ribbons and a certificate.

Ah, well, it’s all for the chiiiiillllldrrrruuuuunnnn.  We must spare them any and all psychic harm, dontchaknow?

Bah.

That said…OmegaDotter came home with an official second-place ribbon, and we’re as pleased as punch with that.

The venue was a brand-new middle school in Big City.  A really pretty brand-new school.  With two art studios!  And a dance studio!  And an atrium filled with dangling glass mosaics in rainbow colors!  Holy cow, it looked like the set from High School Musical–there were balconies and swathes of glass and the principal’s office was a two-story high-ceilinged affair!  Man, we felt like we were in Swank City while we were there.

Friday evening was filled with standing in lines.  There was the line to check in to get a project number.  There was the “media release” line.  There was the line for the free T-shirt.  There was the line to pay for registration.  There was the line for the judging information and time selection for judging (for elementary students–older students had to be there for a full four hours).  There was the line for the FAQs (really–why on earth didn’t they just hand it out with the project number?!).  There was the line for the Safety Check, which in essence said that if you brought anything that could possibly, in any way, harm someone by giving them a boo-boo, it was out.  THEN, when all those lines were visited (older students also had the line-to-submit-abstracts and the line-for-human-research-protocol-checks), then you could visit the line where they told you where to put the project.

But even with all the lines, it only took us an hour.  Then we went off to dinner at a local Korean restaurant, overate, and went home, to return again this a.m.

These are the hanging mosaics at Very Bright Shiny New Middle School:

This was part of the scene in the gymnasium where the exhibits were displayed:

OmegaDotter talking with the judge.  We had walked her through various questions and answers beforehand, but were not allowed to be anywhere near her during the judging.  The gymnasium had an upper-level track around the periphery, so we went up there and spied from above.  Yes, it’s a bad picture; I zoomed too far and things pixilated.

Madame Scientista posing in front of her project:

One of the middle schoolers on the other side of the gymnasium also had a dissolving-egg-shells project; theirs was much more complex and involved measuring the thickness of the egg shells using calipers after four days of immersion, and they used Sprite instead of Dr Pepper and Pepsi.  The dotter was very interested in seeing their project, and they had to ask her if she bounced the nekkid eggs–which, of course, we had done.

Then we had five hours to kill before we could pick up the projects, so we drove down the coast of the inlet to Ski Resort Town, which we had never visited before.  I was astonished at how much snow they got there; OmegaDad kept telling me that this was the Rain Shadow Effect In Action.  Thank you very much, Herr Professor My Love!

We were intrigued by the effect of tides on ice in the inlet; there were many small iceberg-lets stranded on the mudflats at high tide, and the ice was not a solid sheet, but carved into canyons and mesas by the action of the tides (we assume).  Nothing like the ice on Lake Michigan in winter, which I remember very distinctly as a solid mass, with excellent frozen wave action on the edges (no waves in the inlet, so none of that here).

As we drove back, there was this large grey cloud to our left.  OmegaDad and I kept eyeing it, and we finally decided it must be an ash cloud from the volcano.  Note the brownish tinge to the bottom of the cloud layer at the top of the image below:

When we arrived home and checked the Alaska Volcano Observatory, sure enough, there had been yet another eruption (another day, another eruption; this is becoming almost routine by now), with an ash fall advisory in Big City.  Another eruption occurred after we got home, and this time the ash fall advisory is right here in Suburban Alaska.  So OmegaDad is outside taping up the cracks around the chicken coop.  Ah, life in Alaska…

As an aside:  last year, there were pictures of way kewl lightning around the eruption of Chaiten volcano in Chile.  Tonight, I am able to provide links to similar pictures of our very own volcano!

Oh, and greetings to any Mudflatters who are visiting.  Look around, kick the tires, see if you want to stay a while!

In the midst of a whole slew of things I’d like to write about (hoping that my brain-to-typing-fingers connection reanimates itself sometime), today’s is The New Dora.

Crash course:  Dora–to those not in the know, aka “non-parents”–is a bilingual first-grader/kindergardener who lives in the jungles of Costa Rica, wears orange shorts and a magic backpack (and, of course, the omnipresent PINK top), has a monkey as a pet, and encounters a variety of adventures.  She climbs, she swims, she hikes, she boats, she uses a map and compass–she’s an outdoorsy kinda gal.  Not my most favorite of TV characters, to be sure, but she’s not yet another girly-girl with floofy clothes and high heels.

So–Mattel has purchased the rights to market The New Dora, and Nickelodeon will create a show for The New Dora.  The New Dora is supposedly a middle-schooler aimed at tweens.  All well and good; corporations will be corporations, and, hey, having captured fifty kazillion preschoolers through first- or second-graders (though the latter is doubtful, as the dotter has taken to calling Dora “for babies” lately), they want to hold onto those kiddies as their purchasing power starts growing.

In an act of super-coyness, the two companies released a silhouette of The New Dora, who features long, flowing hair (rather than Dora’s current bob), a short skirt (rather than shorts), and ballet slipper-like shoes (rather than sneakers).  No backpack, and probably no monkey, either.  No more jungles of Costa Rica–she’s moved to the big city.  She likes shopping and jewelry.  Oh, and technology.  Sort of tacked onto the description…

Le shit has hit le fan in mommyblogs the blogosphere (As Liana so rightly points out, “mommybloggers” is a pretty stereotypical label, and I apologize!).  Grumps about sexualization and what-not–all of which I tend to agree with–plus a petition to Mattel and Nickelodeon to back down, mofos!

On the other hand, we have two women scientistas, Dr. Isis and Sheril Kirshenbaum over at ScienceBlogs, who look at it in a different way:  This doll is saying (they say) that smart can equal pretty!

The problem I have with that is that the description of The New Dora doesn’t sound like the “smart” is what’s being emphasized; what’s being emphasized is Yet More Expansive Consumer Goods, with (as mentioned above) the “technology” being added as an afterthought.  Note that “technology” does not necessarily equal science, nor does it necessarily equal exploration, nor does it necessarily equal adventure.

Sure:  Smart can equal pretty!  Woohoo!  Some of us do wish this particular meme made it out into the general pop-culture consciousness.

But.  Dayum, does that new silhouette make me think of all those movies where the “smart girl” is suddenly seen as attractive because she takes off her glasses and pulls her hair out of the ever-present businesslike ponytail.  *Poof*!  As soon as the glasses come off, and the hair comes down, whammo-blammo, the “smart girl” is wearing eye shadow, lipstick, and sexy clothes, her popularity soars through the roof…

…and, very often, the “smart” side of her vanishes into the woodwork.

It’s not offering a new option to the girls out there.  It’s not being accepting of who they are, really.  It’s saying–in a sneaky way that passes right by the dewy-eyed interest of tween girls–that to be accepted, you have to look pretty and tone down your smarts. (But, of course, not too pretty, or too mature, as Dr. Isis points out, because then you’ve crossed The Line and are now a target for being called “easy”.)

Look, there are oodles of shows and dolls and what-not aimed at getting girls to buy clothing and jewelry and makeup and accessories and “look pretty”.  There are not oodles of shows and dolls and what-not aimed at letting girls be not interested in those things.  I was a geeky, awkward teen.  I wasn’t interested in that stuff.  I was interested in Star Trek.  And science fiction books.  And writing.  And geometry.  And history.  Trust me–there wasn’t anything out there in pop-culture land that matched my image of myself.  And prior to that, in what is now called “tween”age, what I was interested in was playing cops and robbers and Good Guys and Bad Guys and hanging out at the playground with buddies and going to camp and stuff like that.

‘Course, I’m not sure anything in pop-culture land would have interested me, but it might have been nice to have a TV show that featured a girl who wasn’t into those things.

Dunno.  I’m sure my dotter (suddenly into flippy short skorts) would love The New Dora.  But as a mother, I’d like to aim her at other things, other shows, that don’t emphasize the outside so much and do emphasize other things.

(Various notes:  Pretzel made a joke about how I’d soon be complaining about the moose eating our vegetables again.  As fate would have it, that very night we had a moose come dining at our perennial flower bed.  Har.  In the meantime, spring seems to be trying to spring here in Alaska; we have had two days of 40 degree weather.  Yay!  The snow is melting!  This is impacting the Iditarod race, because soft snow plus high temps equals bad mushing conditions.  Our doctor, Doc SledDog, is racing in the Iditarod this year, so I am [vaguely] keeping track.  All in all, things are looking up, except for my paycheck, which will be going down in two weeks, because my new, shorter, work hours started on Monday.)

My memory is not what it once was; this, alas, is the fate that awaits almost all.

To wit:  I chanced upon the film “Kindergarten Cop” at the local DVD-aria, in the “buy it cheap” bin.  I remembered it as being quite fun and cute, so purchased it.

The dotter pestered me to watch it this a.m., so we snuggled on the futon with the sun reflecting off the snow in the back yard into the family room, and turned on the DVD player.

Well.  Okay, then.  I remembered bits and pieces of it, all the ones with Arnie in the classroom.  What I should have remembered is that, even at his cutest and funnest, Arnie tends to have blood-and-guts movies with bad guys being beaten to smithereens in all sorts of odd places (such as a beauty salon).  That there are strung-out hookers and street sleazoids who use rather rank language.

So there we are, snuggled up, with “shit!”s and “asshole!”s and “motherfucker!”s being tossed hither and yon, OmegaMom wincing all the way and hoping its moving fast enough so the dotter doesn’t really catch them.  The dotter is requiring an ongoing explanation of the various shenanigans–who is doing what to whom and why–and producing a running commentary.  Then Arnie hits the classroom filled with 6-year-olds.

And the dotter turns to me with shocked eyes, and hisses at me, “Ooooh!  He used the ‘S-word’!”

I’m sitting there thinking to myself, “Shit!  Yes, he used the ‘S-word’ many, many times!  Damn!  She noticed!”

And she continues, sounding the forbidden phrase out: “Sh-uh-t uh-p!  We’re not allowed to use that in school!”

So there ya have it:  the various incarnations of the infamous Nine Words went right in one ear and out the other, but Arnie shouting–three times, very loudly!–”SHUT UP!” to the kiddies in his class roused the shocked Victorian in the dotter.

As an aside:  Really, I should remember for future reference that any Arnold Schwartzenegger movie is going to include blood, guts, gore, people being beaten, guns firing loudly, and, in this case, a terrorized mommy and child.  Um.  I did not win the Good Mommy award with this one; the dotter spent about ten minutes in my lap with a blanket over her head, asking when she could watch again.

Remember how OmegaDotter told me that as soon as I left for my vacation, she and OmegaDad were going to have a disco party?

Unbeknownst to me, OmegaDad was sent off by his mother, lo these many years ago when he was a teen, to actually learn to disco.

The things you find out about your spouse.  First I discover he knows all the words to a variety of Carpenter’s songs, then I am blindsided by the fact that he actually knows how to disco.

In addition, while I was on vacation, he shared this knowledge with the dotter, who has been happily disco-ing ever since.

So, since New Year’s Eve is traditionally a time to party, I decided to share OmegaDad and OmegaDotter disco-ing around the living room.  Please ignore the dawg; please disregard the large blank spaces on the walls; please do not worry:  the Christmas tree has not fallen down yet, nor has anyone been impaled by needles, nor have Christmas ornaments been demolished.

There is one spectacular cartwheel.

There is no sound track of OmegaMom snickering helplessly as she recorded this scene for posterity.

So this is my wish for you, my readers:  That your life may be filled with as many pleasant surprises as mine in 2009.  And that you PAR-TAY! for New Year’s Eve.

I am back in the snowy North, arriving back from the snowy Southwest.  But this doesn’t seem to be any different from the rest of the United States:  it’s snowy everywhere.

I haven’t felt like writing anything for a week now, and it doesn’t really seem likely to change soon.  So, in the meantime, herewith is the tale of the Gingerbread Inferno.

First, we have the original gingerbread house, GH v. 1.0:

There was more:  a sleigh…trees…decor on the door…a flagpole.  But, as I wrote before, OmegaDad forgot it was sitting in the oven awaiting finishing touches, and he torched the thing accidentally, leaving it looking–as he said–like a classic “home burnt in a California firestorm”:

The back wall had fallen.  The roof collapsed.  The peppermints had melted into puddles of goo.  The candy puffs outlining the walkway had puffed up, like Peeps in a microwave, rather than melting.  The M&Ms had split.  It was a sad, sad sight.

So OmegaDad and the dotter pulled themselves together, like all fire victims, and rebuilt:

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.  We are pulling together various gifties for the dotter and for each other, and having a marathon wrapping session.  There is Santa’s present to put together, too, which required just a wee foretaste of Things To Come…the dreaded wrangling the wrappings…as we decided to have a soft pony straddling the package since there was no room for it inside the box.  This required de-tangling the beast. 

I have written about packaging and Christmas before.

Suffice it to say that I think Amazon.com, Best Buy, Sony, and Microsoft are doing A Good, Good Thing in deciding to nix the ultra packaging in a “frustration-free packaging” initiative.  Woot!

More later, I promise.

I had promised GrannyJ that I would stop at Trader Joe’s on my way up to buy her some lemon-dill sauce and some tuna steaks.  I had a plan:  I would go to the TJ’s I know, at 99th and Thunderbird, then head on up the hill.  No problemo; the route was engrained in my head.  So I pulled out of the rental car complex and let my autopilot take over:  turn this way, turn that, get on I-17, drive, drive, drive, turn off on Thunderbird, drive, drive, drive.

I arrived at 99th and Thunderbird, and there was the familiar shape of the TJ’s mall.  But it looked different. Where were all the cars?  I turned across the intersection and pulled in, realizing, with a sinking feeling, that TJ’s was gone. Yes, I had the right spot:  there was the familiar shape of the TJ’s store front.  But where the “Trader Joe’s” sign had been there was only a fading memory burned into the creamy adobe by the sunlight, a dim shadow of where the letters had been.

Oops.

So I pulled into the Wells Fargo parking lot, pulled out the phone, called mom.  Sorry, I said.  I’ll be there in about an hour and a half.

I decided it would be fun to drive up 99th (the Lake Pleasant Road) up to the Carefree Highway, though I knew it would be painful.  The last time I had done the drive, the encroaching ticky-tacky boxes had been pushed further north, but surely there would still be some desert out there that I could drive through in the setting sun.

I drove up 99th, just getting into the swing of things, and was abruptly stopped at a T-intersection where 99th ended.  Before me was a mall, a swanky earth-colored eminence with neon lights advertising eateries and clothing stores.  The cross street was called “Lake Pleasant Parkway”.

Say what?!

I had to make a snap decision, and was not in the left-hand lanes…goodness only knows how things had changed further, and perhaps the better thing to do would be to just turn right, head back to I-17.

As I was driving the broad new parkway, expecting to head towards the highway, it started curving.  I noticed a cross street:  Beardsley.  Say what?!  That’s not right, I thought–doesn’t Beardsley intersect with the highway?  I kept on, but started looking ahead for cross-street signs.  And I realized that the setting sun was no longer behind me, but off to my right.

There ahead of me was Union Hills.  ACK!  Yes, I was right:  ”Lake Pleasant Parkway” had morphed from a possible intersection with the highway into something heading directly south–back the way I had come.  I turned on Union Hills, and saw that LPP had, at some point, turned into 83rd Avenue.

But despite this unexpected detour–which had taken an extra 30 minutes–I soon made it to the highway, and was motoring north through the edges of Phoenix…and passing yet another “Photo speed enforcement zone”.  They were littering the area on all the highways, and they were new.

I passed Deer Valley and hit construction:  a long, long passage of arrows pointing left, then pointing right, the highway lanes swinging this way and that, the Arizona Department of Transportation widening the highway and rerouting it.

I passed an intersection labeled “Jomax Road”.  Once, only 10 years ago, Jomax Road was a small dirt road that fed into 99th Avenue in the middle of the desert, a lonely sign on a 2-lane road, that led into an area of old 2-acre spreads with dowdy ranch houses.  Now, it was big enough to warrant an entrance to the interstate.

I passed the construction on the new, expanded interchange with Carefree Highway.  It was dark now.

The newness passed away; now I was on familiar ground.  Coming up on my bete noire, a development called Anthem.  Once upon a time, the road there was called Desert Foothills; now it was called Anthem Way.  Once upon a time, there had been a (for the desert) lush forest of palo verde trees, one of my most favorite spots to drive through in springtime, as the wildflowers carpeted the ground and the pale chartreuse leaves popped out on the trees.  When Del Webb came through and raped the desert to install its huge development out by New River, they made very sure to keep all the saguaro cacti–it was required by law.  But all the palo verde trees?  The thing that made that spot unique?  Poof.  Gone.  See, they weren’t required to do anything with them.  So they brought in their bulldozers and ripped them out of the ground to make way for hundreds of square adobe-colored McMansions.  McMansions purchased by people who wanted inexpensive housing near to Phoenix, out in the desert where the nights were an endless expanse of darkness filled with hundreds of stars.

Of course, now that those McMansions are there, with their associated street lights and porch lights and their carefully saved saguaros, the velvety nights with the tiara of brilliant stars are no more.

I’m sure the people who had lived in New River for years beforehand were pleased to have their night skies removed like that…

Most of the drive between Anthem and Prescott was the same, thank heavens.  Long sweeps of emptiness with a blob of lights around Black Canyon City, and scattered spots of light marking old houses out in the chapparal.  A small spot of newness at the entrance to Prescott, where ADOT is remodeling the old highway interchange, but not too much difference.

The past ten years have changed so much about this land I love.  The relentless expansion of Phoenix has chewed up an amazing amount of the desert, and it saddens me.  It especially saddens me to realize that–according to reports I have heard–many of those new houses, built to cash in on the real estate run-up of 1997-2006, are empty or on the verge of foreclosure.

Ah, well.  I am at mom’s house.  Her street is the same as it has been in the past ten years; the changes came here before that.  We spent yesterday visiting the local Gingerbread House Village, hanging out, and going out for dinner.  It’s quiet and relaxing, and I find I miss my dotter very, very much.

First, as requested by some of my commenters, a picture of the oh-so-cute itty-bitty Silkie eggs:

Of course, you can’t really tell how itty-bitty and cute they are; it’s the two light ones up top, and they are about half (or less) the size of the others.  We’re getting about one Silkie egg a day, and still four of the other girls’ eggs daily.

This actually has something to do with my title.  We are, it seems, right on the cutting edge of popular culture.  Once again, we have dipped into the Ur, the Jungian gestalt of the United States, by having chickens.

There is a “Chicken Underground” in Madison, Wisconsin.  There are urban coop-ists in New York City.  The website BackyardChickens.com logs 6 million page views per month and has more than 18,000 members in its forums.

Whocoodanode?

Of course, this is not cheap.  One thinks of chickens as cheap and easy, but, alas, they are not.  One can compare our coops and the dotter’s egg money similarly to, say, the U.S. agriculture system.  The government subsidizes the infrastructure (OmegaMom and OmegaDad purchase and build the coop).  The government subsidizes the ongoing process (OmegaDad visits the local feed store once every month to buy chicken feed and fluff).  In return, the farmer (that would be OmegaDotter) takes care of the livestock (with help from the gummint–a constant reminder to go out and check the chickens twice daily), cleans the coops (with intense help from the gummint), sells the eggs to neighbors, the government (Chez OmegaMom) and government-sponsored entities (that would be people like OmegaDad’s coworkers, who trade frozen fresh-caught halibut or salmon for a few dozen eggs).  In the end, everyone is happy and well-fed.

Right?

Anyway, to get a glimpse of this new underworld of chicken lovers, read up on “The Craze for Urban Chickens“.  I’m sure that it will be spreading even further, as people decide that keeping chickens and growing gardens helps in this dismal economy.

In the meantime, OmegaMom and OmegaDad can rest assured that, once again, they have their fingers firmly on the pulse of America.

(ETA:  This is just too cool.  You click and drag the big box of bars over the stripes to the left.  Do it slowly.  What do you see?  I just had to share it as quickly as possible!)

I’ve purchased the tickets, and will be off to visit GrannyJ for a week before Christmas.  This leaves poor OmegaDad holding the reins of the household (and OmegaDotter) whilst I am gone.  He, being a wimp when it comes to Causing The Dotter Emotional Distress, said I had to tell her I was going.

So on the way home from swimming the other day, I broached the subject.

It was not taken with Emotional Distress, oh no.

“Yay!  Daddy and I can do whatever we want while you’re gone!”

I winced inwardly, imagining returning to a home more like a tornado has gone through it than normal.

“And we can have a party!  A disco party!”

I do not know where that came from.  Har.

So Dr. FreeRide, over at Adventures in Ethics and Science, posted about The Typealyzer, which purports to take the URL of your blog and tell you what “type” (as in Myers-Briggs type) your blog is.

Let’s just gloss over the question of whether a piece of writing can have a Myers-Briggs type.  Ahem.

Anyway, here’s what The Typealyzer had to say about Omegamom.com:

ESTP - The Doers

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.
The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

My response?  Bahahahaha!  OMG.  I must use a totally different area of my brain when writing than when, say, living my life.  Every single time I take a Myers-Briggs assessment, I end up being typed as an INTP.  Every once in a while, since the dotter has entered my life, I type as an INFP.  (Oh, well, at least I got the TP out of it…)  This is so far off from my own personality type that it’s like night and day, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

If you have a blog, you must run it through this little black box, and come back to tell me what “type” your blog is, and whether it is as far off from your “type” as this one is for me.  I’ve just gotta know!

Just think what the people 40 years ago, funded by DARPA, looking at a new way to (a) protect communication in the face of a nuclear strike and (b) share research quickly, would think of if they looked at the ‘tubes of today.  I’m sure they would have never conceived of a world where people could buy just about whatever they wanted without leaving their computer, or the way that the music industry has been rocked to its core.

Definitely, they would never have envisioned the lively political debate that it has fostered.

Oh!  Did someone say “political debate”?! 

And I’m sure those intrepid internet pioneers would never have considered a world where such joys as this are available:

I do.  I truly do luuurve Teh Intarwebs.  They rawk!

Remember how I asked here whether Obama is supposed to be the anti-Christ, because some folks were giving us rally-ers the devil’s horn, as opposed to the finger?

Well, apparently I’m just a sweet, innocent naif from Alaska, wide-eyed and gobsmacked, because, yes, Virginia, there are folks who think Obama is the anti-Christ and that’s why they’re not going to vote for him.

Really and truly.

I was whacked by a 2×4 alongside the head with this realization when reading a 400+ comment thread on A Little Bit Pregnant.  One commenter flat-out said she wasn’t voting for Obama because he fit all the characteristics of the anti-Christ, and another one said she was pretty sure she was voting for McCain because she was merely worried that Obama might be the anti-Christ.

Setting aside the whole question of “OMG so you really believe this stuff?!”, I find myself puzzled by this approach.

Surely, if you think Obama is the anti-Christ, then you’re likely to be a person who believes in the End Times, in the Rapture wherein all good and righteous folk will be sucked up into Heaven to sit on the right-hand side of the lord, complete with halo and harp.  And you’re likely to believe that this is preceded by the second coming of Christ, which is preceded by the rise of the anti-Christ.

So wouldn’t it be logical to, say, vote for Obama in that case?  Wouldn’t that be hastening the aforementioned series of events?  Like, almost guaranteeing it?  Sing hosanna, vote Obama, get me to the Rapture on time?

(OmegaDad, when I broached this thought to him, told me that maybe these people secretly aren’t sure they’re going to be sucked up into Heaven come the Rapture, and that’s why they don’t want to vote for him.

Hmm.  This is always possible.)

Moving on:  No doubt someone will tell me that the reason for not voting for the anti-Christ is that the rise of the anti-Christ is supposed to be a time of terrible turmoil and misery for the world, and that no-one with a kind heart would want that to happen.  But…but…I thought all of that is gonna happen anyway in that world view, no matter what you do.  One way or another, the whole row of dominoes is supposed to fall; it’s all predestined.  So surely the faster it’s done, the less turmoil and tribulation, the quicker the Rapture?

I can’t wrap my head around this stuff.  I really can’t.  Here we are, living in an amazing world filled with man-made miracles, living lives of ease due to technological advances, a world where people are taking photographs of the further ends of space and the amazing intricacies of microscopic things on our own world, where people are living longer lives through the application of science, where practically every single instant of our days is touched, in some way, by science, technology, or the rational thought process…

…and there are still people out there who (first off) really, truly believe that there is such a thing as the anti-Christ, and (secondly) really, truly believe that Obama is him.  When I come across people like this, I think to myself (and come mighty darned close to saying out loud, or typing out), “You are just bat-shit crazy.”  Whoops!  There goes any pretense to tolerance I have.  Sorry…but there it is.

It’s a Bizarro World, indeed.

Do you ever have those moments of total paranoia?  The kind where you’re sure everyone else has telepathy but you, and you just know they’re laughing at you and pitying you?  Or where you finally settle down to sleep for the night and then all the dogs in the neighborhood start barking, very loudly, for a long, long time, and you’re sure that Someone Is Out To Get You?

You don’t?

Oh.

It’s just me, then?

Oh.

Well, yeah, sure, I knew that all along; I was just joshin’ witya, y’know?

Ahem.

Anyway, one of my ongoing paranoiac sureties in life is that when I have a Great Idea, somehow or other I am really subconsciously broadcasting it nonstop over the Jungian undermind.  That’s why, when I started plotting a really way kewl science-fiction-y novel based on the idea of a previously unknown disease spreading like wildfire through the industrialized modern world, bringing it to its knees, six months later that very same novel came out and raced up to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.  And my idea for a totally useful and helpful device for the kitchen (which I can’t remember now), which showed up at our local fancy kitchen store six months later…

Well, now it’s time for yet another one of my ideas–my abso-damn-lutely fine ideas–to be stolen by someone else via that pesky Jungian overmind.  Or undermind.  Or whatever it is.

For years, I’ve had a fantasy of owning a store, a very specialized sort of store.  One with one large room separated into four bays.  Targets at one end.  A table or rack at the other end, laden with cheap old dishes, china, and crockery purchased at the local Goodwill or Salvation Army.  One with an entrance at which I would stand by the cash register, ready to take money and hand out safety goggles and industrial-strength earmuffs to deaden the noise and direct the customers to one of the four bays.  My customers would be able to pay me…oh, I dunno, say $20?…and then spend the next half-hour enthusiastically working off all their angst and fury by throwing the dishes as hard as they could at the target at the other end of their selected bay.

I thought it was a winner.

Well, so did Sarah Lavely.

Ooooooh!  I so know she’s just been dipping into that under/overmind, looking for the Right Idea, and my idea was floating around there and she found it and she stole it, dammit!

Grrrr.

One of these days…one of these days, I’ll actually use one of my very own ideas, and be rich, I tell you, rich!

Bwahahaha!

(OmegaMom shuffles off into the distance with an Igor-like crouch, rubbing her hands and cackling about how she’ll take care of those people who steal all her ideas, yes she will.)

In my previous post, I deliberately left out a rumor that had been sweeping the internet, that Palin’s fifth child was actually her eldest daughter’s child.  First off, I don’t like repeating unsubstantiated rumors, and secondly–well, whoo boy, some of the “reasoning” that went on was just silly.

For instance, she didn’t look pregnant, and all women who are on their fifth pregnancy look much more pregnant than their first, and here’s a picture of her with her first, where she’s all blown up like a balloon, and no-one knew she was pregnant until she announced it in her 7th month.

Obviously, the people who used that as reasoning have never been around a woman who has gotten pregnant more than once–or else they have, and they assume that all women follow exactly the same pattern as the woman/women they have known.  Palin had her first child when she was a stay-at-home mom-to-be.  Now she’s a high-powered go-getter who likes to run.  I know someone who “likes to run” who was pregnant with twins, who didn’t look pregnant at all until she was in her 7th month.

Then there’s the “44-year-old women don’t get pregnant accidentally” commentary.  This was bolstered with deep discussion about the success rates for IVF for women in their 40s.

Excuse me while I howl with laughter at that one.  Haven’t these people ever heard of “oops babies” or “menopause babies”?  And applying statistics on IVF success rates for infertile women to a woman who had already had four children and is obviously fertile as all get out is…um…let me put this gently…stupid as hell.

What about the “Mat-Su Regional Medical Center’s baby nursery web page doesn’t show Trig Palin being born on that day!” excuse.  Somehow, the nursery web page is supposed to be equivalent to official hospital records.  ::blink::  The last I had heard, those nursery web pages were strictly a voluntary thing on the part of the parents.

We’ve got the “no woman in her right mind would get on an airplane to fly eight hours when she was leaking amniotic fluid!  She would have checked into the nearest hospital!”  Maybe, maybe not.  Maybe she’s not a panicky person?  Maybe she actually (gasp!) called her OB and (gasp!) asked what to do and was reassured that things would no doubt hold until she made it…home.  Yes, amazingly enough, she may have wanted to give birth at the hospital she was familiar with, with the doctor she was familiar with, surrounded by her family?  The birthing fascists are particularly appalled at this one, pointing the finger of judgmental disapproval at her for risking the life and health of her baaaaaybeee.  Wondering just how dire “leaking amniotic fluid” is, I approached Teh Mighty Google.  And nowhere did I see “OMG, get to a doctor right away, an eight-hour airplane flight is bad bad news, your baby may die!”  In fact, a lot of the websites I found said, “First, find out if it is amniotic fluid” and “it can be because of a small tear in the sac that can heal or it could be pre-term labor” and “then your doctor or midwife can help you decide what to do, depending on how premature your child is…”

My assumption:  She checked with her doctor, her doctor told her given the circumstances she could fly back home and s/he would see her the next day, and when she was seen, the doc said, looks like you’ve leaked a lot of fluid, and it’s probably best if you give birth today.

But, hey, that’s me.  It just amazes me that there’s a whole slew of women out there whose battle cry is “pregnancy is not a medical condition!” who seem to have gone bonkers at the mention that Sarah Palin was OMG leaking amniotic fluid and obviously she doesn’t have the judgement to become a vice president.  I would have thought that there’d be a whole slew of women who thought, “Hey, a mom who’s given birth four times, capable and competent, knows her body, knows how her body handles pregnancies, she and her doctor together think it’s okay to return home, way to go Sarah!”  Nope.

So I didn’t discuss that rumor. 

But this morning McCain and Palin decided to release the news that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant and getting married because that rumor was getting so much notice on the intertubes.  Sigh.  Yes, I do think that Bristol’s pregnancy is relevant given Palin’s policy of support for abstinence-only sex-education.  Yes, I do think that Bristol’s pregnancy is relevant given Palin’s policy of wanting abortions to be illegal.  Yes, part of me wonders if Bristol has actually been given a real choice–abort, adopt out, have the baby–or was told what to do.  I sorrow for the abrupt change from carefree teenager-hood to parenthood for her, but am sure that she’ll do just fine given the support of her family.  I’m glad that under current laws, Bristol has the choice, and I will do what I can to ensure that my own dotter, when she is 17, also has the choice should she be in that situation.

But y’know what?  There are plenty of other things about Palin that should concern people who are voting in this election.  I don’t think, frankly, that the state of her family is anyone’s business.  Let’s concentrate on the issues, people.  There are oodles of issues that the two campaigns differ widely on.  Let’s not get caught up in gossipy, judgmental finger-pointing.

This public service announcement brought to you by OmegaMom, She Of The Shiny Halo.