Reader Mail

I don't get a lot of comments, and I can't particularly complain - mostly I just like to babble and email the odd duck that shares my drinking habits. But I recieved what seems like a record number in the last day, so I shall address them here:

First, Kevin and Goon regarding Cindy Sheehan: it is possible to be glad you didn't meet the President in retrospect because you're aware of what a voice it's given you in shaping the lives of others. Most of the people in this world roll with what life gives them, and when it comes up roses despite the daisies they know enough to be thankful and hope that they can make an impact on the lives of others. As for horrible altar-boy, Eagle Scout raising, Marine-inducing mother Cindy Sheehan (so sayeth Jon Stewart), it doesn't matter whether I like her personally or not, I don't know her, but I can sympathize with her loss, I can still appreciate the impact she's having on dialogue about the war. I can appreciate the fact that she's raised awareness about a president who did refuse to meet with her (important things to do, like biking with Lance and playing his presidential guitar - and it's not like he has a good track record about being open, attending funerals, et al), and I can appreciate the parallels with our own MN State Senator Becky Lourey, who said:

"There is an isolation here of President Bush from the people," said Lourey, "(and)it seems to me as I am looking around that it is wrong, that a person who makes life and death decisions is insulated from the people who suffer the consequences of those decisions."

More than anything, I appreciate the fact that there is a segment of the population that doesn't think Cindy Sheehan should be talking at all and that she's doing a disservice to her son and to her country. I fully believe they're wrong.


As for nation building exercises, you won't actually get an argument out of me that reservists in the National Guard are more suited for nation building than full time soldiers - different set of skills, less likely to shoot, no arguments. You won't even get an argument out of me that nation building is inherently wrong. We have a long and illustrious history of nation building, and if you're completely against globalization to the point of isolationism maybe you have some issues with it, but it's been a much more constructive process than financially penalizing countries and beating on them again and again until you hope they learn a lesson. My argument, and this is only a tiny little piece of all of it, we'll just skip past WMDs and all that jazz, is that if you're going to send reservists and machinery to Iraq, and you know they're used to fight forest fires, flooding and other natural disasters, and in states with a high poverty level where local resources are not sufficient and national intervention is a necessity, perhaps it would behoove you to include some sort of provision for the reallocation of resources in your nation building plan to compensate for lack of resources domestically. There wasn't a good plan to get into a war. There weren't good contingency plans to handle the war, despite the fact that serious issues were already arising in "management" during Afghanistan. There weren't/aren't good plans to get Iraq out of the pacification stage into the self-management stage (at least not by the Administration). There aren't good plans to get us out (my local newspaper has engagement announcements that include, (I quote loosely) "will be married when back from his tour of Iraq in 2007). And there were even fewer plans to mitigate how it would affect us domestically. I like Francis Fukuyama's (subscriber link) quote in "Nation Building 101" in The Atlantic on the problem (though he uses one of my least favorite excuses, 9/11 changed everything - but at least he references Michael Ignatieff, one of my favorite sources for how human rights should be considered in the context of dystopic studies), that there was a:

"failure to develop contingency plans against the possibility that the Iraqi state would almost completely collapse"

at which point Fukuyama draws parallels between failed states, poverty and terrorism (among other issues).

Of course, if you really need to read about nation building, The Rand Organization has their whole study on line in PDF format, and Wikipedia has a brief little article detailing the history.

Some critics say Bush's zeal for running Iraq and transforming it into a democracy sounds just like the nation-building efforts he campaigned against. On Oct. 11, 2000, then-Texas Gov. Bush said: "I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean, we're going to have kind of a nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not." But yesterday White House press secretary Ari Fleischer proved the critics wrong once again. "During the campaign, the president did not express, as you put it, disdain for nation-building," he said. So there you have it." --Kamen, 02.28.03

National Day - Hari Merdeka

It's National Day in Malaysia, so if you happen to live near one of the few Malaysians that inhabit our state, give them a big hug and punch a Brit where they can see it (although I'm pretty certain they'd appreciate you punching either someone British or someone Japanese - the older the better).

In the spirit of Hari Merdeka, I offer a sampling from the New Strait Times' list of "48 Little known facts that add to the wonder of Malaysia":

1. Tunku Abdul Rahman first announced the date of Malaya’s Independence at Padang Pahlawan in Bandar Hilir, Malacca, on Feb 20, 1956.

4. "Tun" is the most senior federal title and there can be no more than 25 living recipients at any one time.

11. Kuala Kangsar district office is the site of the last surviving rubber tree from the original batch H.N. Ridley brought from London’s Kew Gardens in 1877.

18. The largest insect egg in Malaysia comes from the 15cm Malaysian stick insect (Heteropteryx dilitata), which lays eggs that measure 1.3cm, making them larger than a peanut.

31. Kota Baru was the landing point for the Japanese invasion of Malaya during World War II in 1941. Riding bicycles, Japanese soldiers took an amazing 45 days to reach Singapore.

36. Many global brands are produced in Malaysia, including Intel Pentium chips and Brooks Brothers’ shirts.

38. The spiritual pop group Raihan holds the record for the best-selling local album: 700,000 units of their Puji-Pujian album in 1996.

39. The longest King Cobra in the world, measuring 5.54m, was captured alive near Port Dickson in April 1937 but later grew to 5.71 metres in captivity in London Zoo.

45. The word ringgit means "jagged" in Malay, and originally referred to the serrated edges of Spanish silver dollars widely circulated in the region.

Cindy Sheehan and the Anishinabe

Well, the Anishinabe and my ancestors didn't exactly get along, but I have to give them props for this ceremony that recognizes Cindy Sheehan as a warrior (AP Photo/LM Otero) - a class act all the way. It's good to see that someone from Minnesota is making up for the reputation we squandered with that Time Magazine nonsense. And it's uplifting to see this acknowledgement of sacrifice and patriotism, this acknowledgement of what this woman's son meant to her, and this acknowledgement that questioning a war can be the act of a hero. It's just too bad it's not the guy biking at his ranch somewhere in the background making that acknowledgement.

Tea and Crumpets

Well, more like coffee and cookies. The Power Liberal and After School Snack each have posts out there today about how the homosexual-friendly left is oppressing the right with...snacks. It seems the Girl Scouts are tainting the wholesome image of their cookies by bringing in Dr. Johnnetta Cole and Kavita Ramdas (extra link) to speak at their national convention. The problem? "The choice of the first two speakers indicates that the Girl Scouts show no sign of slowing their plunge into hard-core feminism and political advocacy, at least at the national level." Plunge into political advocacy? I would hope so, particularly if they have Boy Scout equivalent badges like "Citizenship in the Community", "Citizenship in the Nation" and "Citizenship in the World". I'd hope they'd actually fulfill one of the requirements for the middle one by attending the convention and talking to two women that should be role models for anyone who calls themselves a concerned woman.

Starbucks is in trouble with the exact same organization (Concerned Women for America - that's right, they're wiki-able, you don't have to actually link to them) over their new marketing campaign, which puts quotes on their coffee cups where they can infect the minds of caffeine-addled Seattle liberals. It just so happens that one quote is by Armistead Maupin: "I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short." There are conservative quotes as well, if your coffee isn't bitter enough. Unfortunately, I only have a Caribou at hand in my company, so I'm going to have to write quotes on the outside of my own coffee cup. Fortunately, there are plenty of sources...

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision. ~Lynn Lavner

If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work: "Hello. Can't work today, still queer." ~Robin Tyler

We are not the first but I am sure we will not be the last. After us will come many other countries, driven, ladies and gentleman, by two unstoppable forces: freedom and equality ~ Jose Luis Rodrigueaz, Prime Minister of Spain (in a speech given after Spain legalized gay marriage)

It's not a forest fire

One of the first things I thought about when they activated the National Guard and started shipping them off to the Gulf again was "who's going to fight forest fires?" After all, the National Guard seems to be the de facto force involved whenever you see stories about Idaho and Montana beginning their semiannual charcoal festival. If you're a good libertarian, I guess this comes as an opportunity to get big government out of the picture and allow private companies to become involved in the process - but when your life is on the line, the price involved can start to really escalate for consumers (after all, consider private contractor trucking in Iraq - six figure salaries with few taxes aren't unheard of) and the result isn't private companies filling the gap, but counties and states that can't afford the services at all.

But are forest fires the only disasters states face? Obviously not. Swing State Project examines how the lack of vehicles and National Guard members is affecting Louisiana's ability to deal with Katrina: "JACKSON BARRACKS -- When members of the Louisiana National Guard left for Iraq in October, they took a lot equipment with them. Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators are now abroad..." It would be one thing if all the equipment was missing and that was the end of the issue, but the truth is, many of the members of the Louisiana National Guard are simply never coming home at all: "In no state have those deaths registered more than in Louisiana. Louisiana, along with New York, has lost more guardsmen and reservists - 23 as of July 24 - than any state in the nation..." It's really something when you have to wish your soldiers were here in the middle of a hurricane instead of Iraq because that's the hard place and not the rock.

A turd held up to the flickering bulb...Kinsey vs. The Cave

On Friday I left work a little early so Pooteewheet and I could tag team a movie. In the past, this has resulted in us seeing different movies on the same night which is a real problem because it means I can't talk to her about what she saw, she can't talk to me about what I saw, and we can't read each other's blogs until we've both seen the movie. This time I made up my mind that I was just going to see whatever it was she was going to see, regardless of the movie. She decided on The Cave. I had seen the reviews for The Cave and felt that they presaged something horrible in ways I couldn't quite define. Keep in mind that I'm willing to see almost any horror/scifi movie if there's a chance it will offer up a glimmer of originality, even if just for a moment. I mentally give them their own secondary rating system on Netflix, hence my friend Ming's scorn for my three-star rating of Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, given, a bad movie, but by snake movie standards, really rather run of the mill. I still felt that The Cave would be something special in terms of absolute levels of regurgitated crap, so I even stayed away from Rotten Tomatoes before I went, worrying that what I might see there would force me into a different decision. Then I got to the theater, and The Aristocrats was playing at exactly the same time, in the next screen, within visible distance, with a warning that it was to be treated as NC-17, and I knew it starred the oh so lusciously luscious Sarah Silverman...I literally stood there between the two entrances, stock still, my poor brain torn between what I knew I would love with every fiber of my being and this thing that I knew would suck beyond however low I could lower my expectations. In the end Pooteewheet won out, and I went to The Cave, just so I could talk to her about it later.

To make a long story short - when I got home, she told me that she was in no way going to The Cave. She'd read the reviews, and they were bad. Really bad. She was going to Red Eye instead. Sure, no Sarah Silverman, but I already noted once upon a blog that Rachel McAdams isn't my choice for least desirable actress in an Owen Wilson film. I was angry. Perhaps unreasonably so, although in me that generally is visible as just a general pissiness. But I've learned my lesson. When faced with Sarah Silverman or my wife, always choose Sarah Silverman. So...the question should now be, was The Cave really as bad as I'd expected. No. It was worse. And for the sake of comparison, I will contrast it with Kinsey, which I watched the night before.

Kinsey, acting: excellent, you believe Liam Neeson and Laura Linney are married and love each other, regardless of the travails and strains upon their marriage. They communicate that there are serious issues, but that those are opportunities to expand and strengthen their marriage and their relationship. You see the love and the humor between two people who are always learning about each other. The interaction between these two actors was perhaps the most endearing thing about the movie. Strong performances by all supporting actors.

The Cave, acting: there wasn't any - unless you count having your breasts flaunted for the sake of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation acting (and I know some of you do). It was hard to tell supporting actors from the leads.

Kinsey, humor: I laughed. I laughed loud enough that Pooteewheet heard me upstairs and later asked me what I was laughing about. I couldn't remember the specific item, because I laughed at so much.

The Cave, humor: not even inadvertent, this is so stupid it's funny moments.

Kinsey, locale: University, with excellent, exceptional, local color provided by Oliver Platt as the University head who is goofy, but obviously supportive of the income, the research, and the social benefits Kinsey was providing, as well as of the man himself.

The Cave, locale: cave diving is kewl, it's so f*ing kewl, it's so kewl we'll make 96% of the damn movie about floating around an underwater cave with a big flashlight. If you don't think it's kewl, you will once there are rapids and equipment with lithium batteries that can explode in ways that would put a car fire to shame. Did we say rapids....oh yeah, rapids and an f*ing waterfall...and the cave divers will ride it baby, ride it right down the rapids and over the edge...and a monster will follow them the whole way, a smart monster. Extreme!

Kinsey, what they thought was cool: a study of a man driven by his personal lusts and family history and methodology, partially through chance, who made some of the greatest changes to American culture in the last fifty years and gave us the gift of being able to not only talk about sex, but to actually know something about how human beings sexually interact, despite how society says they do and should act.

The Cave, what they thought was cool: the cave is like hell, it has levels - look how Dantesque we are, it's just like the inferno - ice regions, flaming regions, demons. Never mind that it's all BACKWARDS and the lowest level isn't the ice level, but the flame level. Never mind that they don't do anything with the ice level at all other than make it slippery. Could a creature that uses echolocation actually see through ice? Possibly, might be neat if it did. Does it in the movie. No. But look, the aliens from Alien...um, cave creatures...are scary. No, they're not. Cave diving is kewl. Did we mention knights used to fight the critters? That's manly, and historic, and might be why there are stories about hell, because there's methane...hey, there's methane...m...e...t...h...a...n...e...you know, it blows up...it blows up? That'd be radical. Let's blow up the aliens...um...parasitical critters.

Kinsey, reviews: 88% on RottenTomatoes, 92% cream of the crop. We see such fare as "Intelligent, probing portrait of the man who stuck a needed thumb into the eye of a narrow-minded public.", "It's partly a scientific brief, partly a song of sex, and it's enormously enjoyable." and "The strength of Kinsey is finally in the clarity it brings to its title character. It is fascinating to meet a complete original, a person of intelligence and extremes."

The Cave, reviews: 17% on RottenTomatoes, 0% cream of the crop. Yes, 0%. No one with any clout liked it. No one. And we see such raves as: "A turd held up to the flickering bulb of the projector would be a marked improvement.", "The Cave isn't just a bad movie, it's a very, very, very bad movie, so bad that it can't even redeem itself by turning into high camp." and "Ten things I learned watching The Cave. 1. 'Beneath heaven lies hell. Beneath hell lies the cave.' 2. Beneath that lies the theater showing The Cave." (kudos to Colin Covert from the Minneapolis Star-Trib, and empathy because he had to watch it).

Kinsey, the ending: talking about sex is still controversial in many ways. We hope you learned something about Kinsey and about sex and about people.

The Cave, the ending: so predictable I wanted to scream at the screen. It wants out. It wants out. IT WANTS OUT! What, when everyone split up, the "lead" female was infected? What? Really. But she's beautiful. I hope this means a sequel where she has sex with men and either infects them or kills them.

Natsuo Kirino's "Out"

Out of all possible places, I first read a review of this book in The Onion and decided it might be enjoyable to read, despite that fact that I pretty much stay as far from mystery novels as possible, with the exception of the odd Brother Cadfael book. I am an Uncle Hugo's patron, while not simultaneously being an Uncle Edgar's patron. I was expecting something like Audition, almost more of a horror novel than a mystery novel, and in some ways the book fit that bill with its focus on dismemberment, but that certainly wasn't the thrust of the novel. The point wasn't even so much the mystery. Rather, it was more a novel about the effects of consumer culture and immigration and gender politics on Japanese society (among many things) and thus, more of a study in sociology. There didn't actually seem to be any sort of mystery at all, though in that respect I'm probably showing my mystery novel preconceptions/prejudices - it read more like a true crime novel with in depth probing of the characters involved, primarily four women working the night shift box lunch line and exhibiting different aspects of commercial interaction with the (Japanese) world and the men around them: coworkers, husbands, sons, criminals. The murder and the dismemberment that marks the beginning of the book becomes nothing more than a forgotten catalyst that forces the women into changing the dull routine they've embraced as a way to hide from a life that constricts them in so many ways. I did find the idea that the main character would share the darkest characteristics of the serial killer in the novel rather off putting - but it's supposed to be. She is a woman rejecting Japanese traditions. First cooking, then her job, then her husband and son, then her entire country, until her life has become something alien. I guess I should just be happy that she didn't become a serial killer herself - a predictability I think I'd have expected in an American book. But this book could have been about American culture almost as much as it was about Japanese culture - a look at how women, poor women, struggle against odds that are stacked against them in any way they can, filling whatever economic niche is available, regardless of how repellant, if it gives them personal and economic freedom.

Dystopic Blogging

I had never seen this bit of prose before it showed up in my Harper's. I'm slightly obsessed with dystopic literature, so this was really something of a delight, being an even shorter treatment of dystopia than The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

After the uprising of the 17th of June

The Secretary of the Writers' Union

Had leaflets distributed in the

Stalinallee

Stating that the people

Had forfeited the confidence of the

government

And could win it back only

By redoubled efforts. Would it not be

easier

In that case for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?

-Bertolt Brecht

Fair Blogging 2005

The Wege seems to hate Fair blogging. But some of us have a blog that's only partially politics and mostly other crap. Mine falls firmly into that other crap category. I long ago came to the realization that I'm not likely to become a full time political blogger (or political anything), I'm just not the type to up and quit my job in search of something supremely fulfilling - this means that traffic to my site to read about politics is correspondingly lower than searching for things like "breast squeezing" and "+cute +Eryn +Fair". I put far more stock in the hope that given the people I know might come to read about my family issues/events, my sometimes book reviews, and whatever else tends to bubble to the top of my head, if I drop the infrequent to frequent political turd in the middle of pictures of friends and family at the Fair and chili festivals, they might rethink an issue upon which they disagree with me, or at least be introduced to something new.

On to the cute kid pictures at the Minnesota State Fair 2005. Before we really get going - this is not a fair picture - it's Eryn at one of the local parks - a park that's over 2 miles uphill from my house (a little downhill too, but 2 miles+ of uphill). Tugging a Burley and 40# child to that park was some work. Note that she's not afraid of the mean dinosaur - her horrible ordeal at Wall Drug is behind her now.


We went to the Fair on Saturday with my friend Kyle and my father, John. We met my ex-coworker Mike there as well as TallBrad, who really seems to be everywhere I turn lately. I was denied the ability to use my coupons for both a huge pancake (it was "after breakfast") and toy Bobcat - my biggest complaints. We met John at the spire/needle, as we were sure he could find it. That meant that Eryn and I both got to take advantage of the free stuff at The City Pages booth. I got a Saw II t-shirt I probably won't wear in public, and Eryn got a "Free" button that fully incorporated her into the marketing ethos that pervades much of the Fair.


We hit the usual things kids want to do at the Fair. The kids farmer area where Eryn did some farming:


and rode a tractor powered the old-fashioned way.


But she also rode a real tractor with Grandpa:

And a snowmobile with mom.


We took Eryn's piture in her usual spot at the Fair - the same sign she stands in front of every year (at least for three so far). You know the routine if you have kids - try to get a picture of them in front of the same object every year so you can do a series of portraits that shows them growing. Ours happens to be in the very furtherest corner of the grounds - back by the vetinary area. This was the first year where she didn't have to sit in a stroller.


And she rode the rides at the Kidway. The bee was a hit, as was the big tugboat that whipped around. Eryn is over 36" tall, so supposedly she can ride most of these all by herself, which might be a good idea considering the tugboat made me a little queasy at first.


Kyle was at the Kidway as well. He was happy to see me. From the looks of him, he's happy to see everyone. That's 18" of corndog he's sporting. Sure, it wasn't the largest corndog we saw at the fair, or even the most unique way of eating one, but he is two-handed. Robert Fitzgerald's booth is right next to the Kidway. I've never seen a woman look so bored and thoroughly tired of carousel music as the woman staffing his booth. I went over to say "howdy" and mention Robert had gone to the same school as a coworker and chat her up a bit - she looked like she needed the stimulation.

The Fair was filthy with Guidant employees. My father-in-law works there, so we made sure to snap a few pictures for forms' sake - a montage if you will.


Eryn was staring to fall asleep before we left - her belly heavy with chipwich. But when we got to the animals she perked up a bit - she was excited about the sheep and pigs and bunnies this year. She was a bit surprised when this pig squirted a stream of water at her.


Finally, although she still doesn't like him, Eryn seems to have conquered much of her fear of "Steve Boston", alias Stone Cold Steve Austin. She was convinced this was him, and when we left wanted to go back and stare at him some more.

Tesseracts and n +1

Mean Mr. Mustard and I had a discussion the other morning about tesseracts. Originally, I was talking about the local private school, but Mr. Mustard noted that it was used in a bit of science fiction. I ventured Dr.Who. He was pretty sure it was A Wrinkle in Time. We seem both to be correct. Strangely enough, the word popped up in the book I read this weekend, Alastair Reynolds' Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days. Unfortunately, even though it contained two novellas, giving it a two-for-the-price-of-one chance to be pretty good - it was the least interesting of any of his books so far. The first novella, "Diamond Dogs", was pretty much a rehash of Cube 2: Hypercube, and Reynolds goes so far as to make his characters actually dream about that movie (piped into their dreams) on their way to confront an alien puzzle artifact. The story is less about the puzzle artifact and more about the lengths people will go through to solve a puzzle - but that angle just doesn't lift it above what seems to be a fairly "dangerous game" motif. The second novella, "Turquoise Days", is more fully a Revelation Space novella (the universe his other, better, books are set in - most of them in the tradition of grand space opera), taking place on a Juggler world - oceanic worlds where the vegetative ocean life serves as a sort of giant database of the minds of those who have immersed themselves in its waters. While it might serve to shed a bit more light on The Jugglers for those who have read his other books, it just wasn't a very interesting standalone story.

So, book review aside, where were we? Tesseracts. Four dimensional cubes. In "Diamond Dogs", one of the puzzles is to pick which object is not the shadow thrown by a lightsource in proximity to a tesseract. Apparently you need to know about mathematical nets to really get the hang of this. The idea of a tesseract is pretty straight forward - just think of a cube, now think of it sort of moving, through time (for instance, time isn't the only fourth dimension you could use) - you sort of get a "tunnel" of cubes. There's your tesseract. If that's not enough hyperobject for you, you can move on to any of the more complex hypershapes or polychorons (four-dimensional polytopes). This will lead you to the following, many of which don't even get their own wikipedia page:

• pentachoron (with 5 tetrahedral cells) (also called a "4-simplex")
• tesseract (with 8 cubic cells) (also called a "hypercube")
• hexadecachoron (with 16 tetrahedral cells)
• icositetrachoron (with 24 octahedral cells)
• hecatonicosachoron (with 120 dodecahedral cells)
• hexacosichoron (with 600 tetrahedral cells)
• faceted hexacosichoron (also called icosahedral hecatonicosachoron)
• great hecatonicosachoron
• grand hecatonicosachoron
• small stellated hecatonicosachoron
• great grand hecatonicosachoron
• great stellated hecatonicosachoron
• grand stellated hecatonicosachoron
• great faceted hexacosichoron
• grand hexacosichoron
• great grand stellated hecatonicosachoron

I'm going to use that last one for my CDFFL name next year. So. This sort of leads me back to a tour of our computing facilities for my company we had the other day where they explained that the basic approach to redundancy in most systems is "n+1" (you can see my correlation, as tesseracts are just n+1 versions of cubes). Figure out how many of something you need, and add one. Follow this advice for power supplies, backup systems, generators, everything. Thinking in an extra dimension is imperative. Mormons and TallBrad both take this advice to heart (Brad doesn't like to see just one girl kissing - he's all about great grand stellated femalekissingchorons). Presumably, this means that when they can, they'll add fourth dimension redundancy to our computing facilities, and Dr. Who or Mrs. Whatsit will suddenly appear in the middle of our facilities - I hope I'm on the tour that day.

Human Zoo

This is so absolutely wrong - which I assume is why my sister, LissyJo, sent it to me. This picture is from a Yahoo article about a "Human Zoo" in London. See the guy in the lower right corner, no shirt, having nits picked off his back? That's a dead ringer for my brother, The Drewster. I didn't even realize he was on vacation.

Update: Found another picture. Oh yeah, could definitely be my brother - standing up - in the speedo with the leaves attached.

Not About Baseball

I paid $5 to get half a day of work off to go the Twins/White Sox game today at noon. Work was willing to give me the half day if I was willing to buy my own ticket. I was more than willing. I bundled myself up and parked my car over at Fort Snelling only to find that a.) 10,000 other people were boarding the train at the Mall two stops before me and taking up all available space and b.) several thousand more were boarding at the Fort Snelling Park and Ride and trying to fit into the three leftover spots not really available on each car. The fact that I had to wait in line behind a guy for over ten minutes while he had his kids feed $10 in quarters into the boarding pass machine, until I finally gave up and went and found the six-hour ticket booth, might have been bareable had I known I'd be waiting through three trains for one that had wedging room. But my time was not wasted. A nice old gentleman sat down next to me and began to tell me stories about being a writer and going to watch the Millers play with his wife for the ticket price of $1 when he was in grad school. I really wanted to listen to him, I really did - I like interesting people - but he was spraying residual food from his mouth onto me the whole time. Not flecks, mind you, but little pieces of chewed food that caught in my arm and leg hairs. I had to bury myself in the SCORM documentation I had with me until he finally ignored me, sometime after a thesis about how Silva's feet hurt.

The game itself - extra innings - we lost - but fun - I've never sat in the sixth row.

However, when I went to avail myself of the trough in the men's room, I ended up right next to a poster for Kids n' Kinship. What struck me was that there wasn't any sort of affiliation listed on the poster, it cast itself as pretty much a big brother-type program. If you look at their core values at their website, they don't have any affiliation either - you have to go to their PDF under "Our Christian Mentoring Heritage". There you can see that they're gospel-centered Lutheran seminarians. Not that I have a problem with Lutheran Seminarians -- particularly if they're actually helping inner city kids and doing positive social work (and McKnight and several other organizations believe they do) -- unless they're trying to outreach to me personally, I was just very surprised not to see the religious affiliation prominently listed. However, I must admit that the terms "Kinswomen", "Kinsmen", "Kinship" and "Kinfamily" are really creepy in a Klan sort of way, particularly as they postdate the Klan, the Kingdom Oil link that references them is disturbing for its blend of prayer intercession and strategic giving, and their partnering with my school district and city ("Admission is $5 per person. You must have a photo ID to enter. Proceeds to benefit Kids-N-Kinship. More... City of Eagan © 2004."), considering the religious affiliation, is rather peculiar. I hope the lack of a blatant affiliation means they're no longer religious-oriented and not preaching, though the Kingdom Oil link seems strange if that's the case. Heads up for my friend Erik - they also have their roots in Fergus Falls.

Witness to Barbarism

I notice, per my last post, that there's a link to Horace Hansen's book and website, Witness to Barbarism. Who knew that the chief prosecutor at Dachau lived in North Oaks and had such an interesting life. Sure, probably everyone with a knowledge of Minnesota history outside high school social studies where they only taught you how to define "travois" - but not me. I've always been partial to the idea that being a citizen of Minnesota should entitle you to a free "Our History" newsletter that details interesting people and places in Minnesota - they could just provide you an extra bin for recycling your junk mail and reprint it on that - heck, charge for profit bulk mailers and extra hundredth of a cent and you could probably fund the whole thing.

Jack and Rochelle Sutin

Recently, while out at the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, I noticed a link in the narratives area for Jack and Rochelle Sutin. Larry, their son (pretty obvious in this picture), was my oftentimes professor and thesis advisor (I turned in a Master's thesis on dystopias with three of my own for good measure) for my writing degree in the Hamline MALS program. Larry wrote a memoir about his parents' lives: Jack and Rochelle : A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance that's exceptional, and I was disappointed when I couldn't make the stage version which was playing at the beginning of the year at the Stages Theatre in Hopkins. The narrative at CHGS isn't very long, but there are numerous pictures (1,2,3) - so many more than were in the book - most from right after the war (Julius/Jack and Rochelle were partisans). I thought this "1947 New Year Card from Survivor" was particularly interesting.

"Jack and Rochelle Sutin survived in the Byelorussia forests as partisans, fighting through World War II and avoiding the fate of other Jews from their homeland, Poland. They fought in a detachment under General Zorin. After the war, they were repatriated to Poland but left Poland after pogroms (attacks) against Jews who had returned. The most infamous was the Kielce Program of July 4, 1946. Jews who left Poland sought to get into the American Occupation Zone of Germany, or the British Zone. The Sutins wound up in Neu-Freimann, a DP (Displaced Persons) Camp. While they awaited visas to the United States, Jack became a photographer for the camp newspaper. These photos are from his private collection and show life in the DP camp after the war. A larger collection of original works have been donated to the photography archive at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington."

There are many more pictures and narratives from others at the site in addition to the Sutins' - it's really worth a few hours digging around.

One More Post

One more, then I'm off to watch Kinsey (88% RT) - and speaking of movies, if you've never seen Fitzcarraldo (with Klaus Kinski - 83% RT), you're missing a very strange and entertaining evening.

MNSpeak sent me "Today's Talk" and in Today's Misc. Links, they included this bit:
EnchantedHighway.net: Only in North Dakota. Here are just a few pictures from our trip to Montana and South Dakota two weeks ago (below) - look a bit like what you find at the link? Personally, we thought it was a trick to get us back into the boondocks to shop at a town we really had no desire to shop at (sort of like an off-highway Wall Drug), so we didn't follow the art to its conclusion.

The Wege's Boobs and Breeding

I really enjoy The Wege, in part because he delivers so much content there's just bound to be something I want to read. But there's a method to his madness (and I'm sure it lies somewhere betwen heart number one and heart number two of a bottle of Bell's), and when he leads with something like this under the title "Boobs and Breeding", and then follows it up with a bit about Randy Kelly, you know he's really working that Shakespearian double meaning. Actually, this is one of my favorite posts in a long time because he does a great job of aggregating one of arguments I put before female coworkers who tell me they vote Republican - being antichoice isn't just about abortion.

"I think that one of the most long-lasting effects of this administration (along with fiscal policy that would shame any banana republic, war everlasting, and global environmental destruction) will be its backwards steps on women’s fundamental rights. From John Roberts’ increasing obvious animosity toward women to the declaration that women’s social rights aren’t critical to democracy to backwards steps on forced pregnancy to the willingness to draw Nazi analogies to those who express concern about women’s health to the vanishing record of women in the workplace to a military medical plan that will pay for breast enhancements but not for the termination of a doomed pregnancy, it’s clear that these people are some really strange, fucked up folk who value the gals only for boobs and breeding."

But Do They Sell a Big Gulp?

My friends Tall Brad and Mean Mr. Mustard were both on vacation last week. Mean Mr. Mustard partied the you-pee and Tall Brad rubbed elbows with rock stars (Bob Schneider - whose CD is actually sitting in front of my computer downstairs) in Breckenridge, Colorado. Actually, Tall Brad would have to stoop to rub elbows with most of humanity - so maybe he just elbowed Bob in the head. Hope it doesn't affect his music. I have pilfered two photos from Tall Brad's pictures as he doesn't have a blog of his own. Item one, a picture Tall Brad took on vacation that he thought I would find very funny.

Item two - a picture I had Pooteewheet take in South Dakota the week before because I thought my friends might find it amusing.


Can I pick my friends, or what?

And item three - an A & W Sign Tall Brad saw on vacation. I don't know about you, but I find myself extremely unlikely to discover Jesus at the bottom of a root beer (or orange) float - though my pareidolia does extend to clocks and grilled cheese sandwiches, among other things. If you're not familiar with Isaiah 53, by the way: "And God so loved root beer floats and Coney Cheese Dogs, that he did send his only son, Jesus, down to fetch him some as he had the wicked munchies. "

Japanese Lantern Festival

On Sunday, Pooteewheet, Eryn, my friend Kyle and I all wandered over to the Como Park Japanese Lantern Festival. It's fairly easy to sum it up: drums...too far away. dancing...too far away. Japanese gardens...too many people, a long line, so too far away. Martial arts display...too close because it was boring. Kite lady...too close, though I wasn't there to hear her tirade about how all the festival goers were in the way of her demonstration. Actual Japanese lanterns...too far away. Windy. Cold. However, Eryn felt it was perfect weather for a snowcone and was ecstatic about her very first ride on a school bus - so maybe it was all a matter of perspective. I'm pretty sure it would be a great festival if the number of people at the festival actually fit comfortably within the space allowed for the festival - but then that's my experience with most festivals in Minnesota - Bockfest, The James Page Blubber Run, et al - there are so many people you a.) can't get your beer, b.) can't get your beer, c.) can't get your beer, d.) can't slosh your beer without getting it on someone and e.) can't see anything the festival is remotely about except for the beer you can't get to.

However, Kyle did have some interesting stories about the NowThen Threshing (i.e Tractor) Show and exploding steam-driven tractors (stories told to him about exploding tractors, not the actual witnessing of exploding tractors) - and though it may sound as if I'm joking - honestly, way more interesting to me than the Japanese Lantern Festival, and based on his observations/stories, a festival that might not have annoyed me with its sheer press of humanity. So, in Kyle's honor, I have recreated his experience at the NowThen Threshing Show. See - fun!

Consider the Dwarves

For those of you with too much interest in Lord of the Rings, perhaps you should consider switching to Ásatrú (where you can worship Norse Æsir and Vanir) as your religion of choice. Radical Religion in America has some sound advice should you pursue this change of deities:

"A primary goal of ritual, of course, is to remagicalize the world. James Chisholm offers an unexcelled example of this in his utilization of the Lay of Alvis as source text for a series of blessings (worship rituals) and workings (magical acts) centered on the dwarves, whose aid can be secured in various tasks and whose happiness and good will one would want to assure in any case." (76).

Abu Ghraib revisited

Holy Hannah is this depressing. I blog more about religion than politics lately because religion, well, it has a touch of the absurd. Hearing about this stuff makes me want to vomit. Hearing about anyone defending it in any manner whatsover...my head pretty much shuts down and tells me that it doesn't want to deal with the fact that there are people in the world who might be up to this shit, let alone people in my country, in my military, defending my values, who might be up to this shit. Shit.

"What should the government do about the hidden Abu Ghraib photos and videos?

What is in them? The Congressmen who were allowed to see them last year emerge ashen-faced and talked of unspeakable horrors. Seymour Hersh has reported that they contain images of young boys being sodomized."

Lowest Point in My Life

(CNN) -- A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state's presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "the lowest point" in his life.

You know - I think I'd have to say the lowest point in my life was when I got so drunk drinking chocolate chips in a plastic glass of Miller over a game of Shogun with the Cassano boys, that I couldn't remember hitting on Donna B. until she was so pissed she stalked off, leaving me to crawl around an upstairs hallway while my friends ran interference because I was a unholy nuisance - and the next day I was taunted by my friend's hungover 30-some year old uncle who kept twirling a ball of tinfoil in front of me trying to get me to hurl, and when I finally sobered up enough that I could actually eat some food at Perkins, the waitress on duty looked at me with a concerned look and noted, "I heard about you last night." However, I have to admit - it's better than Col. Lawrence Wilkerson's worst moment.

What Other People Take for a Given (sort of my daily post about religion)

I don't particularly recommend Radical Religion in American: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah to anyone looking for a light read. More than anything it reads like a PhD thesis, although the use of "!" in various places would indicate a very forgiving doctoral advisor/committee. But his encompassing thesis regarding the Children of Noah, various groups on the radical right, and a look at how watchdog groups both monitor and shape other groups (perhaps the most interesting ideas he presents), are very interesting. There are a few surprising bits of information that were new to me that are worth sharing. In this post I'd like to address "The Vision of Washington." This isn't a vision of the state of Washington, nor a vision of Washington, D.C., but rather a vision of Washington the President and a vision by Washington the President if you believe he appeared to a revolutionary war solider in a dream with an apocalyptic warning, like some strange Virgil in Dante's Divine Comedy. The best summary of the actual dream can be found at Snopes, but I'll regurgitate and summarize based on Snopes and Radical Religion. Actually, why not quote - it's easier. Keep in mind, the point here is that there is a segment of society that believes not only that this is fact, but that it is such incontrovertible fact that it can be quoted to support portions of the Bible.

"Perhaps no better example of the process by which a specific doctrine is offered to the Identity community by a particular leader, considered through the diverse world of the Identity faithful, and then either rejected or forgotten or accepted as dogma can be given than the strange case of George Washington's prophetic vision for America. Washington's vision came to be widely accepted, an unquestioned tenet of belief among Identity adherents, only after a complex process of selection, hermeneutics, and dissemination. The actual origin of the story is impossible to reconstruct. According to the tale itself, the vision was related by one Anthony Sherman to Wesley Bradshaw on 4 July 1859. Mr. Sherman was at the time 99 years old—the precice age of Abraham when God bestowed upon him the Covenant in Gen. 17--and in 1777 was with George Washington at Valley Forge. The vision itself took the form of a dream, which Washington described to Sherman. In highly allusive language, Washington recounted that a singularly beautiful female came to him in his sleep, and addressing him as 'Son of the Republic,' guided him through a
series of apocalyptic visions whose central motif involved the American republic engulfed in the tribulations of war and famine. The cause of these fearful scenes was suggested by 'a shadowy angel,' who placed a trumpet to his mouth and blew three distinct blasts; and taking water form the ocean, he sprinkled it upon Europe, Asia and Africa.' From these continents arose a black and terrible cloud, which settled to earth and resolved into armed men 'who moving with the cloud, marched by land and sailed by sea to America, which...was enveloped by the volume of the cloud.' America is fated to survive this tribulation, according to the vision, only so long as the Republic keeps faith in God, the land, and the union." (p. 52-3)

Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It's not relevant.

Claim: Former First Lady Barbara Bush said of the war in Iraq: "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

Status: True.

Of course, with caveats...go read Snopes, the Wege does.

THEM: Adventures with Extremists

While on vacation I read THEM: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson. I picked it up while looking for another book in the same section at the library, and it wasn’t until I was several dozen pages into it that I realized I had seen most of the content on television under the guise of Ronson’s documentary “Secret Rulers of the World”, which he did for Channel 4. Trio (TV), before my DirectTV dropped them, used to show all sorts of weird shows you couldn’t find anywhere else, and this was one of them – so as I read the book, I was actually having flashbacks to Ronson being tailed by the Bilderberg Group and the Bohemian Grove ceremony he was detailing. If you get a choice (between the series or the book), watch the series – it follows the book almost exactly and some of the visuals can’t be captured adequately in words.

Ronson is more of a humorist than anything else, and this makes the book, for all its content about fringe groups, self-proclaimed messiahs, the New World Order, and Satanic conspiracies, very light reading. He does a deft job of capturing the humanity of the people he interviews and in many cases you find yourself liking them, or at least liking their likeability despite their paranoia, racism and outright insanity. It takes a deft pen to apply that insight into people with whom Ronson himself generally does not feel comfortable.

Two of the things I learned while reading Them:

1. Extremist humor just isn’t that funny:

“Omar paused. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘the Koran even tells me which direction I must break wind in.’
There was a short silence.
‘And which direction do you break wind in?’ I asked.
‘The direction of the nonbeliever!’ Omar said.
‘Ha ha ha! The direction of the nonbeliever!’ Omar laughed heartily for some time and slapped me on the back.” (31).

2. KKK members now primarily wear cotton robes because silk robes have to go to the dry cleaners where minority drycleaners have a habit of losing them. There are several pages in Them where KKK members actually exchange fashion and washing tips (196-97).

Lance and George

You know - if Sheryl Crow were riding with them while wearing her MoveOn.org shirt, it might be worth watching.

"President Bush 's planned bike-off with Lance Armstrong tomorrow will be filmed exclusively by the Discovery Channel, sponsor of Armstrong's team. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the blowout -- er, bike ride -- will be closed to the media and a photo will be released."

Washington Post, by way of Wonkette

Amazon Reviews

Harriet Klausner on Amazon has writen 9608 book reviews (oop, 9615, she's up since last time I checked, two days ago), making her the most prolific reviewer on the system. I have read approximately 360 books in the last eleven (11) years. At my rate, it would take me somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 years to catch up with her record. I have my suspicions that Harriet is either a dummy account for autoposting summaries or a group of people who are willing to read almost anything as the last few reviews include a "fantastic teen amateur sleuth tale", a "spellbinding paranormal police procedural", a "deep character study of a Nazi butcher ", and a "fine Americana historical Christian tale".

Tax Songs (in case you filed an extension)

Paul L. Caron, over at TaxProf Blog recently had two posts up about tax songs - songs especially poignant for those lonely nights studying tax law, or doing your taxes, when you need a bit of theme music.

TaxProf links to Taxes Are Best When You Pay Nothing at All and Nickel Creek performing The Tax Man. But if you know a lawyer who lives for the law, you don't have to stop there. In the course of my work, I've been treated to two other tunes, "The Judge Song" and "I'm Billing Time", performed by the Bar & Grill Singers. You can listen to samples of many of their songs at their site and might be surprised to find they're really very melodious and enjoyable.

"The Bar & Grill Singers, all of whom are practicing attorneys in Austin, Texas, have entertained lawyers and non-lawyers since their 1991 debut in a one-performance musical revue. Now appearing year-round across the nation, the Singers spoof themselves and their profession with clever lyrics set to a variety of musical styles. They needle everything and everyone around the law, including clients, billing practices, legal ethics, bored jurors, and (gasp!) federal judges."

A Dose of Humor

Looks like David Neiwert over at Orcinus is moving away from journalism and into science fiction. Actually, it looks like he's having a bit of disturbing fun running with Rush Limbaugh's recent statement:

"Wouldn't it be great if anybody who speaks out against this country, to kick them out of the country? Anybody that threatens this country, kick 'em out.
We'd get rid of Michael Moore, we'd get rid of half the Democratic Party if we would just import that law. That would be fabulous. The Supreme Court ought to look into this. Absolutely brilliant idea out there."

and extrapolating out a declaration of liberal exclusion/unpatriation by the "Master of All Megadittoes".

For a more direct sort of humor that has only a slight moralizing about human nature within, check out Jack Handey's recent piece in the New Yorker, "What I'd Say to the Martians". When I got to the line, "You say your civilization is more advanced than ours. But who is really the more “civilized” one? You, standing there watching this cage? Or me, with my pants down, trying to urinate on you?", I felt as though it was a piece that might speak to my friend Klund.

Sit in the Corner

I' ve been posting a few things about Terry Pratchett books I've read lately - so for any Terry Pratchett fans who find their way here, I thought I'd include an author-related post from Boing Boing, pilfered in its entirety.

---

Cory Doctorow: Here's Terry Pratchett commenting on the Canadian court order forbidding customers of a book-store who got the new Harry Potter a few days early from discussing or even reading the book:

Now that the bound proof copies of _Thud!_ are out, and will no doubt be winging their way to an e-bay near you, I would like to say that ANYONE WHO READS A WORD OF IT before publication day will be MADE TO SIT IN THE CORNER and their ENTIRE COUNTRY will be given DOUBLE DETENTION until every single person SAYS SORRY!!!!! Link (via MiniLinks)

Ride of the Mergansers II - Free at the Walker

My friend Steve recently told me that his documentary, Ride of the Mergansers, will be showing at The Walker on Saturday, November 5th, for free (family film weekend). At that rate, even Klund can afford to take his family. I wonder if ducks are funnier drunk.

I don't see it listed on the Walker Calendar yet - but it's easy to watch for (rss and iCal) and I'll post a time if I find one.

Also, the Como Park Japanese Lantern Festival is coming up on August 21st - $5/person or $10/household and "Free parking at Bandana Square on Energy Park Drive with a free shuttle bus to and from the festival." Tall Brad loves the Japanese drums, so if you see a 6'8" guy wandering about, ask him if he's Tall Brad the blog star - he loves attention.

Sans Photo - Interior, SD

Sometimes, even when you have a camera available, you fail to take a picture of the things that most deserve a picture. It must be something you train yourself to do by incessantly carrying and using your camera at all times. During our recent vacation in South Dakota, we faced the prospect of a $250 hotel room because of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Deciding to travel further afield for cheaper digs, we contacted a motel in Interior, SD, right on the edge of the Badlands National Park. That hotel was full of bikers, but they have a cozy little network in Interior, and they just called around and found us an open room at the Badlands Inn. Our expectations were exceedingly low, so we were pleasantly surprised with the wonderful staff, the nice digs (not great digs, but two beds, clean, air conditioning, and nicer than some of the more expensive places we stayed), and the fact that it was a bit quieter than the Sturgis area proper.

However, before we got to the motel, we drove around town for a while first - and I use town in the loosest sense of the word. There were three hotels and a cafe/gift shop just inside the park, but the town of Interior itself is about a dozen severely dilapidated trailer homes, bleached by the sun and covered in thirty years of Badlands dirt, and a run down building or two that might be general goods or might be car repair - it's hard to tell just looking at the shop and/or yard. There was one other stand out building, the local bar - a small, dingy hut with windows so dirty you couldn't see in, just a general glow from inside, two obviously drunk, laughing Mexicans outside (could have been Hispanic Americans - difficult to say, and we didn't ask them), and the cause of their laughter - an older, slightly swaybacked, longhorn steer tied to a post by its reins, a saddle slung across its back. Based on the laughter and based on a gut perception that the cow wasn't just simply tied up there by the owner as a joke, Pooteewheet and I had to agree that it really looked as though someone had ridden a saddled, longhorn steer to the bar for a drink. Some people just won't let their spouse hiding the keys keep them down.

Not Quite the Same as Leaving a Cave

City Pages' Culture to Go has a short bit about the Jesus Video Project America's goal to put a copy of the movie Jesus in everyone's mailbox by 2040. It doesn't seem a heavenly inspired move to follow the lead of AOL/TimeWarner's saturation strategy, given their lackluster performance - and it seems even less likely that the phrase "saturation evangelism" will become the next great buzz phrase (the whole trend of mixing free market economics and religion gives me something of a headache), although receiving a random, watered-down call to faith does seem to fit right in with current trends (albeit in the UK).

"...the number of people who have a real faith is now smaller than the number of people who passively "belong" to a religion. That undermines a cherished tenet of churches in Britain: that many people implicitly "believe" even if they don't explicitly belong."

On a positive note, there's a good chance, based on the mobility of American households, that it'll be the people who owned the house before you, and the people you sold your last house to, that will get the copies of the video instead of you.

Mean Mr. Mustard and His Phallic Compensation

I missed this post on Planet Dan about a Cornell study that concluded, "Men who feel anxious about their masculinity are more likely to support war, buy SUVs and be hostile to gays..." Obviousness aside, one of my friends/coworkers drives a nice little pink, maybe purple, RAV with a no war in Iraq sticker on the mud flap and (at least previously) a kid's seat in the back, an example of which you can find here, at Kelly's website about crafting and antiquing (you can also see her kitties). I think Cornell needs to qualify their study with the words "large", "manly", "at least six cylinders" or some sort of cc qualifier before "SUV" lest I believe that's all the compensation Mr. Mustard can muster.

By the way, a shout out to the Mustard as he's on vacation this week, effectively putting me one car length closer to the front door each workday. It's like he left just for me.

G.W. Bush, Terry Pratchett, and a Wooden Horse

Did I mention Terry Pratchett might be using the Oxter English Dictionary to use words that provide no possible web-based method of verifying? Words related to the construction of models, like:

foryphy
smaradgine
skelsa
delphinet
shode

I'm not even sure he spelled smardgine correctly - as the closest thing I can find is smaragdine - of or relating to the color of emeralds. Keep that one handy for the New York Times crossword puzzle. And shode, well, he says a carefully worked model of a boat is inlaid with it, but it seems to mean waste/rubbish stone. So he's actually using those words to hide a joke. Bastard probably thinks he's funny.

That aside, Pyramids has been one of Pratchett's better Discworld books so far. I would have never thought that mocking Pharaohnic culture would be such rich and fertile literary ground. Portraying an "Egyptian" burial model maker as a geekboy living with his mother and obsessing on his boat models like some Star Wars fanatic - brilliant, right down to the mania for scales (the 1/80th kind, not the weighing kind). I thought the ending was a little soft, but overall it was extremely funny, and though written in 1989, still managed to make pointed fun of George W. Bush:

"It was that bloody wooden cow or whatever," said Xeno. "They've never forgiven us for it."

"If we don't attack them, they'll attack us first," said Ibid.

"S'right," said Xeno, "So we'd better retaliate before they have a chance to strike." (p. 215)

Barrel Roll

Don't let anyone tell you different - once you're in your mid-30s, doing a barrel/log roll down a large hill has the potential to make you violently ill, even if your daughter does think it’s pretty funny.

I notice I haven't been blogging much in the way of politics lately - but I was on vacation and moving air hockey tables. I shall endeavour to get something up along with a few book reviews I've been meaning to get to all weekend, Scout's Honor.

No Like Him

My daughter has a new enemy - Stone Cold Steve Austin. My brother, for some unknown reason, saw a Steve Austin straw "cup" on the way to Montana, and thought of me - not because I like wrestling or something apropos, just because. And Eryn absolutely hates it - she covers her face, runs for the corner and announces, "No like him!"

Doctor Doom (courtesy of Burger King happy meals), however, is just peachy, and two Doctor Dooms, well, they fight for a while, and then kiss and make up - which is way better than the movie.

South Dakota Vacation II - the Stupid Stuff

Elise might like to know that we all went to Reptile Gardens. I don't recommend going there if you haven't been - it's just not that exciting for $11/person. The alligator/snake guy was wonderful - he gave a pretty good show - but I don't know what birds had to do with any of it, other than that they eat snakes, and the "trained animal" show was horrifying in a beyond-kitsch sort of way. But they did have an interesting selection of animals and this one might interest Elise the most. I didn't take a picture of it, because it didn't seem to be in its cage - it was probably running around loose somewhere, paralyzing the staff and laying eggs on them.

We also saw this preserved stickbug from Malaysia. Every time I hear a story out of Malaysia it's about scorpions, boas in outhouses, mean monkeys and other nasty critters. I don't think this bug, almost twice as long as my hand, makes it any more attactive as a vacation destination.

Did I mention that I'm one sexy mother-f-er? This sort of thing helps Mean Mr. Mustard because it means he doesn't have to bother with photoshopping.

We were pulled over at one point during our travels. But I felt pretty stupid when Pooteewheet forced me to pay the ticket.

And this picture, well, it's only for those who can appreciate it. I didn't go because I was worried I'd bump into a co-worker (not because I was worried I'd bump into Steve Perry).

Finally - Eryn really enjoyed Wall Drug, particularly the T-Rex that roared so loud that she sprinted down a hallway and cowered in the corner until Pooteewheet carried her out. We didn't make it to Deadwood (Deadwood being full of Sturgis bikers) to see the really loud gunfights Mr. Mustard warned me about, but this seemed to fill that void for Eryn. Later, at lunch, she scribbled out the t-rex on the menu, scrubbing him off the menu with her pen while leaving everything else alone. We're very proud to have given her perhaps her first serious psychological trauma. Here are three pictures of me at Wall Drug. The first, of me making a mockery of my own Oglala heritage.

Then me on a jackalope while Erwood is forced to await her turn:

and then me annoyed because they fenced off anything fun to touch/photograph on the 80' dinosaur at Wall Drug.

South Dakota Vacation I - the Stupid Stuff

Pooteewheet, Eryn and I spent a full week traveling to Montana to visit my grandmother for her 90th birthday, and then moseying back across South Dakota to see the sites. Before we left we must have mentioned to a dozen people that we were going to miss the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally by a week and not one of them bothered to inform us we were woefully wrong and would be in South Dakota for the opening week - I prefer to think that I don't regularly hang with motorcyclists rather than that my friends thought it was funny I'd end up in South Dakota during a week when every hotel within over one-hundred miles of Sturgis (literally) was either booked or going at the low low rate of $250 for a rather sub-to-standard room, gas prices were elevated by 10-20 cents, and the roar of bikes was everywhere (particularly at 6:00 a.m.). But lack of available hotel rooms aside, we did manage to have a very good time - hopping from Jamestown, to New Salem, to Sidney, to Devil's ("Debil's" according to Eryn) Tower, to Rapid City and Mount Rushmore ("the four faces"), to the Bad Lands, to Sioux Falls (um...yeah), and home, and the motorcycles actually added a bit of local color that we probably won't experience again. I'm pretty sure Pooteewheet will blog the happy family pictures, so I'm going to stick to the stupid pictures my friends (Mr. Mustard, Elise from After School Snack, Klund, Ming, TallBrad, ChristyTwoFist, TheHairySwede) and others might find amusing.

Item one - Mr. Hairy Swede, I have been to Fergus Falls, and it's not that exciting. However, I expect that this is where at least one member of Plissken learned his trade, or at least bought his first guitar and I must say, it's not really all that hip.


Item two - while preparing for Grandma's birthday party, we were required to load up the remnants of her old house into my father's pickup so that he could haul it to Minnesota and then to Arizona. We ended up doing it twice because an old oil lamp was packed with the oil intact, which pretty much meant it was inevitable that it would be spilled all over the back of the pickup, meaning we had to unpack, wipe down, and repack the truck. In the course of our packing, we packed this lovely painting that has hung in my grandmother's living room forever. Someday, I had hoped it might be mine, but my sister has beaten me to the punch, boldly writing her name on the back when she was just a kid so that we'd all know it would eventually be passed on to her.

Item three - Jamestown, South Dakota - where Eryn and I dealt up a few hands in honor of Tall Brad.

and then I did a few other things in honor of Tall Brad, like trying to prove I'm almost as tall as him (yeah, that's a really big ball on a really big buffalo).

We also toured the Jamestown historic village while checking out the giant buffalo. Football fans will be excited to know that Jim K. is from Jamestown and recently auctioned off a signed football to benefit the town - going price, $150. Angie Dickinson is also from Jamestown, and this is more interesting to me, because she went to school at Beach and was related to my aunt's first husband, meaning that within my extended family structure you can point at someone who slept with JFK. I've never seen her at a family reunion, but I'm sure it's because she was busy. Anyway, I did not realize that M. Night S. actually based his movie "The Village" on the Jamestown historic village, a fact Ming might be interested in - I captured this proof just for him.

While I was in Jamestown, I figured I might as well play cowboy.

There were more cows/buffalo to be seen, and in keeping with my habit of touching them in inappropriate places, I present the giant cow of New Salem.

Pyramids or Don't Spellcheck This Post

I know I said I wouldn't actually write a review of any of the Terry Pratchett books I'm reading lately, and I'm still not going to - but in his last few books I've noticed his tendency to use language that's beyond my ken. For a short while, I felt that perhaps that English degree and post-grad writing degree had been largely pointless, but then I began to do some research on the latest of the most currently confusing passage I'd read, from Pyramids.

Pratchett writes of the assassins in the assassins' guild, "...and were expected to dance well, and because well-cut black silk and long legs attracted a certain type of older woman, they'd whirled the night away through baubons, galliards and slow-stepping pavonines..." I understand "and" and "legs", but "baubons", "galliards" and "pavonines" are completely unfamiliar. So I went to the web. Galliards and pavonines were immediately forthcoming.

pav·o·nine adj.
Of or resembling a peacock.
Resembling a peacock's tail in color, design, or iridescence.

gal·liard n.
A spirited dance popular in France in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The triple-time music for this dance.
adj. Archaic Spirited; lively; gay.

But "baubon" was problematically elusive. The online dictionaries returned nothing and most of the Google hits fell into three distinct categories (I don't guarantee work-safety):

1. Dildo-related: "The Greeks also had specific words for a dildo (olisbos or baubon)."
2. Some sort of weird-ass collie (like the dog) porn: as in Nataline. Smooth and Rough Collies. Photoalbum. Paimio.
3. Italian on Italian (.it) sites I just simply don't understand, but which is probably related to #1.

Then I decided to concatenate "baubon" with the other dance-related words, and when I added "galliard", I got a hit referencing The Oxter English Dictionary. Wondering if I mistyped Oxford and have perhaps never heard of it? Apparently neither has anyone else who might write a review of it for Amazon - but I'm willing to bet 4:1 that Terry Pratchett has a copy of this "Uncommon Words Used By Uncommonly Good Writers" sitting on his shelf at home and that it possibly doesn't even come with a definition for "baubon", just a note that if you're referring to a dance, you should use the words "galliard", "baubon" and "pavonine". I had a professor once who told me good writers have good tools and this seems to be an exceptional case where you can actually trace specific writing back to the specific tool. Not that I'm calling Terry Pratchett a tool - I like his writing, and the new words he teaches me, even when I can't find them on the web.

Conservative Blog Taxonomy

This will probably be everywhere liberal, but it's wonderful - so I'm doing my part to spread it around a bit, particularly as it highlights the fact that our state has more than its share of right-leaning loudmouths. Fables of the Reconstruction (out of Philadelphia) has provided a handy Conservative Blog Taxonomy. I'm sure everyone will have their favorites, but I personally like:

4. Little Green Footballs - If LGF didn't exist, Dave Neiwert would have to invent it. Heady stuff for young rightwingers, like the Völkischer Beobachter was in the good old days. Site gives off a strong scent of roast pork.

Last Weekend - Sushi and Comedy

I left it up to Pooteewheet to blog about last weekend's sushi at Origami (the Wahoo was absolutely delicious) and our outing to see comedian Nick Swardson. So if you're interested in a sushi review, please redirect yourself. Her timing on the post was perfect, because she talks about her problem with the octopus balls a mere day before The Blotter (via Pharyngula) posted a link to a story about eating live octopus tentacles at The Prince in LA (Korean food, LissyJo - maybe we can have it next Thanksgiving!)

"This is an entity that does not want to be eaten alive, dead or otherwise.
This is, perhaps, even a thing that would happily take you down with it if it
were big enough. This food hates you and what you did to it! "