So... I dunno about cleaning - putting stuff away, dusting, scrubbing, mopping, etc. I mean, it's nice to live in a clean house where I can find things, because they've been put away where they belong, and there's not random crap all over the place. Okay. But then I ponder this: When I'm lying on my deathbed, am I going to be thinking "Gosh, I wish I'd spent more time cleaning?" Seems unlikely. Your thoughts are invited, though I probably won't get back to you on them until Monday-ish, give or take.

Also dusting can go to hell. As you can probably tell if you come over to my house.

I still suck at steering with my feet, though I think that just at the last moment I was starting to get it. Maybe. We'll see. Of course, by the time I get the chance to go again, I will probably have entirely forgotten it.

Also, I have to go easy on myself with the rest of it. This is only the second time I've done this. Everything is not going to be perfect the first time, and there is so very much to keep track of. I wish I could get my instructor to give me the same latitude.

He was described to me as "one of our most patient instructors," but so far, in fact, patience does not seem to be one of his virtues. For instance, at one point we're working on keeping it straight and level and any time there's the slightest deviation from that he's on me about "left wing is down" and you know what, I actually did notice that, I can tell that we're sliding off to the left a bit, give me three fuckin' seconds, will you? Yes I SEE IT. It's not that I don't see it. I'm trying to FIX IT. I haven't done this before. I'm just now LEARNING HOW to fix it. Give me a chance to do so. It's like being at a stoplight that just turned green and the dude behind you is on the horn faster than you can move your foot from the brake to the gas.

He is good about saying "well done," but you know, that's not where I need the encouragement. When I am doing it right, I know it and that's just good enough for me. I need him to say "okay, you're still learning, here's how you can improve that" instead of making me feel like I'm a moron for not already knowing how to fly a plane after 30 minutes of flying a plane. I'm already plenty good at doing that to myself, I need no further assistance. I don't think I'm being oversensitive, at least, I'm sure not trying to be, but man. The guy has just been on my ass the entire time.

As I understand it, my instructor is one of the newer instructors at this place. So possibly the flight school manager, who is a very friendly fellow, was wrong about my instructor's patience... or all the other instructors are total jerks. A slightly terrifying thought.

It is also just barely possible that I'm doing well, and he's on me so that I can be a better pilot, and perhaps kick him out of the cockpit and solo sooner (and thus save myself some money). That's a nice thought, but I honestly don't think it's the case.

For Mother's Day, I mostly wish I still had a mother.

But before we go diving too deep into that particular well of sadness, I should say that I am genuinely and truly happy that I still have a fantabulous stepmother, not to mention all kinds of awesome grandmothers (seriously, I've got like 4 of them and they all rule).

And that's not even counting this girl I know who is the mother of a kid who is currently taking up a room in my house. I am short one mom, but... there are still many mothers whom I love dearly.

Next year will be a bit easier, I hope.

Inpsired by seeing different versions of this in several places just recently.

Poll #1184263 Phat Beatz
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

If you were going to use text to represent techno music, how would you spell it?

Okay, other. Please don't bother with stuff like "I'd spell it suk suk suk," hur hur, now go away.

I got an e-mail in my Facebook inbox from one Narayan Khanna. No clue who that is, but here's the opening:

Wishing you a Life Filled with Inner Self Newness. As we Bravely Run towards the Finishing line of Life, we Forget to Remind each other of Our Virtues. Interestingly, The Divine Rationale Intellect Only sees Qualities and Teaches us to Let Go of our weaknesses. Out of My Respect for Humanity, Please Accept My Good Wishes...

And it goes on quite a bit in that vein, including such gems as

Your Beautiful Soul contains: A Happy Mind + A Knowledgeful Intellect + A Virtuous Personality. The ORIGINAL HOME of Souls is The SOUL WORLD, The Faraway Peaceful Land of Silence.

and my favorite,

Be a Beautiful Gardner in the Creation of your Colourful Tree-like Life. Eat Fruits of Joy and Spread the Fragrance of your Flower-like Virtues to souls who seek your Shade.

I'm reasonably certain I have no virtues whatsoever, having personally strangled the last of them when I was 26. But if some have come creeping back, I'll have you know that there is no frigging way any of them are flower-like.

You people keep your Fruits of Joy and especially your Fragrances to yourselves, too. Spreading them can't possibly be hygienic.

I recently received my official election packet for the upcoming election, which consists of no actual "elections," but instead only two referendums, Propositions 98 and 99.

I checked out the websites of both of them, which, you know, basically said the same things the "pro" and "con" arguments did. The Prop 99 website did have links to a couple of purported news stories, though, one of which contained the following quote:

Arnie Bernstein said his landlord has been trying to drive him and his wife out for years to jack up rents. Without rent control, they'd be forced to leave the state.

"All these landlords think they are getting shortchanged because they can't get market value," said Bernstein, 64, who lives on Social Security. "But many of them aren't worth market value.

"Where I live, you can hear people fornicating next door. The plumbing is bad. If I first came to L.A. and they offered me this place for $1,300, I would about-face and walk away."

Um, Mr. Bernstein.

First of all, as I'm reading Prop 98, you wouldn't be affected. Rent control would remain in effect until you vacated the place, so you're fine.

Second, well, every apartment (in fact every thing you can buy) is worth market value. All "market value" means is "what someone is willing to pay you." It doesn't mean "a lot more than I personally feel like paying." If you left your apartment, your landlord could put the place on the eeevil market for $8,000 a month. It's unlikely your landlord would get any takers. He or she would have to drop the price until they found someone willing to pay the price offered. That's what "market price" means.

Anyway, if your plumbing is bad, there are 8 zillion renter-protection statues in place in this city and state, maybe you should try forcing your landlord to do something. Also, the next-door fornication is a *feature*. C'mon, you're totally enjoying it.

Anybody need a 130-foot water tower? For sale cheap!

After years of blathering about how I wanted to learn to fly, today for the first time I actually did something about it. I had my very first lesson on the path to getting my private pilot's license.

I have to admit that I was quite, quite nervous. I mean, after all this talk, after being willing to sit and fuck around with Flight Simulator for hours on end, would it turn out that I would hate it? Worse yet, would I suck at it?

The answer is a bit of both, and yet, I still want to fly again. I did suck at it, and it was scarier than I thought it would be. But... I sucked at driving the first time I did it, and I think I'm a fairly decent driver these days.

Part of the problem is that today was an insanely hot day in the San Fernando Valley, and I was flying (well, being flown) out of Whiteman Airport. The temperature was about 100 degrees, and there just isn't much ventilation in those bitty planes when you're sitting on the runway.

Then I had my first major fuck-up, when the instructor let me try to taxi the plane as it rolled down the taxiway. See, in a small plane, when it's on the ground, you don't steer with the yoke (essentially the steering wheel, I'm sure you've all seen it), you steer with your feet, by pushing on two pedals under your feet. Only, these pedals that you steer with? They are also brakes. The steering bit is at the bottom, and the brakes are on the top. I got a bit flustered at one point because we weren't going in the right direction and stomped a bit on the pedal. What was happening that I didn't get at the time, that I only understood upon later reflection, was that in trying to make the plane turn to the right, I stomped on the right-hand brake, which made it veer off to the left. The instructor had to holler "my airplane" (my signal to get off the controls), and... well. It was kind of - no, VERY, embarassing.

Anyway, so, the instructor turned us around again and got back onto the taxiway waiting for ground control to let us take off (and dear god I hope that some day I'll be able to understand what those people are saying.) And so we took off.

People, I have never gotten seasick or airsick before, but I came *mighty* close today. Mind you, we'd been sitting in a fairly tiny cockpit with zero ventilation in 100 degree heat. It had to have been 110, 115 plus in that cockpit. We waited for several small planes to land, and then a helicopter, and then yet another plane. I sweated. But then we were given clearance (I assume we were, it sounded like the dude said "frizzle fracty 30.") It was quite windy, so even just accelerating down the runway, not only were we baking, the takeoff was, let's just say, reallllllly bumpy. We were going all over the place, it seemed.

And we kept bumping around, quite a bit. The instructor was quite unconcerned. It felt like driving over little hills and curves and whipping from side to side and everything was going everywhere and I was thinking "what the fuck am I thinking? How the hell can my uncoordinated ass do THIS?"

The air smoothed out a bit eventually, once we got over the hills leading towards Santa Clarita. And then I got to drive, and, well, it was frankly a bit scary yet again. I sort of felt like I was getting the hang of it by the end though. At one point the instructor even told me to take my hands off the controls, and he did the same, and the plane, by golly, the plane just kept flying by itself. I knew intellectually that it would, I know that most small planes are incredibly stable, but it is, shall we say, a wee smidge different when you're actually in the plane.

By the time we touched down the rolls and swells and bouncing sort of felt, well, a bit normal. That's how the plane goes. It moves with the wind. That said, I hope it's a bit calmer, wind-wise, the next time I fly.

So, action items for me for the next time, two weeks from now:

1. Learn to drive with your feet, and learn that at least on the ground, you have to drive with your heels or possibly your toes. I think maybe that bit wasn't explained clearly enough, and it may have been because I told the instructor I'd played with flight simulators. I should have pointed out that I played with a joystick, and putting on the brakes was a matter of just hitting the correct button.

2. Remember how tentative you felt driving a car the first time, and how you oversteered and like that. You will get this, too. You will, because honestly, how FUCKING AWESOME was it to be up there?

3. You have to get better with your feet, because dear heavens, what will happen if you try to land? You've got to keep the thing going straight while also braking.

INT. LIVING ROOM - EVENING


NIBLET
Hey, Dada.

DADA
Yes, Niblet?

NIBLET
Ffffuuuuck. I heard that word from Dorian. Fuuuuck.

DADA
I see. Well, that is a grownup word. You shouldn't say that word until you are a grownup.

NIBLET
Oh. Okay, Dada.

I assume this word (and others) will come up again, though it hasn't yet. I only hope it doesn't happen until there is some chance of reasoning with the child, explaining that there are some words you can use around me but nowhere else.

There is something about the whole Catholic sex abuse scandal that has been bothering me for a while. It's that people, and the media, and apparently the church itself, have been focusing on the wrong thing.

At the risk of sounding callous, the real problem is not the sexual abuse itself.

Please let me explain, and do not think for a second that I am trying to diminish the pain and shame and emotional trauma that the victims of the abuse went through. But... the abuse itself, while a crime, and reprehensible and deeply, deeply regrettable, is not a solvable problem.

The sad and terrible truth is that there are pedophiles in this world. There are pedophile priests, there are pedophile teachers, there are pedophile insurance adjusters, there are pedophile physicists, there are... pedophiles. They exist everywhere. It's not just Catholic priests, in fact, I would be incredibly surprised if there weren't a few of these assholes leading flocks in almost every religion. But even religion itself isn't the problem here, it's that sometimes, regrettably, there are predators in the world.

Worse yet, you often can't catch these people until they actually do something that someone is willing to report.

So when people get upset that the new Pope declines to meet with victims of the sexual abuse, I wonder who can blame him, because what the hell could he possibly say to make it better?

However, and this is the part that most of the media outlets seem to be missing but more importantly the Catholic Church itself seems to be missing, is that while it may not be possible to stop it from happening in the first place, it IS possible to respond properly. Which doesn't mean blaming it on "homosexual priests" or whatever blather Benedict was going on about.

It is the cover-up, and the continuing cover-up, that is the true crime. The media focuses on the abuse itself because it is titillating. The Church seems to feel that making big payouts to victims will solve the problem. It won't.

Had the pedophile priests been immediately turned over to authorities (and probably thrown out of the church, or possibly forgiven in their prison cell), this would not have been a huge deal to me, or, I think, to most thinking people. But instead the church moved the priests around, transferring them to different parishes as soon as there was a hint of trouble, even in cases where priests confided to their superiors that they did not think they could stop touching little children.

Even to this day, Los Angeles' Cardinal Roger Mahoney is refusing to give up the records of how and why his parish priests were moved around from church to church, while his Archdiocese pays out millions to shut up victims.

People can accept failings in their priests, Cardinal. Everyone is human, even pedophiles. They can be forgiven. What can't be forgiven is allowing that abuse to continue when you have, easily, not only the power to stop it but the power to give yourself some good PR by showing that you are DOING SOMETHING about the problem.

I am sorry to say that sexual abuse probably can not be stopped. But hiding it and purposefully allowing it to keep happening is a far, FAR worse sin. The entire Catholic hierarchy, from the lowest priest to the Pope Hisownself remains guilty until they promise to take the right steps the next time it happens. So far, that doesn't seem to be happening.

So, I'm feeling pretty okay about today. I suspect that this may have something to do with the fine products of a certain distillery concern located in Lynchburg, Tennessee (Pop. 361, as the label notes).

Because otherwise I'd be freaking broken, like everything else in my house: The refrigerator. My car. The vacuum cleaner. The kitchen sink. The dishwasher (sorta). Apparently the only thing holding this house together was my wife's presence.

So, the refrigerator is fixed, 263 dollars later. The vacuum cleaner I will see if I can deal with. I will call a plumber for the kitchen sink - while I am probably capable of fixing it, it's such a huge pain in the ass and in need of specialized tools that I'd rather just pay somebody. My car is fixed, it's just difficult to pick it up, but I should have the time on Monday afternoon. The dishwasher... will be okay. It still cleans things, just not as well as we'd like.

And the wife will be back on Friday. So there you have it.

If we're all so worried about the obesity epidemic in this country, why does everybody complain that there's no meal service on airplanes any more?

Thanks, folks, I'll be here all week.

We got *killed* on taxes. Again.

Ganked from fullerton, this fascinating picture of Signal Hill, CA, in 1923. I don't want to break everybody's page so it's under ( a cut. )

Signal Hill is a suburban residential section of Long Beach these days. I guess it was residential back then, too, but that's probably not the first thing that will catch your eye.

Why, I answer stupid memes. Really people, you ought to get the Army abolished, because this is the kind of thing you get when I'm without my wife. ( Boredom, that's what. )

I wonder what's the amount of human hair (from haircuts^*) that is thrown away every day? Presumably the useful measure here would be weight. Not out of any particular environmental concern, I assume it's biodegradable. Just a random thought that occurred to me.

No, I'm not stoned, I'm just weird.

^*I'm sure quite a lot of it goes down drains, falls onto floors and sidewalks, and etc. But for sheer concentrated mass I bet most of it comes from barbershops and hair salons.

Here's something cool that I'd never heard about, that I think you might like to know about as well. I cannot vouch for the scientific accuracy of the following, but it's cool anyway. According to the authors of The Book of General Ignorance, John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, the loudest thing in the ocean is... shrimp. Not the loudest individual creature - that honor belongs on land or in air to the blue whale, whose incredibly low-frequency and loud song has been shown to travel up to 10,000 miles. But the loudest possible noise, they say, is the combined sound of shrimp.

The sound of the "shrimp layer" is the only natural noise that can white out a submarine's sonar, deafening the operators through their headphones.

...even adjusting for the fact that sound travels five times faster in water, equates to about 160 decibels in air: considerably louder than a jet taking off (140 dB) or the human threshold of pain. Some observers have compared it to everyone in the world frying bacon at the same time [and wouldn't that be a fine thing? World Bacon Day! -ed].

The noise is caused by trillions of shrimps snapping their single oversized claw all at once...

But it's even more interesting than it sounds. Video shot at 40,000 frames per second shows clearly that the noise occurs 700 microseconds after the claw has snapped shut. The noise comes from burst bubbles, not the shutting of the claw itself, an effect known as cavitation.

It works like this. A small bump on one side of the claw fits neatly into a groove on the other side. The claw is shut so rapidly that a jet of water traveling at 62 mph squirts out, fast enough to create expanding bubbles of water vapor. When the water slows down and normal pressure is restored, the bubbles collapse, creating intense heat (as high as 20,000 degrees Celsius) [that'd be 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit -ed], a loud pop, and light - this last being a very rare phenomenon called sonoluminescence, where sound generates light.

Shrimps use this noise to stun prey, communicate, and find mates. As well as ruining sonar, the sharp, hot intense noise makes dents in ships' propellers.

Preliminary web research would indicate that the shrimp layer is far from widespread, and in fact only exists in a few places. Also I really have to wonder at that 20,000 degrees Celsius figure - that's a temperature three times hotter than the surface of the sun (though admittedly well below the thousand of millions degrees produced, we think, in the center of the sun). Still, presumably the shrimp don't usually manage to produce quite so much heat, or they only manage to do it in sub-microscopic areas. And it's a good thing, or they'd boil the seas dry, at least in their local areas.

Also, can sound actually make a dent in a propeller, or are ships' crews blaming poor navigation on "well, I don't know... maybe it was the shrimps!" Nice try, Whiskey McScurvy... maybe? I dunno. Further research is necessary.

Nevertheless, it seems possible that shrimp can kick our ass just by being shrimp and doing their shrimpy thing. Just one more reason for the rest of you to get on with eating them. I'd help, but I'm allergic.

So, "Lost." We sort of failed to watch the first 7 episodes until just recently, though we did record them on Ye Olde Tivo. We're nearly caught up. Last thing we saw was, um, somebody and another at a certain person's grave stone. Does that mean that person is dead, or could it mean that that person is merely, um, being covered up for and that this is the way for the persons visiting the grave stone to acknowledge the continuing existence of the person who is not, in fact, buried there?

Am I being deliberately obtuse? No, but hey, maybe there are other folks out there who haven't yet watched this season of "Lost" but who want to.

Also, the song referenced in the title can be listened to here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANGkn9Hddn4 There is no reason to watch the video, but the song is pretty good. EDITED: I found a better audio quality version on YouTube. There's still no point in watching the video though.

To those who are wondering what the fuck I'm yammering on about what with "The Others" and why this song lyric referenced in the title might mean something other than that war sucks, well... don't sweat it. But, explanations upon request.

We hopped in the car and drove 370-ish miles to Phoenix this weekend (and back, today). It is not somewhere we'd care to live, probably, but we can certainly understand its attractions.

The main attraction for us was not that it was somewhere, it could have been anywhere, as long it contained our friends. We spent an enjoyable few hours in Fountain Hills enjoying the quiet of a lovely neighborhood with quail and other various fauna and flora. It seems like a very nice place to live. Then we made our way to the Chandler end of town, which also seems an agreeable place to live, and where our other friends are making a very nice life for themselves indeed with their adorable daughters, who Mr. Nibby was fully in favor of. We also went and saw a spring training baseball game. Golly, I do like baseball.

As we were getting in the car to leave on Friday morning, though... well, what you need to know for this story is that my wife, the Derby Doll, has a sticker on the back of her helmet which reads "I AM A BAD ASS."

So Mr. Nibbles made some bunny ears at school on the day before we left, and this creation was in the car as we were getting ready to leave. He found them as he was getting in to his car seat and put them on and said, quite matter of factly:

"I am a bad ass Easter Bunny."

We, and our bad ass Easter Bunny, had a nice time this weekend. Yay!

You know how when you were a kid and your parents made you go to bed and you were thinking "oh man, I bet they get to stay up all night and do fun stuff that I don't get to do, man, it sucks to be a kid!"

Of course, what your parents probably did was watch the news and nearly fall asleep on the couch before dragging themselves to bed at 10:30.

My wife and I, however, feel we need to keep up the parent side. So what do we do after he goes to bed? Why, we stay up all night, doing fun things, eating Doritos and other junk food and playing video games. Yes: We are doing exactly what you always suspected your parents did after you were forced into your bed.

We are the worst parents in the world. And man, it is SO fun.