INT. LIVING ROOM - EVENING
DADA is reading a book in the living room. NIBLET has been sent to the bathroom to potty and put on a pullup. Niblet returns to the living room, naked as a jaybird, carrying his pullup, and proceeds to begin putting it on, before opining thusly:

NIBLET
Dada, I need some privacy while I put on my pullup.


I'm such a terrible father, not considering my child's needs like that.

Almost anybody with any education at all, even high-school students, has heard of the Magna Carta. Most of those people are aware that it's an important document, and many of those people know that even though it applied only in England, it was still a pretty huge deal in terms of the rights of humanity. (Unless you were landless, or not noble, or a woman, and especially if you were a Jew. But eventually those folks got some rights too.)

But the thing is, does anybody know what the damn thing actually says? I didn't. At least not until now. Although to be honest, even after reading a translation (it was written in Latin) I'm still a bit mystified, I mean, what's a stank¹ or kiddles² or socage³?

And what is one to make of sentences such as this? All counties, hundreds, wapentakes, and trithings shall remain at old rents, and without any increase, except our demesne manors. I mean one assumes it's areas of land, and counties makes sense to us now, and you could probably come up with a plausible definition of a "hundred" as a unit of land, but wapentakes? Trithings?

Wapentakes sounds like something Swedes make for, uh, ShnoggiBoggi or whatever wacky holidays they've got out there. Wait, no, not Swedes. Uh... Hungarians. I dunno.

Nevertheless, some of the stuff is really very clear, such as stipulation #45: We will appoint as justices, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs only those who know the law of the realm and who wish to observe it well. Pretty darn clear, if you ask me. (The "we" in this case is the Royal we, as the entire document is the King saying "okay, okay, this is what I'll do."

The historical context is that pretty much, King John, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and etc., pretty much *had to* sign whatever the barons presented him. But it was gosh-darned seminal in that even though it says the King is the rightful ruler by God's will, he still has to act under the rule of law, and also that the King can't just screw anybody over because he's the King. Well, he can, but dammit, he has to do it within the law.

Of course, this being the barons, a great deal of the language has to do with the King not being able to hike their taxes into the stratosphere to pay for various harebrained foreign wars and other schemes. Also along the way it established the idea of Habeas Corpus.

Luckily in our enlightened time such issues have been entirely resolved.

One thing you don't read about in the history books is what I think may be the central idea, which is yeah, we need some government (and in 1215 nobody was thinking anything but kings, kings, kings), but your power is a long damned way from absolute. It's a pretty interesting thought and always one to keep in mind.

¹stank: A pond or pool. Also a ditch or dyke of slowly-moving water, a moat.

²kiddles: Fishweir. Used in a general sense to cover all large, static contrivances for catching fish; inevitably these might cause serious inconvenience to boats navigation in inland waters.

³socage: Socage was one of the feudal duties and hence land tenure forms in the feudal system. A farmer, for example, held the land in exchange for a clearly-defined, fixed payment to be made at specified intervals to his feudal lord, who in turn had his own feudal obligations, to the farmer and to the Crown. In theory this might involve supplying the lord with produce but most usually it meant a straightforward payment of cash, i.e., rent.

(as always, edited to remove extraneous conversation)

<misskaz> As a non-501c3 non profit, I work for the most evil kind of non profit there is, I think

<Osomatic> Hey, there's no reason there shouldn't be evil charities.

<Osomatic> Those people are out there doing bad every day out of a sheer love of evil.

<Ajax-> "United Sisters of Evil: Lopping Off That Helping Hand."

<scottydont> Disunited Way

<Osomatic> The Red Crucifix?

<misskaz> Club the Seals, Especially the Babies 501c3

<Osomatic> OxFAMINE?

<Osomatic> Badwill?

<scottydont> Doctors Without Principles

<scottydont> !x to fr Doctors Without Principles

<mulebot> scottydont: Médecins Without Principles

<Ajax-> People for the Exsanguination and Termination of Animals.

<scottydont> Damnation Army

<collier> Medecins Sans Principes, I think, scotty.

<Ajax-> The Gay and Lesbian Schism Against Decency.

<Osomatic> Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

<Osomatic> Poo Charitable Trusts!

<scottydont> the John D and Catherine T Hitler Foundation

<Osomatic> Carnage-y Foundation

<misskaz> I think one of the great things about being rich and then dying and having a foundation is the prominence your middle initial gets.

<Osomatic> Human Wrongs International

There are many shows which are called "reality" television. Not all of them all, in fact most of them are probably closer to game shows. But at the same time many of these shows involve you in the workings of these people as they compete, which is different from, say, Wheel of Fortune or other game shows where you get a 20-second bio of a person and then we move on to playing the game

To us, it seems that there are two axes here: Reality-Game, and Luck-Talent. So I present to you our graph, which works towards a possible classification of which shows are which. While there are suggestions on the graph, we certainly invite your submissions for which shows might belong where. It's been left largely blank in hopes that you all will have your own suggestions. This is a theory entirely in progress, and we do not kid ourselves that it is anywhere near to finished.



Also, sorry if this giant image broke your friends list!

So, I called some middle-aged lady a "bitch" today. Frankly even asserting myself is unusual, let alone saying something like that. I felt bad about it, but... I don't think it was entirely out of line.

Here is what happened and why I said what I did:

After I took my kid to the movie, we went and got a couple of hot dogs. Having acquired food, there were NO tables anywhere, but then Lo! a guy got up and started clearing his stuff. So we moved in, only be told by a woman who was not sitting AT the table, but NEXT TO the table, "we're at this table." I asked: Uh, is someone coming? "No, but, this is our table." Would you mind sharing long enough for us to eat our hot dogs? The response: "Well. We're HERE. At THIS table." And then she turned away. We'd been, you know... *dismissed*. It was that dismissal that pissed me off more than anything else.

So I said "Well then call security, bitch."

And then I hollered at my kid to come back and sit down. Whether she heard what I said or just edited it out as something that nobody could have said to her, I do not know. But only when I hollered for my kid to come back and sit down did she look back at us, with what I am almost certainly imagining, complete fucking horror that we had defied her command.

Awesomely, the Nibby made a huge meal out of his hot dog, and then he wanted to eat my leftover bun bits from my hot dog, and then he wanted to eat the french fries, and oh, oh, oh, I was *loving* every minute of it. Of course she rather pointedly ignored us for every second of it, but pretty much the millisecond I picked up our food containers from the table, she reached under her chair and stuck a bag on the table. Which totally *showed us*. Of course the Niblet had no idea that any of this was going on, he was just enjoying the hell out of a hot dog.

But I feel that I won. And... you know... she was a bitch. I use the term advisedly.

Okay, shameful admission time: I've got a huge crush on New York City. It's just so awesome and attractive and sexy, but I know it wouldn't love me the way I love it. As with most crushes, I expect that after a couple of weeks I would *hate* it. Ah well.

Not as much this time around, but still a few items of interest:

BUNNY
Call for more information, $25.
Better call quick, Bunny, that quarter C-note ain't gonna last forever.

ANTIQUE NINTENDO
Collectors item, with controller, a couple games, $80.
Niiiiice try, dude. Although it does lead to the amusing mental image of some guy on Antiques Roadshow going "but they made this thing in 1987! That's before I was BORN!" Or better yet, antiquers in New England exclaiming over the pre-Revolutionary Atari 2600.

BAG OF WOMENS
MATERNITY
Casual clothes, small, medium, large. Gently used, all cute, $40.
Admit it now, you were really wondering "what the hell?" before you got to the part about MATERNITY, and then you wondered even more before you read the description. I know I did.

WE FIX CREDIT
Bad credit? We Can Permanently Improve your Credit Scores. FREE CONSULTATION
These things are always scams, so there's absolutely nothing funny about this. Except for the part where it's listed under Appliance Repair. I wonder if they were not aware that applying for credit is not, in fact, an "appliance."

COMMODE
Never use, call for more information, $39.99.
Well now. If this person genuinely has information about how to never use a commode again, and that information is available for under 40 bucks, it certainly seems worth it. That investment would pay off in savings of water and toilet paper alone in no time. Although I'm sure it'd probably be like "Welcome to the No-Toilet Seminar. First, I'd like to direct your attention to the Santa Monica Mountains, quite nearby and with many hiking trails. Now, who can tell me about bears and where it is they are said to use the, ah, facilities?" Alternately, this person could just be selling a toilet and made a typo in the ad. But what fun would that be?

Tonight, I made peanut butter, and it was delicious. How, you ask did I create this incredibly delicious food? Well: I asked my wife to buy a pound of roasted, salted, peanuts at the farmer's market. (Cost: I dunno exactly, but when I bought two pounds of roasted salted peanuts a year ago, it was like 4 bucks.)

Then, I turned on my food processor and dropped in a handful of peanuts at a time. Eventually I had peanut butter.

Okay, that was not quite all. The peanuts were grinding up real good but weren't getting that smooth texture. So, since I already had some peanut oil, I poured out a shot glass of it and dripped it in quite slowly to the food processor. It only took half a shot glass, call it maybe 1.5 teaspoons, for everything to smooth out and be peanut butter. Then I tasted it and it needed just a bit of salt, which I added, and gave it a pulse in the machine, and Ta freakin' Da.

So there you go. The peanuts were almost certainly overpriced, but even so I made nearly sixteen ounces of peanut butter for less than three dollars as opposed to the usual five dollars for twelve ounces. Peanuts and salt, man. That's all it takes, plus whatever electricity to run the food processor.

So why, as I say in the title, do I feel dumb? Because I have been meaning to do this for some time, and yet all this time I have kept buying Laura Scudders brand peanut butter.

In any case I do feel pretty pleased with myself. It's delicious, it's cheap (as compared to buying "natural" peanut butter), and I made it.

So, in the break room (or whatever you call the room with a couple of tables, a refrigerator in desperate need of cleaning, and a microwave oven) at work people often bring in magazines, generally old magazines, for other people to peruse as they eat their lunch. Why, precisely, someone might wish to read about celebrity news from 3 years ago, or about how America's lack of moral fiber leads to whatever it is that Reader's Digest was worried about 4 or 5 months ago ("HOW YOUR BOTTLED WATER IS KILLING YOU"), I do not know.

Apparently it works, because I was flipping through...uh... some celebrity magazine, possibly People or Us Weekly or something like that. (Also why is a celebrity mag called Us? It most certainly is NOT about Us, it's about... Them.)

Nevertheless. I was flipping through this magazine while my microwavable food was being bombarded with nuclear radiation. I came upon a page which called "Quick Bits" or "News In Brief" or "One Sentence About A Celebrity" or something like that.

There was some various "B-list celebrities had babies/got arrested/hooked up/plan to get married/said something amusing" stuff, but on the far right and bottom of the page, was a heading of R.I.P. with a one sentence obit for Eartha Kitt. But *after that*, curiously, were two more bits of celebrity news: One, a mention of Michael Jackson, reported to be suffering from some damn thing but whose doctor said was totally fine, and another about D.J. AM, who had just filed a lawsuit against, uh, I don't remember.

Point being, both of those folks DIED within a mere nine months.

So. Some of you I know, some of you I do not. But if you aspire to fame, do yourself a favor: Do not EVER appear in a celebrity-focused magazine UNDER the "so-and-so died" section. To avoid this, you could, say, assault a nun. Or beat a panda bear. In an extreme case, you could rape a large building. But, and I say this knowing the dangers: Make sure it's a *really* big building.

Not for anything to happen, just acknowledging an extreme lack of posting. Sorry. I wish I could say I promise to do something about it, but realistically I don't.

INT. - DERBY DOLL TRACK, MEN'S ROOM

NIBLET and DADA are here, washing off Niblet's finger from a minor injury. A friend of the Derby Dolls enters (pretty sure it was Bitchy Kitten but for now let's just call him, um, BK.) BK strips off his shirt and starts washing a minor injury on his back.

NIBLET
Why are you doing that... Calvin?

BK
Um... I'm just washing off. What's your name?

NIBLET
My name is Niblet, Calvin.

DADA
Buddy, um, his name isn't Calvin... even though it says so on his underwear.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "I *know* where they got this joke, they got it in Back To The Future. And truly, I cannot deny that something like this happened in Back To The Future.

But also, I swear upon all that is holy that my kid assumed that the dude's name was Calvin.

Funnily enough, after I regained my composure enough to ask the dude if he knew why I'd nearly fallen on the floor laughing, I was like "dude, haven't you seen Back To The Future" he said "no, well, maybe, but a long time ago." So, hey. But oh man. I explained that something just like that had happened in the movie, and he nodded and smiled and thought me and my child were insane. Ah well. Luckily, when I explained what had happened to my wife, she nearly fell off her feet, which explains why we're married.

Ah, LA Metro. You're cute, but you're dumb.

Until recently, our subway and light rail lines worked on the honor system. If you didn't buy a ticket or have a pass, there was nothing to stop you from getting on - but if you got caught by a fare inspector or sheriff's deputy, you got a ticket for $250.

Well, now the agency has decided that maybe the honor system isn't such a great idea - to the tune of $5 million lost per year. (I wonder precisely how they arrived at that figure, but whatever.) So, for 10 years... yes, TEN years now, they've been trying to figure out how to install turnstiles. (I know, they've got them in New York, Chicago, London, pretty much everywhere. But shhh. Metro is all growed up and it can do it by itself.)

So now there is a fancy new TAP card system. You load money onto the TAP card, and tap it against a reader as you get on the train or bus. Then the fare inspectors read your card. Still the honor system, except in a few stations, they've installed turnstiles - you tap your card to open the turnstile.

Only... apparently it didn't occur to the big brains at Metro that lots of people still have paper passes. Like, say, the passes you can buy in the train station. So the solution? Have a lane where people with paper passes can just walk through. Nothing to stop you. Go right ahead, but remember, if you get caught, you get a ticket for $250!

Now. If you can figure out precisely how this is not exactly the same as what we had before, only now with expensive and shiny turnstiles to look at as you get on without paying a fare, well, I'd be happy to hear it.

Dear Metro. I know you're doing your best. But this is just embarassingly dumb. This is what it's taken ten years to come up with?

I really did intend to continue bringing you entertainment from the Pennysaver circular that shows up in my mailbox every week, but unfortunately this week's Pennysaver had for the most part almost exactly the same ads as last week. So this may have to be a bi-weekly sort of amusement thing. Sorry.

I miss my mom. A lot. That is all. Go about your business.

The PennySaver shows up in our mailbox every week. Before tonight, it had always been recycling fodder, or on occasion used to fire up the charcoal in the chimney starter. Tonight, for some random reason, I actually started looking through it. What I discovered was both a source of amusement, and also occasional sadness.

All ads are reproduced exactly as printed, minus phone numbers and such.

TINY APPLE HEAD
CHIHUAHUA
$200 OBO. Parents on premises.
It hadn't ever occurred to me that both "tiny" and "apple head" were selling points for any dogs, even chihuahuas. You think you'd get the tiny part already when buying a chihuahua, but "apple head?" Why do you want your dog to have a head like an apple? Or does it mean, like, the dog is like a crackhead but for apples?

ANTIQUE FRAMED PAINTING
2'x3'. I paid $279 plus tax, will sell
for $100.
I dunno about you, but what I look for in an antique painting is not the subject, or artistic merit, artist, or even what the frame looks like. No, what I am most interested in is the SIZE. That fucker better cover up some WALL, you know what I'm saying? I think you do. And I think you'd better buy this for the quoted price before I come along and buy it for $105.

ESTUFA EN VENTA $100
The headline is also the description, there was a phone number but nothing else. This was way funnier until I went to a translation site and learned that estufa en venta doesn't mean stuff on sale. (It turns out that estufa means stove. And here I'd felt so clever about knowing what en venta meant.)

2 EXECUTIVE STULE CHAIRS
Indoor/ outdoor, swivel bootom, $30 each OBO.
The concept of Executive Stule is disturbing enough without adding the part about a swivel bootom. I'm pretty sure this one was placed from the Netherlands, it sounds like a joke in Dutch. Dutch kind of sounds like a joke anyway. Seeten doon on die buttplatz, and like that.

UPHOLSTERED CHAIR
with a hasek. Good condition. $60
The hasek alone has to be worth 75, maybe 80 bucks. You can't buy a new hasek for under 200, that's for damn sure. I've seen haseks in high-end shops on Rodeo Drive for like 3 grand. This guy is just GIVING it away. I mean not only are you getting the hasek, but the chair is upholstered! C'mon.

(1) BOX OF ADULT
I have to let you hang there for a moment on this one, because, hey, 1 box of adult! It could be filled with Lyndon LaRouche supporters, you don't know! It's a box of adult. Okay, okay. Here's the actual ad.

(1) BOX OF ADULT
Medium size diapers, 96 total, high
quality, heavy duty, $45 all.
Oh. Oh, okay. There's not many reasons somebody would be selling these. This is what I mean about sad. It ain't exactly Hemingway's "One pair baby shoes, never worn" but still.

60 VHS MOVIES
Children and others. $1 each.

30 DVD'S
$62.

Who will win? I'm betting on DVD guy, even though he wants you to buy the whole collection instead of piecemealing them out at a buck a pop.

ALGERIAN POOL BALLS
Never used. Still in original box.
Sells for $40, want $25.
I have to assume this means "balls used to play pool with" rather than "balls you play with in the pool" but without calling the guy, I can't know. So I'm going with the former. And wondering why Algerian balls used to play pool are so awesome.

So yeah, next week? I'm *totally* reading the PennySaver again. And then using it to light fires with.

Now, I knew about Mount Wilson in the Angeles National Forest. It's the one with the observatory on it. I'd also heard of Mount Disappointment. Which is a pretty wacky name, but hey. Now I learn that there is apparently a Mount Desperation up there too. So I'm starting to wonder about the rest of the mountains and their names.

Mount Who Thought This Was A Good Idea
Mount No Way Nuh Uh
Mount Seriously You Think We're Going To Make A New Life In California, In THIS?
Mount Oh Come ON
Mount Another Freaking Mountain
Mount Oh Just One More And Then We'll Be Out Of These Mountains, He Said

etc. Your suggestions, as always, are invited.

So on Thursday I gave a shot to riding my bike to Wilshire and Western (about 1.6 miles), taking the subway to downtown, then taking the Gold Line to Pasadena and riding the 4 blocks to work. Lessons I learned: You're gonna do a LOT better if you're willing to just pick up your bike and walk up or down stairs rather than waiting for elevators. Luckily, I am willing to do so.

In any case, it worked out just fine, yadda yadda yadda. The thing is. I biked on home from Wil/West, but on my trip up a residential street, some guy decided he was going to just go ahead and walk across the street right in front of me, assuming I'd brake to avoid him. Which I did, but then as I passed him he smiled, pointed at me and/or my bicycle, patted his abdominal area and then curved his hands in front of him to indicate a large belly, then said "Bery bery good for stomach."

It turns out that I did not need this guy or anybody else to point out that I'm fat. I'm pretty fucking well aware of that, y'know?

I feel I'm being douchey here, and it wouldn't be the first time as I have recently been reminded. He was just trying to be friendly, right? But... seriously, do I need some random stranger on the street to remind me of my flaws and applaud me for attempting to correct them? Does this guy hang out in front of surgical clinics and tell people with harelips "Ah, surgery, bery bery good for fix fucked up lip." "Ah, chemotherapy, bery bery good for destroy cancer cells killing body."

Or, you know. Maybe I'm just a douchey fat guy.

The scam I reported here appears to be continuing. In the last week I have received another 4 or 5 e-mails giving me new slightly different details, but apparently still similar enough that they were able to find my journal entry. Criminals are pretty stupid. But then they're scamming people even stupider, so who cares if some guy is keeping track of them on the internet?

My question is this - how private and inviolable are cell phone records? Because what if the UK authorities were alerted to this scam coming from their country, and noticed my long list of phone numbers, and used the records to track down the scammers? Is that a violation of free speech or privacy? In the US, it very well might be, though I don't know if it has ever been tested.

Certainly phone records have been used as evidence in both criminal and civil cases before, though as I understand it, obtaining those records can be a bit troublesome constitutionally. And maybe that's for the good - I mean I'd be happy with the government obtaining the phone records for these scammers, but I wouldn't be at all happy about the government having unlimited access to any phone record. Viz. the argument about unlimited wiretapping to discover terrorists.

But anyway, what if the government/police/detectives have evidence that a certain phone number, probably associated with a phone, has been used as an instrument of crime?

Is it just a standard of evidence that would allow, say, a judicial order allowing wiretapping or pulling of phone records or whatever? That would seem to me to be the best option. We *know* that Mary Smith from Pillow, PA called this number in the UK to discuss her winning the Fuckyanks lottery, because she willingly showed us her phone bill which showed a call to 011-44-772-***-****. They directed her to wire funds to Arsehole Bank, account #88828282828. And so on.

Is that number, having been used in a scam, now fair game for pulling of records, GPS location (if such is even possible, of course), etc etc etc?

I dunno. I invite opinion.

Kids who play video games don't get any exercise? (Sorry it's sideways. Crappy camera phone video recorder, and I don't have any video editing software.)

INT. LIVING ROOM
The Niblet has just taken a bath and has come into the room half-wrapped in a towel and shivering from being wet. He gives MAMA a hug.

NIBLET
Mama, your hands are warm!

MAMA
That's because your skin is cold from being wet. So it feels warm when I put my hand on your cold little bum.

NIBLET
Could you get it on my penis? My penis is cold.

MAMA
(coughing)
No I sure can't.

I'm doubting this will work for me either.