It ain't all pizzas and cream

Sometimes the last post just gets to be moldy cheese

...and you have to write something new, even if it's not earthshakingly significant, gaspingly shocking, or laugh-till-you-piss-yourself funny.  So here it is... The baby woke me up at 5:55 this morning.

"Daaaaa-deeee."

She has the cutest way of saying it.  Very clear, like she'd taken a class, or was trying to teach a non-English speaker.  "Daaaaa-deeee."  And so, at 5:55, I was up.  The sun was still on her hands and knees, crawling through the underbrush and looking for her glasses.  Down in the valley, sheets of fog were rising from someone's private lake.  I wondered if they had to pay extra for that. I got the baby her juice and banana, then retrieved a sleeping bag from the bedroom closet and curled up on the couch as the baby watched two rather manic Australians draw pictures of themselves with a Sharpie on a Lucite screen. After a few minutes, Tori walked to the large, east-facing window and announced, "SUN!"  Sure enough, the old girl had found her spectacles and was flooding the livingroom with light. It is at times like these when I feel the full brunt of being a first-time dad at 40+ years of age, and an ex-drunk to boot.  But it is also at these times when my heart swells with joy as I watch my daughter discover the world, and greet with amazement those things we take as givens.

So tonight, as she sleeps, worn out from a day of swimming with her mom in the lake (the public one down the road), I type this, if anyone's out there to read it.  Just to say how grateful I am to be a first-time dad at 40+ years of age, an ex-drunk, and the one whom my star-eyed little girl calls "Daaaaa-deeee!"

What's wrong with this headline?

"Man Killed in Nicetown Shooting"

Saw this on my local news today and thought, that's not very nice. Maybe they should change the town's name to Bullet Hollow if it's gonna be the kinda place folks get shot. I mean, can you picture something more extreme, like "Hundreds Butchered in Happyville" or "Massacre at Bliss Valley".

Plumbers...in...spaaaaaaace!

You really can't make this stuff up...

Among the precious cargo blasting off aboard the latest Space Shuttle launch from Florida: a toilet pump for the Russian space station's ailing plumbing.   (If the Russians built their A-bombs the way they build their bathrooms, we may have had nothing to fear for all those years. So much for duck and cover.)

Can't wait till Hollywood gets a hold of this one.

New Brunswick, 1968

Visits to my great-grandmother
meant getting past
Aunt Irene and Uncle Joe
who spoke only Hungarian
and cooed
“Hoodge vudge, Hoodge vudge!”
as their meaty hands reached
for my cheeks.

The kitchen
my great-grandmother’s fortress
smelled of fresh-baked
kifli.

I endured their hugs
like a dog endures
an Easter bonnet
then ran
to my great-grandmother’s room
where I shut the door
and flung myself
on the bed.

Strange
that the bed of such an old woman
always smelled of baby
powder.

"Let me scan your feet." Really?

Remember when going to the shoe store meant having to step into the familiar "Brannock" device (one of those items everyone recognizes but nobody can name) to ascertain your shoe size. Despite some attempts in the 1940s and '50s to use X-rays to measure foot size (yes, they really did that, and the practice wasn't banned until the 1970s), the Brannock remained the simplest, fastest, and safest method. 

So imagine my surprise when we took Tori to get a new pair if sandals at Olly's and she was asked to step inside a purple box and to step upon a glass screen so each foot could be scanned. Of course, being a squirmy toddler, she moved during the scan. So we tried again to get her to stand still. And tho the clerk was kind and patient, our daughter would not keep her foot planted on the glass. In fact, she developed a particular talent for moving just as the light from the flatbed scanner moved below her. After three or four tries, I could no longer hold the leash on my anti-technology bias, and I blurted out, "Don't you have one if those things [of course I didn't know it was called a Brannock until I looked it up]...those foot measurer things." The clerk, or should I say 'sales associate,' tho still kind and patient, looked at me like the Neanderthal I am and explained that the Brannock (no, she didn't use the name) was only a measure of last resort.

Yes, we have finally arrived at an age when a ruler is a tool of last resort. Like the atom bomb.

So we continued to try...and all along I'm trying to imagine how much each of those purple boxes costs the average shoe store. But figure the typical flatbed scanner is about $100-$200, I imagine that the box costs about ten times that.  But I shouldn't be shocked. Technology abuse is nothing new. Remember concrete battleships? The government bought a bunch of them near the end of WW1.  If you want to know how that little experiment turned out, check out the Atlantus, just off Cape May NJ on the bay side.

Luckily, on about the seventh try, Tori became mesmerized by the light sliding beneath her just long enough to complete the scan.  And the result?  Drum roll please..... she was one size larger than the last time she'd needed shoes. Thank God we had a scanner.

One Democrat's wish list...

1. That Hillary would read the writing on the wall, drop out of the race, and start angling for a cabinet post in the Obama Administration.

2. That Rosie O'Donnell were a Republican. Ever have one of those friends who jumped ardently to your defense and, in so doing, made the original problem twice as bad? I'd really feel better if Rosie played for the other team.

3. That Howard Dean weren't an idiot. I e-mailed the DNC to ask about the whole Michigan and Florida situation...and to posit a hypothetical in which 12 states had moved their primaries up to dates that were unacceptable to the party.  Would we really go to a convention in which only 38 states were represented?  Of course, I received only a mechanically generated request for funds in response.

Ugh. It's tiring being a lefty.

Worse than the disease...or at least stranger

Has anyone else noticed the lengthy disclaimers that accompany TV drug ads these days? And I don't just mean the Viagra warning about "an erection lasting more than four hours."  Three have been enough jokes about that one already.

I mean the truly strange side-effects that emerge during clinical trials and that drug companies must disclose if they want to avoid lawsuits. Like the warning that the drug Requip (used to treat restless leg syndrome, which I prefer to call "the Jimmy legs") may cause "increased sexual or gambling urges."  WTF?! I can't even imagine the mechanism by which a drug to treat leg cramps would compel me to go to Vegas.

And then there are the drugs that are just fun to say... like Abilify.  Ah - bill -if -fye.  Try it.  It sounds like a George Bush word. Like "strategery". It's better if you use it in a sentence..."We're hoping to abilify our troops to withstand the latest round of violence."

Here's one I just made up...
Do not take Noobatrin if you are pregnant, nursing, juggling, swimming, or flying. If you experience uncontrolled panting, insomnia, compulsive sewing, leg cramps, inability to pronounce the letter Q, night blindness, fear of trampolines, or a tendency to make poor financial decisions while taking Noobatrin, see your doctor immediately.

Care to take a whack at it?

Persistent misinformation

Ever get some factoid stuck in your head for all time...only to discover that it's completely wrong?  As a collector of factoids, I find this happens to me with embarrassing regularity. And what's worse, the errant factoid is impossible to dislodge.

Example... if you ever ask me, "What year was the Magna Carta drafted?", I will unflinchingly answer, "1066 AD." Only problem is, the Magna Carta was drafted in twelvehundredsomething. Which I only remember at this very moment because it was just the subject of a question on Jeopardy.  Ask me in two hours, and even with electrodes attached to my balls, I'll answer without hesitation, "1066 AD."

Here's another one... "First man in space?" I always say Alan Shepard, and I'm always wrong. It was some Russian dude. But in fairness, I think this is due to being part of the American public education system in the late 1960s. It simply galled my teachers to admit that 'those barbarians' got a man into space before we did, so as near as I can recall, they actually amended history and taught us that Shepard was first.  Aah, I miss the Cold War.

So, care to share any of yours? I can't be alone in this.

So what's with all the f*cking earthquakes?

Not to give the sign-waving apocalypse-mongers any fuel  for their Christ-is-coming arguments, but what's with all the fucking earthquakes lately?  The most recent was last night in Guam, preceded by one off the coast of Japan, and before that Washington DC and rural Illinois.  The scientists, from what I can tell, don't seem that worried. But with earthquakes occurring along so many different fault systems (and in Washington DC, where the only faults are above ground), I can't help but think the seismograph-watchers ought to be at least a little nervous. Not that the world is gonna swallow its crust, and us along with it, but with so much underground activity in so many different places across the globe, someone should be looking for patterns. No?

Guess it's time to buy some rubber carpets and nail the furniture to the floor.

Updated 5-12-08 to add: 7.8 quake kills thousands and buries 900 students in China.

Updated 5-29-08 to add: 6.1 quake hits Iceland.

Updated 5-31-08 to add: 6.4 quake reported at Batan, off the Philippines.

Updated 6-08-08 to add: 6.5 quake hits Greece.

That's 5 quakes over magnitude 6.0 in less than 1 month.

Anyone still think this is normal?

Castro deposed

No, not Fidel.
Jason. 

The dreadlocked stoner with the "What, me worry?" smile was finally voted off American Idol last night, after botching the lyrics to Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man on Tuesday's performance.  Although the result was not unexpected... forgetting the lyrics is pretty much the kiss of death... the program's producers did their best to generate some drama.  And I was surprised to see that, of 50 million votes cast, each of the 4 contestants was separated from the next by less than a million votes. For those doing the math, that's 11, 12, 13, and 14 million votes. Which means that Jason, who always looked to me like the result of a failed eugenics project aimed at fusing the DNA of of Harpo Marx and Bob Marley, got 11 million votes. Doubtless there was multiple voting going on  across the board, and mostly by tween girls, who are already guilty of cellphone abuse. But I've got to say I'm relieved to see him go. He was, after all, olutclassed and outgunned for the past couple of weeks. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of him, however. He'll probably be slightly harder to get rid of than the other Castro.