Nobody Knows Anything

Or your money back!

The holiday snowglobe we’ve been waiting for, and

Mac Eye for the Windows Guy (warning: totally hilarious).

Well, kinda.

Mostly I’m visiting with a lot of people (and when it comes to the Thanksgiving bunch, a lot a LOT of people), eating, and sleeping. Usually the eating leads to the sleeping. The vast quantities of people generally facilitate one activity and interfere with the other, and I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to which is which.

The big news around these parts is that something about the social aspects of this giant gathering is really facilitating Simon’s speech. (The same thing happened with Sophia two years ago: before Thanksgiving, not much talking; after Thanksgiving, hasn’t stopped talking since.) Uncle Scott was playing with Simon and holding him upside-down. Eventually Simon started saying, “Upside-down!” Today at the end of breakfast he said, “I done!” and he ran away from his Cheerios.

There’s a website set up by some Britons who are less than thrilled with George’s visit: Chasing Bush. I especially like how the URL does not give an indication of what the site is. (There is a picture on the site that may not be safe for work.)

I’ve been trying to tidy up my office, get everything arranged into its proper place or a proper place (after all the stuff that doesn’t belong has been removed, then we’ll find proper places). I hit the motherlode of my paper journals and arranged them on a shelf:

Now, to be truthful, the last 6 or 7 books on the shelf are blank—in unpacking these boxes I have come to terms with my rather extreme case of notebookmania (anybody got a Latin term for that?)—but holy God I’ve written a lot of pages since 1986, which is when that spiral notebook to the far left is from.

I reread some of it last night. I haven’t reread my journals much over the years, mostly out of fear that I’m going to find out I was complaining about the same stuff in 1990 that I am now. But I was actually far more entertained by them than I thought I’d be.

I need to rearrange some more stuff in my office though, because right now these books are one shelf off the ground, which means they are in easy access for Simon, who’s been enjoying ripping books, and Sophia, who’s always looking for paper to draw on. I’m going to put them on a high shelf so when they’re older they can hunt for them like sneaky children should.

Tired of the Nigerian scam? Join the party:

It has been described as the internet’s first blood sport and is fast becoming one of the web’s favourite pastimes. Fed up with having their inboxes clogged with emails from Nigerian fraudsters promising untold riches, the victims are finally hitting back.

Scam-baiting - replying to the emails and stringing the con artists along with a view to humiliating them as much as possible - is becoming increasingly popular with more than 150 websites chronicling the often hilarious results.

The site most prominently featured in the Guardian article is 419eater.com, in case you want to have a look-see.

Honestly, who would respond to the Nigerian e-mails? It’s so tragic.

(My favorite reverse Nigerian scam is the Cthulu scam, which I have mentioned here before.)

I was inspired by two events—pulling out my old fountain pen, and realizing I don’t have very many people to talk to around here at the moment—to take up writing in my paper journal again, which is partially why I’m not writing so much here.

I’ve been doing a core-dump into the book, just writing down whatever’s coming to mind. Not even so much getting to the therapeutic aspects of keeping a journal—I’m just…kibbitzing. Hey, how are you doing, here’s what up.

I also haven’t done any serious writing for months, and this is taking the place of that for right now.

It’s fun to write by hand again. I highly recommend it. It’s physically involving in a way that typing simply cannot be.

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For anyone who keeps a notebook on hand for any reason, be it keeping a journal, keeping a nature diary, writing, or just taking notes about day-to-day life, I definitely recommend using a Moleskine notebook. The small ones fit in your pocket, the larger ones are a good enough size to tote around easily.

They’re hardbound, they lie open flat (if you’ve ever picked up one of those cheapie blank books you know how hard it is to get them to stay open), they have a sewn-in bookmark, and they have an envelope in the back to hold…whatever. I put in our tickets from the SF Zoo. The paper is also high-quality and the ink from my pen doesn’t bleed through (unless I get a huge puddle of ink, as happened on one page—c’est la vie). And there’s an elastic belt that keeps the book firmly closed when you’re not using it—if you’ve ever had your notebook open in your bag and get some other object wedged into it, you know what a feature the elastic strap is.

I’m having to stop myself from buying every fountain pen that strikes my fancy these days. I’m enjoying writing by hand but there aren’t enough hours in the day to use all of these pens.

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I was thinking recently that maybe I should transfer all of my old online journal entries (1996-2000) over to Movable Type. The period where the entries would most like be commented upon is gone, of course, but it would be nice to have the entries sorted by category. If you have any thoughts on the matter, drop me a comment.

Monday and Thursdays it’s me and the kids, all day long. So today: the San Francisco Zoo. Good day to go, too: completely empty.

This morning, when I told Sophia we were going to the Zoo, she said, “I need a camera!” I said, “Wha’?” Darin filled me in: there’s an episode of Dora where Dora takes lots of pictures of animals. And he was right: as we walked around the Zoo Sophia kept singing, “Finding the animals,” which definitely had a Dora-esque ring to it.

When Darin and I were cleaning my office last weekend, I found an unused disposable camera and gave it to Sophia for today. She was thrilled. Want to make a tot happy? Disposable camera. That’s all I’m saying.

Today at the Zoo we discovered the Children’s Zoo area, which we hadn’t visited the last time. It’s pretty good. Well, the carousel made me dizzy, but Sophia loved it. And the petting zoo?

It was totally great. Sophia was right in there, brushing off all the goats, petting the sheep, asking me once again if she can go ride a horse. (Have to find horse rides around here. Shouldn’t be too hard, with the Santa Cruz mountains and all their attendant stables nearby.)

Simon was not too fond of the animals, given that they were for the most part much, much bigger than he was. In fact, a goat came near him and he started to cry, which was understandable because goats are scary. (Have you ever looked in their eyes? They’re slitted. Seriously. Creepiest eyes I’ve ever seen.) But he did find something he liked:

I could have left him there all day and he’d still be walking around with that thing. (He couldn’t quite ride it—every time I put him on the seat he slipped right off. But he liked walking it!)

We spent four hours at the Zoo today. Sophia made several new friends and was prepared to lay the smack down on me when I told her it was time to go.

I wish it weren’t so far away. We’d go a lot more often if it weren’t. They loved it.

All this week our trash company is doing a “free trash” day, so anything you wanna put out, they’ll haul away.

We’ve been waiting for something like this.

We definitely beat everyone on the block. I’m just happy we’re going to get rid of the giant pile o’boxes and paper and what not that was piling up in our driveway (and had gotten a nice level of composting going on with the recent rains).

My question is: why do trash companies do this? In LA you get to pay for each and every bag you want to throw away, 52 weeks a year (unless you can sneak it into someone else’s trash, I guess). No free trash days there!

You need this link: the Wingnut Debate Dictionary. It’s a compilation of terms that…well, let me give you a taste:

Coultering - the act of adding copious endnotes in an attempt to give the sham appearance that one’s writings are scholarly, methodically researched and based in fact.”

(Do you know I actually found myself on a website where a poster used Ann Coulter’s “work” as a historical reference?)

So, today’s Veterans’ Day. Okay…but instead of not getting mail today, we didn’t get it yesterday or today. Same for libraries (closed both days) and schools (exc. Sophia’s, thank goodness.) Since when do we celebrate national holidays on Tuesdays? I mean, except for July 4 (sacrosanct) and Thanksgiving (picked as a particular Thursday of the month, not a special day), isn’t every other holiday usually celebrated on the Monday, so as not to screw up the workweek? Have I simply napped through previous mid-week Veterans’ Days? Or is this year’s celebration some kind of sneaky way of shutting down the government for 4 days in a row?