Not sure what this is but just stumbled upon it and assumed that it was some kind of forum for...Billmon posted a pretty funny adaptation of Asimov’s three laws of Robotics:
1. A Republican may not injure a corporation, or, through inaction, allow a corporation to come to harm.
2. A Republican must obey the orders given it by corporations except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A Republican must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Short version: I really enjoyed this flick. Check it out.
Slightly longer version: Excellent action flick with some great action sequences, tho’ if you are allergic to hand-held cam you may need to skip the movie entirely, because shaky cam and flash editing is much in evidence here.
Extremely long version: Matt Damon is back as Jason Bourne, the amnesiac rogue CIA agent. He’s off in Goa, India, with his adoring girlfriend Franka Potente, having bad dreams about something he might have done in his previous life and keeping himself in very, very good shape. Then his old life shows up with a vengeance and Bourne has to get back to doing what he does best to find out what’s going on.
Assassination using only a magazine. A foot chase through the U-Bahn. An amazing car chase through Moscow (no damn CGI here).
The best thing, in my view, is that this movie is confident enough in itself to put things in there and let the viewer figure them out. You get flashes of things Bourne sees and unlike most movies, that’s all you’re going to get: either you noticed it and can put it together with later events, or you’re going to wonder what the hell just happened. (My favorite: Bourne checking the U-Bahn schedules. Hint: he’s not simply wondering when the next train is going to arrive.)
And, as Darin pointed out as we left: you definitely get a sense of place in this movie: this movie was filmed on location in India and Berlin and Moscow and you can tell. Prague is not doubling as all European cities here. Matt Damon running at top speed on the beach at Goa: you can feel the humid air.
The shaky cam cinematography did grate on me after while (say, the first five minutes), but it does give an immediacy to the proceedings I’m not sure the usual dolly-tracking system would have given.
Darin and I have been seeing a lot more movies recently, and this is one that I definitely recommend.
Last night I listened to Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention as I entered receipts and payments due into Quicken. It was a damn good speech, as many others have noted. But there’s one aspect of it that I thought was brilliant that no one else has pointed out (I’ve slightly edited down the New York Times’s transcript):
PRESIDENT CLINTON: …For the first time when America was on a war footing in our whole history, they gave two huge tax cuts, nearly half of which went to the top 1 percent of us.
(Chuckles.) Now I’m in that group for the first time in my life. (Applause.) And you might remember that when I was in office, on occasion, the Republicans were kind of mean to me. (Laughter.) But soon as I got out and made money, I began part of the most important group in the world to them…
Now, look at the choices they made, choices they believed in. They chose to protect my tax cut at all costs, while withholding promised funding for the Leave No Child Behind Act, leaving 2.1 million children behind. (Cheers, applause.) They chose to protect my tax cut while cutting 140,000 unemployed workers out of their job- training programs, 100,000 working families out of their child-care assistance, and worst of all, while cutting 300,000 poor children out of their after-school programs when we know it keeps them off the streets, out of trouble, in school learning, going to college and having a good life! (Cheers, applause.)
They chose, they chose to protect my tax cut while dramatically raising the out-of-pocket costs of health care to our veterans, and while weakening or reversing very important environmental measures that Al Gore and I put into place, everything from clean air to the protection of our forests…
Now, if you like these choices and you agree with them, you should vote to return them to the White House and the Congress. (Boos.) If not, take a look at John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats.
And all I could think of was the thousands of Republican ‘bots listening who were confronted with the logical conundrum of “Tax cuts good…but Bill Clinton benefitted. Tax cuts good…Bill Clinton bad. Keep tax cuts…help Bill Clinton? End tax cuts…no! no! Error! Error!”
And their tiny little heads explode.
Yes! I’m still a nerd! I found How To Catch A Lion hilarious:
The Bolzano-Weierstraﾟ method
Divide the desert by a line running from north to south. The lion is then either in the eastern or in the western part. Let’s assume it is in the eastern part. Divide this part by a line running from east to west. The lion is either in the northern or in the southern part. Let’s assume it is in the northern part. We can continue this process arbitrarily and thereby constructing with each step an increasingly narrow fence around the selected area. The diameter of the chosen partitions converges to zero so that the lion is caged into a fence of arbitrarily small diameter.
(Via Darby, who picked the Schrödinger’s Lion method.)
So, we’re back from a week’s vacation. Not surprisingly, I feel completely exhausted. What is it about vacations that completely and thoroughly wipe one out?
Oh yes, I remember now: kids. When you are on vacation, you are on call 24/7. No preschools, no babysitters, and rarely a room or a moment to yourself.
It was fun anyhow.
We went on a drive trip up to Portland, then down the Oregon Coast to Mendocino, then home today. A full week of doing about 1500 miles.
Bonus: Simon has started talking up a storm. He repeated words we said constantly. The most hilarious version of this was when I promised Sophia we would get ice cream at our next rest stop. (Not to bribe her or anything. Just to get some ice cream. Mommy wanted ice cream too.) For the next half an hour of drive time, Simon chanted, “Choco cone! Choco cone!” Over. And over. And over.
Downside: Somehow, and I have no idea how, the spammers who have pretty much left my site alone for the past few weeks hit the comments section with a vengeance the day we left. Thank goodness we had internet access at the beginning and the end of the trip to take care of that as much as I could. If you happen to see comments for Vi*gra/Meri*ia/the like, please let me know.
Anyhow, if you are interested in our doings, continue apace…
(Warning! Excessively long, talky entry with photos follows!)
(more…)
You know that People for the American Way has published the Florida Felon List, which allows citizens to check to see if the state of Florida is calling them nasty names behind their back and, oh yes, disenfranchising them. Great move, props all around to PFAW.
I’m not here to get into the Florida thing. No, no: I’m here to tell all writers out here to get copies of the list immediately. Unfortunately, it’s 26 PDF files. On the other hand…it’s a gigantic list of names you can look at any time to spark an idea for a character’s name.
Need a name? Check the list. All different ethnicities and heritages. Easy to peruse in the comfort of your own computer.
I’m all about the writing help over here.
They’re not even pretending anymore:
Military records that could help establish President Bush’s whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.
It said the payroll records of “numerous service members,” including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. No back-up paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25.
Cue the Church Lady: “Who could have done this? Hmm, let me think. Could it have been…SATAN?”
Update: Lambert at Corrente has much more analysis of why this is suspicious, criminal bullshit.
Tamar, Dan, and Damian came to visit for a week, which is among the reasons I haven’t been posting. It’s exhausting having house guests, what with the socializing and walking and going places like the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It’s exhausting being a house guest.
Basically, vacation is just exhausting and you should think twice before setting foot outside your house.
Actually, it was great having them here. I really enjoyed having adult conversations with close friends, and we felt comfortable enough with each other so that we could do stuff together, or not, as the circumstances warranted. One of the best things about having them visit (beyond simply seeing friends from Los Angeles) was that Damian and Sophia get on so well. They immediately started having fun together, as though the last time they’d seen one another was last week instead of six months ago. The kids (with Simon in tow) were tearing through the house from morning til night, which was one big reason we didn’t get any sleep.
Anyhow, one game that Sophia and Damian came up with during one of our walks—was it in Monterey, walking back from the restaurant? Or before that?—was a variant on “Red light, green light.” You know this game: you yell, “Green light!” and everybody runs; then you yell, “Red light!” and everyone has to stop.
Well, evidently two lights were not enough for them. They added:
(I think there was another one too, but I don’t have Sophia with me right now to find out.)
What was amazing was that they played this game several days running, and they did the same motions depending on the color of the light.
I’m kind of a purple light girl myself.
Recently Tamar and Otto have had entries comparing their lives today with their lives four years ago. I can’t even think back that far. I compare my life today with just a year ago. That’s about as far as I can go.
It’s been a year since we moved back to the Bay Area. More than a year at this point—13 months? Wow. Just…wow.
Anyhow, as I think back upon my life now versus then:
In Los Angeles I had a half-time babysitter. Yes, twenty hours a week, four hours a day. Four hours a day when I could do anything I wanted. I usually wrote. Not as diligently as I could have, obviously, since you still haven’t seen my byline anywhere.
Darin worked at home. He was a very good telecommuter: fell out of bed, started work, put in his eight or nine or ten hours. He was ready for dinner at 5:30. 6:00 at the latest.
We ate out, a lot. When we didn’t go out, we ordered in. We had Maria’s Italian Kitchen on speed dial. When we cooked, I went out and did the food shopping, Darin did the cooking, and I set the table.
Then we moved to the Bay Area, and pretty much everything changed.
Suddenly I was a full-time mom. This was a shock for me. A big shock. I didn’t have a babysitter, and I didn’t have Darin at hand, at home, ready to watch the kids for a few minutes while I did whatever. It was all me, baby, morning, noon, and night. It was quite a while before I even discovered the Sitters Unlimited babysitting agency and hired someone maybe once a month to have the afternoon off. (The biggest problem with finding a babysitter around here has been the sticker shock: it’s $10/hour in Los Angeles, $15/hour here. Plus transportation fee. Plus tip.)
Writing? Pretty much no writing for the past year. I realize that there are plenty of writing mothers who manage to carve out a portion of their day and write despite taking care of little kids. I know this. For the past year, I have not been one of these moms. I have been adjusting to too many other things. I hope I have more of a handle on things now.
I will not lie: I did not immediately cotton to full-time mom status. Full-time parenting is hard. Not having someone to spell you is hard, particularly when you’ve been used to it. If there is one thing this culture is very good at, it is making you feel inadequate if you are not naturally Super-Mom. I have worked at this, bucko.
I have since found a babysitter for Friday afternoons and every other Wednesday evening (date night). A few hours to myself is such a luxury now. It seems absolutely incredible to me that I used to have twenty hours a week to myself. Ha!
I have not, as of yet, figured out how to keep the house spotless throughout the day.
Darin started going into the office each day instead of working at home. And, not surprisingly, he started working more: he had a new job, more responsibilities, was there on-site instead of dealing with everyone by phone. Getting out of there by 6 became the lower boundary of what he was aiming for, rather than the upper boundary. When there is no traffic, it takes him 20 minutes to get home.
Two little kids cannot wait until 6:30 to eat dinner. Trust me on this one. And corralling two little kids in a restaurant every night by myself…eh, no thanks. Once in a while is okay. Can’t do it all the time.
So the second biggest change for me has been that I learned to cook. I did not learn how to cook as a girl. I believe my mom had a phobia about having my sister and I near the stove, because when her brother was a boy he pulled down a pot of soup and burned himself badly. My mom was not especially thrilled by cooking to begin with, so no secret lore, no abiding love of cooking was passed down to me.
But now I have two kids and I have to feed them, preferably healthy food. Or something other than chicken dinosaurs and french fries all the time. I dug out Quick and Healthy I and II and the Joy of Cooking and dug in.
The biggest compliment has been that Darin has actually enjoyed most of what I’ve cooked. Darin, while the most supportive mate on the planet, is a die-hard foodie: he won’t lie about whether he likes something or not.
I still let him cook the red meat though. I am afraid I will cremate the meat.
Some interesting things have come about from this: I’ve gotten so bored with asparagus and broccoli (my favorite veggies) that I’ve begun eating peas again, first time since I was, oh, four. I actually bought tomatoes and mozzarella and prepared a salade caprese for Darin and me. This is the first time ever that I have bought tomatoes and prepared them. Ever.
I think I expressed myself creatively through my cooking. Well, whether I did or not, that’s what I tell people.
I’ve slowly begun meeting other adults, particularly other moms. I’m not the most gregarious person at the best of times, but a combination of Sophia’s sociability (did you know a four-year-old can have 86 best friends?) and my desire to talk to someone else whose age reaches two digits has forced me to be more outgoing.
I’ve started exercising again. I managed to hurt myself, of course, so it’s been periodic rather than steady, but after not having an exercise routine for a long time, I finally started moving the bod again. The Y having a child care area (see: no babysitter, above) was a big incentive. Having friends in the area who wanted to run with me also helped.
I feel much more like part of a community here. I walk around, meet neighbors. I read the local paper. I buy coffee from the local coffee shop, not the Mermaid.
I still feel a little off-kilter from the move, from the change in the various things. But, you know: that’s how you can tell you’re still alive, I guess.
By the way, to anyone who feels compelled to post a comment along the lines of, “You’re supposed to take care of your kids 24/7 and not have any help! You’re supposed to do all the cooking!”
Let me reply ahead of time: Bite me.
You’re welcome.