Wowza

Man that chick can sing.

Insane is the Word, All Right

Check this madness out:



That's a level of skill and trust in one's equipment you don't often see. Man does that look fun, and you have to wonder if any of it is possible in a real helicopter. I'm sure it would kill anyone inside it to do what this guy does, but it sure would look cool to do a lesser version.

Thanksgiving Memories

Despite being away from family, Thanksgiving 2006 was pretty nice. It didn't hurt that we brought wine and weren't expected to help clean up or really do anything but enjoy ourselves. It's funny how having a small child exempts me from more activity than a broken back ever did . . .

Anyway, we were entertained by the lovely Naomi and her man Adam, who live in a great house in Clarksville. Gorgeous old wood floors, tiny riotous kitchen, a huge enclosed balcony and a fun circular layout that kept Sabrina happily occupied for hours. Naomi put on a fantastic spread, including the most beautiful turkey I've ever seen and so many delicious side dishes that the dining room table seemed to groan under their weight. Before dinner several plates of what turned out to be puff pastry laid flat and covered with carmelized onions and blue cheese, baked and cut into squares. I ate maybe ten of these things and still dream about them. Seems like an easy thing to make, so I'll find out soon.

Great food, a really fun group of arty Austin weirdos and a happy baby made it a really nice time. So did not having to clean up and going home to our own bed. But I really missed the Thanksgiving dinner my mother makes. I guess everyone must feel the same; it's not really Thanksgiving if you don't have a certain food item, or if it's not done a certain way. For me it's the gravy. My mother makes a perfect natural gravy, just slightly thickened at the end with flour, or maybe it's corn starch. It saturates the stuffing and to a lesser degree the turkey, making them warm, salty and delicious, and it's absolutely essential to my enjoyment of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. I'll eat creamy giblet gravy, but I won't enjoy it or the holiday. It ruins everything and is basically worse than the Holocaust.

Funny Stuff

If you haven't seen this yet



it's pretty special. And I liked the song, so I looked it up:



I'd barely heard of Amy Winehouse before this, and only in the context of being one of the great British drunks despite her youth. Which adds to the enjoyment of the song, I think.

Bombdiggity

This is one of the cooler things I've seen lately. From Skinny Bean in Denver, whose sex reassignment interview did not go well.

Best Website Ever

Touching animal friendships. I could look at this stuff forever, especially this one. Lifted from the Thighmaster.

You Said a Mouthful, Sister, Times Three

First, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell say what almost no one else has the courage to say:

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs lambasted teacher unions today, claiming no amount of technology in the classroom would improve public schools until principals could fire bad teachers.

Jobs compared schools to businesses with principals serving as CEOs.

"What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good?" he asked to loud applause during an education reform conference.

Indeed. Next, Professor Bob Giegengack, who voted for Al Gore in 2000 and says he probably would again in 2008, says what we all know: Gore is full of sh*t in his ridiculous Global Warming movie:

To determine temperatures and carbon dioxide levels in the distant past, scientists rely on what they call the “proxy record.” There weren’t thermometers. So researchers drill deep down into the Antarctic ice sheet and the ocean floor and pull up core samples, whose varying chemical elements let them gauge both the CO2 levels and the temperatures of the distant past.

Gieg clicks a button, and three charts come together. The peaks and valleys of the Milankovi´c cycles for planetary temperature align well with the ocean-floor estimates, and those match closely the records of carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature indications from ice cores. So, the professor maintains, these core samples from the polar ice and ocean floor help show that the Earth’s temperature and the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been in lockstep for tens of thousands of years.

Of course, that was long before anybody was burning fossil fuels. So Giegengack tells his students they might want to consider that “natural” climatic temperature cycles control carbon dioxide levels, not the other way around. That’s the crux of his argument with Gore’s view of global warming — he says carbon dioxide doesn’t control global temperature, and certainly not in a direct, linear way. (emphasis mine)

I don't disbelieve that the earth is warming, I just think Gore and company are screwing up the science. I disagree that it is caused by humans, I disagree with idea that using computer models that can't accurately predict a week, month or year ahead would provide accurate data, and I disagree that anything we do now could meaningfully change the current warming trend. But most of all I disagree with any side of an argument that doesn't want the other side's story told. When Gore says any scientist who disagrees with him is on Bush's payroll, he's squashing dissent on a scientific matter. When Ellen Goodman says Global Warming deniers are no different than Holocaust deniers, she's doing the same thing. When the Governor of Oregon wants to fire the state climatologist for disagreeing that humans caused Global Warming, so is he.

Finally, an October '06 Christopher Hitchens piece about bailing on Iraq:

Many of those advocating withdrawal have been "war-weary" ever since the midafternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, when it was discovered that the source of jihadist violence was U.S. foreign policy—a mentality now reinforced by the recent National Intelligence Estimate circulated by our emasculated, demoralized, and incompetent intelligence services. To this way of thinking, victory is impossible by definition, because any response other than restraint is bound to inflame the militancy of the other side. Since the jihadists, by every available account, are also inflamed and encouraged by everything from passivity to Danish cartoons, this seems to shrink the arena of possible or even thinkable combat. (Nobody ever asks what would happen if the jihadists had to start worrying about the level of casualties they were enduring, or the credit they were losing by their tactics, or the number of enemies they were making among civilized people who were prepared to take up arms to stop them. Our own masochism makes this contingency an unlikely one in any case.)

I am glad that all previous demands for withdrawal or disengagement from Iraq were unheeded, because otherwise we would not be able to celebrate the arrest and trial of Saddam Hussein; the removal from the planet of his two sadistic kids and putative successors; the certified disarmament of a former WMD- and gangster-sponsoring rogue state; the recuperation of the marshes and their ecology and society; the introduction of a convertible currency; the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan (currently advertising for investors and tourists on American television); the killing of al-Qaida's most dangerous and wicked leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and many of his associates; the opening of dozens of newspapers and radio and TV stations; the holding of elections for an assembly and to approve a constitution; and the introduction of the idea of federal democracy as the only solution for Iraq short of outright partition and/or civil war. If this cause is now to be considered defeated, by the sheer staggering persistence in murder and sabotage of the clerico-fascist forces and the sectarian militias, then it will always count as a noble one.

Liberals, to a man and woman, said excactly the same thing between the late '90s and mid-2003 as Bush or any conservative you care to name: we can't let Saddam continue to flout the UN and its resolutions. They all said it would be worth going to war over to stop it. They never said anything about having to find WMD when we got there; it wasn't really about that then, not finding a particular weapon or set of weapons. They, like everyone else, wanted to keep WMD from ever being made or stored there; it was less about what was than it was about what could be if we did nothing. To pretend now that there had to have been certain conditions on the ground there to justify said war is utter bullshit, and the entire party should be ashamed.

Holy Sh*t

I can't think of another way to title a post about harvesting submerged trees from lake reservoirs with a chainsaw-wielding submersible robot. Too cool.

Hijacked from Garfield Ridge.

Swingy Thing

Sabrina's a fancy little rabbit. She dances a lot now, and most of the time she looks like Elaine from Seinfeld. It's a violent dance move, almost knocking her over half the time.

It's not possible to convey with this photo the depth of Sabrina's love for speed and violent motion. We try to introduce new dangerous activities as slowly as she can be persuaded to learn them, but as in most peoples' childhoods, there's a lot more blowing past the safety line than there is carefully approaching it.

I don't know how daredevilishness comes about, but I'm sure she'll have some. Just be careful, monkey . . .

Suspicious Minds

I thought I had the best Anna Nicole crackpot theory, but my lovely wife's beats anything I've heard: her dirtbag lawyer Howard Stern was hired by the Marshall family long ago and has just completed his mission.

I should probably be more scared of my wife than I am.

Also, I just saw video of murdering scumbag Howard Stern pretending to cry about Anna Nicole's death and I think it gave my eyes an abortion, and then AIDS.

Amazing Furniture

I don't know what's cooler, the couch or the table. I love both of them.

Beyond Fantastic

I don't think I've ever seen anything cooler on the internets than this. Awesome times a jillion.

Pretty Good Stuff

I don't know if "greatest love song ever" applies to this, exactly, but I liked it a lot. "Voice on Tape" on her Myspace page is good too.

Wrongness

I've heard of a lot of messed up things, but this takes the cake. Jesus, getting murdered because someone's backwoods religious beliefs in Bumf*ck China dictate they can't bury their unmarried son without a "Ghost Bride"? That has to rank among the most pointless deaths imaginable. There was no malice, the guy who did it was just filling an existing need. Horrible.

Shame

Is it weird to like this?



Because I do. People are drawn to those who have zero body awareness. She's like Jack Black not just in genre and general nuttiness but also in that way he has of glorifying in his own fat. Same deal with this Leslie Hall.

Indispensable Slackwear

This just says it all, doesn't it? Strangely that sort of self-deprecating humor is all the rage with the emo kids, and I wouldn't be surprised to know that depression is considered cool among them. Like having a fast car was for my generation, or getting laid at Spring Break.

I absolutely love Achewood. I want to live there. Screw Middle Earth, Achewood's the place for me.

A Voice that's Bigger than Life

Jennifer Hudson is an amazing singer, and should have won season 3 of American Idol. I was deeply disappointed when she got voted off the island in seventh place. Effing seventh. Maybe Elton John is right, I thought, America is too racist to let someone like her win. As someone who has watched every second of Idol ever broadcast, let me assure you it was because she's a big old weirdo, and most people aren't comfortable with that from a woman, especially a black woman. I don't know why that is, it just is. She acted a little wacky on the show a few times and got real quiet at times on the show when a few words, any non-psychotic words really, would have established a sympathetic part of her character that she hadn't really shown up to that point. I loved her from the first moment and didn't need her to do anything but sing her ass off every time, which is exactly what she did. But I have to admit I didn't vote for her very much during the week she got booted even though I knew very well she probably needed it, and I wonder if I didn't unconsciously assume she wouldn't care either way. Which she might not have, and if so she was exactly right. Winning is hardly the point of American Idol. Exposure is the whole kaboodle.

But my God Jennifer Hudson can sing. She could then



And she still can. I got her version of "And I am Telling You" and it's flawless and spine-tingling. She's a treasure and I'm so glad that cheesy show gave her the leg up she needed to get where she is today.

Oh Bother

Jeez
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.

Another ice storm pic. Sabrina was lovely about the whole thing, really. Santa (still my parents, which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it) brought her a rainbow play mat, you remember the kind, sort of a tumbling mat thing. The thing's multitalented; it's a partition screen, it's a slide, it even makes julienne fries. I like to think we explored the hell out of that thing's possibilities, and many of them make my daughter scream with laughter.

Sabrina's a lovely girl. I can't remember if I wrote about this yet here, but if so I'm going to do it again: our neighbors to the North are a lovely couple with two sons, 2 and a half and five I believe, and the older one is in the stage where they growl at everything like little dinosaurs. In front of our house is a little ring of bushes with a break in the back, sort of a litle kiddie cave, and the boys spend a lot of time in there. Not too long ago Sabrina discovered it, and at first we weren't terribly happy about that. She's still falling over a fair bit and there were some sharp bits in there at eye level, so I did some trimming and we did our best to hold on to her in there. The second time she explored it she was having a lovely time and suddenly the older boy next door came outside and saw her in there, which you could tell drove him absolutely nuts. He grabbed his big Tonka dump truck, the one he holds on to the bed of while rocketing down the sidewalk, and rammed the cave a number of times, growling like mad.

There was no physical danger to Sabrina, and I've found that I always feel like a jerk after yelling at someone else's kid, so I just watched. His dad came out and told him to stop with the cave ramming, and he did, and then entered the cave. I sat near the entrance and watched Sabrina catch sight of him, ball up her little fists, and give him a bear mating call roar that froze him in his tracks. I was as shocked as he was, and for a moment we all sat there stunned until the kid's dad laughed and called him inside the house.

That's my girl. I'm sure I inflate the value of these magic moments, but it sure seems like she's the best little person I've ever known, sweeter, braver, more understanding, more generous, etc. I suppose that's what people mean when they say they learn from their children, at this point at least. The real teaching will begin when she starts talking. I'm ready, Sabrina. Drop that knowledge.

Let Me Out

Sorry honey pie, we're still not even sure which end the food goes in, much less how long is too long for a baby to be outside in nasty weather. Don't blame us, blame the doctor for letting us bring you home without an instruction manual.

Quality Craftsmanship

It's not that I blame the manufacturers of this clock for its inaccuracy; it blows off the wall outside a lot and hits the concrete patio out back because we live in a windy part of town (seriously, I've had to retrieve my BBQ grill from the corner of the yard, propane bottle still attached, more than once). But honestly, two inches of ice ought to bring the temp down to at least 40.

This picture was taken Wednesday late morning, after some of the ice had melted.

Silly Baby

Sweet babies get bored when it's very icy outside, and we never know how long is too long for her to be outside when it's 18 degrees of wind chill.

Which is why Sabrina has this look on her face, I guess.

Just Wow

If you're a music fan, and a jazz fan, and an electronics fan, you'll love this. Michael Brecker playing some electronic woodwind thingy that does just about anything, including accompany him. Stay with it, a little boring at first but it's worth it.

Self Defense Device

Tim Blair's got a link that might just come in handy one day.

RIP

I really liked James Brown and am sad to see him go. Of the many blog posts about the Godfather of Soul's recent death I've seen that contained Youtube clips of JB, this is my favorite. James is rocking a fro and sounds better than I've ever heard him, and says "Good God" just once, at the perfect moment. Magical.

I'm almost ashamed of how his death lends itself to awful jokes containing his song titles. Think about it.

Best Christmas Ever

I should add a picture to this, but I don't have any here at work so I'll have to do that later. I had the best Christmas of my life week before last, and it's all because of my lovely daughter Sabrina. On the Saturday morning before Christmas, she was sitting on Mommy's lap and reached for me, and then when I just gave her a kiss and didn't pick her up, she screamed until I did. That's the first time I've been preferred even for a second, and it's an amazing feeling. I've always known she would have a stronger bond with Mommy, maybe forever, but I had hoped she'd see me as a decent substitute, and to be picked first even for a minute is the best feeling I've ever experienced. I'm proud to say it's continued and we're getting closer every day.

I'm also very proud of my little angel because although she was very interested in the other kids at my parents' house, almost all of them were 4 years old or older, so they didn't really want to hang out with her or let her play with their toys, and were continually taking her toys away, knocking her over, hitting her or just generally not letting her join in their reindeer games. I kept waiting for her to cry or otherwise get unhappy about it all, but she never did. When another kid took a toy from her, she'd get another one and take it to him. When she got knocked over, she got up and kept trying to join the group. I couldn't decide whether to beat the other kids or weep at my child's innocence and spirit, so I mostly just watched in amazement.

I did, however, make an ass of myself at least twice when a certain nephew knocked her down a couple of times and didn't even look back. I found myself threatening the poor kid with similar treatment if he didn't take care not to crush her to the ground, and in retrospect it was obnoxious and overdone. In my defense I watched her get abused for days before I had anything to say about it, but it's still terrible behavior on my part. And I'll apologize to the little monster as soon as he has the capacity to understand any of it.