24 March 2010

Whilst in the lab working diligently as usual this morning (~9 AM), my co-workers were involved in some sort of pointless ridiculous banter. At one point, one of them said: “Is this what you’re gonna blog about today, James?” And I said, “No, I already have something to blog about for today.” Which is this:

I pulled out of our apartment’s parking at 6:00 this morning. About 15 seconds into my commute,just as I passed over 35E, but before I passed Summit Brewery, I saw a shadowy 4-legged thing moving behind some trees. I slowed down. The thought: “Was that a dog?” entered my brain, but I immediately dismissed it, as no dog is that big. Going even slower, I drove forward about 100 feet more and saw not one, not two, but TEN deer nibbling in the grass and walking around. I brought my car to a complete stop and just stared. There were eight mature does, one juvenile, probably a year old, and another that was somewhere between yearling and adult (tween?). A couple of them looked up at me, and a few began walking past, but not hurriedly. The closest ones were fifteen to twenty feet away; close enough so that my car’s headlights gave their eyes that weird we’re-in-league-with-the-Devil look that my cat so often sports at 2AM.

Another vehicle approached from behind. The driver slowed as (s)he passed me, presumably because it’s odd to see a parked running car that early in the morning on that empty street. But then they sped away. They must not have seen the deer. But, I guess if you drive a Ford Explorer, you’ve long since abandoned noticing anything beyond your own dashboard. The re-acceleration of the Ford gave the herd a minor panic, and a few of them pranced away, past the railroad tracks, another thirty feet or so from the road. I watched them vanish behind the trees, then I took off for work.

Also – one of my co-workers emailed this flow chart to me today (if you click on it, it’s easier to see):

She thought I would find it amusing. I did.

25 March 2010

Owen and I stopped at the library on the way home today. He selected a whole bevy of books including titles such as: You can be Pretty like Barbie, Princesses are Fun, and Mermaids are Real. Just kidding. See, Owen is a boy, and so we were allowed to check out books with titles like Watching the Moon, Jupiter, and Dwarf Planets. Okay, so I guess I’m still harping on that thing from a few days ago. Princesses. Jeez.

Speaking of books, here’s my latest book review: The Heathen’s Guide to World Religions. This entirely mediocre tome is currently taking up precious space on our book shelf, so if you’d like to read it, I know where you can get a copy from.

Owen claims that everything he hears adults say aloud, he has to repeat in his head. This causes him frustration, and that’s why, he says, he tries getting us to stop talking so much. He also says he can stop the repeating if he makes these electronic/laser/robotic noises. I know this sounds unbelievable, but, coming from the son of someone who used to have to repeat everything backwards in his head, it seems as if the family genetics have improved with this generation. My wife says she’ll talk to Owen’s teacher about it tomorrow.

I received an email from the President of the Maple Grove Critical Thinking Club this evening. I didn’t even know such a club existed. More importantly, what are critically thinking people doing living in Maple Grove?  Anyway, she (yeah – she – can you believe it? I wonder if she’s a princess. Okay, I digress) wants to know if I want to come speak to her Club in June. On the topics of atheism and Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Hm. I don’t know. I’m not an atheist “expert,” it’s just what I call myself because I see no evidence for gods, and, in fact, the evidence presented falls flat. Much like Santa Claus. (I’m also aSanta, too.) But I don’t really care if people think there’s a god, just so long as it doesn’t make them do crazy stuff, and I also don’t know all the finer points of defending/explaining such a worldview. I mean, for that matter, I’m also pro-gay rights, but I don’t think I’d be the one to lecture on the logical reasons for allowing same-sex marriages.

I do, however, consider myself an expert on the topic of Jehovah’s Witnesses, so maybe I could just talk about that for the bulk of the hour. This is unfairly easy, though, as I am confident there would be no one there offering counter-arguments to my Watchtower polemics. I guess I’ll have to think about this one.

23 March 2010

So here’s a rather small scale model of the USS Enterprise: CLICK THIS.

It’s small. It’s amazingly small. 8.8 microns. To put that into perspective, if you lined 113 of them up end-to-end, they still wouldn’t be as thick as dime (I’m talking the skinny side of the dime – not the diameter). I just think it’s really great when scientists use their know-how to do something marvelous for the human race like this.

Here’s another link: NOW CLICK THIS. I felt compelled to write this article after watching said episode. Something like this happened last season on Survivor, too. One contestant prayed to her god to help her team win the challenge. They didn’t, but I think she continued to believe in her god after he failed her so miserably. Maybe her god was busy in Haiti that week, who knows?

I also found out today that my work was accepted into Hamline’s book of student stuff titled The Fulcrum. (Sorry, I don’t have a link for you to click this time.) This is kind of amazing because, last year, when I first found out about the Fulcrum, I made it a goal to submit something. That was in September. The deadline was something like December 3rd. All through October and November, I kept meaning to write something, but I was busy with other matters. So, finally, like the day before the deadline, I had to take the day off work because our baby-sitter canceled on us. So I took Owen to preschool, and then had three hours to spend at the local library. I was all caught up on my schoolwork, so I wrote an essay real quick, and sent it in about 15 minutes before the noon deadline. Apart from Word’s auto-spellcheck, there was pretty much no editing.

In a way, though, it’s not at all amazing that my work was accepted. After all, the editor-in-chief shares my last name. I’ve never met her but, hey, nepotism must work at all levels of human endeavor, right?

21 March 2010

I was at my niece’s birthday party today. From the looks of things, there are two types of toys that girls can have: toys with Disney Princesses on them, or toys with Barbie on them.

Have I mentioned that I hate Disney? No, not Walt Disney, the pioneering cartoonist and film-maker. I’m talking about the media giant that has sunk its tentacles into every aspect of childhood. I can’t stand the way they extend copyrights, sue quasi-copyright infringements, market junk and proclaim it as the next “classic” and ruin otherwise perfect Pixar films by slapping their logo on the beginning.

Anyway, nothing seems worse than those princesses directed at little girls. I can’t quite figure out why Disney seems to think that, in order to be somebody, you have to be royalty. I thought my ancestors fought some big war a while back to throw off those royal tyrants. And, actually, now that I think about it, the best Disney cartoons are the ones about non-royalty: Dumbo, Bambi, Pinocchio, and all that early stuff with that mouse and that duck. The British royal family is just a waste of UK tax-payers’ money. It shouldn’t even exist anymore. It’s just something everyone over there is afraid to get rid of, kind of like the way Americans are with their gods.

The bigger crime, though, is the look of these picture-perfect princesses. They look so fake and phony (is that redundant?), like they all went to Glamour Shots. The story, as first told in Snow White, then repeated in Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, the Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and probably that new movie with the obnoxious alligators (oh – and if you click this link, the site shows you a montage of prior Disney princesses, in case you forgot that this is just another rehash), is this: if a young girl wants to make something of herself, she needs to:

1 – be pretty. If you’re not naturally pretty, like, say, Snow White, try to employ witchcraft. Maybe some fairy can turn your rags into a prom dress or – more drastically – you can contract with a sea hag for major body alterations.

2 – catch the attention of a rich, handsome man. Yeah, that’s right, even if you’re a princess (what is that, like third in line for the crown?), your best bet is still to just lie around all day waiting for a Prince Smarming. You can literally lie around, like Snow White, or that chick from Sleeping Beauty, or figuratively lie around, chilling with your pet tiger.

3 – well, honestly, there is no #3. Because, let’s face it, once a girl has grown up into a 16 year old woman (that’s how old Ariel is on her wedding day), and has snagged someone with that coveted XY combo, there’s really nothing left to achieve. And that’s why the movie is always over at this point.

Hm, I was going to mention Barbie, with her gravity-defying bosom and permanently-ready-for-stilettos feet, but you get the point.

22 March 2010

While at Mississippi Market today, we recruited assistance from one of the employees to get us some bulk pop-corn. As the employee stretched out to grab a bag for us, I noticed her tattoo. She was wearing a button shirt, but the top two (maybe three) buttons weren’t fastened. emblazoned on her sternum was something that looked like this:

I only saw it for a second, but wow…if that didn’t look like Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I don’t know what does. Later, as she was ringing up our items, I could only see the very, um…Northern shore of her tattoo.

So now I bet you’re wondering three things:

1) How can I be sure it was Michigan’s UP?

Because, I’m just THAT good at geography. It’s my favorite Trivial Pursuit category. One of my favorite past-times in junior high school was correcting teacher’s when they got their geography facts wrong. I once asked a table of co-workers if any of them ever noticed that Wisconsin looks like Tanzania, and they all gave me a look that said: “Wow, I bet you could spot Michigan’s UP on a tattoo in less than 0.5 seconds.

2) Why would someone get a tattoo of Michigan’s UP?

I don’t know! Isn’t it great, though? I mean, everyone gets hearts, crosses, names. How many people get a road map?

3) Did she also have the Lower Peninsula?

Ooh… I could’ve asked …but that might have gotten me thrown out of the store.

19 March 2010

I invited myself to join my co-workers in going out to lunch today. I usually don’t go with them when they head out for lunch because, for one thing, I’m too cheap to buy lunch at a restaurant (or the cafeteria) everyday. Second, I usually have stuff I want to take care of during my break – writing this blog, running errands, reading a book, doing my homework, stuff like that. But, today, I just felt like doing something social.

In fact, so many people from my department went out to lunch together, that I joked that it was kind of like a department meeting. I was exaggerating, of course, but this has been quite the month for our department. Early in the month, one co-worker quit. Less than two weeks later, another co-worker quit. As of today, my department employs exactly 50% of the people that it employed when we were at our peak (14 from 28). And they’re gonna be announcing lay-offs soon, too, so it’s feasible the department could shrink even more. It’s feasible, actually, that I could be one of the people laid-off. So, stay tuned.

20 March 2010

Happy vernal equinox!

Today, we went to Olive Garden for lunch. While there, I asked Jennifer if she had any hand lotion in her purse. She said she didn’t, and the following conversation ensued:

ME: You have gotta have the most useless purse contents of any woman I’ve ever lived with.

SHE: You’ve never lived with any other women.

ME: Um…my sister, my mom, both my grandmothers –

SHE: Well of course they’d have the same stuff you’d need in their purses.

ME: What’s that supposed to mean?

SHE: It means they all have OCD, just like you, so they carry all that stuff you always want.

ME: Huh. That’s probably true.

Man, the passion just never ends in our relationship.

If men could carry purses, here are ten things I’d keep in my purse: my keys, my wallet, Advil, lip balm, hand lotion, a pen, a small notepad, a multi-purpose knife, a few tissues, a flask with some hard, hard liquor in it.

17 March 2010

In class today, we watched the motion picture A Raisin in the Sun. No, not the 1961 version, the 2008 version. We watched the 1961 version last week. That means that in one week, I saw 4 movies for school-related projects.

Here’s what I gotta say about the two Raisins: if you’re in the mood for a film version of Hansberry’s famous play…skip the new one and proceed directly to the older version. Without going in to detail (’cause that’s what I’m gonna do for my class paper), let me delineate a few reasons why the older one is to be preferred:

1961: Sydney Poitier and Ruby Dee

2008: Puff Daddy and John Stamos

I think that pretty much says it all. In fairness, I felt Phylicia Rashad gave a superior performance of the Lena/Mama character, but…that’s about the only good thing I can say about the 2008 version. The newer version was also a made-for-TV production (automatic demerits), it’s longer, the dialogue features anachronistic slang, and the music (to paraphrase one of my classmates) was Disney.

To summarize —

1961: Sydney Poitier and Ruby Dee

2008: Puff Daddy and John Stamos

18 March 2010

I opened our Volkswagen Jetta’s glove compartment this afternoon.

As I’ve indicated earlier, we plan to pawn off our hecho en Mexico money pit in the near future and, consequently, I figured it was time to pry open the dashboard Ark of the Covenant and see what was in there.

To explain: a few years ago (spring 2006?) I went to open the glove compartment, and the handle broke off. I tried digging my fingers in there to open it, and I tried shimmying the lock mechanism with my keys, but I just couldn’t do it. One day, I brought a crowbar out to the Jetta and tried to open it. I would’ve succeeded, too, except a last minute decision to not permanently deface the car gave me a change of heart.

After a while, the glove compartment turned into a kind of forced, unplanned time capsule. I forgot what was in there and, since we hardly ever used it anyway, it didn’t seem like a big deal.

Well, a few days ago, while stopped at a light, I jabbed a small screwdriver in the lock and, viola! (or, presto!, if you prefer), the left-side latch unhooked. With the compartment half open, and ownership soon terminating, I decided to walk out to my Jetta during my lunch break today (with large screwdriver in hand) and finish the job. Unfortunately, the right-side latch wouldn’t budge, so I had to force it, but I didn’t hear anything break, so I think I could still close it again if I wanted.

At any rate, for the first time in years, human eyes laid eyes on the contents of the glove compartment. Talk about a lame-ass time capsule. Contents included:

-A matchbook

-A map of Sherburne County

-Directions to my sister’s house

-Another small screwdriver (jeez, I guess I have a lot of screwdrivers laying around)

-A tire pressure gauge

-A brochure advertising Big Lake Automotive (that’s a great place to bring your car, by the way)

-A receipt from April, 2006 for one of the Jetta’s 500 car repairs.

-Directions to our friends’, the Kimballs, house (they don’t even live in that house anymore)

-Directions to my sister-in-law’s townhouse (she doesn’t live in that house anymore, either)

-Directions to my brother-in-law’s house (wow – did we know where anything was back then?)

-And these:

They’re candles. Tea light candles, to be precise. Over the years of hot summers and cold winters they’ve apparently expanded, melted and spilled over the edges of their original containers. Notice the candle on the left: the wick has been completely enveloped by the wax. Meanwhile, the other two candles have conjoined to form a hybrid super-candle.

I can’t wait to go hunting for my next long-lost lame-ass treasure! Stay tuned!