Year: 2007

One of the kids’ friends brought her copy of Dance Dance Revolution to our house (she has a different version than we do) and the kids were all listening to the music– not dancing, mind you– when I came in for my afternoon snack.

“Hey dad, there’s this awesome song you should hear,” said Kyra.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“It’s called ‘Whip It’!” added Alex.
“You mean by Devo?”
“Yeah.”

Oh my. I explained to them that the song is probably twenty years old (still a classic, of course!). I’m surprised they have it in the game, because most of the music is modern dance stuff. I guess some tunes just never go out of style.

They really got a kick out of the music video, too. “Look at their hats!” they said. “And did you see how they whipped off that lady’s hat?”

I don’t get much spam any more (hooray) so unfortunately I miss out on all of the cheesy loans and mortgages and drugs and money transfer deals. But today I picked up a great ad:

I particularly like the happy punching guy on the side. Not only do you get $1,500 BY TOMORROW but you also get a free bonus SOCK TO THE KISSER BY SOME ASIAN GUY!

Our family enjoys playing Dance Dance Revolution, but I wonder how much more fun we’d have if we installed a Dance Dance Immolation set in our family room.

As shown here, you do the standard dance moves on your control pad. Note the fashionable fireproof suits.

When you goof up a step, you get sprayed by a flamethrower! Whee!

That’s way more exciting than the word boo on the screen…

This week marks the start of my hyper-exercise season. For the next two months, my weeks will include the following:

Monday – ultimate practice
Tuesday – ultimate pickup at lunch
Wednesday – ultimate league game (double headers eight out of ten weeks)
Thursday – ultimate pickup at lunch, dodgeball in the evening

That’s four or five ultimate games per week (depending on whether we have a double header or not), as well as dodgeball. Of course I’m also biking ten miles to my office a couple days a week, and there’s the occasional paintball game on Saturdays. We’re considering a whitewater rafting trip soon, and inevitably we’ll be hiking every few weekends.

Wow. By September I should be in fabulous shape. Just in time to get flabby again during the hibernation season.

This description cracked me the heck up.

An artist named Kim Dingle asked teenagers in high school to draw the outline of the United States from memory. The result was… umm… interesting.

She observed that Florida appears in nearly every representation of the country, although very few kids included the Great Lakes; even Texas wasn’t guaranteed a spot. And a couple of those are so unrecognizable they could be inkblot tests or something.

Ahh, geography: apparently a lost art.

So there was this guy. And a couple of his pals. And a plan they had to blow up JFK airport in New York City.

Luckily the plot was foiled, even though it appears it wasn’t very well-thought-out. They had intended to ignite the fuel lines running beneath the airport, expecting the entire airport to go sky-high and “leave very few people alive”. Indeed, blowing up an entire airport would be catastrophic, but apparently the way the fuel lines work make such an event extremely unlikely.

So three cheers for the FBI agents who tailed this guy for a year and a half before finally arresting him today, but a big fat raspberry boo to New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg. He proved that he’s been to Camp Nine Eleven when he said:

Why do these fear-mongering terrorist-happy politicians insist on claiming that every attempt to blow something up means we’re going to lose our freedom and our way of life?

It’s true that I would be sad if JFK airport went up in flames, and certainly there would be widespread feelings of grief for the victims and anger toward those who carried out the plot. But I can’t understand how an airport exploding would mean I’m less “free” than I was yesterday.

If anything, it’s the very politicians who spout such nonsense that are actually taking away our freedoms. Every time they point to a plot like this, and how we’re all “safer” because the Bad Guys were nabbed (note that the plot was nowhere near ready for execution, so there was no imminent danger), they mention that all of the surveillance techniques and wiretaps and other intrusive and freedom-destroying tools employed by our government were “instrumental” in making the catch. Then they insist we need more of them. More surveillance. More databases. More identification required. More background checks every time you buy a Snickers at the gas station.

I, for one, would rather face the chance that I’ll die in a terrorist act someday (which is terrifically unlikely) over the alternative of a police state whose stated goal is “protecting my freedoms”. No thanks, guys, my freedoms are just fine without your help.

From The Onion:

Laralee was weeding the yard, and she found this amazing little rock amongst the river rocks we use as landscaping around the house.

It’s about an inch across, and almost perfectly round! And it’s definitely a natural rock, not a weird lump of concrete or a marble or something. I guess conditions were just right on the river where it spent a million years getting beat up.

Let me see if I understand the Iraq war funding situation correctly.

January
Bush: I need a nice big check for… umm… a hundred billion dollars.
Congress: Ha, good one, George!

February
Bush: If you don’t give me a nice big check, it means you don’t support the troops.
Congress: Okay, we’ll give you the $100 bil, but you have to pull the troops out in a year.
Congress: By the way, we’ll also toss in $20 billion more in pork projects. Whee!

March
Bush: (insert tired arguments about “staying the course” and “supporting the troops”)
Congress: (insert tired arguments about how Iraq blows and we need to leave)

April
Bush: This thing about pulling the troops out kind of sucks. I’m going to veto the bill.
Congress: Ha, just try it. That clause stays in or you don’t get the money.

May
Bush: Veto, baby.
Congress: We were just kidding. Here’s your money. Is there anything else we can do for you, Mr. President?

Sigh. In January the Democrats took charge of Congress and said they were going to make some real changes. They sure talk tough, but I think they left their spines at the door. Once again we sit and watch as Bush gets a bucketload of money, very few restrictions on how to spend it, and all the latitude he wants to conduct his futile little war.