eclecticism

Once again, we are reminded that the true celebration on this day isn’t Cinco de Mayo, but rather Royce’s birthday. Too many people get that mixed up. I have no idea why.

As always, my brother is just a day and three years behind me, so today marked his 32nd birthday. I hope it was a good one!

As of today, I’m officially old enough to be elected President of the United States — 35. I believe this is my last age-related milestone before official senior citizen status, though there may be something I’m not remembering.

Any birthday festivities are being delayed, though, for a few reasons. Firstly, I’m spending part of the day shooting a wedding for a friend’s daughter. They asked me to be their photographer last year sometime, I agreed, and then later on when they told me the finalized date…well, I didn’t want to back out and disappoint them, and it’ll still be a fun way to spend the afternoon. Prairie and I just figured that we’d do our own little celebration here at home in the evening (though probably saving birthday cake for a later day, as there’ll likely be wedding cake during the day).

Unfortunately, Prairie’s grandmother passed away earlier this week, and Prairie flew down to California to be with her family for the funeral — which is today as well. She says that she’s enjoying the trip, as even though it’s for a funeral, it’s also the first time in years that that entire clan has assembled (they had dinner for 28 people last night). She’s also taken a ton of pictures of everything, and says there’s a chance she might actually fill the 1Gb card we keep in her camera — a major event, as she tends to take about one picture for every 50-100 that I do (I’m so proud of her)!

So, definitely not a Worst Birthday EVAR, but not a Best Birthday EVAR either. Prairie comes back in to Seattle tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll probably go out to lunch somewhere and then come home to let her crash out. We’ll find a time for birthday celebrations and cake later on, perhaps next weekend.

In the meantime, if anyone feels sorry for me has too much money and wants to spend some on me is overly generous feels benevolent and wants to get me a present, I have a couple wishlists available through Wishlistr or Amazon. Hey, it’s my birthday, I’m allowed to do this, right?

It’s been a while since I’ve actually said anything on here, hasn’t it? So it goes, sometimes. This past school quarter was a rather unpleasant one, and online babbling became a pretty low priority for me. So, some random updates on the world around me…

School: Ugh. Glad that this last quarter is done with. Had one absolutely hellish class (Spanish 102, with insane amounts of homework and frequently unpleasant classroom experiences) that pretty much took over my life, and to very little positive end result, as the 2.3 final grade will attest to. On the bright side, I passed, but it was really frustrating (especially as this is the first quarter that I’ve been taking a full 12-credit load and didn’t end up with a high enough GPA to be on the Dean’s List) — and resulted in my re-thinking my schedule, dropping Spanish 103 (as it’s taught by the same teacher as this last quarter’s 102 class) and entirely rejiggering my last quarter. I’m now lined up for POL230 International Relations, WMN200 Intro to Women’s Studies, and DRA121 Acting. Should make for a decent senior quarter, and then I graduate in the spring with my AA. Yay!

Work: Proceeds as ever. I’m still selling cameras for the Ritz empire, and still enjoying it. We’ve got a pretty good team and a good little store, and lots of fun toys to play with. Of course, there is the constant good-natured one-upmanship when one or another of us gets a new toy, and I think I’ve fallen behind (I got my Nikon D70s about a year and a half back, then Ns got a Nikon D50 and later upgraded to a Nikon D80, R got a Nikon D40, L got a Pentax K10d, and now Ng just got a Canon 40D — I think we’ve just looped around back to me, anyone want to toss me $1800 for a D300?), but that’s all just part of the fun. In all honesty, for a ‘mall retail job,’ I do enjoy this one.

Home: As cute as our little apartment is, we’re both looking forward to this summer, as current plans have us moving down to the Des Moines area to be closer to Prairie’s job after I graduate. The apartment is in an old-ish (60’s-era?) building, and there are a number of little things that we’re not fond of: single-pane windows that don’t insulate well and rattle every time a car drives, slams its doors, or has music playing too loud; cracks in the plaster ceiling in the bathroom; and we think that there’s some mold or fungus somewhere that keeps both of us just over the line from being quite entirely healthy. We’ll be fine while we’re out and about, then come home and immediately start sniffling a bit…then once we leave the apartment again, we’re fine. Our favorite part, though, is the neighbors who have no concept of ‘inside voices’ or anything else that goes along with conscientious apartment living, and have a tendency to get into rather noisy fights (and we’re concerned about potential domestic violence). On top of that, our building managers, while very nice people, aren’t very effective people, and we’ve long since given up trying to get anything done short of an absolute emergency. We’re definitely ready to find something better.

Other: This past week’s been Spring Break, and I’ve been enjoying the chance to simply take a few days to relax and putter around without any big “gotta do” things hanging over my head. Of course, more than a few days without much of anything scheduled leaves me a little stir-crazy, so today I came out to Des Moines with Prairie to keep her company during her workday. It’s been nice to get a look at the Highline Community College campus where Central Washington University has the branch campus for which Prairie’s heading up the writing center. Tomorrow’s going to be my ‘get ready for spring quarter’ day, clearing out my notebook from last quarter and getting everything ready to go for the next round of classes.

Photos: I haven’t been doing much with my camera lately, unfortunately — that became another casualty of the Class from Hell. I did use a little bit of my tax refund to pick up a little pocket camera — a cute little Casio EX-Z77 that I keep with me so that I can get snapshots during those times when I don’t want to haul the big camera around, which has been helping. Still, I’m feeling a little photography-deprived…hopefully I’ll be able to change that this summer, if I don’t get a chance this spring. Since I needed to decompress (and spend some time with my girl) after last quarter, I decided to forego Norwescon this year (prior Norwescon photos are here, here and here) — a bit of a bummer, but a very necessary and good decision — and as I have to work this weekend, I won’t be able to check out Sakura-Con, so this spring is looking to be sadly devoid of costume-clad fanboys and fangirls. Such a pity! Maybe I’ll be able to swing by the Emerald City ComiCon in May to feed my geek voyeur tendencies (prior ComiCon photos are here and here).

And…once again, I think that pretty much catches everything up for now. Until later, then…

Generally speaking, I don’t get sick very often. The occasional sniffles or light cold, but not much more than that. I made up for it this weekend, though, when I managed to come down with some nasty 48-hour-ish flu bug. Saturday evening I had a little bit of a headache, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough to make me worry. Prairie and I had a good mexi-goo dinner (a bit of experimentation on her part, somewhere between enchilada and casserole), watched some Frasier, and went to bed. As the night wore on, though, I started feeling queasy…and then the bug hit. From 3am until 8am, I had nearly hourly trips to the restroom to puke, accompanied by cold sweats, and fever hovering around 100 degrees. Not fun in the least!

Sunday I ended up spending most of the day sleeping, trying to catch up on the sleep I’d missed Saturday night. We carefully fed me drinks (clear liquids only), crackers, and white bread, which stayed down most of the day…then one last puke session Sunday night brought it all back up again. Thankfully, the fever broke last night, and everything I’ve munched on today has stayed down. I was able to spend today in bed again (with a short run onto campus to turn in an assignment that had to be in today), and it looks like the worst is over. Still, while I hate missing two days of work and one of school, at least I don’t find bugs like this very often. It’s been years since I’ve had anything like this — here’s hoping it’s another good many years before another such bug gets me!

I got this little note from dad last night…

Paul Fain Hanscom was born at 5:58PM AST (6:58PM in Oregon). Emily and Paul are doing fine. They had not recorded height and weight when Kevin called.

I now have two nephews, and Noah has a brother! Yay!

Congrats to Kev, Emily, and Noah. We’re looking forward to meeting Paul!

Valentine’s Day morning, as I was puttering about the house and getting ready for the day while Prairie slept in, there was a knock at the door. When I answered, I was handed a package from Amazon by one of our landlords. This was a little confusing, as I didn’t remember ordering anything, but it was definitely addressed to me. Okay, whatever…

When I opened it, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find The Cult of Mac, which I’d put on my Amazon Wishlist not too long ago. On the shipping invoice was a nice little note from ‘Liz in Pittsburgh,’ who reads this site and decided to send me a Valentine’s Day present — cool!

So, many thanks to Liz! I got about halfway through yesterday as I was bussing around town, and have been enjoying all the stories of the Mac über-fans (and, unsurprisingly, seeing elements of myself in more than a few of the stories). I hope your Valentine’s Day was a good one as well!

De M’amour Soiez Sure, originally uploaded by djwudi.

Our Valentine’s Day presents to each other: poesy rings inscribed with ‘Of my love be sure’ in French.

The original of this 15th century poesy ring can be found at The British Museum, Dept. of Medieval and Modern Europe, London, England.

The original of this ring is enameled gold. The hoop is rounded on the outer edge where it is engraved with an interlaced band between two rows of sprigs. The poesy is engraved in the interior of the ring in period French, though the ring is actually English. French remained the language of the Court and Nobility for several centuries after the Norman Invasion in 1066.

Poesy (n): A short poem or sentiment decoratively inscribed on rings or jewelry, particularly in the Middle Ages - usually a romantic gift or token of friendship.

Tradition has it that words which touch the skin have a particular power. Poesy Rings were traditionally given in sterling silver as engagement rings, and then replaced with the same ring in gold upon marriage.

Those who follow me on Flickr will have noticed this already, but I’ve been spending some time digging through my old archive CDs and uploading a bunch of old photos from years (and digital cameras) past. At this point, I’ve made it through all my digital photos up to the last few days before I bailed out of Anchorage and migrated south to Seattle. As such, the two sets that have received the most attention are those for Gig’s Music Theater and Old Stuff: Life Before Seattle. Those who’ve met me (physically or virtually) more recently will find these of limited interest, but for those few of you who’ve known me for a while, you might get a kick out of some of these…and you might even find yourself in there a time or two!

I had to stop by Best Buy today to pick up a new WiFi router for our apartment. Normally, stopping by Best Buy is something I tend to avoid at all costs, and I’ll only go in when I know exactly what I need to get, so I can go in, grab it, and get out as quickly as possible. Today, however, I wasn’t quite sure what router to get (or if it would really be worth getting a new one), so I crossed my fingers and hoped I’d find a sales droid who had at least one and a half, if not two whole brain cells to rub together.

I ended up speaking to two — first, a guy in a green shirt, who was apparently the in-store Clearwire representative, but who happened to be free and knew something about WiFi routers. After describing the situation to him and batting things about, he led me back to the correct shelf, and he snagged a blue shirt on the way. I gave the blue shirt the Readers Digest Condensed Cliffs Notes version of the conversation I’d just had, he recommended a Netgear router to me, and — once again, crossing my fingers — I grabbed it and headed off to work.

(Minor aside: the issue in question was that our D-Link WiFi router seemed to have issues with Hermie, our Vista laptop. The D-Link worked fine over the wired connection with both Macs in the apartment, and connected fine via WiFi to my G5 desktop. Hermie consistently works fine with WiFi in public places — during travels, at the local Panera, and at NSCC — but it had serious issues connecting to the D-Link at home. Some days it would only connect after anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes of repeated tries, other days we wouldn’t be able to get it to connect at all. Needless to say, this has been more than a little frustrating.)

After getting home from work, I unpacked the Netgear router, plugged it in, and went through the installation song and dance, using the ‘Installation Wizard’ on the CD from Hermie. Once it said it was up and running, I checked both desktops via the wired connections, and they were fine. Checked the Airport connection on my G5, it was fine. Rebooted Hermie (to cover all my bases), logged in, and started to head to the ‘Network’ icon down in the try to initialize the connection…but wait, what was that? It was already connected! No muss, no fuss, no error messages telling me it couldn’t connect…it was just there, just like magic. Just like it’s supposed to work.

Thinking back on it, I realized that this now makes five times in a row that I’ve had to go into Best Buy for something, and come out with what I needed, and — when I’ve had to deal with any of the staff — actually not been driven to distraction by their idiocy. In this case, I was actually given good information, and they helped me find what I needed.

I must say, while I’m still no fan of the overall Best Buy experience (their stores tend to come across as oppressive to me…too loud, with aisles that are packed too closely together to make the experience pleasant), five consecutive good experiences have to lead me to admit something of a trend. I don’t know if they’re starting to emphasize more or better training that deals in actual knowledge rather than simple salesmanship, but for some time now, the staff has seemed far more competent than I would have expected.

I may not ever get to a point of just stopping by to browse, or remotely look forward to having to dive into Best Buy…but at least at the moment, I don’t feel the need to actively avoid the store or it’s sales droids when I do stop in. And, for Best Buy, that’s saying a lot.

A little under eight hours left to go in the year, and as I look back, most of what stands out in my mind is just how incredibly busy this past year has been, for Prairie and for myself. That’s not to say it’s been a bad year — it hasn’t been at all, and in fact, overall I’d say it was quite a bit better than the year prior — but we just never seemed to stop moving. I was balancing a 12-credit load at school and two part-time jobs, Prairie was handling a number of teaching and tutoring positions at NSCC, and it seemed like any ‘free time’ we had was immediately filled with everything that we couldn’t get done otherwise.

Still, as things wrap up, life is looking pretty promising for the future. Still busy, to be sure, but busy for some very good reasons. I’m down to my final two quarters before graduating from NSCC with my Associate of Arts degree, and Prairie’s getting started with her new job at CWU Des Moines. We have rough plans to take a road trip this summer for some ‘just-us’ vacation time, and come next fall, I should have transferred into UW to go on towards getting my master’s degree.

Lots behind us, and lots coming up, but it’s all looking pretty good from here on out.

Happy New Year!

Other bits:

• Prairie’s posted her year-end thoughts as well.
• Over 2007, I posted 2,394 photos (an average of 6.5 photos per day, though it’s obvious from the calendar that I wasn’t posting anywhere near daily), and pushed my total uploaded photo count on Flickr to 11,104.

Just about everyone has their own favorite Christmas album. Prairie got a copy of her family’s traditional music and started playing it today — Peter, Paul and Mary’s ‘A Holiday Celebration’ — and it got me thinking about my own, long-lost personal favorite. For years, there was one particular album that I’d dig out every Christmas and put on the record player…however, it’s been ages since I’ve heard it, and while I would occasionally get snippets of the songs floating through my head, or brief flashes of the cover art, I haven’t been able to pull the actual title of the album out of my brain in years.

Chatting with Prairie tonight about it, though, the word ‘sunshine’ popped out of my head, which seemed to jibe with the hazy memory of a rising sun on the cover, so I tossed ‘sunshine christmas album’ at Google. I wasn’t really expecting to get a useful hit, but lo and behold, the third major link caught my eye — an (apparently unauthorized) bootleg of ‘Sunshine and Snowflakes: 40 Kids Singing at Christmas’. Bingo — the right title, the right cover art, and the titles of the songs looked right….

This was promising, but it still didn’t let me actually listen to the album. So, one more trip to Google, now that I actually had the official title…and once again, success! A 2004 weblog post by the Mad Philosopher had the entire album posted as .mp3 files, complete with cover art. Immediately I downloaded the files, tossed them into iTunes, and called Prairie into the room to listen.

Finally being able to hear this again is great. Prairie’s been enjoying it, and I’m amazed at just how much I’m remembering, almost as if it was just last Christmas that I was pulling the record out of its sleeve, putting it on dad’s record player, and carefully lowering the needle onto the vinyl. And while I’m sure there’s a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in this, the music is fun — a very, very 70’s funk/rock medley of traditional songs on side one, and five original tracks, three of which are nice and pretty, but two of which are the two that I really remember being fond of (“Wise Men Still Adore Him” and “Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus”).

So for me, this is a perfect Christmas Eve present. I get to revisit part of my childhood with some good old music, Prairie’s enjoying hearing the songs (and watching me bounce around as I remember bits and pieces of them), and I get some more good Christmas music to add to our collection.

Now, off to bed. After all, if I don’t go to bed, Santa won’t stop by…and that would be a sad, sad thing indeed!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Solstice…pick your holiday, call it what you will, just have a good one!

As I briefly hinted at earlier today, Christmas came a little early for us this year. Prairie has all of the details over on Domesticism, but in her own words…

…and as of about 12:15 this afternoon, I’m the new CWU Des Moines writing consultant. I’m THE person to go to with writing questions on that little campus. It’s my job to get this new writing center off the ground and flying. I’ll be the entire writing center for the first few quarters, but as the center grows I’ll be training new tutors to help me. I can’t even begin to try to explain how ecstatic and excited I am (or how close to being in complete shock).

I am so happy for my girl, and we’re both really excited about this opportunity. She’s just finished calling all of her family to let them know, so now it’s all official!

The current future plan, then, is for us to kick around here in North Seattle for the next six months or so until I get my AA in June. Once I’ve graduated, we’ll move down to the South Seattle area, and I’ll commute to UW (or wherever I end up) instead of making Prairie commute from North Seattle to Des Moines any longer than absolutely necessary.

(On that note: any local Seattleites who can give us any sorts of tips or pointers about good towns, districts, or neighborhoods in the general Des Moines area, we’d really appreciate it over the next few months. Best case scenario, we’re hoping to be able to find a little house that we could rent, to avoid the neighbors-stomping-on-our-heads and other side effects of apartment living.)

So there’s the big news. Hooray, and many congratulations to my girl!

I was beginning to doubt that I’d ever find the time to finish this project, but I’m finally done with the pictures from our trip to Hawaii last summer!

Four-month turnaround really isn’t my preferred methodology, but at least I have good excuses for the delay (sudden unplanned moves, a busy school quarter and so on). If I can get the Thanksgiving photos taken care of in the next week and a half, that’ll bring me down to about one-month turnaround…

That’s approximately how much water has fallen over the Seattle area in the past few days, according to the Seattle PI. Flooding all over the place, bridges and roads washed out, I-5 is closed between Seattle and Portland forcing a detour through Yakima…crazy stuff.

Outside of leaks taking out a few ceiling tiles at my store in the mall, neither Prairie nor I have personally seen any of the more dramatic effects of the storm. Apparently we got off fairly lucky — the PI mentions a few people in our area of town that didn’t fare so well.

“It felt like we were on the Titanic,” said Randy Carter, who awoke at 4 a.m. Monday to lights from utility trucks and the realization that his apartment in the Jackson Greens complex in North Seattle was flooded to evacuation levels with 3 feet of water.

[…]

In Seattle, where rescue crews were forced to carry people from hard-hit homes in the Northgate area and then shelter them on Metro buses, Mayor Greg Nickels said flatly that the city’s infrastructure had been unable to cope with the deluge.

“The systems that this city was built around — the draining systems, the transportation systems — simply were not built to handle this kind of rainfall,” he said.

By late afternoon Monday, nearly 6 billion gallons of rain — the rough equivalent of six Green Lakes — had fallen.

Four apartment buildings, housing some 50 people and their pets near Midvale Avenue North and North 107th Street were evacuated and another four were similarly affected, Seattle Fire Department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick said.

“The flooding is up to 10 feet deep in some areas,” she said.

In one building, the parking garage was almost completely under water, cars were nearly floating with rain up to their windshields and firefighters were carrying residents out.

The PI has a photo gallery of some of the effects around town.

(photo by Liembo)

Apparently, I’m a 50-something gun-toting impotent Republican.

At least, that’s sure what it seems like judging by the junk mail I get. For some reason, I’ve ended up on some hilariously odd mailing lists. I get occasional mailings from the AARP welcoming me to my retirement years, the NRA asking if I want to join or contribute money to one thing or another, and so on. Today brought the best mailing yet, though.

Prairie picked up the mail and started flipping through the envelopes. Handing one to me with a puzzled look on her face, she asked, “What mailing list are you on?” The envelope she handed me had a somewhat softcore porn-ish shot of a man and woman in bed, with the text “THE FIRST TRUE REVOLUTION IN MALE SEXUAL POWER IS HERE…NOW!” emblazoned across it.

“I’m really not sure,” I said and popped it open. Pulling the folded newsletter style paper out of the envelope, my eyebrows shot up, and I started to laugh at the headline that greeted me: “THE PROBLEM IS NOT TESTOSTERONE - The Problem Is That You Are Being Deluged with Female Hormones. You Are Being Feminized and You Don’t Even Know It.”

Feminized? Oh, no — what’s happening? Am I losing my manhood? Is my manliness being sucked away, turning me into some swishy girly-man? This can’t be true!

Reading on, I chose bits and pieces to read to Prairie aloud, until both of us had stitches in our sides and tears in our eyes. The advertised product, EstroBlaster, is yet another in a long line of herbal supplements aimed at men who have (or are being convinced that they have) a little less fuel in their rocket than they did in earlier times. I haven’t seen too many of these ads, so I don’t really have a basis for comparison, but this one’s marketed using an absolutely hilarious mix of misogyny, homophobia, and scare tactics.

A few choice quotes…

…more and more research is coming out. There is a terrible secret that you should know about.

The Secret Problem of Estrogen Dominance

You are being deluged with female hormones. That, on top of naturally falling male hormone levels, can cause a condition called estrogen dominance.

You are being turned into a woman, and you don’t even know it.

What’s happening is that large amounts of female hormones are slipping through the water treatment plants of most major cities. Even in the country the water is filled with them.

Estrogen is passing right through women and into the water supply — where it can’t be removed.

In fact, there is enough estrogen in the water right now to change male fish into females.

Recent statistics even show that more young men are getting plastic surgery to remove their “male boobs” than there are young women getting breast augmentation.

Not only that, but the rate of young boys turning into girls is frightening. One group that monitors this problem said:

No one compiles official statistics on transgender youths, but everyone agrees that their numbers are rising quickly.

…it took months to narrow down a powerful formula at a good price. We named it Estro-Blaster — after what it’s designed to do…blast the estrogen out of your system.

**Get Back the Sexual Drive and Ability You Had as a Teenager… Wanting Sex Every Day - The Ability to Get Hard Every Time - And Even Spontaneous Erections! (The Kind You Used to Have to Hid in School When You Got Up to Change Classes…You’d Have to Carry Your Books Down in Front of Your Pants)

After years of falling sexual ability, I was amazed one day, when out and about, that I was getting a “spontaneous” erection.

I didn’t even have to touch my penis. It just began swelling to an erect state.

You can imagine my surprise — and pleasure. This hadn’t happened to me since I was in my twenties. Many years ago.

I felt like a man again — a real man.

As if all this wasn’t funny enough, there were two sources listed in the flyer. At first I was surprised that there were any sources listed — this didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would be worrying about sourcing its information. Then I noticed that one of the sources was a forum post on Free Republic, one of the most notorious far-right rabid conservative spaces on the ‘net today, and far from being anything that I’d even remotely consider a ‘trusted source.’ The second was a small excerpt from an article titled “Treatment of Young MTF Transsexuals” on a site called “Second Type Woman,” which (at least on first glance) doesn’t exactly strike me as the kind of source most people should be basing their pharmaceutical decisions on.

All in all, it made for a very entertaining evening.

And, apparently, I’m a fifty-something gun-toting impotent Republican.

Good to know!

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Prairie’s dad Lon and her sister Hope came over this morning for breakfast (sausage and eggs and cinnamon rolls), then Lon and I did some “boy puttering” (fixing the passenger side view mirror on the car, which a vandal knocked all askew a couple winters back) while Prairie and Hope did some “girl puttering” (making lemon tartlets).

Presently, all are relaxing with warm drinks as Prairie prepares a snack plate before Hope heads off to a Thanksgiving dinner celebration for her job. Lon, Prairie and I are planning a relaxing afternoon and evening here at the apartment, watching something silly and having Thanksgiving dinner.

We hope your day is going as well as ours!

Happy Night Before Thanksgiving.

I’m sure it’s a holiday somewhere.

The original Sesame Street episodes are being released to DVD (Vol. 1, Vol. 2)…just don’t show ‘em to your kids.

According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

What?

I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”

Which brought Parente to a feature of “Sesame Street” that had not been reconstructed: the chronically mood-disordered Oscar the Grouch. On the first episode, Oscar seems irredeemably miserable — hypersensitive, sarcastic, misanthropic. (Bert, too, is described as grouchy; none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.) “We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said.

I’ll freely admit to leaning to the left politically and socially, but this level of über-sensitive, overwrought ‘Political Correctness’ is absolutely ridiculous.

Were I ever to have kids (or spend some time babysitting any nieces or nephews — consider yourselves warned, Kev and Emily, Noah’s in trouble with me!), I’d be more than happy to give ‘em a full dose of Sesame Street and the Muppets both (that is, during one of the few times we plopped ‘em down in front of the TV instead of with a book or a game or outside play or other such things).

This world just gets weirder and weirder some days.

(via /.)

Well, that’s a mild bummer — I missed posting yesterday. Took a test in the morning before school (it was posted online at 6:30am), went to school, came home, had lunch with the girl, went to work, came home, had dinner with the girl, and went to bed. Somehow managed to completely forget about posting…and there goes the one-a-day streak.

Well, I’d already missed Nov. 1st, since I didn’t start this project ‘til the 2nd. Guess I’ll go for 28 out of 30 days.

Sea Turtle, originally uploaded by djwudi.

In lieu of actually posting anything truly interesting, I give you one of my favorite shots from our trip to Hawaii this summer (no, I’m still not done working my way through all of them). Prairie and I were snorkeling early in the morning at Carlsmith Beach Park in Hilo, and had brought along a little disposable film waterproof camera. As we floated along, we were joined by a couple of sea turtles, cruising their way through the coral reef and finding their breakfast.

Prairie and I have been alternately amused and appalled at the never ending onslaught of prescription drug commercials. Actually, it would be more accurate to characterize us as appalled and amused: appalled when yet another one pops up (as we find the whole idea more than a little sleazy — medicines should be prescribed by doctors, not self-prescribed on the basis of a thirty-second overgeneralized list of symptoms), and amused at the seemingly endless list of ever more disturbing sounding side effects. With most of these, it doesn’t take long at all before we decide that we’d prefer to just live with whatever issue the drug is supposed to alleviate rather than risk the side effects.

Apparently (and thankfully), we’re not the only ones watching these ads with more than a little distaste. Consumer Reports is starting what’s intended to be a series of video/weblog posts analyzing these DTC (“direct-to-consumer”) ads.

The problem with such “direct-to-consumer,” or DTC, advertisements is that they may generate excessive demand because people go straight to their doctors asking for this or that specific medication. In a 2006 survey by our National Survey Research Center, 78 percent of doctors said that patients asked them at least occasionally to prescribe drugs they had seen advertised on television, and 67 percent said they sometimes did so. And don’t expect the ad barrage to let up. While Congress recently gave the FDA more authority to regulate ads, it rejected a measure that would have allowed the agency to place a moratorium on ads for new drugs that raise safety concerns. The U.S. is one of only two countries in the world (the other is New Zealand) where such ads are legal.

The first entry of the series looks at an ad for a drug intended to treat RLS, or “restless leg syndrome.”

That condition may sound fanciful, but it’s a real problem. Something like 3 percent of Americans suffer from RLS, which is characterized by an uncontrollable impulse to keep moving your legs even when you are trying to go to sleep—which obviously could make sleep difficult.

Several years ago, doctors discovered that drugs that were originally developed to treat Parkinson’s disease could provide meaningful help to people who suffered from moderate to severe forms of this condition. But the drugs have serious side effects - one of the more bizarre involves a propensity for uncontrolled sexual or gambling impulses, as our video mentions. And while these medications may provide welcome relief to some RLS patients, the ads could leave anyone who ever suffered fidgetiness when trying to go to sleep to wonder whether he or she has RLS and should seek treatment.

Now, while Prairie and I are reasonably sure (though without any actual medical diagnosis) that there’s a chance that I have a mild case of RLS, in my case, it’s nothing that can’t be dealt with via a few relatively simple measures (a king-size bed, separate sets of sheets so I don’t yank hers off when I kick, and a guest bed for the really bad nights). Besides, the list of potential side effects in the ads themselves were enough to scare me away from even remotely considering the drugs to ‘treat’ RLS…and that was before I watched the Consumer Reports entry.

Kudos to Consumer Reports for starting this series. Hopefully it reaches beyond simply preaching to the choir.

I do have to admit to a little curiosity about what they might say about Panexa (acidachrome promanganate), though….

PANEXA is a prescription drug that should only be taken by patients experiencing one of the following disorders: metabolism, binocular vision, digestion (solid and liquid), circulation, menstruation, cognition, osculation, extremes of emotion. For patients with coronary heart condition (CHC) or two separate feet (2SF), the dosage of PANEXA should be doubled to ensure that twice the number of pills are being consumed. PANEXA can also be utilized to decrease the risk of death caused by not taking PANEXA, being beaten to death by oscelots, or death relating from complications arising from seeing too much of the color lavender. Epileptic patients should take care to ensure tight, careful grips on containers of PANEXA, in order to secure their contents in the event of a seizure, caused by PANEXA or otherwise.

My job handles product training through a training site called Cyberscholar, which offers prizes as one of the incentives for completing various training modules. I’ve been good-naturedly grousing (well, some days more good-naturedly than others) that while I’ve been doing Cyberscholar training for quite some time now, even going beyond what’s required to do training on other products (some of which we sell, some that we don’t), I’ve yet to win a prize. This was occasionally even more frustrating when I’d hear about other local employees who’d won prizes after doing just a small handful of modules, while I’d been plugging my way through for most of the two years I’ve been with the company.

However, my streak has ended! I’m now the proud amused owner of a Canon Rebel (“Official Camera of the NFL”) folding chair!

Of course, I shoot Nikon, not Canon, the only football I have any interest in is the kind that’s played with a round ball, and it’s not nearly as impressive as the 30D that another employee won, or the 58” HD LCD TV that another employee won…

…but I won! And hey, free chair, right? Always good to have in the trunk when Prairie and I take one of our little camping mini-breaks.

Plus, I can hope that this is the end of my unlucky streak, and there’ll be a high-end camera, TV, or other such goodie heading my way in no time!