Probing thoughts

Some local bloggers have been having a nerdgasm about the recent trip of the Pheonix probe (heh) to our nearest planetary neighbor, Mars.

It's all very exciting, the prospect of finding the building blocks of life on another planet, the achievement of sending our technology across the solar system to do our bidding, the thought of Americans colonizing another world.

But, lost in all of the hype we forgot about one very important group. I mean, don't get me wrong, I applaud our efforts to bring democracy to Mars. I'm just not so sure how keen the Martians are on the idea.

What might their feeling be about us probing their planet, acting all big and dusting off their ice and all?

How would you feel if a powerful nation shoved a thinly veiled metaphor in the shape of a robot arm into your polar ice cap?

Like I said, I support our invasion. I'm just sayin' we should let the Martians know what they're in for. And I think a good ambassador would be deep thinker Jack Handey.

A couple of years ago, Mr. Handey penned (keyboarded?) a piece for The New Yorker letting us know just what he would say to the Martians. It is cleverly titled, What I'd Say to the Martians.

Here's a snippet of audio taken from a recent episode of PRI's Studio 360. You can hear the entire essay there.



tagged: Mars, Pheonix, ice, planet, Martians

YouTube Tuesday: numbnuts?

num ● nah
–noun
1) a pad that goes under the saddle to keep the saddle clean and to cushion the horse's or pony's back.



tagged: numnah, spelling, spelling bee, humor, Sameer Mishra

In which I get punked by identity thieves

It was the damnedest thing.

When I received a mysterious package from BOMC2, I just kind of chalked it up to some kind of marketing gimmick. When I want a book, my first stop is Half Price Books on Metcalf. If I can't find it there, I hit up Amazon.

But a book club? Hmmm, I don't think so. But feel free to send me a comp copy.

Like I said, I sort of dismissed the book as an unsolicited marketing ploy to try to get me to join the club, that is until a few days later when another mysterious package arrived for me.

This time, it contained a selection of Gevalia coffees along with a note reading "Here is your first order. Your credit card has been charged $9.95. We hope you enjoy this selection of delicious Gevalia Gourmet blah blah blah..."

So now I'm thinking something strange is afoot. Two mysterious, unsolicited packages arrive at my door in less than a week? Something smells fishy, and this time it's not Meesha's nipples.

I call the customer service number listed on the Gevalia shipping invoice and say, "Yo, what up biotch! I di'int order this sheeeat!"

We discuss the matter for a few minutes and I learn that the order was charged to one of my credit cards. I make it clear, in no uncertain terms, that I don't want the coffee subscription and please cancel the account and any future orders.

Next I call my credit card company and, after navigating the IVR menu for a few minutes, I get the fraud department. I learn that the book and the coffee are two of three unauthorized charges to my account, the third being a $10 charge to Blockbuster.com.

I get everything straightened out with Credit Card Co. They suspend the account, lock down the number and order me up a couple of new cards (one for me, one for the missus). We rarely use the cards, which really is what allowed us to catch these recent charges as the red flags that they are.

But I do have some lingering questions, like just what the hell is going on here? I hardly ever use the card, so how did the perpetrator(s) get the number? If this is some kind of credit card theft, why buy only three items, each of which is only ten bucks or less? And why have the items shipped to my address?

So I concluded that I've either been hit by retarded identity thieves, or I'm being punked by some joker who thought it would be funny send me goofy stuff that I didn't really want. Thing is, books and coffee aren't as funny as, oh, I don't know, a new iPod.

Whatever the case, let this be a warning to you kids to keep an eye on your credit card statements. Check your balances regularly and if you find anything suspicious in your mailbox, be sure to panic first and ask questions later.

And that's... One to Grow On^®

tagged: credit card, fraud, BOMC2, Gevalia, Blockbuster, Half Price Books

Friday Blogthing: We all scream

With a heat index forecast to be near ball-boiling today, one sure way to keep cool is a nice scoop of ice cream (or, as I prefer, Foo's Fabulous Frozen Custard, but that's just me).

Anyway, be carefull what you order. You're ice cream selection can say a lot about you...

Your Ice Cream Personality:

You are an incredibly modest person. You don't feel comfortable bragging about yourself... or even receiving complements. You are incredibly cautious. You rather miss out on something than make a mistake. No one would ever call you wild... but they would call you responsible. You are a somewhat open minded person, but deep down you're fairly conservative. You don't like trying new things very much. And if you do find something new you like, you stick with it. You tend to have a one track mind. You prefer not to multitask. You are a serious and contemplative person. You definitely do your own thing in life.

The Ice Cream Personality Test

tagged: Friday, blogthing, heat, humidity,, ice cream, Foo's, quiz, blog, meme

Bullitt list -- 05.29.08

Today's category:
Names I'm considering for my new punk band...

• Zip Line Smugglers
• Earth Friendly Bombs
• The Robomonkees
• Toad Venom Aphrodisiac
• Toilet Possum

tagged: Bullitt, punk, zip line smugglers, toilet possum, bombs, Toad Venom Aphrodisiac, monkey, robot

Movie Mini Review: The Curse of the Golden Flower

Title: The Curse of the Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia)

Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li, Jay Chou, Liu Ye, Chen Jin

Plot summary:
Set in feudal China’s Tang Dynasty, Emperor Ping (Chow Yun-Fat) returns home to the Imperial Palace to celebrate the Chrysanthemum Festival with his family. The Emperor has summoned his second son, Prince Jai, home from the frontier, and he has ulterior motives. But while the emperor has been away on military campaigns, his wife, Empress Pheonix (Gong Li) has been making clandestine plans of her own. Behind the silk veneer of the Forbidden Palace, all is not as it seems and tragedy awaits.

My thoughts:
I was home sick a couple of weeks ago and, while in a drug-induced stupor, the only activity I could effectively manage was channel surfing.

Luckily, I hit one of the action movie channels at the upper end of the dial while The Curse of the Yellow Flower was just beginning.

I watched the subtitled version, which I always recommend because overdubbing ends up looking awkward and cheesy. And even though I don’t understand the spoken language of the film, I think overdubbing tends to strip out the emotional inflection of the actors and waters down the director’s original vision.

And the director had a stunning vision for this film. Director Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers) brings us his stylized view of 10th-century China with sweeping vistas and vibrant colors. The camera work and musical score are really amazing, creating an epic film in the best sense of the word.

In the early scenes, I was expecting a martial arts tour de force, but Yimou soon exceeded my expectations. This isn’t just another wire-fighting kun-fu movie, although there is plenty of that (not to mention cleavage) and fans of that style won’t be disappointed.

But it is also a provocative story about the excesses and pitfalls of absolute power, the complexity and fragility of family relationships and the destructive force of greed.

The Curse of the Golden Flower has been criticized as a soap opera set in feudal China, a kind of dynastic Dynasty. And the film can be a bit over the top, especially in the final act. But in my opinion it’s a good kind of over the top, like a tragic Italian opera, and completely in context.



My final rating: Set Your DVR.

Favorite quote:
"What I do not give, you must never take by force."

tagged: movie, China, The Curse of the Golden Flower, Tang Dynasty, film, review, Zhang Yimou, Gong Li, Chow Yun-Fat

YouTube Tuesday: Raptor

This is my response to Meesha's first strike. As Richard Vernon would say, when you mess with the bull, you get the horns.



tagged: movie, YouTube, video, military, fighter, jet, Raptor, Richard Vernon

White noise

So I head to my favorite, well, head at the office to, as the Facebookers these days would say, download a brownload.

Anyway, I open the door to the john and immediately hear the familiar sound of a urinal flushing. But entering the room, I find it empty. Nobody zipping their fly, washing their hands. Nothing.

It seems the urinal I heard is stuck on permaflush, a condition caused when the automatic flushing mechanism malfunctions making the water flow continuously like a waterfall.

I was annoyed at first to see such a waste. Why can't the building maintenance people fix the damn thing so I don't have to put up with all the noise while I'm dropping the kids off at the pool.

The noise was annoying for the first minute while I chose my stall and settled in. Then, I began to appreciate the relaxing effect of the falling water. Take away the florescent lighting and the synthetic smell of sanitizing air freshener, and I could almost imagine myself on the beach listening to the waves crash upon the shore.

Plus the sound was loud enough that it mitigated the need for the otherwise obligatory camo cough.

So while I still object to the waste of water, I gotta say I've changed my tune on the "audio" issue. I'm thinking about bringing in one of those sound-machine alarm clocks to provide background music the next time I take the Browns to the Super Bowl.

tagged: bathroom, flush, toilet, urinal, environmentalist

Sectual abuse

News outlets are reporting that a Texas appellate court judge has ruled state officials had insufficient cause to take custody of 460 children from members of the Yearning For Zion Ranch.

According to the report...

The Third Court of Appeals ... ruled that the grounds for removing the children were "legally and factually insufficient" under Texas law. ...

The ruling comes the same day as authorities learned that half the mothers in the sect that Texas child welfare authorities put in foster care as children have now been declared adults.

Attorneys for Child Protective Services say 15 of the 31 mothers are adults. One is actually 27. Another girl listed as an underage mother is 14, but the state has conceded she is not pregnant and does not have a child.

This is a dicey issue, despite the knee-jerk reactions of those who would like the government to come in and solve all their problems for them.

On one hand, we as a society must defend those least able to defend themselves.

My Supermodel Wife and I took a training seminar a few weeks ago that certifies us to work at our church with children, youth and dependent adults. During the seminar, we learned that in 2001, Kansas had a higher rate of child abuse and neglect (12.4 per 1000 children) than the national average (11.8 per 1000 children) (source pdf).

So there's a lot of work for us all to do to make sure we are doing all we can to raising a generation of healthy individuals.

On the other hand, we have increasingly been ceding our responsibilities and freedoms to The Government. We want The Government to feed the poor so we don't have to. We want The Government to make us stop smoking. We want The Government to monitor internet communications to protect us from people who write mean things.

The problem is that The Government is really good at taking power and abusing it. We end up on a slippery slope where we have given The Government power to do things we never intended it to do. The plight of Christopher Ratte is a great example.

Almost everyone Chris Ratte met the night they took Leo away conceded the state was probably overreacting.

The sympathetic cop who interviewed Ratte and his son at the hospital said she was convinced what happened had been an accident, but that her supervisor was insisting the matter be referred to Child Protective Services.

And Ratte thought the two child protection workers who came to take Leo away seemed more annoyed with the police than with him. "This is so unnecessary," one told Ratte before driving away with his son.

But there was really nothing any of them could do, they all said. They were just adhering to protocol, following orders.

So we find ourselves caught with opposing imperatives. We need to do as much as we can to make sure that women and children aren't being oppressed and worse, but we can't trust an overbearing bureaucracy to keep the personal rights of individual citizens in mind.

I don't know what the answer is. But I do know that we as individuals should focus more on our responsibilities. We should ask what we can do for each other, rather than what the government can do for us.

I'm reminded of this quote from Thomas Jefferson...

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.

tagged: children, abuse, Yearning For Zion, Chris Ratte, Texas, Thomas Jefferson, custody

3AM Poll: Sanguivorous

My previous post along with some of the comments prompted me to ask myself whether I would rather be bitten by 45 ticks or 45 leeches.

Tough question, and there's no right answer. But I wonder what the least favorite blood-sucking parasite is? Please vote and leave a comment.

tagged: poll, blood, sucking, parasite, tick, leech, science, sanguivorous