Music Meme

It goes from Jenel to Phil to Tom to Me to the Cleaners

"You go here, find the year you turned 18, then C&P the results. Bold the one’s you liked and strike the one’s that made your ears bleed."

Adapting what Tom did, I have italicized those songs/artists whom I did not recognize.

1. That's What Friends Are For - Dionne & Friends
2. Addicted To Love - Robert Palmer
3. Kiss - Prince
4. Walk This Way - Run D.M.C./Aerosmith
5. Living In America - James Brown
6. Take My Breath Away - Berlin
7. Burning Heart - Survivor
8. Walk Like An Egyptian - The Bangles
9. The Sweetest Taboo - Sade
10. You Give Love A Bad Name - Bon Jovi
11. Higher Love - Steve Winwood
12. Never As Good As The First Time - Sade
13. Greatest Love Of All - Whitney Houston
14. Tarzan Boy - Baltimora
15. Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel
16. You're A Friend Of Mine - Clarence Clemons & Jackson Browne
17. Manic Monday - The Bangles
18. Glory Of Love - Peter Cetera
19. Like A Rock - Bob Seger
20. I Knew The Bride (When She Used To Rock and Roll) - Nick Lowe
21. Word Up - Cameo
22. Conga - Miami Sound Machine
23. The Men All Pause - Klymaxx
24. In Your Eyes - Peter Gabriel
25. Live To Tell - Madonna
26. Dancing On The Ceiling - Lionel Richie
27. Venus - Bananarama
28. Typical Male - Tina Turner
29. Take Me Home Tonight - Eddie Money
30. Rock Me Amadeus - Falco
31. I Can't Wait - Nu Shooz
32. If You Leave - O.M.D.
33. You Be Illin' - Run DMC
34. Crush On You - The Jets
35. The Rain - Oran "Juice" Jones
36. Papa Don't Preach - Madonna
37. Mad About You - Belinda Carlisile
38. R.O.C.K. In The USA - John "Cougar" Melloncamp
39. Danger Zone - Kenny Loggins
40. Words Get In The Way - Miami Sound Machine
41. Walk Of Life - Dire Straits
42. I'm Your Man - Wham!
43. West End Girls - Pet Shop Boys
44. All Cried Out - Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam With Full Force
45. We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off - Jermaine Stewart
46. My Hometown - Bruce Springsteen
47. On My Own - Patti LaBelle & Michael McDonald
48. Everybody Have Fun Tonight - Wang Chung
49. All I Need Is A Miracle - Mike & the Mechanics
50. Tuff Enuff - Fabulous Thunderbirds
51. The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades- Timbuk3
52. Love Walks In - Van Halen
53. Shot In The Dark - Ozzie Osbourne
54. The Next Time I Fall - Peter Cetera & Amy Grant
55. Move Away - Culture Club
56. Day By Day - Hooters
57. Rumors - Timex Social Club
58. I Wanna Be A Cowboy - Boys Don't Cry
59. The Power Of Love - Jennifer Rush
60. One Step Closer - Gavin Christopher
61. A Love Bizarre - Sheila E.
62. Everybody Dance - Ta Mara and the Seen
63. Sex As A Weapon - Pat Benatar
64. Superbowl Shuffle - Chicago Bears
65. Live Is Life - Opus
66. Great Gosh A'Mighty - Little Richard
67. Jungle Boy - John Eddie
68. Crazay - Jesse Johnson and Sly Stone
69. More Than Physical - Bananarama
70. Baby Talk - Alisha
71. Pleasure and Pain - Divinyls
72. Don Quichotte - Magazine 60
73. Why Can't This Be Love - Van Halen
74. Once In A Lifetime - Talking Heads
75. Caravan of Love - Isley Jasper Isley

Stuart Addresses His Hands

Dear Hands,

Thank you for not pulling at my hair anymore, and for not gouging my eyes. I am glad we were able to come to an accord on those behaviors. Recently, however, you have been trying to help me with my binkie, and it is not working out well for anyone. If I have the binkie in my mouth, you can be assured that I want it nowhere else. Grabbing ahold of it and pulling it out is not appreciated. Neither do I appreciate your attempts to adjust it. All in all, it would be best if you did not touch the binkie, at least for the time being.

With deepest respect,

Stuart

Sad Sorry State of Affairs

Well, I couldn't do it. When it came down to the wire, it seems that I chose my family over my blog. Just so you know, here are the things that conspired against me.

• Illness - Everyone has come down with a 14 day cold. Coughing, stuffy noses, etc. Nothing like a breastfeeder with a stuffy nose. :(
• Class - Even though I am without class, I am working on a masters and take classes for that. This one was going well, but I needed more time to work on the presentation.
• Tory - For some reason, Tory gets downright cranky if I come home from work and get on the computer. It's like she thinks she has a god given right to a relationship with her father!
• Johanna - I enjoy spending time with my wife. So sue me.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Last night, as I was falling asleep, I enumerated some of my favorite things, in no particular order:

• The smell of Stuart
• The way Tory snuggles up to me after I move her when she is asleep
• Stuart's laugh
• The way Tory tries to be all serious and bargain for the things she wants
• Various things about Johanna that I am not at liberty to enumerate

Death to Pennies

I hate pennies. They are a waste of natural resources, a waste of time, a waste of effort, and (literally) a waste of money. I hold the nickel in slightly less distain, but if it were not for the penny, I would not have thought much of it. However, since I have thought much of it, and I have come up with a plan. Oh yes I have. I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel. This plan comes in stages, each more dastardly than the last.

Part the First: Pummel the Penny

The US Mint stops production of pennies, and orders the return of all stock. These are melted down and turned into decorative paperweights and sold at flea markets around the nation. Pennies will still circulate, but they will become fewer and fewer.

Part the Second: Nix the Nickel

The same is done for the Nickel, except that they are made into hip flasks. These two parts will probably require an act of Congress, directing that all public transactions be rounded to the nearest tenth dollar.

Part the Third: Down with the Dollar

The dollar bill is much less profitable than the dollar coins. Their cost to produce per year of circulation is around 10 times that of the coin. Additionally, they are harder for businesses to count. Get rid of the stop pressing dollar bills and ramp up the production of dollar coins. This is the part of the plan that will encounter the most objections. Or is it?

Part the Fourth: Create Coinage

Why, in the name of all that is holy, do we not have a $5 coin? That has GOT to change. While we are at it, let's start minting $2 coins. This will be the longest part of the plan, since it will take years and years to come up with a design that people can live with. Feel free to leave design comments below.

Part the Fifth: Vi veri universum vivus vici

Once we have a $2 and a $5 coin, stop printing the bills. Oh, I can hear the howling echo back through the ages. SUCK IT UP AND DEAL! This is for the good of the nation. Give up the bills or the Terrorists win! Your Grandparents seemed to do just fine with no bill smaller than $10 (equivalent value), and you can too.

P.S. How is it that we live in a nation that can take the ugliest money in the world, spend millions redesigning it, and make it UGLIER!

I Hate Bake Sales

Every time I see a school fundraiser, I think the same thing. "There is another school, a school in a poorer district, that cannot raise money for that." That shouldn't be the case. Poor kids deserve art and music classes as much as rich kids. They deserve to go on field trips and international trips. The problem, however, is even deeper than those.

I don't know about where you live, but in Oregon, the funding breakdown is like this:

• 35% Local
• 57% State funding
• 6% Federal
• 2% Other

The only reason it is like this is because measure 9 limited property taxes. Before measure 9, it looked like this:

• 66% Local
• 26% State
• 6% Federal
• 2% Other

Left to their own devices, 2/3 of all education funding is derived from the families being educated. IMHO, this is exactly backwards of what should be happening. Funding should look more like this:

• 10% Local
• 20% State
• 70% Federal

My proposed solution is simple, and probably would never work. Average teacher salary, nation wide, is about $47k. With benefits, lets call it $60k. The ideal class size seems to be about 20. Therefore, the Federal government should be supplying $3000 per student to schools, pegged to inflation. In my system, this money could only be used to pay full time teachers, and no teacher could receive, in pay or benefits, the money from more than 20 students. With 81M kids aged 5-19, that is a total of one quarter trillion dollars, or about 5 times the Department of Educations discretionary funding and about half of the Department of Defense budget.

The benefits from this system are manifold. It encourages the hiring of full time teachers, and it encourages the reduction of class size to 20 students. It removes local and state funding problems from the picture, leveling the playing field for poorer districts and poorer states. It mandates that teachers get a decent wage and decent pay increases. It removes much of the federal wheedling about what needs funded and what does not. Lastly, it draws a bright line between what the Federal government needs to pay for and what the local governments need to pay for. The Feds pay for the teachers (plus or minus). The locals must pay for the books, the buildings, and the administrative staff.

But nobody ever asks me.

im in ur machinez stelin ur votz

After watching the events of last week, I have some advice for this great nation. This is pretty much a rant, so brace yourself.

First and foremost, to the people who voted on DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting machines. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKING MIND!!!! Get an absentee ballot and vote by mail! Then petition your government officials to sue the people who sold them to you. It surprises me still that there are voters using machines with no paper trail. Without a paper trail, elections will be rigged. It's not a matter of if, but when. I can say that unequivocally, and for a number of reasons.

• The machines have bugs. If there is anything the last 50 years of computer science have shown us, it is that you can fix all of the bugs some of the time, and some of the bugs all of the time, but you cannot fix all of the bugs all of the time. (Sorry Abe) Additionally, the only way you can make bug free systems is to hermetically seal them (they aren't), tightly control the access (we don't), audit the source code (is hasn't been) and educate the uses (riiiight).
• Next, elections get rigged no matter what you do. All we can is make sure we have some chance of catching the people who do it. With DRE machines, there is no chance. If there is little to no chance that the riggers will be caught, they will do it more often. It is just human nature.

Now, for all of you voters who do not live in Oregon, what is the best way to (1) maximize voter turnout, (2) minimize the effect of sudden news events, and (3) maximize available information to voters? Vote by mail. Y'all tend to call it "absentee voting." Round here, we call it "an election." All vote by mail, baby. I can take 2 weeks to do my research and mark my ballot. If I forget, I can still do my research in the comfort of my own home, and in the middle of the night! The next morning, I drop it off at any library and go off to work. No lines, no time off work.

So there you have it! Throw the machines in the ocean and vote by mail. Your electorate will thank you.

Painting at Henry's

So, a while back, just after Stubert was born, Tory went over to Henry's to play. His cousins were over and everyone was out in the back playing. Wendy got out the paint and set up paper on the back fence, though it seems that that was not strictly necessary.

Henry decided that he would mix all the paint and coat himself uniformly from shoulder to toe. Tory took a much more artistic approach, and ended up looking like princess Amidala meets native warrior. I am pretty sure the paper survived unscathed.

When all of the painted children were in the tub, Wendy and I made an interesting discovery. Paint mixed with bubble bath makes insoluble white goo! This did not phase the children in the least, but it grossed out the two of us.

November 7 Funnies

Given the events of the day, I thought I would share some articles that struck me as funny.

• Carter Center declares that Florida does not meet basic international requirements for a fair election.
• South Carolina Governor turned away from polls
• Missouri's secretary of state asked for photo ID to vote despite law being struck down
• Kentuky poll worker chokes voter
• 77,000 Dead voters still on the rolls in New York
• Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele’s homeless campaign recruits pass out 'untruthful' fliers
• County in Utah has 4 more voters than residence
• Devil votes 12 times

The Battle of the Burrow

Last night, Tory was too tired. Going to bed can be hard for her, and when she is too tired, it is a real fight. For some reason she fixated on "building a burrow" (a mountain of pillows) that she would climb inside. We told her that she could have some burrow time after we got ready and before books. We got ready fairly quickly, read a little, then built a burrow. This is when things started heading south.

Tory started getting very frustrated trying to climb under her burrow. I did my best to help, but it wasn't working the way she had in her mind. I calmed her down and we did some reading till lights out. Once the lights were off, Tory tried to get in the burrow again, and started getting really frustrated. I tried to calm her down and dismantle the burrow, but that was just not going to happen without a fight. I tried letting her go to sleep on top of the burrow, but it became obvious she wasn't going to be able to fall asleep there.

It was also obvious that if I didn't get out of there, I was going to blow a gasket and say something I was going to regret.

So I bailed. When I got downstairs, I looked at Joh, gestured towards the stairs, and said "Your turn. Good luck getting her off that f**cking burrow."

As she headed upstairs, Joh new this would end in tears. Better to have it end now, while there was one parent who still had their shit together.

Johanna entered the bedroom and turned on the light. Then she started tossing the pillows back into place. "I need a burrow!" Tory was adamant that she needed a burrow that contained the body pillow. Joh offered her other pillows or to have the body pillow for a short while, but Tory wanted none of it. So Joh shut off the light. At this point, Tory totally lost the script. She didn't know what was supposed to happen or what she wanted, but she knew this wasn't it. I could hear her side of the "discussion" from downstairs. Within 20 minutes, Joh was back downstairs.

Busy Day

Dear Internets,

It has been a busy day. Stuart is definitely teething (two on the bottom) and we have a lot of catch up to play around the house. Joh and I need to vote, bills need paid, etc., etc.. My point is, this is the sorry excuse for a post that you are getting Today. I will try and make it up to you next week. Honest.

the Storywhore

A Recipe for Disaster

• Ingredients
• a dozen or so small children
• sugar

1. Take the children and put them in a car to tenderize for 1/2 hour.
2. Place the children in a room with nothing to do for 15 min.
3. Now, move all of the children into a large room with bouncy equipment, and bake for 1 hour while agitating. Ideally, there will be a meal missed during the hour.
4. Feed the children the sugar.

Really, Josephine's party was a blast. It went much better than I had feared. Nikos and I both hurt ourselves, but there were no other casualties that I knew of. Tory had a meltdown when we were leaving, but that is not uncommon even when she doesn't miss a meal.

Everything's All Locked Up Now, Thanks

Since her car was in the shop, Johanna took Tory to preschool via city bus. Now, as it happens, there is a bus that is nearly perfect for the trip, stopping both near our house and right next to the school. The trip out was fairly uneventful, and the trip back even less remarkable. That is, until Joh and Stuart got to the house. At which point she realized that she did not have her keys.

No, we haven't gotten around to exchanging keys with the neighbors.

"Hmm. So much for getting Thane off to work at a reasonable hour; he's barely there, and I have to call him to come home and let us in."

But the cell phone is dead. Now what?

"Aha! I never locked that window I opened to clear the smoke.* But I can't put Stuart through the window like I did with Tory."

"I could climb up on a chair ... and then fall and break my neck. Yeah, riiight. Wait: the shed! I didn't lock it last night, so I can get the ladder."

So Johanna set Stuart down on a cushy surface, got the ladder, climbed through the window, unlocked the door, and got Stuart. Problem solved.

Then she sent me this message:

"It wasn't currently raining, and it's actually pretty warm, and he was doing fine with a toy. Otherwise I would have hunted someone down to hold him in a warm place, but then one of our neighbors would know my shame. Now, nobody needs to know...except all the internets!"

* The fish sticks tried to fight off Johanna the other night. They lost, but took their toll.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree

On Tuesday, my daughter made a mess.

Stuart has been a bit fussy lately, for quite legitimate reasons: teething, stuffy nose, fever. Tory too has been sick recently, and is perhaps a tad more needy since the arrival of a sib. Perfectly normal. On Tuesday, Stuart was finally going down for his first good nap of the day, and Johanna heard Tory playing in the bathroom sink. Not alarmed, Johanna thought to herself, "Thank you, Tory. Thank you for entertaining yourself for a few minutes so I can get your brother to sleep."

Tory comes into the living room.
"I want you to read me a book."
"OK Baby. Let me get Stuart into the sling."

Johanna hears a noise. "What is that tinkling sound?" Johanna looks around the corner at the bathroom.

"Oh my God." The sink is overflowing.

"Oh my God!" There is a lot of water on the floor.

"Oh my God!!!" There would be more water on the floor, except that it is running down the hot air vent.

Stuart does not sleep through this, is rather unhappy about that fact, and lets everyone know. Tory is perhaps taken aback by the loss of her mother's sanity. Johanna turns off both faucets, and decides the towels needed to be washed anyway, but thinks to herself that there are easier ways to mop the floor. Finally she goes downstairs with an armload of wet towels to discover water has also dripped through the ceiling, onto the couch, the floor, and some boxes. She loses a bit more of her mind.

One of our wonderful neighbors told us later, "That is when you bring Tory over and say 'I need you to watch her for a bit so that she makes it through the day.'"

My mom was less impressed. "I had to replace the upstairs bathroom floor twice because of you, and I don't know how many times we had to patch the ceiling. It was never Elena. Just you."

Me be a NaBloPoMo Ho

Dear Readers,

As Tom has pointed out, November is NaBloPoMo. I am planning on participating, but do not worry! I plan on generating no more content than I do any month, I will just post more random drivel that no one cares about.

Now, given that I am such a poor blogger, one might ask, why am I doing this. It is simple. I hope to win an "I Fuck Like a Girl" t-shirt. I will wear this shirt proudly to public functions. When my wife gets irritated with it (i.e. immediately) I will point our that "I got it from MightyGirl!"

Wish me luck!

The Storywhore