Monthly Archives: November 2004

New Manipulation Technique

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If you’re one of the many two year old blog readers that I have, Abby has revealed a new technique to help manipulate us into being spineless parents: telling us she’s crying. What happened this morning is that she pooped in her panties. This upset Jessica greatly, so she made her sit on the toilette to finish her business. Abby started wimpering and saying, “I’m crying.” This of course shut down all of our parental instincts and we caved in and gave her whatever she wanted.

OK, not really, but her telling us she was crying was an all time best for attempted mercy-begging.

Super Sicko

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I was sick all of yesterday, almost a literal 24 hours. Monday night at 12:08 (I remember looking at the clock) I woke up and went into the bathroom and discovered that my body was in ’empty me at both ends’ mode. That is a relatively nice way to say that I took the fastest route possible to losing weight be getting my body to eliminate anything and everything in my digestive track. This continued to where I finally fell asleep somewhere near 3:30 (as far as my delusional mind could remember) that morning and then happened again when I woke up after 6.

I don’t watch a lot of television, but when I’m sick, the boob tube comes on. I think that Katie Couric is half the female host that Diane Sawyer is. With that in mind neither of them strikes me as brilliant news casters, but since when was the ‘mass media’ the best place to get really useful news?

Anyway, I’m back and in action now so I’ll be posting again as usual.

Special Times

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When I was a young child and on into my teens (though we stopped calling them such) I had ‘special times’ with my parents. Or dates if you will. This allowed my parents to have one-on-one time with us kids as well as give us an oportunity to have some fun without the distractions or potential arguments with other siblings. I remember we would go to get frozen yogurt or maybe go miniature golfing. Fun was had and I think that it kept me from selling drugs in high school. Oh, shoot, I did sell drugs in high school [I worked at a pharmacy].

Tonight Abby and I had a special time, we went to the library and picked out some books and videos and then afterwards (don’t tell Jessica) we went to Starbuck’s where she had some chocolate milk and I consumed a small portion of a tall latte. Abby flirted with several people in the store and I watched the reflection of a woman cry a lot to a man in the window. We didn’t have any deep conversation, but I hope that it tells this little two year old girl of mine that I love her very much and think she’s very special.

At the library she cracked me up by saying, “No, it’s my precious heart, Dad.” And what a precious heart it is.

A New Bike for Abby

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Today FedEx delivered Abby’s new bike that Grandpa and Grandma Forland ordered for her while we were in Washington. I’ll try to get pictures, but at 2 years old, she’s hard pressed to move those pedals around. Oh, well, it looks cute!

Overheard This Last Week

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This last weekend (Sunday the 31st) Clair and I went to a restaurant for lunch and were seated at a booth near two older ladies (older meaning they looked to be in their late 60’s to mid 70’s if I was to guess. They may have taken that as a complement). Clair got up to use the restroom and so with nothing else to do I listened to other conversations in the room. The two older ladies were very excited about ‘the bowling alley last week.’ I can assure you that there is no bowling alley in Kalama Washington. However, one of them was impressed with the food at the bowling alley. She leaned over to the other gal and said, “You know that was a big turkey sandwich! They had this much meat on it [makes about a 1.25 inch gap between thumb and forefinger (AKA nose picker)].” Her friend seemed equally impressed by the size of the sandwich.

I hope and pray that turkey sandwiches are not focal points of my life when I reach that age. I want to be excited about my grandkids, the fact they have a new Super-Duper Polygrip [you so have to click that link, it’s to a funny comic strip], and of course the latest on America’s Funniest Home Videos – Mashup Edition.

Interesting Op-Ed

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I have been amazed, amused and confused by various responses to Bush’s re-election this last week. My thoughts aside, which are pretty ho-hum, this Op-Ed article is quite fascinating.

I’m a generally conservative guy (but I’m not registered Republican, I’m ‘unaffiliated’ or some other non-sense term that means, “Please don’t pigeon hole me.”) and I’m not a closet Christian, but I’ve been flabbergasted that so many web sites and news blurbs cited ‘Evangelicals’ as the source of Bush’s win. For crying out loud, there are lots of states with a very small percentage of actual Christians (where Christian does not equal WASP) but where conservative values tend to be held. Heck, I left the Bible Belt to find a home church 🙂

What I’m most interested in is some reasons why I don’t think Kerry won:

  • Anything but Bush is hardly a reason to vote for Kerry, and it’s really not a reason to vote against Bush. It just says that someone disagrees with Bush.
  • Bush Lied. Yup. Most likely he spun, or lied, about a lot of stuff. This is typical for politicians, no matter what stereo-type they get labeled with (including Bush’s Christianity). People apparently aren’t expecting truth from politicians or televangelists.
  • Bush is against Stem Cell Research which could hold the cure to (insert many diseases here). I want to state right now that I am for stem cell research. With one condition: don’t get the stem cells from aborted babies. The reason this didn’t win people over to the Kerry camp is because not enough Americans recognize this as the issue it is. There is a lot of ignorance when it comes to medicine and the common United States citizen.
  • The War on Terror is never ending. You may know that. I know that. However, considering that most of the people voting attend religious ceremonies two or less times a year their recognition that terrorism in the middle-east is often based on religious motivation – they don’t think about it and they don’t get it.
  • Peoples children are dying in Iraq. Voters don’t want people to die. However, when you calculate that the number of US citizens that die every month from car accidents in the United States is higher than the number who have died in Iraq in all of that time, the fatality rate has been very low[1]. Granted zero deaths is better than even one death. I’m personally not for war, and don’t want us in Iraq (or any other country) either, but I think that voters didn’t buy this argument.
  • Gay (marriage, unions, governmentally recognized relationships). Many Americans may not be homophobes (or many may be, I don’t know enough Americans to tell you this) but I think that this issue really didn’t grab the attention of John and Jane Doe because Will and Grace is their one contact with homosexuality – except if you count their aunty’s hair dresser.

This is a very small list and I know many more arguments were leveled during the time of the presidential running (or, if you want to be humorous, the running of the bulls [as in bull pucky that came out in the mud slinging]). My recommendation for those against Bush’s presidency is to not marry a Canadian, move to Canada or protest all over the place. Instead, move to California, they’ve got plenty of room (not really), join a cult (to counter the Evangelicals) or marry a Canadian so they can move down here and populate the country with Candadian ideas and accents (Pretty good idea, eh?).

I’m interested in intelligent conversation on this and would like to hear other arguments I didn’t list and see what else we can come up with. Also, what candidates do you prognosticate for the next presidential election? Powell verses H. Clinton? That would be quite the race because you’d have a black male verses a woman. Of course Arnold Schwartzeneiger verses Obama would be even more intense! OK, I’m going to bed.

On the Road Again

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Much like Willie Nelson I have many hit songs, tax issues and a fanbase with no need for dental floss. Unlike Willie, I don’t like to be on the road a lot. We’re heading back to the great state of Colorado. We’ll sleep in our own beds tonight which will be good. However, I’m sad that I’m not going to get to work on the house today and until it’s finished.

Anyhow, blogging will resume its abnormal patterns as of now. I hope to get some of the pictures I’ve taken here up online.

Poop Nazi

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I have been called a poop nazi this morning. This is a name that I take seriously given that I’m German in descent and I married a rather German woman. Therefore Abby is still a mutt, but she’s got a lot of German blood. The reason I’m a poop Nazi? Because I ask Abigail if she needs to go poop when her face falls into what I would call a blank poop stare. A blank poop stare is one in which her focus can be seen shifting to her bowels and the inner workings of her body. It is like she’s doing a system check to make sure everything is as it should be.

However, I ask more often than Abby needs to go, and so Jessica has called me this crappy name. Therefore, I christen her, the Moderate Mommy.

Time Management vs. Progress

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I had a hard time thinking up a title for this article, mostly because it’s philosophical rather than being practicle. I’ve identified a trend, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but I think it will change the way that companies deal with advertising and how they handle distributing information/propaganda. The last 5 years has brought about a radical change in when you get your information. If you think about technologies like Tivo (Personal Digital Video Recording) and now podcasting (downloading of MP3’s [or other audio formats] onto your computer using an RSS feed) you, the end consumer have control over when, where and how you consume the video or audio. This is not a new concept since books, newspapers and magazines have allowed for this to happen in the print world for ages.

I think this will prove to be a challenge for ‘traditional’ media like television and radio since they rely on advertisers (something that software can filter out) and since they have not adapted to the ‘e-consumer’ model. A smart move on their part would be to look for greater product placement within TV-shows for a PVR. Radio on the other hand is probably going to hurt from this shift since more control over songs/media means that people may dump regular radio programming for models like XM/Sirius which offer satellite radio channels with channels that have no commercials. A monthly user fee that affords station syndication fees is a model that many people are willing to live with. What makes RSS enclusures (which power podcasting) so powerful is that the internet allows for people to gather MP3 audio files, various video files and many other digital files while they’re away from their computer and then update any devices with content at their leisure.

You are in control of your content, and the time you consume it. This is a shift for the tranditional media outlets that I hope the react to pro-actively. If they respond in a reactive fashion in 5 years rather than beating the trends and doing something constructive now, it may be too late for many of the networks. While I expect that in 5 years only 40 or less percent of consumers will have the electronic equipment and know-how to achieve a completely autonomous media consumption habit it will surely effect the way advertisers choose to spend their money. Recently I heard that Sony was actually moving to spend more of their budget for video advertising at Wal-Mart, with their closed-circuit televisions that play ads 24-7, rather than spend the money on traditional television outlets [I cannot find the article that reported this, so please take this with the understanding that more research needs to be done].

As you consume media, please consider how you consume it, what you get in the way of advertisements and where your dollars go for entertainment. The trend is changing and I feel it will be an interesting next 5-10 years technologically.

[Thanks to Nick for getting me started on thinking about this].