I had a big long bitch session prepared for Jodi Picoult's new novel Handle With Care and how I'm sick of how OI & disabilities in general is portrayed in popular media and how Picoult will almost undoubtedly contribute to rather than challenge it, but then Chris said I was being stupid and overreacting. So I let it sit for a couple days, moved on to other things, and while I'm still incredibly frustrated and teeth-gnashy at the thought of it, I found a website that's collected all the episodes of The Joy of Painting online. Bob Ross can't not make you happy, and now the rage has dimmed somewhat. God, I miss that guy.

I also found this parody of Bob Ross which made me laugh.

This is really silly, but it makes me happy when I can remember shit I learned years ago. I'm writing about US foreign policy and was trying to remember some US invasion of Lebanon, and I was like 90% convinced the operation had the word "blue" in it. I couldn't remember when it was, and some googling turned up the Lebanon Civil War and there wasn't anything about Operation something-Blue in there. Other than US + Lebanon + invasion + blue, the only other thing I could remember about it was the story my professor told us about how US forces totally stormed the beach, which was near a city or something, in full gear while tourists looked on and were like "what the hell?" And, really, that image just amuses me. Can you imagine being on vacation, hanging out at the beach drinkin' a Coke or something, and suddenly a bunch of foreign troops pop out of the water and run off to take the closest city?

Anyway, long story short, I went back and looked through it in my notes. It was Operation Blue Bat in 1958. HAH! This mind is like a steel trap, I tells 'ya.

Mostly I just wanted to share the invasion story because I hadn't thought about it in awhile.

I have to write a stupid paper on the importance of diversity in education and I really don't want to do it. It's not even really a paper, it's a book report. I thought I was done with those when I graduated junior high, and yet here I am.

Anyway, I'm sitting here and really don't want to do it, so naturally Chris & I are watching TV while I'm writing, and it's the Sherri Bobbins episode of the Simpsons. Perhaps it's not the best episode to be watching homework, as it's practically convincing me with the really catchy tune that if I "Cut every corner, there'll be more time for play! It's the American way!"

Last weekend there was a mythbusters episode where they cracked the fingerprint-scanner locks by putting a fingerprint on a CD, photocopying it, and holding it up to the scanner. I didn't see the answer, but I think that's how they did it. Apparently my boss at work had been thinking about getting a simple, four-point fingerprint scanner for this damn door we have at work -- the current lock sucks hardcore, it takes two hands to use, and our hands our always full when we use it -- until he saw last week's episode of mythbusters. Then he got all worried about somebody cracking this new lock if we bought one (on an internal door, mind you, accessible only if you've already gone through one of our other locked doors) after he saw this mythbusters episode. We were crushed -- a fingerprint scanner! How cool would that be?? A high-tech ray of light among the rest of our second-rate facilities.

Anyway. We were crushed. So I sent Adam Savage a twitter. And he sent one back to me. How cool was that? What a nice guy. Twitter = awesome.

Mom: "Someone sent you a handwritten letter."
Me: *open it* "Huh. The Jehovah's Witnesses sent me a personalized letter. I wonder how they got my address."
Dad: "Someone must have given it to them."
Me: "I wonder who."
Dad: "Jehovah."
Me: "God must have narc'ed on me."

For some reason, that amused me highly.

I've been bitching for a couple days about how there's absolutely nothing interesting about sports history. I just don't care. I know it's really a problem of sources, but there's only so much I can read about how elite white men killed time. I get it. College boys liked to beat each other up because they were so worried that being trust fund babies would mean they weren't masculine. Where are the women? Where are the poor people? Where are the minorities? Where is the west coast? Suck.

Anyway. I've been complaining about how there's nothing, absolutely nothing, interesting about this topic. I'm 160 pages into this overview of sports and there's just not a damn thing that is slightly intriguing. Not even a cool little tidbit I can pull out.

Until now: "Swimmers in the Yale University pool, for example (until women undergraduates were admitted in 1969) were required to swim nude."

Huh. Awkward.

All within one chapter of this sports history book I have to read:

"Prizefighting was the most noteworthy sport of the era." (70)

"Harness racing, especially in the cities, became the single most popular sport of the era." (70)

"Baseball may well have been the most important sport of the antebellum era." (79)

The "OMG this the MOST IMPORTANT thing you'll ever read you HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION" tactic only works but once, Elliot J. Gorn and Warren Goldstein. I understand you get excited about it, but it really ruins your credibility with me. Boo hiss, I say.

I was at the bone doctor's office today (good news: no more IVs for awhile) and while I was getting ready for the bone density scan I noticed a sign on the wall: if you are pregnant or think you may be pregnant please tell a nurse. And then somebody had written at the bottom "BEFORE THE TEST."

Really? They needed to add that? I really hope it was just there because some hyper-literal person, much like my mother, remarked that the sign doesn't tell you when to tell the nurse and someone got freaked out about a hypothetical lawsuit, not because it actually happened.

I'm taking an honors class this upcoming semester, and just got an e-mail from my teacher. Since our first day of class is the day of Obama's inauguration, she bought everyone a commemorative issue of the NYT for that day. Also, she bought everyone a 3 month copy of the NYT. And I was like score! I never thought being in the honors program would actually pay off! ...And then I kept reading and realized she highly encouraged us to pay her back the $27. So that kind of sucks.

I was in the middle of a dream this morning when the alarm went off. I was TAing for Knaus's summer classes, doing various things like showing youtube clips & maps, reading the textbook, studying for the tests, etc. When the alarm went off I think I was taking a test when the alarm went off, and I had to put an answer down quick before the time went off! Quick, answer something!! Something important!!!

My first thought when I woke up was "It's a 20th century labor policy!"

Off to Vegas tomorrow! Visiting there with my mom's family. The older generation is super-into gambling, while us younger ones not so much. It'll be my first time there since I've turned 21, and my first time gambling. It should be fun. (Though it won't be the same without you, Amber...)

Last night when Allan left after playing games Chris & I caught perhaps the best infomercial ever: the Magic Bullet blender (not sex toy). It was so awesome we rewound the DVR and watched it again. And then giggled about it for another half hour. I thought perhaps it was just because it was 1 in the morning and we were a little punch drunk, but it's still pretty damn hilarious in the light of day.



Most of it's fairly standard infomercial -- the obnoxious guy who doubts the power of the Magic Bullet (teehee), the convert who swears she's buying one as soon as she gets home, displaying the wide variety of uses (though why they're making fettuccine alfredo & chocolate mousse at 8 a.m. is slightly confusing), somebody shouting "AND IT'S SO QUIET!", the convenient edits that prevent you from seeing that the product doesn't actually work, and the host praising its hands free capabilities while he holds onto it for dear life lest the whole thing spin out of control and kill someone. All fairly funny in and of themselves. But the best part is right around the 2:12 mark. There, in the middle of a carefully constructed setting where a bunch of friends gather for a weekend together, a crazy old lady with poorly dyed red hair wanders into the scene with a housecoat and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and the same sideways gait my grandma had after decades of heavy vodka use. "Did somebody say muffins??" She rasps in that deep smoker voice. No explanation at all. The other characters don't even really acknowledge her. She just stands there, right in the middle of their personal space, and then wanders off again. Only to appear again around the 3:56 mark to complain about "Chopping garlic! Nasty, stinkin' garlic!"

Ah, man. Chris & I wandered around all morning asking "did somebody say MUFFINS??" in our best Dr. Girlfriend voice.

Normally I can remember most of my dreams. Sometimes of the time I can remember them for years. Occasionally I even confuse them with real life.

Today, though, I can't remember any of my dreams from last night. Except for one phrase, right before I woke up: "...massively liable hold fund."

Say what?

Check out the "Yo Mama" election fight on twitter. Someone collected the best and posted them here. Helped me waste a half hour.

It makes me disproportionately happy that I managed to quote SNL in my environmental politics paper. I had to write on the Evangelical Climate Initiative, so the opportunity was just too good to pass up:

Evangelicals in the United States are often seen as outspoken critics of global warming. They are often comically portrayed as ignorant of the causes and problems of climate change, and cheerfully insistent that it may even be a good thing: global warming, the stereotypical evangelical says, is “God just huggin’ us closer.”

I've been using non-print resources a lot in my papers this semester because it makes the whole process slightly more fun, and I've really lost the will to jump through hoops this year. I can't decide if it makes me a better or worse academic. But I definitely can't wait to hear what the people who are "peer editing" it say in class on Wednesday.

I've been against the Palin camp using her son as political capital for awhile now. I think since it first came up I have been screaming at the screen any time someone attempts to use the special needs parent as a way of gaining sympathy/votes. Sarah Palin does not know what it's like to have a son with special needs. She has no idea what life is like as a parent of special needs. Come talk to me when your son gets beat up in school, when nobody talks to him in class, when his teachers yell and scream and hit him because they don't know how to deal with him. Come talk to me when your insurance company won't cover new experimental treatments that could seriously help your son. Come talk to me when you realize that you can't ever really retire because you won't ever have enough money to cover your kid's medical bills. You have no idea, Sarah Palin. Don't tell me how you understand my problems, and how I should vote for you because we're both families with special needs children. Don't you dare.

Even further, though, don't you DARE attempt to use a disabled child as political capital when YOU CAN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO FIGURE OUT WHAT HIS DISABILITY IS. Don't you DARE. Don't you look me in the eye and tell me you understand MY problems when YOU CAN'T EVEN TELL ME WHAT MY PROBLEMS ARE. FUCK YOU, JOHN MCCAIN. There's a special circle in hell for exploiting disabled children like you are.

I am absolutely livid. I can't even form a coherent thought right now. I can't BELIEVE you, John McCain.

This video makes me laugh. The Palin impersonator is pretty bad, but the song itself is spot on. Totally awesome. There's also this one, but the guy in that video is kinda creepy and they sing very poorly.

When I need a quick little pick-me-up, I've started just going to this site and staring happily at the graphs. The pie charts on the left are nice and soothing, but it's the electoral vote distribution graph that really just makes me smile. Ahhhh. Blue really is calming.

Anyway. Nearing the end of hell week '08. One more stupid paragraph about how European men hated black women's bodies in order to delegitimize them and justify slavery in colonial America and I'll be done. That's almost a soothing thought in and of itself.

The best way to kill 20 minutes.

My instincts are pretty much all wrong. I always run rather than hunker down, always flee to the vehicle even though it's a steel-encased death trap, and I never hesitate to leave my companions. You pretty much don't want to be standing next to me when the zombie invasion hits, let me tell you.

Did you know there's a difference between the American billion and the Russian billion? If you say "I want a billion cookies!" in the US, it means 1,000,000,000. But if you say "I want a billion cookies!" in Russia, it means 1,000,000,000,000.

That's the one of the weirder things I've heard in a long time. Also, one of the silliest. You'd think numbers would be one of those standardized things.

What's even weirder, though, is that Britain apparently used the long-scale (the bigger number) until 1974, when they changed to short scale. How do you change something like that? That doesn't seem like something you could just fiat overnight. I would think counting would be one of those things that's just ingrained in people and not easily changed. It'd be like switching X and Y in the alphabet, to me. If I was stoned, my mind would've been totally blown just now when I found all this out.

What's not weird at all, though, not even in the slightest bit, is that Clay Aiken announced he's gay. Shock of shocks, I know.