Halloween!

It was a very busy day for all of us today. At work the kids were so bad that i felt like i crammed seven hours of work into about half an hour. Then i had to stay late because we don't have enough staff to legally supervise the kids, and then we ran off to another Halloween party! The part where i wasn't at work was great! Fun!

Houston was a ninja for the Hal-O-luia party, which involved black clothes and a t-shirt tied over his face, but today he was a witch, wearing an old choir robe and a black peaked hat that Karen made out of posterboard. May i say how awesome his costume was. Awesome. Katrina was Princess Pea again, and Zane wore his storebought Tigger outfit. Unbelievably cute, all. Karen was a hockey mom again, and i was an amateur electrician again.

The weather today was incredible. I've never seen so many people outside on October 31st, hanging about in front of their house, many with fires built in those portable fire pit things -- braziers? There were hundreds of Trick-or-Treaters out as well, dressed as ladybugs, zombies, bunnies, and there was one "dead princess". Eew. One Rubik's Cube -- awesome. I was slightly sad that there were no George W costumes or people dressed up like 401k statements. Because i've been reading political cartoons, and cartoonists seemed convinced that those are going to be the scariest costumes ever.

I really enjoy Trick-or-Treating. It's such a community thing. Even if Karen and my specific community doesn't do much... and there's so much giving! To strangers! The kids scored at least five pounds of candy. Mmmm, candy. With all the neighborly activity and sharing with each other, i think Halloween would be Jesus' favorite holiday. And with the revolting irresponsible consumerism that Christ's own Mass has become, i'm pretty sure that one might be His least favorite. Weird, because Halloween is kind of gruesome and morbid, and Christmas ostensibly represents new birth, grace and holiness.

Yes we can carve pumpkins.

:)

Houston and i collaborated on a spider, which is quite Spider-Man-esque. Katrina drew a "melting skeleton" which looks like a slightly anthropomorphic blob shape. I don't know if she really knows what a skeleton is, but i'm glad i wasn't called upon to carve a detailed anatomical representation of the bones of the human body. Zane and Karen cooperated on a traditional jack-o-lantern style pumpkin carving, based on Karen saying "Zane, should we make our pumpkin face happy or sad?" and Zane instantly said "Sad!!!!" Sad it is. And i made that Obama one. It was either Obama or Hello Kitty. I've never tried to carve a realistic face before, and it was a little weird stabbing Obama's eye repeatedly. Yeck.

What our house will smell like this winter:

Often at work, i will wander around supervising kids, and there will be a whiff of salty body odor lingering in the air. Sometime in the fall, the pockets of foul teenager smell is replaced by general sourness caused by boys not washing right, and then later in the year when we keep the doors shut against the freezing cold, a horrifying smell of youth oriented fragrances starts to soak into the carpet. It's absolutely horrifying. I know i already used that word, but it's totally the best one. One time at the very end of a rummage sale i was looking at the things that were being given away so they could simply keep them out of the dumpster, and besides the excellent find of a functioning dehumidifier (which has been serving us well for four years) i found a moldy old bowling bag containing a very heavy bowling ball with tiny finger holes, and a pair of tacky bowling shoes which almost fit me. The inside of that bowling bag: that's what AXE smells like. Dusty. Old. Nasty.

Um, where was i? Oh yeah, BO at work. Okay, so a while back, i was wandering and smelling the stank, and started looking for a kid who would be nearby consistently during the experiences of odor so i could tell the dude to go wash himself. But no dude was forthcoming. No, the common circumstance was the nearness of a bucket of crayons. The crayons smelled a little like BO. Some crayons smell like some BO. Bummer.

Next part of the story: a couple months ago, Houston was cleaning up after a time of coloring. He tripped while carrying one of his Mega Giant Boxes -o- Crayons (which get passed down serially from Karen (who shuns crayons once the virgin sharpness gets rounded down) through Houston into the general crayon bucket where Katrina uses them and Zane rips off the paper) and every single crayon flew onto the floor. One crayon cleverly shot, point down, right down the heating grate. Houston cried, and i told him i'd try to get it out. The grates are really easy to remove, so i did, to find that that heating duct is almost directly over the furnace in the basement. I could see the crayon resting on the heat exchanger which surrounds the core stove like oven thing of our old style gravity-feed octopus style furnace. My longest arm woudn't reach the crayon.

So now, every time the heat comes on, we get a smell of hot crayon permeating our house. Hot, plasticky crayon. Oh how i wish we'd accidentally spilled potpourri down the heating grate. Or a scented candle. I checked the other day to see if there would be an easy way to open up that part of our furnace to extract the candle and the one hundred nine years' worth of other objects dropped down the grates (could be some Microsoft stock or something) but unless i want to disturb the asbestos, there isn't. And if there's one thing i learned at college earning a bachelor's degree in art, it's not to disturb the asbestos.

Two questions i find interesting

The first: what is the most intelligent insect? Karen and i agreed that the praying mantis should be up there, with its intense focus and stalking behavior makes them look sharply calculating. Then there's the dragonflies, which are extremely good hunters. They sneak up on flying insects by approaching them from directly to their rear, where the prey doesn't respond to the growing blob in their vision, which is the approaching dragonfly, because the blob stays centered in their rear vision. That works -- if you slowly move a pen (or even your finger) closer to a sitting fly, and stay exactly to the fly's rear, you can touch the fly before it'll zip off.

But the butterflies, like the Monarch. They fly enormous distances, trekking across continents (or... over most of the continent) and wind up where their ancestors left. Mysterious. And then, of course, the collective intelligence of honeybees is astonishing. Bees communicate. Better than some current presidents of the USA that i can think of. Termites! They create skyscrapers for their nests! With ventilation and breweries!

Spiders, though, don't seem very intelligent. Their webs are stunning, and they certainly are effective predators. But it might be their lack of turnable heads, and maybe it's the very precision of their behavior, but they seem instinctual, robotic. Still cool and even cute (i caught a very small cobweb-type spider the other day, and it shriveled into a little floppy comma, because it was deathly afraid of being touched) but robotic.

Okay, so my second question: how can our political system so perfectly divide the population of our country? It's gotta be self-balancing... but still weird.

Annual Hall-O-Luia party

Every year for the past three years (possibly four???) we've gone to the Hall-O-Luia party put on by a local church. It's always an extremely silly time, with kids running around playing pointless games to win absurd prizes, and everyone but the Responsible Grown-ups are wearing crazy costumes, sourced in a disappointingly high percentage from stores. Whatchagonnado. I guess everyone can't be creative like us. Oh yeah, and poor. Although if i could give up being creative to be not poor... no, i'd stay poor. So anyway, Houston wore black pants, two black shirts, and another black shirt over his head like a ninja mask. So he was a ninja. There were a couple other ninjas there with weird skull bedecked outfits, which confused me -- ninjas need to be utterly stealthy, so why wear adornments? Katrina wore some dress-up clothes we've had, and was the cutest Princess P ever. From Super Why, the PBS show. Zane was a Tigger, wearing the same outfit Houston wore. SO CUTE!!!! And Karen was a hockey mom. Very relevant. I think for her next costume for her she'll be a pit bull. Same outfit, no lipstick. Har. I was Electrocuted Guy. Houston voluntarily made me a lightning bolt for my chest, which made me proud. Karen's post from today has way more pictures, so check it out!

Family Drawing Time

The pictures in that post just down there are selected from recent Family Drawing Times.

Houston's a math whiz. It's so easy for him. Katrina slept today, and said something very funny which escapes my memory. And Zane declared that riding the scooter was "FUN! ..... FUN! ..... FUN!"

Ba Rock The Vote

The very first time i voted was back in 2000, when Al Gore was running against George W Bush. Politics disgusted me. I felt quite personally insulted by the idea that a few dozen fifteen or thirty second commercials on the television could adequately equip me to make a wise decision for whom to vote. And the ads were generally negative, smacking of gossip and rumormongering. I try to live my life gossip and rumormonger free, and if possible, trans fat free. So i did my best to tune those horrible ads right out. Of course, this is also when i decided that all ads involve giant corporations spending giant cash just to infiltrate my brain to implant images there designed to trick me into giving them my money. I still think that's true...

So in my first election, i voted for Ralph Nader for president. Good old Nader, champion of the regular guy, and fantastically smart, odd fellow. And, by the way, one of the three or four people who dealt well with Ali G. I knew about him from, like, before.

I also developed my theory that anyone who shows a hint of political ambition should be automatically and permanently disqualified from holding office, and we should sentence criminals to serve in public office, because a) they'd do just as well, b) when corruption happened, nobody would have to pretend to be surprised, and c) wow! Talk about a deterrent! Jail? Prison? Parole? No problem. Mayor of Detroit? OH SNAP!!!!

The intervening elections saw me vote for independents, issues i actually cared about, John Kerry because i really really wanted George W out, other local elections, and now, here we are at The Most Important Election since Madeline Albright (so says she) has been alive. We will elect a black man, or a woman, to the executive branch of government. I've not been shy about being a hearty supporter of Obama ever since i heard of the guy. Way back when he (and most of the other eventual hopefuls) had released a statement about not being interested in pursuing candidacy. I've been accused of "drinking the Kool-Aid" even, although technically, the cyanide laced drink preferred by Jim Jones' cult was Flavor Aid.

So, in sleep-deprived no-particular-order, here's why i threw my dread scarf into the ring so early on, and remain a committed Obama supporter:

1. Obama is superficially different. He's black. Our country really dislikes George W Bush, and most of the rest of the world agrees. Incompetence and arrogance are the only charges i care to level at the administration, for simplicity's sake. And regardless, i hope we can agree that Obama appears different. Bush appears white, oldish, and embarrassingly bad at saying words in a good order and style which makes them make sense and make him sound like he knows what he's talking about. Briefly, he is a bad communicator. Obama appears black, youngish, and staggeringly eloquent. Most US citizens and the vast majority of the rest of the world engage politicians only that deeply: appearances. And with our country and world crying out for change, a superficial change is going to do it for lots of people.
   
   Keeping on about the superficial differences: think of our brothers and sisters in Arabic countries where their leaders are among the loudest critics of Bush and his chest thumping rhetoric. Bush, to many of them, is The Enemy. Bush represents the West, which is the great satan (which is Arabic for "adversary") for many conservative Arabic Muslims. McCain shares some of Bush's speaking style -- the defensiveness, the grimaces -- and he certainly is an older white dude. So now compare that to Obama. Physically, Obama would blend well with many Arabic populations. He's got the coloring, and even vaguely Arabic features through some accident of genetics. So McCain looks like (and remember, looks are all most people really pay attention to) The Enemy, the great satan, to many Arabs, while Obama looks like an uncle or cousin.
   
   Most agree that terrorism is the greatest risk to our national security, and a great deal of that terrorism is sponsored by radical Islamic factions which tend to be made up Arabs. These people would most certainly find it harder to get enraged at a country whose leader looks so friendly to them.
   
   This is, on the flippedy flip side, why there's so much fear of him here among the white uneducated. There's "just something about him" which people "aren't comfortable with", which is code for "LORD SAVE US HE'S BLACK AAAAAAAAA!!!" The fact that he's done so well in spite of this handicap should indicate how vastly superior he is to his opponents.
   
   
2. Obama seems fundamentally different. Um, it seems like the rest of my points are elaborations on how (i paraphrase) the fundamentals ahr... of our Barack Obama are strong. So onward...
   
   
3. He's judicious. In the primary race, there were campaign difficulties everywhere, except for Obama. Hillary Clinton burned through staff members with frequency. McCain's campaign was given up for dead, and has always been almost broke. On the other hand, Obama's has been well funded (overwhelmingly by small time individual donors clicking on a paypal button), and the campaign has been astonishingly smooth. Barack Obama has surrounded himself with intelligent, efficient people who have made very few, if any, obvious errors. Obama simply listens to his crew (according to a Time article i read early this year) intently, leaning back if he likes what he's hearing, and leaning forward if there's something he needs to take issue with. He doesn't yell. He doesn't get irrational. He Leads.
   
   Small derail: judiciousness is what has allowed this black man to get so far. I am, at this moment, very sore from restraining a kid (whose racial background should remain unstated for confidentiality's sake) at work. The lack of judiciousness in modern poor urban cultures is devastating, and that's exactly what this kid from work was internalizing. The ugliest racial stereotypes about black people -- selfishness, sexual irresponsibility, loudness, laziness, violence -- stem from the most obvious "black" urban, hip-hop culture. Folly, injudiciousness; these very characteristics are hailed within that culture as "keeping it real", being a "player", "hustler" and so on, and are considered noble, positive traits. Obama's judiciousness is what drew early criticism from the African American community: is he black enough?
   
   
4. He Knows What It's Like. Bill Clinton's famous line was "I feel your pain." Well sure he did, he grew up poor. But Obama grew up black. Obama grew up (for part of his childhood) in Not America. Obama grew up with a funny name. Obama grew up working, mingling, collaborating with people who are different from him. A vital character trait in anyone is the ability to see things from anther person's perspective. If i know where you're coming from, i can better help you understand me, and hopefully we can get stuff done. Living overseas gives you a cultural broadness. I gained more insight about the USA from living in Peru and Korea than i gained into those cultures. Kinda. Anyway, foreign relations will be improved when our president can understand that not everybody in the world eats grits with bacon fat for breakfast.
   
   
5. Obama thinks!!! He's an intellectual.
   
   Just a quick contrast: Rick Warren from Saddleback Church interviewed McCain and Obama separately. The abortion question arose, and McCain's response to the question of when a baby is entitled to human rights was: "At the moment of conception." There was thunderous applause, and then McCain talked about his pro-life record. I'm not going to argue with McCain's statement, but it's an oversimplification of an extremely difficult issue to simply brush aside with a pro-life check-box-filling statement. Obama, on the other hand, gave a thoughtful, sensitive essay on the moral and ethical elements of the issue. I copied the relevant parts from that transcript, which you can read after the jump.
   
   I flatter myself that i'm a four or five on the bags-of-hammers scale of smartness, so a smart guy who thinks is far more appealing to me than a guy i'd like to sit on the couch next to, drinking beer and scratching my belly. Please, let the president be someone who's elite! Please! We don't really like the other kind!
   
   
6. Obama is gracious. This campaign has gotten ugly, with attack ads being slung back and forth. I don't watch TV, and i usually read pretty liberal news sites, so maybe i'm wrong, but i think the most unfair and slanderous attacks have been launched by the McCain camp. And through it all, and at the debates, Obama has given McCain respect when McCain wouldn't make eye contact with Obama. Obama has given McCain credit for good work done, for instance in stopping torture. When McCain gets snarly, Obama stays calm and collected.
   
   
7. Obama stays calm and collected.
   
   Bush said once that if people want to avoid World War III, they should stop helping Iran get nu-Q-lar weapons. Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld rushed the nation into an ill-advised war. McCain famously suspended his campaign to work on the economic crisis, did another couple interviews, and then was not very helpful. McCain called off the debate, but then went to the debate. Obama... basically this goes back to being judicial.
   
   And oh yeah, Palin! Obama's choice of Vice President was judicious to the point of being boring, even though Biden can say some pretty funny (stupid) stuff. But Sara Palin, bless her heart, is simply not the person for the job of President of the United States. And constitutionally, that's the vice president's job: to replace a disabled or dead president, and to cast a tie breaking vote in the Senate. Picking her was a bold but completely obvious political move to boost McCain's campaign, which it did until even the dimmest of use realized that when she talks, it's just a bunch of words.
   
   I seriously think McCain shoulder-surfed while one of his aides did a Google search of female republican governors, because governors are good VP's... and discarded the ugly or old ones, and Sarah Palin was left. Oh! And she's a conservative evangelical! Call her now ASAP ROLF LOL!!!!11!!
   
   
8. Last one... Obama inspires. Our country needs a gigantic morale boost. People are broke. Most of us are drastically in debt. Stuff sucks. Obama might help us feel a little bit better about ourselves. And as it is with physical health, a positive attitude actually helps. Obama will help the rest of the world feel better about us too, which is a big bonus.
   
   
9. Oh, okay i forgot. Obama would be a gigantic boost for the black community. Gigantic.
   
   So far, most obviously successful African Americans have been rap stars or star athletes. Michael Jordan and Will Smith are obvious role models... okay, maybe more Lebron James and 50 Cent nowadays. So black kids want to be rap stars or basketball stars when they grow up. So they walk around rapping all the time and bounce basketballs constantly. But those things don't pay very well, so those dreams usually fall aside. But if Barack Obama was the President, why then kids would look up to him as a role model and decide that maybe they want to pay attention in history class or math class, because while you don't need to know how to diagram a sentence to be a rapper or pro baller, you kind of do to be president. Unless you're white and your dad used to have that job.
   
   Sometimes i get really discouraged and think that the black community in the US has never been more disenfranchised than it is now. At least, since the Abolition. During the Jim Crow era, at least the black community had itself as a relatively pro-social culture. But the kids i work with grow up in the most self-destructive culture i can imagine. It's so anti-intellectual and anti-social. "Snitches get stitches" they say, and when i respond "Snitches are helping your community be crime free" or "Don't break the rules and nobody can snitch on you", the kids look at me like i'm stupid.
   
   Obama might be able to start a cultural change, simply because of the way he looks.

And that's perhaps my longest post ever. Three hours of writing. Wow.
___more___

Happy Birthday Beth!

Yay! There's the oil picture i painted. I'm not sure i like the end result as much as the last painting we gave Beth, but i suppose i'll admit it's a cute painting. I also made a really good cake. Katrina spent about two hours decorating the house with streamers and random, excessively cute signs. Then all three kids ran around like crazy while i was cooking, inflating balloons, letting them go, squealing and hooting. Stuff like that makes the house so warm and homey. And messy.

Zane with leaves

Today at work, i made a pancake with a picture of Obama on it. I also made one of McCain, but it didn't really look like him. McCain is harder to caricature, even though he's got that gigantic jaw and ever-so-slightly insectile eyes. I put the "ever-so-slightly" in there because even though McCain's eyes are kind of insectile, i don't fault the guy or respect him any less. People will think i'm making fun of him because i hate him and think all his supporters are idiots. Nah, McCain's okay and stuff, but... See, this current political environment is so tense i can't even talk honestly. But the Obama pancake is hanging up on the fridge at work, drying out. Unless someone gets really hungry, or thinks it's gross to have food clipped to a fridge magnet.

So maybe that's i've been posting leniently. Sorry. Lentils good, lenient posting not good.

And the weather recently has been incredible. Our street always looks so picturesque this time of year, and is only slightly marred by the port-a-potty and pile of building supplies scattered around across the street where there's two new houses springing into existence. More neighborhood news: they closed the main street near us... about since Pangaea broke up... while they fixed the bridge over the railroad. But now the road is blocked off in the exact same spot, but with absolutely no road work evident. Besides barricades and traffic diverting barrels. Grr. I walk my scooter along the sidewalk to skirt the problem, but in the car i actually do the legally recognized detour. Everybody else simply (and sensibly!) drives through the gaps in the barricades which spontaneously generate every time somebody puts them all the way across the road, but i don't do that. Except this morning when i was late for work, where i made the Obama pancake. Which combination of words yields 265 hits on Google at the moment.

Cheese.

I don't like grating cheese. I don't like cleaning the grater device. I suppose i could put the cheese grater in the dishwasher, but that means i'd have to FIND the cheese grater as well. And of course, i know exactly where it is. Maybe it's the added complexity i want to avoid -- i want to use one knife, one cutting board, one pan/pot, etc. I don't like buying pre-grated cheese. It seems like a gigantic waste of money. So today while making stuffed mushroom caps, i found myself chopping cheese. Mincing, even. Which i then found doesn't stay put on the tops of the mushrooms. Oh well. It's okay to be irrational about a couple things.

Houston is smart.

Katrina: Someday I want to be president!
Houston: No, Katrina, girls can't be president.
Autumn (carpool kid): Yes they can. There was a lady who got some votes.
Me: There was a lady named Hillary Clinton who was trying to be president. (breathes in) Okay, there's two parties, like clubs, that most people who make the laws belong to. There's Democrat and Republican. The two parties get to choose one person to try to be president, and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both wanted to be the Democratic person to try to be president.
Houston: So John McCain is a 'Publican?
Me: (!!!!!) Yes!!!!
Katrina: I love Barack Obama.

My kids are getting tall!

Katrina's getting too tall for the frame. She's getting LONG. So's Zane.

Karen told me today that Houston's art teacher called today, saying that Houston's going to be the student of the month for art class! I don't know how they do student of the months with Houston's school, but it can't be one kid per month, or even one kid per class per month, because there's more "Knapp Charter Academy Student of the Month" bumper stickers out there than there are Jesus fish. I saw a van once which had so many of those bumper stickers that they were layered. The first one was prominently displayed in the usual spot. Then the next butted up next to the first. They did a kind of infinitely approaching zero fraction split thing after that... i wonder how much weight was added. But unless they had seven kids who all attended the school, needing to repeat each year, well, i'm pretty sure there's something i don't understand about the system.

In other news, we just watched the final presidential debate. Karen and i both actually cheered at two separate moments when Barack Obama was talking. The part about "nobody is pro-abortion" made me happy because it bothers me when people talk about "Abortionists" as though people are campaigning to increase statistics of abortion. And he went on to talk about ways to reduce unplanned pregnancies. The other time was when he called for people to live within their means. The current financial crisis has not been caused by greed and corruption by rich Wall Street investors, not exclusively. It has been caused by greed EVERYWHERE. Neither candidate has had the courage to say that we're pathologically addicted to consumerism. It's our culture's defining trait. We're obviously a nation of gluttons, with our growing o... oh... obesity problem (imagine me breathing in as though on the cusp of a guffaw) but more and more we're sinking deeper and deeper into debt. A president has arguably small influence on cultural trends, but i do believe a charismatic, minority president like Obama would be could make some giant, visionary steps in that direction -- to get our country solvent, but get our citizens to have a little bit of self control and do not buy what you can't pay for.

Oh yeah, and in Obama's education bit he called on parents to take some responsibility in their kids' education. Turn off that TV, he said. He's such an eloquent orator that i did, but Karen threw her hot chocolate mug at me. Karen really really likes Obama.

I painted in oil

Here's another picture Karen took today while we were at the park enjoying a day whose weather must have gotten on the wrong bus back in mid May and only just arrived. Sure was nice!

And today i painted! A picture! In oil! As an art major at a nationally recognized (in the CRC) college, one would expect that i've some experience in that media. But besides a tiny detail of one of my paintings, i've never cracked open a tube of the stuff. My verdict: awesome. Up to today i had used acrylic paints, which are "easier" to work with, since you thin them and wash your brushes with plain water. They're a little cheaper too. But acrylic paint dries quickly. It's not unusual to be working on a part of the picture only to have the paint you're working with dry up, leaving you to moisten and muddy it, or just kind of make do. I always made do, since that's part of what art kind of is: human flexibility accommodating a chaotic universe. That's also why i draw in ball point pen.

Um... anyway, oil paints dry suuuh-looowly. Finished paintings take days to dry to the touch and can be smudged weeks after they're completed. My style of painting works with that well -- i usually squirt paint straight onto the canvas and dive in, using only one brush without cleaning it. The only change i had to make with oil was putting up with smudgy edges between areas that would otherwise be sharply contrasty, and i did use three brushes instead of just one. Because i don't know where my turpenoid (the stuff you thin/clean brushes with) is. Karen bought me the oil paint kit back in '97 when we lived in Korea. It's still good. Another advantage of oil. I'm converted.

Hehehehehehehe i like Hello Kitty. So easy to draw.

Most of my free time recently has been spent either coloring for Steve's comic site, or listening to NPR and other (less bleeding heart liberal) news sources, and talking with Karen about politics. It's sure a good thing that Karen and i can agree on politics. It would suck if we didn't. So that's why my posts have kind of sucked recently. Oh, and i guess i've been spending far too much time drawing Hello Kitty.

Stair Project!

This morning, Karen let me sleep in until awesome o'clock! Like, eleven thirty!

Then, after fiddling about, i put carpet on our stairs. See, Karen's sister and her hubby gave us some carpet a couple months ago. We immediately carpeted Houston and Zane's room, and now we carpeted the stairs! We have carpet! I also fixed three of the squeaky, cracked stairs. Now we can go up and down the stairs without having our neighbors call the cops on us for disturbing the peace. Boy did that get old. The cool thing is that there was a perfect amount of carpet. There isn't enough for even one more stair. God does stuff like that often.

Wish i could write like Karen

Karen's weblog from today is good. It's really descriptive and excellent.

My creativity well seems not to have been drilled deep enough to tap the tiredness-lowered creativity aquifer, so i'm going to give into my tiredness not by drinking coffee, but to go to bed! Weird, unconventional, even RADICAL response, but i'm a raving liberal. Or socialist. Same thing.

Fall fell.

People say "Spring has sprung", but i don't think i've ever heard that fall has fell. Or fallen. Whatever. So i'll say it. Because i'm a maverick.

And not like anyone cares, but my long suffering camera will probably have soft-focus for the rest of its life, because to get the lens to extend, you need to stick your finger on it to push these little flaps aside. So inevitably you're touching the lens. I try to use soft cloth, but smudges will persist. As they will in the political scene. Or is that smear?

Still here

You know, i've read dozens (okay, couples... or maybe just one) of weblogs where the last post for months or years is titled "still here" or "blog slacker again" or something... and it's been, like, seven days since i posted. Or if i don't exaggerate, three. But that ain't gonna be me, so i'm posting again mostly to say that i'm busy every time i sit at the computer. I'm coloring comics drawn by my friend Steve. The GIMP 2.6 is the latest release of my favorite piece of open source software. It's an incremental release, with only minor tweaks, but those minor tweaks are really kind of excellent. Like, you can take a paint brush and start OFF THE PAGE to draw onto the image. This is new. And, um, actually i think that's the only tweak like that. But it's a good one.

In other news, i prefer the taste of Gala apples to Honeycrisp. The flavor of the Honeycrisp apple has never been all that impressive, but the texture! The bite! And it's certainly sweet! But the Gala apple is to the Honeycrisp as a nice red wine is to Sprite. More tasty. But not as... enthusiastic? But then, yesterday at the apple orchard, i tried a Red Delicious. Maybe i just got a bad one, but it was powdery and bitter, with a tough skin. Delicious schmelicious.

Props to Karen

I have to rave about certain parts of our house right now.

The upstairs. For years we had the most awesome extreme drop of death between our top floor and the staircase. It was scary. But like the threat of being suddenly demolished by a meteor (a real risk, you know, infinitely more possible that "zero") we kind of tolerated and compensated. But i built the railing up there, and now we even have a handrail to hold onto while traversing our (antique, steeeep) stairs... but that's not what makes me happy. Now, the area up there is clean! And totally free of clutter and everything! I really like it.

And now the stairs to the basement are spotless! I think this is the first time that area has been tidy since we moved in. Going to the basement no longer requires the grace of a ballerina and flexibility of a yoga master. Which means that soon, i'll become a hunched old man, creaky and hobbled. And the reason? Karen's mighty hand of tidying and organizing and throwing stuff away! Incredible.

The Y!

Drawing stuff like that is what i do during school. This is why i majored in Art in college. Stupid. I mean, sure, i can do it, but i can manage not to do it as well. What i can't not do is teach or engineer. I'm always looking for opportunities to (bore people and) teach, and my brain won't stop thinking about machines, even when i try to make it.

So the Y! Turns out, it is fun to [go to] the YMCA. We went Wednesday for the first time (and i just realized that i blogged about the experience on Wednesday...), swam, walked around, and were highly impressed. Karen went today with Katrina, and Katrina got to hang out in the "Fit Zone" where she made a fuse bead square, and reported to me that she made it "at the Why, Em, See, Eh." She carefully pronounces each letter, because if she goes too fast it becomes the Village People song. And Zane is unbelievably cute. And Houston has been very helpful around the house doing chores non-stop. Ever since... the accident.

2nd Obama Rally Attended.

Obama and his people put on another rally here in Grand Rapids. It's kind of fun living in a "battleground state". Except i don't get the "benefit" of seeing the fancy expensive ads i'm sure both camps are running non-stop on all the commercial TV stations. We don't watch TV anymore. Not since... the accident.

Um, anyway... we took Zane and Katrina, so they got to see the possible future Pres, up close-ish. From far off, really. Watching the security guys do their thing was really interesting. The ones i could see were perched atop every tall building, in teams of two or three, with walkie-talkies and gigantic binoculars. They spent most of their time peering. When they were not peering (intently) they were talking and laughing. Which makes me think that they expect Grand Rapids to be a friendly town.

I suppose Barack Obama feels blasé about daily appearances in front of gigantic groups of random people, and the inherent risks he's taking, as a controversial and possibly threatening (read: not white) candidate. But think of the Secret Service! It would fascinate me to know exactly what goes on when they inspect a location, and how much suspicious activity they uncover.

And overall, besides the hours standing, or standing carrying one or both children, it was neat. Obama delivered his stump speech, appropriately modified to fit our location and specific issues. But it's really refreshing to actually be excited about politics.

Graham is seventy!

Our dog turned ten Monday! We sang to him. He looked hilariously uncomfortable. Then, we had pizza that i made, but Linda swept herself and her kids off because of a tragic spitting-all-over-the-pizza incident, which turned out to be totally accidental -- Houston was being silly and made little Rorie spew milk. It probably even came out her nose. Poor everyone.

Then Tuesday i worked pretty much all day.

But today we went to the Y! The Young Men's Christian Association! Our local chapter simply rocks. It's gigantic, modern, beautiful, and even though it's over two years old, it's still got that new-health-club smell. And they offer really good discounts to people as poor as we are.

Which brings me to current events. The economic bailout package -- the $700,000,000,000 one -- passed in the Senate today. The House of Representatives will vote on it Friday. There has been a lot of outrage at the very concept of taxpayer money going to help stupidly huge banks, with millionaire CEO's and ridiculous office buildings, Rolexes, Bentleys, golden parachutes... But it turns out that our local bagel store might not be able to buy flour because of this credit crisis. So i think i understand why this help is needed, but it still makes me realize how hollow our entire economy really is. It trips me out that seven hundred billion dollars needs to be promised just to boost the confidence of people who have money buying bits of companies which might or might not have value. And that confidence is all that stands between a rich country and a poor one. So what, really, is wealth? Even more fake that non-gold backed currency. And even gold has no intrinsic value besides being a good conductor and corrosion proof.

I feel like the whole culture in our country HAS to change. Our consumeristic society is unsustainable. We've been collectively paying the minimum balance on our collective credit card with cash advances from our other (collective) credit cards. People who try this find out it doesn't work. I guess it doesn't work for countries, either. A big deal for us is that i don't think the credit crisis will affect us very much at all. Neither will the culture shift -- we already live within our means. I guess we'll see. It's a tense time for our country.