Crazy Pills - posted at 22:31

I heard a joke at work today (which was kind of surprising given the political demographic and the overwhelming preference for Fox News vice CNN there) that had me in stitches for a good five minutes. Jeremy was lucky enough to get a voice mail that consisted entirely of the joke, but those of you less fortunate will have to read it here:

On a trip to England President Bush took the opportunity to have afternoon tea with the Queen. As they were enjoying their crumpets he asked, "I'm very impressed with the quality of people in your government. How did you do it?"

She answers, "Oh it's very simple, really. We identify them as being exceptional at a very young age. For instance, when Tony Blair was only eleven years old I asked him 'If your mother gives birth to a child and it's not your sister and it's not your brother, who is it?' He promptly answered 'It's me!'"

The President sees the wisdom in this and congratulates the Queen on her cleverness. A few days later after arriving back in the states, Dick Chaney walks into the Oval Office and Bush says "Hey Dick, I got a question for you, maybe you can answer it. If your mother gives birth to a child and if it's not your sister and it's not your brother, who is it?" Dick looks thoughtful for a moment and replies "Y'know, that's a really good question there George. I'll talk to my folks and get back to you on that."

So Dick leaves the White House and heads to the State Department where he just happens to run into Colin Powell. Dick immediately asks "Say Colin, the President asked me a question that's got me stumped and I was hoping you could help me find an answer for him." Colin assents and so Dick continues "If your mother gives birth to a child and it's not your sister and it's not your brother, who is it?"

Immediately Colin answers "It's me!" Dick immediately sees the wisdom in that answer and says "Yeah, I think that's the answer he's looking for. Thanks so much, this will make him very happy." He heads back to the White House and bursts into the Oval Office and exclaims, "George, I got you an answer: It's Colin Powell!"

And Bush says, "No, you IDIOT! It's Tony Blair!"

Speaking of politics...

I've been getting really pissed off again as of late. The trusty Shiny Objects, the bills that really don't affect how the whole country is run but do a great job of distracting people from what really does matter like war and poor foreign policy, are being pulled out again just in time for mid-term elections!. Why force the House to vote on a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage when the Senate has already soundly defeated it unless you're just trying to get people who may have dispersed in the last year and a half to rally around the proverbial flagpole? Can't the neoconservative base notice that these issues are only being brought up in an election year, and that Bush has openly called these bills a way to run-up to the elections this year?

This makes me sick. We saw the huge impact that this blow-up (of things that should be considered irrelevant when there's a war on) had in 2004, which means that the rest of us have got to get out to the the polls in even stronger numbers. I really think that there are more of us moderate- or left-leaning voters than neo-cons, but apparently we have yet to find our own Shiny Object to rally the votes around. Apparently a situation in which thousands and thousands of people are dying isn't good enough, but letting two people who love each other (and just happen to have the same anatomy) have their union legally recognized is.

Seriously -- am I taking CRAZY PILLS?

Brick. - posted at 22:41

This weekend, at the suggestion of some of my co-workers, I went to see Brickat the Bear Tooth. While I felt really disturbed during some parts of the movie and I walked away from it with very mixed feelings, I found afterward that the more I thought about the movie the more I liked it.

It's an innovative movie if for no other reason than it takes a genre of movie long-forgotten or even never-known by theater-goers and casts it in a totally new setting that also makes you realize that the people that made this movie knew to not take themselves too seriously.

This elusive genre that I speak of is film noir (or, for you literary types, the hard-boiled detective story when in print). All the classic elements are there: the strong, crafty, unemotional detective main character who keeps his cards close and unreadable to others, revealing a minimum about himself. You aren't even sure whether he would be classified as "good" or "bad" -- you just know that he's your protagonist. You have your helpless female victim. You have the classic femme fatale, so dark and sultry, playing on the idea of the succubus that uses her sexuality shamelessly to get what she wants, and you know you shouldn't trust her even though (or perhaps precisely because) she's got her seduce-o-ray on full blast. You've got your bad guys who are so unmistakably bad that even though you don't know how to classify your detective, you still know that these guys have got to be worse. And of course you have your cop figure, always at odds with the detective, cramping his style, almost messing things up in the process but trying always to do the right thing. The cop is so good that it casts the moral questions of our main character even further into doubt.

Classic hard-boiled detective story, Sam Spade and all, right?

Well, it would be, if the characters weren't largely high school students. That's part of what makes this so interesting though -- and of course is what lends the edges of humor so unexpectedly into the dialogue. I can't say too much here without giving out some spoilers and the really great quotes would look really cheesy out of context of the back-and-forth banter that our protagonist excels at.

It's not really my style to be writing about movies anyway. I felt that this one was smart enough to be labeled as great but is probably underappreciated because not everyone took an English class where the teacher had a total fetish for hard-boiled detective stories and film noir. They're dead genres as far as I can tell. The closest we've had recently is Memento which had the necessary element of the double-cross, but the twist is that the main character has been double-crossing himself all along. But I digress. The point is that I enjoyed this movie, and if you're the type who enjoys homage (with a twist!) to long-forgotten genres you probably will too.

A place where doggies roam free - posted at 22:34

I take Sienna to University Lake, one of the dog parks in Anchorage, almost every night. It's great because it's a place where dogs can truly be dogs and can swim, run, chase, fetch, wrestle, and play with logs of dogs and their humans. However, tonight seemed remarkable for a wide variety of reasons.

The first reason happened early on in the venture. We made it around to her favorite beach by the water and I started throwing sticks and tennis balls for her. By this time Sienna had thoroughly established that she was going to be a Turdbucket today, but I figured that just getting her exhausted would deplete her reserve stash of turdiness. But no, she was not listening and running everywhere and harassing other dogs that were giving her very clear I Don't Want To Play With A Puppy And Yes, That Means You signals and displaying the various accoutrements of Turdbucketness. This got to be even worse when she hit the puppy jackpot and happened across a group of about three young puppies. Now, Sienna loves other puppies because she figures they will have similar desires to play, but unfortunately, at five months she is already a monster puppy and is even way too much for other dogs that are a few months older than her. She just plays too rough with them. So I had to break up about twenty potential Puppy Incidents, apologizing profusely to the owners and trying to explain how Sienna is feeling more Turdbucketish than usual.

When I had had about EEE-NOUGH (yes, two very distinct syllables), my saviors arrive: Sienna's favorite friend Riley and her two doggie housemates Benji and Bart. Riley is a black Lab, about a month older than Sienna, and the same size, and they will wear themselves completely out wrestling. This is the perfect solution to the puppy problem, so I draw Sienna's attention to her furry friends and soon they are frolicking like two puppies that haven't seen each other in ages. You've gotta love that Lab enthusiasm!

The playing migrates to dry land and they are chasing balls, frisbees, and other dogs (what could be better?), having a great time, when a man on a bike with a huge Husky on a leash enter the scene. Before I have any inkling of what is happening, ten-pound Benji trots by the Husky and it goes off like a time bomb and jumps on him, growling and snarling. Benji is screaming like any tiny dog that has been assaulted by a something at least fourteen times heavier than it and the owner runs over screaming and rescues him from the aggressive dog. About fifteen seconds after the rescue it occurs to the man on the bike to scold his dog and then he says not a word to anyone else, not even an apology to my sobbing friend, and leaves. Had I been in my right mind I would have said something to the guy, but during the attack I had been totally frozen to the spot, horrified, my hand barely covering my gaping mouth. I have never seen anything like that -- the dog was totally unprovoked, and I have never seen such an irresponsible owner at the park before. Later I remembered that I had seen him last week with the dog and complimented him on the beautiful animal (it really is a magnificent -- if scary -- Husky) and I could tell in his very delayed response and the way he spoke that he has, at the very least, some sort of social issues. If I ever see him there again I'm going to have to do something to get more information on him.

Luckily, the night wasn't ruined. Benji, Riley, and Bar left shortly thereafter, but I remained in the field because the dangerous dog had departed and a delightful yellow Lab that gave me a very good idea of what Sienna will look like when she's older had arrived. They were playing and frolicking and having a great time, and while they were oblivious to anything outside of their sphere of dogginess another great dog arrived on the scene. She is an Australian Shepard that I was having a blast throwing the ball for because someone had taught her the greatest trick ever: when you said "roll it!" she would crouch down with her front paws together and perfectly even with each other, put the ball on top of her paws, and then use her nose to roll the ball to you. This was both awesome and cute on its own, but when she looked at you with those big blue eyes of her you felt as though you would be committing a grave and evil sin if you didn't throw the ball for her immediately. Naturally, I ended up throwing the ball for her until the two Labs had totally exhausted each other (and if you've ever known a Lab puppy, you know how seemingly impossible that prospect is!) and the Shepard's owner had to go.

Did I say that Sienna was totally exhausted? I misspoke. I swear, perpetual motion machines have already been invented, and they are Lab puppies at dog parks. We went back to her favorite beach since it looked like there were more dogs playing there now, and when I was about two hundred yards away I realized what my brain had been trying to tune out for, oh, about five minutes: the ever-insistent yap of Poopsie. No, I am not making that up. The dog's name is Poopsie. I hate Poopsie. She's basically a miniature Jack Russell and barks incessantly. She's got a total Napoleon complex. It takes a lot for me to say that I don't like a dog, but I really loathe not only Poopsie, but her owner too. He makes no effort whatsoever to make her shut up. I'm definitely going to print out the part about "Owners should control excessive barking" on the Dog Park Rules page.

Come to think of it though, I've never met a Jack Russell Terrier that I didn't loathe. The one I met when I first started going to the dog park would try to hump Sienna incessantly even though she was already bigger than him when she was two months old. The second, Jester, runs amok, jumps on everyone, and is really, really obnoxious. Poopsie is the third and her doggie brother, Itchy, harasses bigger dogs, jumps up on people, and also runs amok. Not looking like this breed has a good track record, or maybe their owners all really suck. Someone needs to tell those dogs that they are tiny and they need to come to terms with that and leave other dogs the fuck alone. Stupid Jacks.

Some more full-grown Lab-sized dogs arrived on the scene shortly after me, which meant that they could run around like crazy with each other and Sienna and play Chase Me Chase Me without bothering anyone else, so that was good -- there's no way those insecure Jacks could keep up with them. Even better, a really big stick washed up on shore so I got to throw that for Sienna a bunch to try and seal the tiredness deal. Right now, I'm pretty damn sure it worked because she is completely conked out at my feet as I write this.

I hate to be telling bad stories the first time I write about the dog park, but if it was ever like that on a regular basis I wouldn't take her there every day. It's definitely one of her favorite places, and it's great for her to meet other dogs and get socialized properly. It's just that once in a blue moon you have a bad or scary experience, just like with anything else.

Mission: Exhaust the Puppy
Measure of Effectiveness: Said puppy flops around uselessly until bedtime arrives
Assessment: Mission Accomplished!

It LIVES! - posted at 14:56

Man, have I ever neglected this for the last three months! I have a good excuse, I swear:

Shortly after I learned how to cross-country ski (see previous entry!) I got a puppy! She required quite a bit of looking after to make sure she didn't eat the house (today the house, tomorrow the world!! She's an ambitious dog). Just when she was getting to that age where I could give her a tiny bit of freedome, she decided it would be a lovely day to chew through my internet cable. It took a while for the cable dudes to come fix it, and by then I had learned my lesson: DO NOT REMOVE EYES FROM DOGGIE. Well, about a month went by, and I must have screwed up somewhere, because SHE DID IT AGAIN. This time it takes even longer for them to fix it, and during this time Cory has come for a visit (woohoo!), so no blogging would have happened then anyway. About the time that the cable gets fixed, a fan in my computer starts making funny noises. After a spectacular hardware lockup I pronouce the fan kaput and swear off computer use until I can fix it. Trouble is, my parents are coming into town shortly and I have a TON of stuff to do around the house, like cover my walls with pictures I've had framed and set off a tactical nuke to get things clean. So after my parents left, I took advantage of my first two days off (of which this is one) to fix it.... and DUN DUN DUN, I was successful.

Let the blogging resume!

Holy crap I have a lot to write and a lot of pictures to post.

More is coming.... very soon.