Drugs, Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation, and Free Rice. Sounds like a party to me!

Happy 5th of June everyone.

I've heard all the updated reports about David Carradine, and I must say, confusion reigns. He seems to have been in good spirits, and not at all suicidal; recent stories mention rumors of foul play.

If, as earlier stories hinted, he mistakenly killed himself in an attempt at auto-erotic asphyxiation, I don't think any less of him. It's an embarrasing and stupid way to die, but some folks will try anything for an orgasm. In the wake of yesterday's stories I even had someone I know tell me they've tried (a mild version of) it themselves.

As for myself, I have a major issue with anyone so much as touching my neck (which has always made trips to the barber contentious), so I can't imagine getting off by having a rope wrapped around my throat. But to each his own I guess.

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You'll notice I've now added all the blogs I follow to the blog list on the sidebar. If your site is NOT mentioned there, please let me know. I just find it a lot easier to notice updates in that format (newly updated sites rise to the top of the list) than with the dashboard or reader.

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I want to add several clickable images to the sidebar - you know, the Free Rice bar I had back on AOL, etc. For some reason I'm stymied, so I'd appreciate any help I can get.

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The other day, while walking with her to Walgreens, YaYa was cofused when I called it a 'drug store'. In her mind, the word 'drug' meant only illegal drugs, not 'medicine'.

And then she asked me why people take illegal drugs.

Well, what to say? When it doubt, I guess the truth will do. I've never understood anti-drug ads, teachers and parents who gloss over the obvious reason drugs are popular.

"Because they make you feel good," I said. "And they're fun for a minute. But they can hurt your body and screw up your brain. Lot's of famous people have died from drugs [I rattle off a few] and even if you don't, you can get addicted and need it every day. And since they're expensive, if you're addicted you'll go broke."

Jeez louise. Between the discussions about: drugs, sex, stranger danger, nental illness, and the Zombie War Contingency Plans, well, it's enough to drive a parent nuts.

But hopefully they'll all make a difference.

"Kung Fu" Star David Carradine Dies

I hate to post this on Lu's birthday but David Carradine, star of TV's "Kung Ku" and of the "Kill Bill" movies, is reported to have passed away in a Bangkok hotel room. He was 73.

My lifelong memory of him? Confusion. Kung Fu was on TV a lot growing up, but as a little kid in the '70's the flashback sequences completely threw me for a loop - total mind melt. It remains my primary memory of the show and its star.

RIP.

Happy 6th Birthday LuLu!

Six years ago today Lisa gave us LuLu, our largest baby and by far the easiest and calmest of the four births. It's hard to believe that little baby is now six years old, a third of the way to legal adulthood (!) but there it is - even more evidence that time passes with alarming speed as we get older.

Here's a few pics of her as we walked her to a friend's house last Thursday, holding an invitation to her upcoming party.





Happy Birthday LuLu! We Love you!

Some pics from the morning of YaYa's 1st Communion

Here are some pics of my YaYa on the morning of her First Communion, Sunday May 3rd.

After 17 miserable years, The Tonight Show is finally in the hands of someone funny. Will wonders never cease?

Huzzah! We got the kids to school this morning a mere 12 minutes late, a clear victory in my book!

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Last night, we tuned into Conan O'Brien's debut as host of The Tonight Show. The last time Lisa and I sought out the show was Carson's farewell, as even before we met we were in agreement that Leno SUCKED.

So how did Conan do? As expected there were first-time jitters and they tried too hard with a skit or two, but I give it a thumbs up. It was a funny and lively introduction into the O'Brien era. I remember Conan's debut on Late Night and trust me, this was far more impressive.

Wil Ferrell? Pearl Jam? The return (Hallelujah!) of Andy Richter? How could he go wrong?

There's a new sheriff in town boys, and it looks like Dan and Lisa might finally have a reason to watch broadcast TV after prime time.

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Last night I dreamt that I sliced open my right calf on the edge of a metal counter. In the morning I got out of bed and noticed a new, mild cut on my calf. I don't sleepwalk, and I woke up curled and snug in my blanket. Coincidence? Sure.

But if I hear kids chanting "One, two Freddie's coming for you" I'm never going to sleep again.

AOL/Blogger Oopsies

I've recently noticed that the AOL/Blogger transition didn't go as smoothly as I originally thought. Many of my older entries were pretty beat up in the move, and I've spent a few hours over the weekend getting pictures, links, and fonts back in order. So far 2004, 2005, and 2006 are 'done' - with the exception of two entries I couldn't completely fix. I'm still grateful to Blogger for getting the job done last year, but it pisses me off that (literally) scores of scrapbook entries were mauled. If I hadn't gone looking for an old entry and spotted the problem . . .

At any rate, it was neat to see the growth of this blog. On the negative end of the ledger, I loathe the stiff formality of the very first entries, the ridiculous need I felt to apologize whenever I posted something "lite", and of course, damn my soul for ever using "LOL" within a post.

On the other hand I've recorded reams of memories that would long since be lost to time, and hopefully made a nice scrapbook for the kids. Without question my writing has sharpened and improved over the years, and because of it this site had a big role in getting me the Journal gig. Best of all, I've made some great aquintances via Slapinions, and at least one good friend.

Looking over the 1000 plus entires I think one of the best decisions I made was to bump politics off to a side stage. On the web you either wind up with a dedicated core of Ditoheads (on the Left as often as on the Right), in which case you're preaching to the choir, or you swing the other way and dissolve into a mess where every post, no matter how benign, is greeted with a 100 comment battle between readers on each side of the aisle.

Hell to the no. I can't imagine how angry this site (and its author) would have become if the original focus had continued. Honestly, if that was my internet, then Al Gore could have it back. ;)

Anyway, now all I have to do is go through the 2007 and '08 entries and double-check them. And then I need to find a way to fix those two posts I mentioned. They're rather important ones too - one of Lu's birthdays, and a post I did in the Bahamas. I've got some ideas about how the pictures got messed up, and if I'm right I should be able to fix it.

Ah, I almost forgot - I haven't mentioned this before have I? - Photobucket removed a picture of Smiley because it violated their TOS. Bullshit, through and through. It was a picture of an infant Smiley as he took a bath. I don't think it even showed his man-bits, but apparently some random websurfer in the last few months came across the post and flagged me on Photobucket. There's no review or appeal process, so bye-bye picture.

Heck, most of you probably saw it three years ago, as there were comments on the post. Whatever. I've gone ahead and trimmed the text of the post to eliminate any mention of it, but memo to the Unknown Assh*le: instead of flagging pictures of infants taking a bubble bath, how about you get rid of the zillions of soft-porn worthy pics on Photobucket?

Or better yet, keep your shitty little censorship loving hands out of everyone's business.

Ginger the Destroyer

On this blog I used to call Smiley "Maker of Trouble and Mayhem", and it was true. He was far more mischievous than our oldest girls, and the cause of many a headache. In retrospect we had it easy. Ginger is, by general consensus, the most destructive baby in history.

She is a feral child. If she needs to be changed she'll get a diaper and lay down at your feet. If she is thirsty she will bring you a cup (or steal your drink). If she is hungry, she will bring you the food she wants (if she has not ripped it open herself).

For that reason I have always been grateful that she was too chicken to climb out of her crib on her own. In fact, I planned to spell out my thanks in writing here, just a few days ago.

And then it happened. I woke up and found Ginger downstairs alone. She had woken up before the rest of the family, climbed out of her crib, gone down the stairs, and destroyed our home.

This is what she did. There is no exaggeration here. No enhancement for dramatic effect. This is all her.

She tipped over a chair.

She dumped a box of Rice Krispies all over the floor.

She opened a bottle of vegetable oil and trailed it around the kitchen table before abandoning it and letting it pool out.

She ripped open a bag of popcorn seeds in the pantry.

She upended a half-empty glass of juice into Lisa's purse.

She knocked glasses and plates to the floor.

Oh man, were we furious. I wiggled my finger in her face and called her a naughty baby, the worst baby ever. She took it without blinking. Lisa joined in, telling her she'd spend the morning in the playpen if she didn't behave. Ginger's response? She mimicked me, waving a finger at Lisa and saying "NO!".
In the playpen she went, the first time in months we've even set the thing up. She tried and failed to climb out, then spent the morning playing with her toes or crying to be let out.

I think listening to that was more of a punishment for us than for her.

I surveyed the family and the consensus is, yeah, she's a crazy kid. My Dad said she yanked all his potted plants out of their containers. "I don't remember any of the grandkids being that destructive," he said - and he has seven.

All this, and we're still months shy of reaching the terrible twos. God help us all.

Last Titanic Survivor Passes Away

Milvina Dean, who was an infant when aboard the ill-fated passenger liner, passed away at 97. She was the last known survivor of the most famous sinking of all time.

Quoting the CNN article on her death:

. . . she was 8 years old before she knew she was on the fateful ship. Dean, along with her young brother and mother, survived the sinking of the Titanic, but her mother didn't tell her about it until years later . . .

Dean became the last known Titanic survivor after Barbara Joyce Dainton died in October 2007. The last American survivor, Lillian Asplund, died in May 2006.

According to the article, all the attention she received from Titanic enthusiasts in recent years gave her something to fill the days, an extra bit of oomph and vitality that increased her quality of life.

When I heard the news I went to tell YaYa, who continues to be fascinated by the ship.

Rest in Peace, Ms. Dean.

SPOILER WARNING My theories and critique of Terminator Salvation

I wanted to separate my review of the film from these thoughts, as they really aren't important to 80% of the people who'll see the film. But if you are curious, and like to think about foolish things in far too much detail, this post is for you.

Admission: I haven't read up on any Terminator Salvation theories, ideas, or for that matter any reviews, so if this is all old hat you'll have to excuse me.

1. First off, the obvious holes in the plot. A field hospital would not be sterile or well equipped enough to handle a heart transplant. The likelihood that the heart was a match are nil, and good luck finding the antibiotics to fend off rejection.

It was ludicrous, a plot point worthy of a high school creative writing class, and there only to allow us to finish the film with the tired "humans have heart" voice-over.

2. What are the chances that the pilot would be a hot brunette with tight-fitting pants that showed off an impressive ass? Only in the movies.

3. I don't care how nice of a leader you are. If one of your soldiers disobeys orders, sets an enemy prisoner free, then aids and abets his escape, you don't let her rejoin the ranks.

You hang her from a tree and let the corpse rot there as a reminder to the rest of your men.

4. So Skynet has Kyle, and uses him as a Judas Goat to lure in John Connor and finish the deal. And I say . . . why? You're a global computer network capable of destroying mankind, and yet you don't see the big WTF here? Listen Skynet: Kill the father, you kill the son. No need to 'lure' him in, no reason at all. Put a bullet in Kyle's head and end the war.

5. On the surface you walk away saying "This was the first Terminator without time travel." Not so fast. How did Skynet determine that Kyle Reese was so important that he deserved to be on the top of the kill list? Magic? No, it is obviously aware of his importance to the story, (presumably) in his role as John's father. That necessitates time travel of some nature, or Skynet would be unaware of him at all.

6. Skynet is crushed and as a parting shot sends the original Terminator back in time, setting off the whole chain of events. If Skynet knows that mission will fail -and if they don't, why send something back to 2018 to try to influence events there? - then logic and self-preservation says in the future you don't send the Terminator back in the first place. blockquote>

7. Why hold onto a dead guy for 15 years? Why not recycle some schmuck you yanked in off the streets yesterday?

There's a great website out there that discusses time travel in films. I've linked to it on my sidebar for years but here it is again. Believe me, it's worth a look: Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies

My take on the Terminator time travel problems? I think the series makes money, and so they're forced to go to the well each time and create more confusion in the timeline. But if we're going to play this straight, I have two ideas.

1. There are multiple co-existing time lines, each branching off from a signature event in the series. In one timeline Sarah is killed in 1984 and John is never born. In another the T2 effort succeeds and Judgment Day is averted. Perhaps Skynet is aware of this phenomenon and content to establish successful futures for itself, even if not in its 'current' timeline.

2. Perhaps Skynet is a true puppet master, arranging events in minute detail, and each 'failure' merely advances its grand (as yet unrevealed) design. Perhaps the future includes a world where John Connor is revealed as a Terminator himself, or where man and machine merge. Could Terminators be the 'true' future of the human race?

Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation is the fourth film in the storied Terminator franchise. Set in post-apocalyptic 2018, it follows an adult John Connor, now a mid-level leader in the Resistance, as he attempts to stop Skynet from killing his (future/past) father. Along for the ride is Marcus Wright, a Death Row inmate executed by the state in 2003 and resurrected by Skynet for unknown reasons.

Marcus' quest for redemption provides the film's emotional center, but have no worries about the series going soft: from beginning to end this is an action flick.

Gone are the cheesy but frightening special effects of the original movie, replaced with slick CGI straight out of Transformers. It increases the number and complexity of the action sequences, but at the cost of the grittiness fans have always associated with Connor's war. Terminator showed us a dark, Stalingrad-like world where humans were reduced to eating rats. Salvation gives us a Resistance capable of fielding helicopters, attack jets, radar, field hospitals, submarines, and worldwide co-ordinated attacks.

[I can only justify this change by asserting that it is early in the Machine war; perhaps we are seeing the dying breath of the traditional military.]

Where does the film rank in the series? Did I enjoy it?

I would rank this movie right where it stands, as fourth in line in the series. It's not as iconic as the first, as original as the second, or as tightly plotted as the third. Most people would agree it fails to suprass the first two movies, but not the third. T3 remains a troubled and unpopular piece of canon, but I've always defended its worth. If nothing else, it reversed T2's belief that destiny was malleable; with T3 we recognize that some people, for better or worse, are burdened with greatness.

As far as enjoying it, sure, I did. It's a nice way to pass an afteroon, and a good popcorn movie. Sure there were plot holes galore, and I think the female pilot was less a tribute to Sarah Connor and strong women than a nod to the horny teenage boys in the audience, but whatcha gonna do?

2.75 out of 4, 67 out of 100