Double Dipping Proved Dangerous, Still No Cure for Cancer

Ah science, how you amuse me. Someone actually took the time to set up, test, and then write about whether double dipping is dangerous. It has now been scientifically confirmed that dipping a chip, taking a bite, and then redipping the chip will in fact spread germs. Thanks for clearing that up. I suppose at least they specified a chip, as the question "Is it okay to double dip?" has for me always been answered with "I suppose that depends what your dipping in there in the first place".

I'll give you all a moment to savor whatever visual that brought up for you.

I would say instead of wasting the money on what is obviously a dangerous practice that should be punishable by the immediate loss of all dipping privileges, we should be going after the people who have been teaching this heinous habit since 1942. That's right Wonka, I'm looking at you, you and the infamous Fun Dip.

Seriously, if you're a grown up who doesn't find this concept disgusting, you haven't seen a kid eat once of these lately. I remember, as I'm sure a few of you do, as a child they were awesome. Then I saw my daughter eat a package. She takes a sugar stick that looks like a giant tab of aspirin and dips it into a pocket of colored sugar. Then she licks all of the sugar off the stick.

And then she does it again. And again.

Within moments, the previous contents of the pocket are reduced to saliva based clumps of sugary nastiness. To make matters worse, she eventually gets tired of it and tries to put it away for later, an effort I have thus far managed to thwart, as that takes something that is already nasty and makes it worse. We're talking Paris Hilton nasty here.

So, this nefarious Wonka fellow is training kids that repeated dipping is not only acceptable, but encouraged. Why we have tolerated this for so long I can not understand. Maybe it's all the good Wonka has done, what with the Nerds and Everlasting Gobstopper technology he's introduced. But these comestible contributions don't make up for brainwashing kids into thinking that this practice should be tolerated.

Besides, let's look at the big picture here. Wonka has a mysterious set up, full of what amounts to slave labor. Even if you contend that the Oompa Loompas are there voluntarily, at least acknowledge that his empire looks suspiciously like that of an evil overlord. Oh sure, he's headquartered in a factory as opposed to a hollowed out volcanic island, but that's a minor detail. He's somewhere out there, probably within our own borders, with hundreds, nay thousands of tiny,fanatical followers, and we're just going to look the other way?

I say that we can not! We must unite to put an end to this effrontery. Stand together with me now, people. Turn away from your SweetTarts. Lay down that Laffy Taffy. Don't stop to read the joke - just drop it! Put back that package of Bottle Caps and say "No more". Until Fun Dip is removed from the shelves, we will no longer support Wonka and his evil (albeit vertically challenged) army. (Those who can not stop eating Pixie Stix will be excused, given the well known addictive qualities of said confection.)

I look forward to hearing from homeland security on how they plan to deal with the threat that Wonka poses to our nation. Also, should the good people of Hershey's wish to support my efforts with contributions (either in the form of funding or chocolate), I will greet them enthusiastically.

That's right Wonka, your reign is coming to an end, and unlike your delicious river of chocolate, these colors don't run!

Not Going There

So, today would have been my father's birthday had he not "rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible" last month. Naturally, this practically begs for me to write a long, rambling text about all that my father meant to me, what kind of man he was, yadda yadda yadda.

Not going to happen.

First, who really wants to read that stuff? I know it's unlikely that I would. Heck it's unlikely that he would. So, why write it? I suppose it might be somehow cathartic, but frankly, I'm too tired to be real stressed today. Any more cathartic might lead to catatonic.

Second, what am I going to say? There were a lot of things I admired about him. There were a lot of things about him that pissed me off. Wow. That's pretty much only applicable to anyone who had any kind of contact with their father (or any other family member for that matter), ever.

Nope, I'm going to talk about something else. Anything else. I'm going to talk about online comics (I'm currently reading every PvP ever written, and it's hilarious). I'm going to talk about why flatulence based humor is funny, and it is (see previous link for excellent examples). I'm going to talk about Britney Spears and the unfortunate conditions of her poor children.

Actually on second though, I think I'll leave Britney alone.

No matter what I talk about, I'm not going to sit here and treat the entire internet like my psychotherapist, forced to listen to me postulate how my life would be different if I had been on speaking terms with him when he died, what I regret not saying, etc. I have a supportive wife who encourages me to talk through my issues. That's more than enough for me.

Although on an unrelated note, I do keep having this dream about a snake in a vest rolling a big donut...what do you suppose that's all about?

I'm In Ur Tubes Building My Networks

So, I'm a little behind on the whole "social networking" scene. I'm all about LinkedIn, as it's more of a professional type networking thing. Somehow the rest of it has eluded me. Part of it is that I'm a computer geek, with full blown programming powers, including html and css (not that you'd know it from here - must update layout soon). Not many outsiders know this, but computer geeks lose a lot of geek cred if they get caught with a My Space page. Not cool.

There's a lot more to it than that though. Ever since breaking up with my extended family, I've been hesitant to put anything about me or my clan online. The idea that people with whom I no longer wish to associate can keep tabs on me and my family creeps me out, especially when it comes to my kids. That's why you don't see my using anyone's actual name here, or pictures for that matter. I don't mind the idea of strangers looking at my kids - if I did I wouldn't be able to take them out of the house. It's the people I know about that bother me.

Even worse than the idea of people keeping tabs on me though is the fear of the fictional relationship, where the unnamed parties are using the information online to maintain a sense of connection where none exists. Now I realize that this probably sounds paranoid, and I suppose to some extent it is, but it's paranoia rooted in truth. If I had any doubts of this, they were eliminated in the fiction that was my father's obituary, where he was listed as having two grandchildren but his daughter-in-law was mysteriously absent. At our last meeting, he actually said that it was too hard for him to even look at my kids pictures because he knew he wasn't going to let himself meet them. He died without even setting eyes on my son, and he hasn't seen my daughter since she was a couple of months old. I'm sorry, but I don't think someone counts as a relation if you haven't actually met them (unless of course they leave you money - you know, just in case a rich uncle I don't know about is reading this).

Anyway, I've avoided the whole online social scene, including blogging, for this reason. I didn't feel like it was a big deal really. Like I said before, the idea of me ranting online and having anyone read it is a little weird (no offense meant to the person actually reading this now), and I'm not concerned with how many "friends" I can get on My Space, so the whole thing seemed like a moot point.

Of course, everything changes, and this is no exception. Recently, someone sent me a Facebook invite. At first I shied away from it, equating Facebook with My Space. But then my lovely wife pointed out a very familiar face (although it was slightly more clean cut than I remembered it). See, one of the things that starting dividing me from the hive was this weird trend of my friends somehow becoming alienated from them in some intense way, making it awkward for me to hang out with them. In this case, said friend took off to points unknown, and I've only seen him once since then. I've often considered trying to hunt him down, but I would become distracted by some emergency (and by emergency I mean "shiny object") and have to postpone it.

So now I have a both a blog and a Facebook account. My online anonymity is dwindling rapidly. I suppose it was inevitable to some extent. I'm not fond of allowing people I don't actually talk to influence my decisions (with the possible exception of John Stewart), so why should I limit myself so greatly in a realm where I'm so comfortable?

Dammit, I want to be part of the internets too! Why should lolcats have all the fun?

Sick of Illness

For over a month now, my kids have been fighting one illness after another. I once had a professor in college tell an auditorium full of students that antibiotics were bad and that we had to allow our bodies to fight off illnesses on their own. Clearly this man never heard his baby whimpering at 3 AM because of a 104° fever. Having experienced this, I can clearly state that the professor in question was a tool. Actually, I believe I stated it at the time, but now it's based on empirical evidence and not the fact that the guy wore a bad 70's porn-star mustache (as opposed to good 70's porn-star mustaches, which clearly rock).

Anyway, we're back to the long stretch of illnesses that comes with kids who come into contact with other kids. For the Moose, this can be difficult, because when you talk about it, people ask if he's in day care, and then sometimes follow it with a look that says "if only you had kept him at home", which is ridiculous, because then he would just get all the illnesses at once when he started kindergarten. Instead, he will have worked through most of the major bugs, and actually attend elementary school, as his big sister does (just one sick day this school year). So those people are tools too (maybe I should have called today's entry "The Toolbox").

Typically, the rash of Winter illnesses is a list of things I'm used to dealing with. She has an ear infection. He has an ear infection. Now her ears are better, but she has strep throat. His ears are clearing up, but we think he's asthmatic, so we want him on a daily nebulizer. On and on it continues for a couple of months, and then Spring shows up, we all go outside, and everyone gets a little healthier for a while.

Well, as part of another "he has a fever" doctor's visit, the Moose got an x-ray yesterday, and the diagnosis they came back with was pneumonia, which kind of freaked me out, simply because it's a word I associate with the term "died of complications from". No one ever dies of complications from an ear infection.

So there I was, staying at home with the Moose yesterday, and I was reminded about how temporary it all was. At any moment, something could take these people away from me, be it an illness or an accident or whatever, and that would be that. I just kept looking at his big brown eyes, or hearing his laugh, and trying to appreciate that these moments are all I can count on. Just this, right now, while I've got him here and safe with me. I'm the typically busy adult, with my mind bouncing between work and the budget and this week's schedule and whatever, and it's easy for me to forget that all I really get are these moments with them, and if I don't stop to appreciate them, in the end I won't even have that.

So, what have we learned today? Appreciate those you care about while you can. Beware of bad 70's porn star mustaches and those that wear them. Oh, and try not to be a tool.

My work here is done.

The Dead Reel

As you may have heard, Heath Ledger perished recently. I'm not going to claim to be a huge fan, but he was good in the movies that I saw him in, and I was looking forward to seeing him in the new Batman movie this summer. I may even have to finally don my cowboy hat, make some pudding, and watch Brokeback Mountain, something I've been unexcited about since the announcement from management that wearing chaps without pants would be met with swift disciplinary action.

Celebrity deaths are fascinating to me. Because a good number of people are familiar with the person who died, we get at least several days of coverage as to what happened, how they spent their lives, who they left behind, etc. If we're lucky, they'll be a conspiracy theory about the death, and it'll go on for years. Heck, you still see specials about Marilyn Monroe and what "really happened" (although I would hope that any death that may have involved a barbiturate enema would at least make the news).

This is in sharp contrast to a standard death, where you get an obituary in the paper, maybe a news report if there was a crime involved, and that's pretty much it. The whole thing is typically over in less than a week. Heck, even if you knew the person well there's a pretty good chance that the celebrity death could be on your mind for a longer period of time just because people will keep talking about it.

The quintessence of the celebrity death, however, is the Dead Reel. Each year, the Oscars includes a short film of all of the people in the movie industry who passed away in the last year, or at least all of the people that they feel are important enough to note. This is interesting because as someone who doesn't regularly read People magazine, sometimes someone passes away whose work I really liked and I don't find out until they run the Dead Reel. A good example was Madeline Kahn, one of the funniest actresses to grace the screen. (If you don't agree with me, rent Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, and Clue and get back to me.)

Unfortunately, the Dead Reel becomes uncomfortable for me because the audience insists on applauding. Now I understand that this is show business, and that applauding is part of the game, but this reduces the Dead Reel to one more opportunity to win or lose a popularity contest. When someone really famous comes up, there's uproarious applause. When some art director, who may have been involved with all sorts of important movies but is not considered a household name, comes up, there's maybe a respectful smattering of applause, but that's it.

Perhaps I'm being oversensitive, but that seems wrong. It seems like they should just do the whole thing in respectful silence instead of dramatic applause when someone's favorite comes up. Of course I don't think that will happen, but it would be nice. Then I don't have to feel bad about the families of the people whose names are met with a thunderous bout of indifference.

In the beginning...

We'll start this with the obvious question: why oh why would I want to start yet another meaningless blog in a sea of blogs that are already extremely effective at lacking meaning? Well, the reasons are both complicated and simple.

First, as a technical person, I feel that I should finally integrate myself into online society. That means posting a blog so that I can send the link to all of my friends and acquaintances and then, by occasionally posting things about my life and opinions and reading the subsequent comments, pretend that I have a rich social life. Neat, huh?

The second and more personal reason is that I love to write. I have no idea why, but I do. Unfortunately, I lack the creativity to do fiction (or so I've been told by several fine publications anyway). I figure I can write here and get it out of my system without subjecting anyone to having to proofread supernatural tales of questionable quality.

So there it is. I'll show up and rant about something. If someone feels like reading it they can, and if they are compelled to comment, they can do that too. I am moderating the comments, but only to prevent spam and perhaps cut out the dirty words (which I will correctly replace with #*$&%, Mad Magazine style). If anyone has anything they want me to talk about, and I mean anything, feel free to ask. Otherwise, you get random wierdness.