If only they wouldn't defecate everywhere

As you learned in our previous post, we have three awesome kittens that are capable of catching mice. Okay, all of these "I'm a Mormon" commercials are really strange. And why are there always two in a row? Anyway, their names are Mustard, Gator and Dr. Paws. Mustard is a girl, the other two are boys. And if you are on the fence about whether cats are totally awesome or insanely awesome, check out this story from Radiolab Christina and I heard while driving to her parents the other day. Pretty amazing. Also, our roosters have started to crow in the morning. And since three are two too many, we are getting very close to having a chicken dinner.

It's not a bird, and it's not superman neither

I was flying in an aeroplane a couple of weeks ago, and had put my phone in the front pocket of the shoulder bag in which I carry my laptop and laptop accessories. I did this before boarding, and when the flight attendant reminded the passengers to turn off all their electronics devices, including cell phones, portable music players, and anything with an on/off switch, I forgot all about my phone. It was nestled close to a box of mints. About 20 seconds after take-off, mid-ascent, I did suddenly remember, and quickly and inconspicuously turned it off. The Feds didn't catch me, and my phone did not accidentally engage thrust reversal.

Then on the next flight (this was a two-legged trip) our old friend Schicksal peeked around the corner. I was seated in the aisle seat of a row with three seats on each side, no one was in the middle seat, and a young woman, probably in her teens, especially judging by the relationship problems she discussed on her phone, was sitting by the window. When it was time to turn off the electronic devices, she put hers up, as expected, but as soon as the flight attendants took their seats, she pulled it back out to listen to music on it. On the ascent I thought maybe she just didn't know, or thought it was ok to listen to music on the phone or simply forgot. On the descent, however, the flight attendant specifically told her that she would have to turn it off, but she just put it in her purse to pull it out again shortly after. And on purpose too.

So my question is, what do you do in this situation? Do you politely tell the person to turn off their device? Do you inform the flight attendant if they still keep their device on? Is the risk of leaving them on really that serious? As far as I know, the main risk is interference with the airplane communications system, which could be pretty serious depending on what exactly happens. I'd hate to make a big deal out of nothing, but leaving the phone on could be disastrous, and I don't think it's ok for one passenger to decide how much risk everyone else should take. What would you do in this situation?

Stating the obvious or: I don't even wanna know what prompted this

There was a paper sign on the dressing room at the gym today, reminding people that the showers are, in fact, not co-ed, but for men or women only. Very interesting.

Who will make them leave their keys?

It's not hard to dislike Oprah. I have, involuntarily, seen my fair share of the dribble that passes as true concern and compassion, and wondered about the short attention span, that I'm not sure if it was born out of the perceived necessity to always cover the newest and the latest, or out of the desire to devise a grand marketing scheme. Nothing they ever talk about seems to last longer than a week. One day Oprah announces she is done with dieting and accepts her body the way it is, which I thought was great considering that she didn't appear to be entirely unhealthy. And the next thing you know she is bawling about having fallen off the wagon yet again. The conversation on her show seem utterly insincere to me, in desperate attempts to be deep and meaningful. I like to think that it wasn't always that way, but that she has simply been on the job for way too long.

Enter Wendy Williams. The way I see it, because of the way she revels in superficiality and irrelevance, strangely enough, she ends up being much more sincere than Oprah. And I think it's because there is no pretense about being pretentious, which sounds like such a tired cliche but in the wide world of TV talk shows should be considered poetic.

And so the other day we saw Gloria Gaynor performing on the Wendy Williams show, the audience was dancing and everyone was having fun, and I said something to the effect of "Can you imagine what this would have been like on Oprah?" to Christina. And using her best Oprah impression of how she announces celebrity guests that she is really excited about, Christina goes "Glo-ria Gay-neeeeer" (yes, it is spelled with an o, but not the way Christina's imitation of Oprah has it). And that completely cracked me up. You had to be there to appreciate it, but as an eyewitness, let me tell you: It was hilarious.

Diabolical dishonesty.

The other day, and I don't really feel like retracing my steps and providing the links, I somehow stumbled upon Michelle Malkin's website and saw that she had written a book in which she attempts to set the record straight on the WWII internment camps in the US. From what I gathered there, she claims that racism was not a big factor when people from various ethnic backgrounds were moved to internment camps, that it was not predominantly Japanese-Americans that lived there, and that it was a military necessity to create the camps. This might not be a 100% accurate depiction of her position, as this is just from memory, though. Oh, I also remember a claim stating that some people moved there voluntarily. Somehow, it seemed really fishy, and without further research I thought that putting people that have been convicted of no crimes in camps is just wrong, no matter how you rationalize it.

After looking into it a little further, I quickly discovered articles refuting her claims piece by piece, written by expert scholars on the subject. And as much I was outraged by somebody putting forth such false and misleading claims, I also thought about a tendency I have observed, where this kind of intellectual dishonesty, especially by those who like to cry the loudest, is becoming more and more widespread. Because a lot of people will read this book and take it at face value, and no matter how much the experts explain how wrong and misleading it is, the damage will be done. I loathe people deliberately deceiving the public like this, all in the name of uncovering the truth, but really trying to further their agenda. Case in point: Michelle Malkin claims that she wrote the book as somebody not affected by the internments in any way, thus not having any vested interest in the outcome of her findings. However, she immediately takes her findings to argue that racial profiling should be used more widely to deter acts of terrorism. How someone can keep a straight face and present themselves as a messenger of truth while at the same time arguing in such a way is simply beyond me, and taints the public debate upon which a functioning democracy relies.

Got a broke down engine, but you're not losing any speed

Look, I used song lyrics in the title, just like Joey. There is a supermarket next to the high school I went. Of course it's not really a high school, but I'm not going into the details of the German education system right now. What you need to know is that the school had grades 5-13, and that in grades 11-13, you had a lot more freedom and were treated as more of an adult than in the other grades. Teachers would still call you by their first name, but use the more formal "Sie" to address you. Which is another German peculiarity I'm not going into right now. Anyway, before grade 11 you were not allowed to leave school grounds during school hours, but starting with grade 11 you were. Which meant that in grade 11, you were allowed to go that supermarket and buy whatever you wanted, i.e. chips, soda and chocolate, and eat it as part of your lunch. It was also a great way to kill periods where you didn't have any classes. There was no such thing as study hall in the school I went to. If you were caught going to the supermarket when you were in a grade below 11, you would be in trouble. I don't remember ever being caught or getting in trouble. I think it depended on the teacher that was supervising during the break you went in.

Anyway, the supermarket is pretty much like Wal-Mart and they sell almost everything. And they also have a music department where you can get CDs. Mostly Top 40 stuff and general mainstream, but still worthwhile having a look every once in a while. And one day in the bargain bin, I found Mudhoney's "My Brother the Cow" for an unbelievably cheap 5DM. I had never heard any Mudhoney songs when I got it, only heard the name and thought that no matter how bad this CD is, it's worth getting for the price. Around the same time, I don't wanna say the same day because it might be lie, I bought a CD there for full price, which was around 30DM. I was into hip-hop quite a bit at the time, but I never really stopped listening to other genres. This had to do with the realization that when I would listen to just hip-hop for a while, for whatever reason, there was some kind of void, that could be filled with a good dose of Metallica or maybe some punk rock. But I digress. So I also bought "Vendetta" by Mic Geronimo, after reading a enthusiastic review in a magazine and being surprised to see it in our supermarket, for the regular price. And guess what, Mic Geronimo totally sucked, the worst kind of rap music, and "My Brother the Cow" has become one of my favorite albums ever. If you even that out, I still got a good deal, but it's just so ironic. I end up loving the crapshot, and pretty much loathing the music I paid good money for. Go figure. And even though I really like "My Brother the Cow", I never got any other stuff by Mudhoney. Maybe I'm afraid it would be a letdown.

Vroooom!

People need to learn how to drive. I'm serious. Especially the ones with big cars. I had a little free time on my hands and conducted some research. Turns out, the bigger the car you drive, the worse of a driver you are. And it makes sense, too. If you're a bad driver, driving is really scary cause you're always on the verge of bumping into things or getting hit by drivers staying in their lanes. So what do you do to feel more secure? You get a big old vehicle which makes you feel all cozy and protected. And that vehicle is usually one of the sports utility persuasion, but pick-up trucks too. Problem with that is, that if you're already a bad driver, getting a big car only aggravates the calamity. Cause now an already bad driver has way more on their hands than they can possibly handle. But the car makes them feel secure, so they pay even less attention. For the rest of us it means botched parking jobs, or actually botching anything having to do with parking or driving in a parking lot, and generally driving like they have no clue. Anyway, to express it in mathematical terms:

car size / a = amount of bad driving

where "a" is driving ability on a scale from 1 to 10.

Follow the followers

Judging from our site visit statistics, not a whole lot of people even noticed, but I've been making some tweaks to the layout. My goal was to upgrade to the Blogger widget layout, which I have been putting off for way too long, but no matter what I tried, I just can't get the script to work that writes the different taglines under the title. The main reason I wanted to update were the labels list, which I now realize is not near as cool as I thought, and also the collapsible archive links, which I somewhat remedied by moving all those links down in the sidebar so they're not so much in the way. And Maria, thanks for subscribing to the feed while the new layout was up, but I'm not sure it will work anymore. Sorry. I did add a link to the atom feed so people can get automatic updates if they want.

The only thing that really changed is that I set the width of the sidebar and posts area to a fixed number instead of a percentage. I remembered that viewing the blog on a widescreen monitor was causing super-long lines that are hard to read. And since most new monitors are widescreen these days, I figured it was time to get with the program. Links are no longer underlined. No one does that anymore.

The griddle.

Folks, they dry spell is over. We now have our very own high-speed interwebbing connection. The open wireless connections in our neighborhood have stopped working for us a while ago, so it's just in time. The stuff you've missed is Germany being runner-up in the European soccer championship and us acquiring a vehicle. If you all behave real well, there might be some pictures in the near future. We're back on the grid.