Hank's Place

Last weekend we went over to a patch of reasonably flat territory to rollerblade and run around. Weeeee!

1. Looks Like Mona Lisa (Smells Like Tuna Fish) - Michelle Shocked
2. Ice Heavy Branches - The Appleseed Cast
3. Petrushka: III La semaine grasse - Maxim Anikushin
4. New Year's Day - U2
5. I Wanna Be A Hippy - Technohead
6. Babylon - Crown Of Thorns
7. I Dreamed About Mama Last Night - Johnny Cash
8. A Little Bit of Your Loving Goes a Very Long Way - Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women
9. Blues For Monty - Joe Pass Quartet
10. Johnny Strikes Up The Band - Warren Zevon

The Chron has an article about US and Iraqi forces beating back insurgent attacks. As usual for such articles it's buried deep in the front section. But here's the thing. It's not about seeing bad guys planting a roadside mine or discovering a weapons cache. It's about US and Iraqi forces engaging in fire fights with insurgents. Why do I get the feeling we're nearing a Tet-like massive uprising? And yes I know that Tet was a military disaster for the VC, but it sure knocked the wind of the sails of the US war effort.

Well I see that Pixar is going to sell itself to Disney. I guess that means that after Cars comes out (it's probably too far along for Disney to fuck it up) Pixar movies will begin to suck as much as the rest of Disney's animated movies do.

I decided to make the curry that Twisty wrote up the other day. It sounds too yummy and too easy to not make. Here it is in a slightly modified form.

Chopped Onion	Saute in butter until soft	Add spices and stir together	Add Chicken and brown slightly	Add tomatoes and simmer for about half and hour	Add yogurt and cashews, stir and bring warm over low heat
Garlic
Ginger
a certain amount of curry powder
some salt
a few pinches of cumin
a pinch of cayenne
chopped up chicken
canned chopped tomatoes to taste
plain yogurt
chopped toasted cashews

Garnish with toasted cashews and cilantro. Serve over rice.

I had a job interview yesterday. One of the advantages of having worked at a company that has practiced multiple layoffs is that I now know people who work all over the Bay Area. One person asked me to send out the ol' resume and the next day I was contacted by the hiring manager and asked when I could come in for an interview. Now we just have to wait while the interview one other candidate for the position. Fingers crossed.

One entertaining thing about the group is that they are confirmed Mac-heads and the few people with Windows machines had to go out of their way to acquire them. If I get the job I should fit in pretty well... One of those MacBook Pros would be pretty nice.

Here's YW part way through the below-described skating lesson. We just might go skating again this weekend so MLWN can skate too.

1. Money, Guns And Coffee - Pray For Rain
2. Reviews / Korg N364 - Future Music
3. Medley - James Brown
4. Armenia City In The Sky (Live) - Sugar
5. The Jerk - Martha Reeves & The Vandellas
6. Shoot the Singer (1 Sick Verse) - Pavement
7. Good Time Music - Lovin' Spoonful
8. Tonyage - Descendents
9. Emily - Los Lobos
10. I Can't See Your Face In My Mind - The Doors

So I hear that Al Jazeera is playing an audio tape purporting to be of Osama Who threatening destruction in Europe and the US. El Presidente claims that he needs to break the law in order to protect all of us Americans. Well George here's your chance. If there are any attacks we'll know that even unfettered lawlessness on your part isn't enough for you to be able do your job.

Here's another one of Hank's patented Parenting Methods^TM: The more that 7 year-old YW says he really doesn't want to do something, the more fun he is going to have when we do the actual activity. A classic is going to the zoo. "I don't want to go to the zoo! I hate the zoo. We always go there and it's no fun." Then he runs at full speed all over the place deciding which is the coolest animal that particular day.

The latest one was the ice skating party he went to on Saturday. He'd never been ice skating before so naturally he was just going to hate it. I convinced him that he should just take the half-hour lesson that was part of the party package. Then next week when MLWN is available for skating (she competed at figure skating in Jr high school and was bummed that she couldn't go to the party), he could go skating with her. He agreed. When we got to the rink he said he didn't even want to take the lesson. Paternal authority prevailed and he got some skates then he saw a couple of other party-attending friends of his and he dashed out onto the ice. When they shut down the rink an hour and a half later I managed to convince him that it was OK to take off his skates.

The best part of all this is that I've told him that the more he complains the more I think he's going to like whatever the focus of his complaints is. It just makes him complain more.

Here's a blast-from-the-past picture of the boys from March 2003. Just for reference, the sweatshirt YW is wearing has been handed down to YA and now fits him perfectly.

1. Ice - Magic Dirt
2. Violent Love - Skankin' Pickle
3. Black Sheep - Killing Heidi
4. Esperando Por Ella - Oscar D'Leó
5. Precious Things - Tori Amos
6. A Good Soundtrack - The Aints
7. Do You Want Out - Mock Orange
8. It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) - Annie Ross & Gerry Mulligan
9. Seven Years - Cowboy Junkies
10. The Other Side Of The Coin - Solomon Burke

YA (who just turned 4, thank you very much) is finally getting out of diapers and into underwear. YW was not potty trained when YA was born. I have been wiping someone else's ass for going on Seven And A Half Years. I'm ready to be in charge of only my own butt. The current stage we're in is that YA wears a pull-up during the night and underwear during the day. Until a couple of days ago, I was putting him in a fresh pull-up to get to preschool where his teacher (for whom he will do anything) would get him into his Mr Incredible underpants. Yesterday I decided that he had gotten good enough at holding his pee that he could almost certainly make it to school without detonating in the car. I told him that we were going to put his underpants on at home. This was not what he wanted to hear and he ramped up from upset all the way to full-on tantrum mode with the screaming and the kicking of the feet and everything.

Whereupon YA had the opportunity to be reminded of one of Hank's Rules Of Parenting: Tantrums don't work. You, as my child, will never never never never get your way if throw yourself a tantrum. I don't reward that behavior at all. My thinking is that if you give in even once, all you've done is show the kid what s/he has to do get something s/he really wants. I don't like dealing with tantrums enough to encourage them.

Here are two things we know about Sam Alito:

1. He will lie when under oath (see his testimony about recusing himself from cases involving Vanguard).
2. He will lie to get a job (see his response to Sen Feinstein about his application for work with Reagan Administration).

So who gives a shit what he says in his Confirmation Hearing? Way back when I was on a jury we were instructed that if we decided that a particular witness had lied about anything we were allowed, actually encouraged, to disregard everything else the witness said. Sam Alito is liar who say will whatever people want to hear in order to get a job. He is not fit to be a Supreme Court Justice.

The Chron has an article about how it is becoming quite common to abort female fetuses in India. There are a couple of reasons for this: when your daughter gets married you have to pony up a dowry (ie, pay somebody to take your daughter off your hands) and parents are looked after in their old age by a son. So from a selfish perspective it makes monetary sense to reduce the number of daughters you have. Nationwide, under the age of 6, there are 932 girls for every 1000 boys. In one area the ratio is 710 girls per 1000 boys.

This has been going on for a while in China too, with the added pressure of the 1 child per couple rule.

So, internets, I hear you saying, "So how does this effect me waaaaaay across the ocean in America?" Well, what do you think a society with more males than there are females of compatible age does? I'm thinking the next big land war is going to be between China and India and it's going to start in 15 to 20 years. Or, they'll get over their antagonism and form an alliance against some evil, oppressive third party. I wonder who that might be?

And in 10 years or so the dynamics of marriage in India will probably get much more interesting. I'm thinking that the dowry is about to go away.

Father of Boy #1: Dipak I'll let my son marry your miserable daughter if you give me <Large Number> rupees.
Father of Boy #2: Dipak I'll give you <Somewhat Smaller Number> rupees if you let me son marry your daughter.
Dipak (Father of Girl): FoB1 you can fuck off. Fob2 you've got yourself a deal as long as the wife and I move in with your son and my daughter when we retire.

Here are some snaps from our trip to the zoo. It may come as a shock, but we were not the only people at the zoo searching out Alex, Marty, Melman, Gloria, and the Penguins (The Skipper, Rico, Kowalski and The Private). A close look at the photos shows that there is motion in several; the rhino is so dark because it was wet from an extended frolic in its pool. Gloria (the hippo), was in a really bad mood. It kept doing the mouth gape/biting motion at the few people in the area.

Here are the Boys climbing on the panther sculpture in the entry area of the San Francisco Zoo. And for those of you who are interested, the time to go to the Zoo is in the winter in between storms. It was cloudy while we there, and it sprinkled a bit, but there was nobody there. I don't know if it was the lack of people or the break in the storm, but the animals were much more active than their usual trying-to-imitate-taxidermy lifestyles. I'll post a some animal snaps in a bit and you'll see.

1. California Nervous Breakdown - Dave Derby
2. Pour les Accord - Mitsuko Uchida
3. Lucky (Rap) - Joni Mitchell
4. Children In Bloom - Counting Crows
5. Pride And Joy (Live) - Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble
6. Strap Me In - The Cars
7. Hey Now! - Oasis
8. A Place In The World - Mary Chapin Carpenter
9. I'm In Love - Aretha Franklin
10. Mr. Smith - Nina Simone

Our Fearful President has asserted the following:

• He has the Right and Power to declare any US Citizen an Enemy Combatant.
• He has the Right and Power to hold an Enemy Combatants in military jails without access to lawyerly advice.
• He has the Right and Power to secretly monitor the communication of anyone in furtherance of the Great War On Terror.
• Once you are in the custody of the Exectutive Branch he has the Right and Power to torture you if that will help the Great War On Terror.

Could someone please explain to me how this is not a recipe for setting up concentration camps of those opposed to his Divine Right?

To paraphrase Brad DeLong, I'll stop comparing them with Nazis when they stop acting like them.

YA got used to the vacation schedule while we were celebrating The Holidays. Last night in an effort to lay the groundwork for this morning I asked him if he was excited about going to school the next day. "No. I don't want to go to school tomorrow." This morning I every time I reminded him that he was going to go to school he got all teary-eyed. By the time we pulled up in front of his preschool he was wailing and had to be carried into the building. "I dooooon't waaaant toooo goooo tooo schoooooooool!" The thought of his teacher made him even more distraught. "I don't want to see Teacher Karen!" But when I had signed him in, put his lunch and nap gear away and had to go the only person who could make him feel better was TK. I left him wailing in her arms. I'd feel bad about my cruel abandonment of him except that I know he was happy as can be within 10 minutes of my departure. There is just too much fun at school to waste your time crying.

Recently a couple Friends of the Nuclear Family moved to other side of the country to become glamorous Professors at a Medical School in Virginia. This makes the whole face to face communication thing much more difficult. But! One of my Holiday Presents was an iSight Camera from Apple. That, my DSL connection and a free Jabber account allowed me to have a video conference conversation with them this morning. The video was a bit dodgy due to e-congestion between here and there but it worked. The only problem with the setup is that the lights in the room are behind me. I need to get one of those iLights so I can have an illuminated visage while v-conferencing.