Someone put up an MP3 of Ithaka's "Escape From The City of Angels". I've been looking for this for years. The CD is long out of print, and it's not on iTMS. It's used in The Replacement Killers, when John & Meg walk off with Loco's ride and the arsenal it contains.

"How am I supposed to get home?"
"You've seen our car. Just twist the red wire and the yellow wire together."

Current Mood: ecstatic

You can no longer get directions from Google that tell you to swim across the Atlantic Ocean. But you can now get directions that instruct you to kayak across the Pacific. (Apparently, the Atlantic crossing is an oversight, it will be back later.)

Two boys, one cup.

...you're needed in Iowa!

Key quote: "I know it will be hard," she said. "But I know it will be worth it, too."

Yes, baby, it will. And yes, baby, it will. (This stuff just writes itself.)

On the other hand, I really hate deliberate mischaracterizations like this. The Narn Bat Squad should be dispatched to whoever wrote Neiderhiser, 18, credits a local sexual abstinence movement that's quietly gaining momentum in Iowa schools at a time when lessons that preach no sex until marriage are perceived to be on the way out.

Whoever considers abstinenceignorance-only sex ed the only approach that preaches "no sex until marriage" deserves a beatdown. I've never heard of a comprehensive program that says, "Hey kids! Fuck away!" Supporters of comprehensive education say it's realistic. Critics say it gives teens the green light to have sex. No, critics are the ones that need the green light. Something is lodged in their constricted passages of logical, coherent thought. Therapeutic recreation might help dislodge that.

Ah, I'm probably repeating myself. If I did a better job tagging my entries, I could probably reduce that...

Tags: peoplearestillhavingsex
Current Music: Ice T-Girls L.G.B.N.A.F.

Why? Because they don't have awesome playground equipment like this.

Admittedly, I like the soft rubber surfaces they put on the ground. It's much less messy than dirt, sand, or wood mulch, and it doesn't get soggy in the rain. But for the equipment itself, the old stuff made you study and react to your environment. Stainless steels slides that heated up to 150 degrees in the summer? You learned how to bend your knees and lean back so only your clothing touched. High-speed merry go rounds? You learned the limits of your tolerance for dizziness. Adventuresome, multi-level labrynths made of coarse wooden logs and thick chains? You learned how to hang on, and how to move as to avoid slivers. You didn't try to slide down the fire pole until you were big enough to hack it.

Oh yeah, and tall swing sets that you could REALLY get altitude on. If you got enough, and launched at just the right moment, you'd get the briefest moment of upward flight before you reached apogee and fell back down.

Look, we could've made playground equipment prettier without taking all the fun and adventure out of it. We failed. I suspect it's the insurance companies' faults. Those people need to DIAF.

A bunch of christianist whackjobs in southwest suburban Batavia demanded that the Batavia Public Library remove a link from its web site to Planned Parenthood's teenwire.com web site. The library board voted 4-2 to keep the link, moving it from its "young adult" page to its "web reference" page.

The key here is this: All six trustees favored keeping the link. Their only disagreement was over which page to put it on.

I reiterate my comment left in dark_christian: Everything you ever need to know about Dominionists was summed up years ago by The Parking Lot Is Full in three comic strips.

In a related item, another christianist mother complained to her library about having a children's book which positively depicts gay marriage in its collection. A librarian responded magnificently. His response is well-researched, well-supported, and entirely respectful of this woman's views</a>. This is the proper way we should be dealing with the narrow-minded when we do it in an institutional environment. What we say on our own weblogs and journals and in random public forums is entirely up to us--if you want to be nice, that's great. If you want to be sanctimonious, or an offensive prick (as I often do,) that's great too. But when we speak and act under color of whatever authority our jobs give us, this is how we need to respond. In doing so, we do the right thing, without being an open threat or challenge to people who would prefer (and even demand) we do wrong. If they decide to pop off in response, they're clearly the immature one in the argument, and they help defeat their own misbegotten cause.

rivals.com has an article about my baseball team. They call out senior Bennett Parry as our "biggest freak". Well ain't that the truth. I've known Bennett for years, and coached him for a while when he was 12-14. Biggest, goofiest dork I've ever had to deal with in baseball. But he's developed very well as a pitcher, and by God, he's actually started to mature a little. He's still a dork, but at least I don't expect him to turn out as cocky as Tim Robbins' character in Bull Durham.

Tags: baseball, poway

This is a story about a family which had to split town for a while when the husband, a manager at a San Francisco game developer, had to fire an employee who turned out to be a stalker. There's some very good material in there about how to deal with stalkers. The gist of it is, do not ever, ever, ever reply in any way, shape, or form, to a stalker. Get the authorities involved, let them handle it, but do not ever make contact with the fucktard. It only encourages the behavior.

Basketball was in a tournament at UCSD this weekend. We played our last game this morning against Bishop's. It was a moderately physical game, a bit of shoving, but nothing too bad. Bishop's coach was riding the referees pretty badly (so were the parents, but sitting on our bench, I wasn't close enough to really hear them,) and at one point, complained loudly, "I don't know how you can be so anal about one call, but so naive about the rest!"

The ref replied, "I'm going to get anal on you if you don't get off me!"

We looked at each other on our bench and laughed madly. Winner!

For reference, a DKos diarist has a rundown on Barack Obama's legislative record with respect to women's issues. (Though it opens with a good rip into McCain.)

I really do want to beat people that moan that Obama has no legislative record, since he's "only been in the Senate two years". Obviously, what goes on in the several states is petty and beneath consideration.

Tags: 2008, election, obama, women