Something to get on my chest

If I wore t-shirts with stuff printed on them, which I almost never do (like, once in the past five years—my "VOTE" shirt on Election Day 2004), I'd want the one from T-Shirt Humor that says this:



"Okay, I give up. It's Nucular."



Hm. Maybe I'll get it as a coffee mug or a mousepad. I don't have any of those that say things on them, either—no one-liners, anyway; I've got mugs with college logos on them—but having a few political ones would make it a lot more fun to serve coffee when my Republican relatives visit.

Can we get Tommy Schenck a job at Fox News?

Now, this is the kind of "network affiliate preempting program it finds offensive" that I can get behind: a Fox station—a Fox station!—refused to air that reprehensible "Who's Your Daddy?" reality program:

WRAZ-TV (Fox 50) in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., has yanked "Daddy" and instead will air a documentary, "I Have Roots and Branches: Personal Reflections on Adoption," in the 8-9:30 p.m. EST block slated for "Daddy."



"We are proud to share this enlightening and heartwarming program, both as informative, appropriate family viewing, and as a public service as well," FOX 50 VP and General Manager Tommy Schenck said on the Web site of the station's Capitol Broadcasting Co. parent.

Fox itself has actually done a bit of censorship since getting whopping horrific shitloads of bad press and protests about the show:

Fox has shot a total of six episodes of "Daddy" but so far has scheduled only one airing as a special.

In case anyone doesn't know what those other five episodes contain, swallow your gorge and read on:

The show challenges a woman who was adopted as an infant to pick her father from a group of eight men for a $100,000 prize. If the woman picks the right man, she wins the $100,000, but if not the impostor gets the money.

Excuse me, I have to go whack someone with a stick now. Fox is defending itself, of course:

Fox reps have stressed that despite the show's provocative title, all of the people featured in "Daddy" were willing participants and that regardless of the competitive element, all of the women are reunited with their biological fathers as a result of their participation in the show.

Yeah, whatever. I repeat:

The show challenges a woman who was adopted as an infant to pick her father from a group of eight men for a $100,000 prize. If the woman picks the right man, she wins the $100,000, but if not the impostor gets the money.

Damn, where's that stick? Really, there are heads that need whacking. I'll conclude with a line from "Daily Show" correspondent Lewis Black: "Oh, Fox, why won't your animals attack when we need them?"

Reverse magnetism

Well, knock me over with a feather: "Support the troops" yellow ribbon magnets don't necessarily support the troops. This story focuses on a Cincinnati woman, Tamara Deal, whose husband in Iraq:

"There are yellow ribbons on almost every car now, and I'm just wondering where people are buying them from."



Tamara says many stores selling "support the troops magnets" are not really supporting the troops.



"I asked one, the manager had no idea, she said she had no idea where the money went."

The writer of the story reports that one major retailer, Walgreens, "tells me 50 percent of their magnet sales goes to the USO, which helps military families." (No word on whether he asked any other retailers, and, if he did, what they said.)

But with almost every discount store now selling ribbons, Tamara asks you to buy only from charities, veterans groups, and stores who confirm your money will help soldiers and their loved ones.

The reporter's concluding message:

My advice? Before buying a support the troops ribbon, ask how your purchase will support the troops.



If you can't get a straight answer, look for an organization that will tell you exactly how it's helping.



So don't waste your money.

Yes. Thank you. My point exactly. And as for supporting the troops, I made my donation directly to the USO; I don't have a car, so I don't have anywhere to put a magnet anyway, but even if I did, I'd rather put my money into a direct donation than into an outward show of support. (If I wanted an outward show of support, I'd go into my gift-wrapping supply box and tie my own damn yellow ribbon around my car antenna.)

So are they all, all honorable men

Hey, remember how the House Republicans, trying to prove themselves more ethical than Democrats, put in a rule that any leader facing indictment had to resign, and then changed the rule when it looked like Tom DeLay was going to get indicted? And got criticism from all sides, including a few people on their own? Well, they changed their minds again, or un-changed their minds, thus proving that sometimes either common sense or the desire to appear to have common sense prevails:

Stung by criticism that they were lowering ethical standards, House Republicans on Monday night reversed a rule change that would have allowed a party leader to retain his position even if indicted.



Lawmakers and House officials said Republicans, meeting behind the closed doors of the House chamber, had acted at the request of the House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay, who had been the intended beneficiary of the rule change.



When they rewrote party rules in November, Republicans said they feared that Mr. DeLay could be subjected to a politically motivated indictment as part of a campaign finance investigation in Texas that has resulted in charges against three of his associates. The decision, coupled with other Republican proposals to rewrite the ethics rules, drew fierce criticism from Democrats and watchdogs outside the government, who said the Republican majority was subverting ethics enforcement.

DeLay himself actually instigated the change/un-change; and while I don't like his policies one little bit, I do have a certain degree of appreciation—on the "I had no idea rattlesnakes cared so well for their young" level—that he's telling other people not to make decisions about what they think he can and can't handle. (My thinking on this issue is probably overly influenced by the annoyance I still feel towards a guy I was dating who obviously wanted to break up with me but didn't have the guts to say it because he was afraid of hurting my feelings; dude, just come out and say it—do you think I'm so fragile I can't live without you?) (But anyway...let's go to the quote.)

Those attending the Republican meeting, which was held on the day before the opening of the 109th Congress on Tuesday, said Republicans unanimously agreed to restore the old rule after Mr. DeLay told them that the move would clear the air and deny Democrats a potent political issue. In the past year, he has been admonished by the ethics panel three times: for his tactics in trying to persuade a colleague to support the Medicare drug bill, for appearing to link political donations to support for legislation and for involving a federal agency in a political matter in Texas.

This is my favorite part, both for its message and for the guilty-pleasure reason I describe below the quote:

Some Republicans who originally opposed the rules change enthusiastically greeted the decision not to go through with it.



"It allows the Republicans to focus on the issues, the agenda that is before us and not to have Tom DeLay be the issue," Representative Zach Wamp, Republican of Tennessee, said. "I feel like we have just taken a shower."

How awesome is it that there's a guy named "Zach Wamp"? I love it; it sounds like one of those proto-futuristic names from mid–20th-century sci-fi TV shows: "And in the engine room, the zany protonic engineer Zach Wamp keeps the hyperdrive atomometer running!" Or the name of a small town in Eastern Europe: "News from the Croatian capital of Zagreb has been slow to reach the eastern village of Zakhvamp..." Or a regional term for an animal with a distinctive call: "Down here we call that a zackwamp because it goes 'zak zak zak!' and then puffs out its throat and goes 'whomp!'" Oh, the possibilities are mindless. I mean endless. I mean mindless.



Disclaimer: No disrespect to Zach Wamp or his forebears here; I'm having fun with the name, but I'm not making fun of it. Words are my chief joy, and when I find a new one, or a new combination of them, I dive in and roll around in them like a chinchilla in a dust bath. (Or a zackwamp in a fishing hole. [I envision the zackwamp as some kind of frog or other amphibian, but it could also be a relative of the blackbird that lives in marshes.]) (There, see what I mean? Give me some new words and I get completely carried away.)

Steal this bus

Do you think it's a good idea to advertise "Grand Theft Auto" on the side of a city bus? It seems almost as inappropriate as advertising alcoholic beverages on NASCAR race cars and highway billboards. I dunno, maybe the idea is that if your car is stolen, you'll have to take public transportation.

Bless the beasts and the children

Annotated link dump: assorted tsunami survival stories demonstrating why you should pay attention to animals, elders, and children.



As conventional wisdom so often suggests, animals apparently sensed the tsunami coming and headed to higher ground:

An Associated Press photographer who flew over Sri Lanka's Yala National Park in an air force helicopter saw abundant wildlife, including elephants, buffalo, deer, and not a single animal corpse.



Floodwaters from the tsunami swept into the park, uprooting trees and toppling cars onto their roofs [...] but the animals apparently were not harmed and may have sought out high ground, said Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, whose Jetwing Eco Holidays ran a hotel in the park.



"This is very interesting. I am finding bodies of humans, but I have yet to see a dead animal," said Wijeyeratne, whose hotel in the park was totally destroyed in Sunday's tidal surge. "Maybe what we think is true, that animals have a sixth sense."

Elephants giving rides to tourists on a beach in Thailand not only headed for higher ground, they brought people with them:

"The elephants didn't believe the mahouts [who were trying to calm them down]. They just kept running for the hill," said Wit Aniwat, 24, who takes the money from tourists and helps them on to the back of elephants from a sturdy wooden platform.



Those with tourists aboard headed for the jungle-clad hill behind the resort beach where at least 3,800 people, more than half of them foreigners, would soon be killed. The elephants that were not working broke their hefty chains.



"Then we saw the big wave coming and we started running," Wit said.



Around a dozen tourists were also running toward the hill from the Khao Lak Merlin Resort [...]



"The mahouts managed to turn the elephants to lift the tourists onto their backs," Kulada said.



She used her hands to describe how the huge beasts used their trunks to pluck the foreigners from the ground and deposit them on their backs.

Knowledge passed down by generations of elders saved an entire village of Thai fisherfolk known as the Morgan sea gypsies:

"The elders told us that if the water recedes fast it will reappear in the same quantity in which it disappeared," 65-year-old village chief Sarmao Kathalay told the paper.



So while in some places along the southern coast, Thais headed to the beach when the sea drained out of beaches - the first sign of the impending tsunami - to pick up fish left flapping on the sand, the gypsies headed for the hills.

A 10-year-old British schoolgirl saved hundreds of people on a beach and in a nearby hotel because she'd just studied tsunamis in a geography class:

"Last term Mr Kearney taught us about earthquakes and how they can cause tsunamis," Tilly was quoted as saying by The Sun.



"I was on the beach and the water started to go funny. There were bubbles and the tide went out all of a sudden. I recognised what was happening and had a feeling there was going to be a tsunami. I told mummy."



Her intuition was enough to raise the alert and prompt the evacuation of Phuket's Maikhao beach and a neighbouring hotel before the water came crashing in, saving hundreds of people from death and injury.



[...]



The girl's geography teacher, Andrew Kearnay from Surrey in northern England, told the paper he had explained to his class that there was about 10 minutes from the moment the ocean draws out before the tsunami strikes.

Of mice and medicine

Well, I'm gonna go get studied. Tonight I'm going to the Jefferson University Hospital sleep lab to get hooked up to machines and somehow have a typical night's sleep, which seems highly dubious. I mean, I have a hard enough time getting to sleep in my own bed in my own house without any wires attached. And I really, really don't like the idea of people watching me while I sleep. Humph. Then again, if I have a hard time getting to sleep or staying asleep tonight, I guess it'll prove the point. I certainly didn't sleep well last night, mostly because I was filled with anxiety; I woke up at 6:30, unaccustomedly early, with my heart pounding so hard I could hear it: THUMP-thu-THUMP-thu-THUMP-thu-THUMP. I am so not looking forward to this. (I posted about not looking forward to the initial evaluation back on December 14th.)



I was also anxious about coming back to work after over a week off—not because of any actual work, but because I was afraid Bad Things might have happened. One of my coworkers was literally deathly ill in December (he has muscular dystrophy and he got a respiratory ailment that turned into pneumonia, which is especially dangerous for people with MD), and the updates my boss was getting from his mother, who was pretty much living at the hospital and hardly sleeping, had been sporadic and unpromising. The first thing I did when I got in this morning was check my office e-mail; and, thank God/gods/heaven, he's doing much better, is out of the hospital, and is going to work from home for a few weeks and come back to Philly when he's fully recovered. Whew.



On a less important but proportionately anxiety-inducing level, I was also hoping the office mice hadn't started dying or eating each other (yes, someone was supposed to feed them, but what if he hadn't?—and yes, I could've gone to the office and checked, but, well, I didn't; so if they'd been dead and cannibalistic I'd've felt even worse about it). So the second thing I did this morning was check the mouse cage, and once again had anxiety allayed as I discovered they're all alive. Or at least there aren't any dead ones in the cage; I'll do a head count when I clean the cage later today. Um, a head-attached-to-a-body count. A head-attached-to-a-living-body count. And, as much as I hope there aren't fewer of them, I really hope there aren't more of them. I've tried to keep the males away from the females, but as I've posted before, it's very hard to determine the genders of spiny mice, and you never know when you're going to discover that your supposedly same-sex cage has produced a litter of little inbred mouse babies.



Argh, increasingly long entry here. I'd better get it posted so I can get back in the swing of blogging things, and so I can get a 2005 archive started. Oh, yeah, and do more work; the kind they pay me for. Right. Well, Happy Julian-Calendar New Year, everyone; let's get this party started.