Slate Magazine is roughly on the same plane as public radio: it has in-depth stories with intellectual analysis, handles stories you might not have picked up in other places, and is staffed by a bunch of lefties (though it seems their audience is less one-sided). Their one regular cartoon is Doonesbury, which might give you an idea of its location on the political spectrum. Agree or not, however, Slate is always worth a read.
Today's worth-a-read article is this one by Paul Freedman analyzing the election returns, and puncturing the inital meme about the election results stemming from Darth Rove turning out the homophobe vote. You may think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not.
So, I guess I have a blog now. I'm still getting used to it. It's powered by Movable Type, which is cool and very tweakable. It's hosted on prwdot.org, which is owned by our friend Peter Wood. He's very generous, and lets both Amy and I mooch off of his bandwidth. We salute you, Peter!
Lots of blogs are dedicated to particular topics, and I wish I could say that this blog was too. Unfortunately, I tend to be an all-over-the-map kind of guy, so I can't promise anything. I might manage to put my posts in categories, but I make no promises.
I will eventually slap some stucco and paneling on these walls and make the place look a little more homey, at which time I will also have a great number of blogs and sites to link to, but I need to figure out how not to break my blog first. I'll still post, and you'll just have to learn to deal with the fact that the decor doesn't match the discourse for distinction, sophistication and subtlety.
So I was at school today, chatting with some folks about the election results, when my friend Lane came by and asked me to stop by his office; he had a big favor to ask me.
Now, Lane has helped me out a few times when I've locked myself out of my office, so I'm pretty sure I owe him more than a few favors. So when he said he needed a favor, I was a little worried; there wasn't really an upper limit to his potential request. He could ask me to scrape rabid cockroaches off of a bus station urinal with my fingernails, and I'd pretty much be honor-bound to agree.
When I finally stopped by to see what he needed, his first words were "Are you planning on having children?" Needless to say, that didn't reassure me too much.
When I told him yes, he remarked that one day I may need call on someone to perform a similar service. I still wasn't reassured, but I was confused now, and that was somehow a little better.
Lane explained that his two-and-a-half year old son was being potty trained, and is also (coincidentally, I assume) a big Buzz Lightyear fan. Lane reported that little Emilio had finally been taught to use the loo, and had successfully done so three whole times in one day. I was, I think, suitably impressed.
Lane explained that that meant that Emilio would therefore be gotten Buzz Lightyear underpants to encourage him that visiting the WC was worth turning into a habit. (This surprised me. I recalled the Spider-Man UnderRoos I proudly wore as a kid; I now saw them in a new light. I was part of the lie.)
Lane continued to say that as a special treat, he wanted to have "Buzz Lightyear" call Emilio and congratulate him on his achievement, but he was worried that Emilio would recognize his voice on the phone. Sooo.....
Let's recap. I'm being asked to:
-- call up a little kid,
-- lie through my teeth about who I am, and
-- talk about using the bathroom, all with parental approval.
I was on it.
So, I whipped up a little script (link below), and Lane called home. I said hi to Emilio's mom, who handed the phone over to Little Britches, saying something to the effect of, "Hey, Emilio, guess who's on the phone? It's Buzz Lightyear."
Big mistake, Mom. All I can hear is screaming and crying. I can't get started on my script, because I can't hear my own voice. Mom comes back on, tries to get Emilio back on the phone, but he won't stop crying. We'll try again in a little bit, Mom says.
I was a little hurt. I had been led to believe that the kid liked Buzz Lightyear.
Mom calls back to let Lane and I know that Little Britches had gotten a little overexcited at the sudden prospect of a phone call from a Space Ranger. So excited, in fact, that he had a minor accident. So we had to postpone Buzz phone time to an unspecified later date. Oh well. Keep up the good work, Emilio. To the bathroom and beyond!
If you're so inclined (and I don't want to know if you are), you can check out the script I wrote here. It's in Microsoft Word 2003 format. (Also, I do so know how to spell pee-pee and poo-poo; they're just in Spanish.)