mcgees.org

Jenn and I had just switched places, Jenn replacing me under Niall’s nylon pup-tent shaped like a locomotive.  Niall was the other occupant.  Jenn is claustrophobic.

“I’m kind of freaking out in here,” Jenn says to me.

“Why?” Niall overhears.

“Your mommy doesn’t like closed spaces.  Your daddy does.”  A pause.  “When daddy goes cave exploring, do you want to go with him?”

He looks at me and regards me carefully for fully ten seconds.  He doesn’t want to disappoint me.  “Ummm.  Ummm.  There might be bears.  I’m not sure if I want to go.”

Jenn and I exchange startled looks.

“That’s true,” she says.  “Sometimes bears do live in caves.”

Suddenly he’s not sure if we’re pulling his leg or not.

“Silly!” he accuses.  “Bears aren’t real!”

“Oh, yes, they’re quite real,” Jenn explains.  “In the sense that they are actual animals living on the planet.”

“Yes, bears aren’t monsters, they are real animals,” I elaborate.

A puzzled look.  “Why?”

I think about that for a second.  It’s a really good question.  Why are bears real?  Not, “Why did they evolve?” but “Why did humans allow carnivorous, predatory, terrestrial megafauna to survive into the 21st century?”  A fitting question for Jared Diamond.  Were bears just too ferocious, too tenacious, or too remote, maybe?

Such a big world.  So many hamsters.  So much grief.  Anyone want to help with the new site, myhamsterdied.info?

It’s been a while since an update.  Welcome, Algeria, Montserrat, Mozambique, Former USSR, El Salvador, Tunisia, and Saint Vincent and Grenadines!

Algeria was looking for Lacuna Coil.  So was Tunisia.  Montserrat looked at my family filter page.  Mozambique was interested in my Pearl Jam mp3s, as was El Salvador.  Former USSR looked at a lot, including my resume.  And finally, Saint Vincent and Grenadines repeatedly looked at my root page.

161 down, 103 to go.

I’m hoping this post will help web surfers.  If you’re looking for a caustic solution to dissolve paper, cardboard, and ink of all tested varieties, mix cat urine and diet cola in roughly equal quantities, and immerse.

This research was underwritten by the Amazon.com VISA card, which provided Thank You For Arguing and Color for Philosophers to my nightstand, and I was ably aided by assistants Mika (our poorly-housebroken cat) and Sebastian (our clumsy cat).

I was hanging out with Niall tonight (my son, aged three) and I was, with no particular purpose, singing, “Pop goes the weasel.”

Niall matches my inflection and tune, and sings, “Down goes the hooker.”

My head spins around.  “WHAT did you just say?”

“Down goes the hooker.”

So I adjust myself to see what he has in his hands.  He has a toy tractor with a winch and line, on the end of which is a hook.  He’s lowering it down.  The hooker.  Down it goes.  The hooker.

So here I go, passing it on to you, and getting my site blocked by family filters, because of a toy tractor and a semantically-confused three-year-old.

Have you noticed the new sprayed-on USPS postmarks?  They have killer bars (or worse, the United Way obliterator) and two or three lines of text comprising location and time of processing?  Most stamp collectors hate them.  I dislike them because I specialize in socked-on-the-nose cancellations (cancellations where a circular date stamp is perfectly centered on a stamp) because … there is no circular date stamp!  So I wrote to the USPS Director of Stamp Services about the issue, and this is what I got back:

(Click to enlarge; in Firefox, you might need to click the image again with the magnifying glass.)

See?  Nice, customized, respectful, and personal, from a very famous person.  I’m sure I would have gotten a personal letter from Arsène Wenger if he had happened to be in the office:

(Click to enlarge; in Firefox, you might need to click the image again with the magnifying glass.)

Too good not to post: unsolicited personal email, probably in reference to Number of the Beast:

Hi, while watching a show on the road of death between Kuwait amd Iraq They talked about the large machine gunin the planes that killed all the Iraqies and vehicles. When they mentioned how many bullets a second I calculated the number per minute and got 666. I then went on the internet to see how many barrels the weapon had, there are seven.
    the number of the beast is 666, It has seven heads. All the things coming out of the head are the result of war!  3-14-2007

                                                    Peter Rosenholm
                                                    treelaw45@yahoo.com

Apparently the show taught him that the machine gun fired 11.1 bullets per second.

More here and here.

…so here is a link.

…at 59% of my current weight.

For those among you who are so indie it hurts (you know who you are), I thought I’ll start a semi-regular quiz.  To wit: Who is this?