The trailer is here.

I’m not really sure what to think. I’ve been looking forward to this movie for oh so long, and Zaphod looks like he rocks.. but.. but… what’s with Ford having an American accent? And that that thing with the white beachball for a head is so not Marvin.

213 things that Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the US Army.

Absolutely hilarious!

The phone just rang. My one-year-old answered it.

At least she hung it up again when she was done talking.

M was the office on his computer, so he was able to answer on the extension at the same time as she picked up the phone here and started chattering away in her little nonsense language (I was across the room from her). The friend who called thought it was hilarious.

It was quite funny, but this is not of the good at all.

There are amazing people in the world.

Here’s a bit of irony for you from Cynthia Tucker’s February 12th column.

Five years ago, political scientist Jean Reith Schroedel, a professor at Claremont Graduate University, published a book — “Is the Fetus a Person?” — that examined state policies throughout the country, comparing their restrictions on abortion to their support for poor children. She found that the states that imposed the most restrictions on access to abortion were also those that put the least money into health care or day care or housing assistance for poor children.

“Pro-life states are less likely than pro-choice states to provide adequate care to poor and needy children. Their concern for the weak and vulnerable appears to stop at birth,” she wrote.

In the rest of the column, she lauds a few conservatives who actually do seem to care about poor children, talks about how Bush is cutting programs that provide aid to poor children, and about the cognitive dissonance that runs rampant in the right. It’s well worth reading, but then Tucker is always worth reading.

I thought I’d outgrown my tendency to do this sort of thing. I guess not though because here I am still up at freaking five in the morning. Just how soon will Munchkin be up?

Ah well. At least I spent the time posting on GAFF writing for the most part, so it isn’t a complete waste of time. One can’t really control when inspiration will hit, right? Sometimes you just have to run with it when it comes and pay for it later.

The Book of Fanfic.

A commentary of sorts on those who write and those who mock, not that doing one proscribes doing the other.

The best bit: “21: And, lo, too late did He start to regret that He had not used a beta during the Creation.”

Hilarious stuff. Go read it.

My daughter is currently wearing two pairs of pants. Apparently the overalls I dressed her in this morning just weren’t enough because she fished a pair of jeans out of her laundry basket and set about correcting her perceived pant-defficiency. She managed to get one leg in just fine and then, after several minutes of frustration, convinced me to aid her in getting them the rest of the way on. She’s quite pleased with herself now and happier than she’s been all day.

If only it took so little to make the rest of us happy. Perhaps I should try wearing two pairs of pants.

I’m all better today. Thank goodness.

I’m such a big baby when I’m sick. I don’t know how I would handle it if I were ever to get really sick like cancer or something. If one day of a stupid stomach bug does that to me, how could I ever get through anything major?

Like another pregnancy. We’ve been talking about giving Munchkin a little brother or sister someday soon, but yesterday I was remembering that I felt that bad for three months straight and now I’m thinking I just can’t do that again. I lost about twenty pounds living on maybe five-hundred calories a day that I had to use all my will to force myself to eat. I went entire days without getting out of bed. I couldn’t even look at a computer screen without getting dizzy and sick. And moving in the middle of that to a city about eight hours dive from where we had been living was the polar opposite of good times. I really could do without ever going through that sort of thing again.

I’d love to adopt, but who has the thirty-thousand or so that the average adoption costs these days? It’s really sad thinking about all the little babies in horrible orphanages in China and such places who would have good homes with loving parents if only said potential parents could afford to do it.

Once again, I’ve been looking though the family services list of the older children or children with problems available for adoption here. I keep promising that someday I’ll call one of them my own. But just now, we’re not ready. We’re too young and too new at this parenting thing.

So it looks like the biological route is the only way to go if we want another child soon. Ugh.

Today at the pinnacle of our romance, M intends to come home early from work and skip playing his normal Monday night hockey game all for me. That is he’ll be home to take care of Munchkin so I can go back to bed.

I’m rather miserably sick.

I went to bed around two last night, didn’t fall asleep until three, and woke up at four with some sort of stomach bug. I didn’t sleep at all well after that. One of the least fair things about being a mother is that you don’t get sick days. If M feels bad he calls in to work. If I feel bad, I still have to chase after my darling little girl. Which is totally unfair of me since he is coming home early and staying home within three seconds of my bathroom and lounging on the couch is still much better than getting on a bus and going to work and sitting at a desk.

Of course, I would rather have stayed in bed all day.

Munchkin has been very good, actually. I locked us both in her room for most of the morning so that I could lie in her bed and doze and not worry about her getting into to much mischief. She climbed over me a few times and whacked me with a book she wanted me to read with her, but mostly she just played with her toys and let me be. She even came and lay down next to me for a little nap herself at one point. My girl is just so sweet.

Literally at the moment. She’s all sticky from the fruit I just gave her for a snack. And she’s done eating, so she’s returned to her favorite activity: dropping extra food on the floor. Oh joy.

I feel a little better now, but I’m still longing to find a hole in which to curl up and die.

I guess traditional family values include wanting nothing more to do with your children if they don’t completely match up to your ideas of who they should be. Who’d have thought.

Washington Post has an article up (login info from bugmenot) about Maya Keyes. She’s Alan Keyes gay daughter though apparently he wishes that she weren’t and is doing his best to make it so. That is, since he can’t do anything about the gay bit, he’s trying to end the daughter bit.

Here is one of the saddest bits:

But her friends told her no, there was nothing remotely inevitable about the break, that political differences and even sexual orientation ought not result in being kicked out. Maya wrote: “They say most parents would be thrilled to have a child who doesn’t smoke, have sex, do drugs, hardly drinks. . . , does well in school, gets good grades, gets into the Ivy League. . . , goes regularly to church, spends free time mentoring kids.”

Indeed.

I do agree with my parents beliefs and follow their way of life for the most part. Still, I always considered myself fortunate to know that even if I didn’t, while they might be very disappointed, they would always love me and be there for me. Now that I am a parent, I understand better that anything else just wouldn’t have been possible. And that makes me think that there is something very, very wrong with people such as Alan Keys.

And now I’ve been reading her weblog, and all I have to say is that if my little girl grows up to be even half as amazing as she seems to be I will consider myself very, very fortunate and deserving of pats on the back for raising such a wonderful child.

And at least she has places to go and people to help. So many others don’t. What the fuck is wrong with people?

He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back — that’ an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory. - Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman

For the State of the Union 2005 Drinking Game.

Well, not really. But it would be fun. I’m just not sure that I am masochistic enough to watch tonight.

Link via ladylivewire

via mistressindi

Didja hear about Ann Coulter making an idiot of herself on Canadian television? Watch it here or read about it here.

I really wish that I’d been watching Fifth Estate when the interview aired. Ah well.

Oh, is this ever disturbing.

U.S. students say press freedoms go too far

I really hope that this is a result of bad statistics and poor survey questions. Because if not, this is scary scary scary.

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

There’s no way to soften the government approval bit. I can’t think of anything else that it might mean anyway. I can only hope that in reference to other restrictions people were thinking of privacy concerns and such. Canada has press bans to keep names of children involved in crimes from being made public in order to protect them, for instance, and I can’t see that as a bad thing.

Although a large majority of students surveyed say musicians and others should be allowed to express “unpopular opinions,” 74% say people shouldn’t be able to burn or deface an American flag as a political statement; 75% mistakenly believe it is illegal.

*bangs head on desk*

The day they ban flag burning is the day it becomes just a piece of protected fabric with no greater meaning. As I still do take pride in my American heritage, I hope that day never comes.

The survey “confirms what a lot of people who are interested in this area have known for a long time,” he says: Kids aren’t learning enough about the First Amendment in history, civics or English classes. It also tracks closely with recent findings of adults’ attitudes.

I was going to ask: when did kids get so stupid? After a minute of thought however, I have to ask instead: when did we become so stupid as to not teach them better?