Tags: gimp, photography, project365
Current Mood: giggly

I was driving home the other day, listening to NPR, when I heard our local State Capital reporter, Austin Jenkins (shared by KUOW and KPLU), talking about how Facebook was teaming up with state Attorneys General to protect teenagers from, well, from themselves essentially.

Jenkins said, "When Washington state attorney general Rob McKenna speaks to school groups, he often asks a question: How many of you have been asked for your A/S/L? And a lot of hands will go up. Now most adult audiences don't know what that question means. But the kids all know that when they're asked their asl they're being asked for their age, sex and location ... probably by some creepy adult."

This is a lie. And Jenkins here (a) repeats the lie promulgated by cybernanny vendors and the attorneys general (b) continues to terrify parents that they simply don't understand the Internet well enough to protect their children and therefore, Something Must Be Done. Something to justify the AG's budget, I guess.

As well documented elsewhere, the infamous "one in five" statistic ("1 in 5 children has been sexually solicited online") in incredibly misleading. The actual statistic for solicitation is 19%, which is not-- quite-- one in five, but we'll let them have the rounding error. The real statistic is 3%, or more like one in thirty. In all the other cases that Department of Justice studied, the "child" (which included people as old as seventeen years) either deliberately joined a sexually suggestive chatroom and the solicitor did not know he was speaking to a minor, or (and this was by far the most common case, representing more than half of all come-ons) the minor was being addressed by another minor. Now that might indicate harrassment, and it might be something for parents to pay attention to, but it is not stranger danger or cause for alarm. The actual intersection of criminal intent and youthful stupidity is so low that there's simply not a statistical category for it.

By repeating the deceit that when a teenager gets an A/S/L he or she is "probably" being approached by a pedophile rather than your usual fellow horny teenager, Jenkins perpetuates the Myth of the Scary Internet and does neither teens or their parents any favors at all.

Tags: news, shrill, wowcwhabpc
Current Mood: annoyed

It's the 100th Anniversary of Mother's Day, and West Virginia, which was the birthplace and residence of Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother's Day, is having a huge to-do about it all. Jarvis apparently came to hate her creation: it had been intended as a Sunday off for Mothers, and instead it became commercialized in the United States with flowers and a card and gifts and things, and the godly Ms. Jarvis detested the way the moneyed interests had taken her blessing upon mothers everywhere and turned it into a curse. She did not want this day to be "happy"; it was supposed to be a sabbath, a time of rest for women and a respectful, faith-filled honoring.

Yeah, in America. Un-huh. Pull the other one.

As revealed yesterday, Kouryou-chan and Yamaraashi-chan spent the weekend over at the house of their friends, so when I picked them up this morning, I hurtled down to the International District to drop Yamaraashi-chan off wit her mother, then Kouryou-chan and I bought flowers and a card. Of course.

Tags: life
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Porcupine Tree, Voyage 34

It was Saturday, around 10:00am, when lisakit called to ask us if we wanted to go out to pancake breakfast with her and her roommate. "Sorry," I said. "We're already in downtown. We just dropped Kouryou-chan off at acting class, and now we're heading back down to the Montessori school for the monthly volunteer shift with the groundskeepers."

"It's Saturday!" Lisa said. "You guys are way too busy."

Anyway, yes, we went and did the monthly maintenance thing at Kouryou-chan's school. Gutters, weeds, watering, sweeping the whole usual deal. Lots of friendly faces; it's always nice to meet other parents who are out to help the school as well. Yamaraashi-chan was great all day, either helping or staying out of the way and playing with her Nintendo or reading a book. She rode with me when I went to fetch lunch.

We fetched Kouryou-chan from acting class, and when we got home around 3:00pm, Omaha said she didn't feel well and wanted to go lie down. She woke with a terrible cough and sore throat. Damn.

Omaha had arranged for the girls to spend some overnight time with friends so that she and I could go and be adults. It looked as if that was not going to happen. I still drove the girls up to their friends' house, and went home. Omaha insisted that she wasn't going to let go of our one chance every few weeks to go out, so we went.

We went to the Fisherman's Restaurant on Pier 57, which has a gorgeous view of the water, and with the $20 entertainment card we'd bought from Yamaraashi-chan's school as a fundraiser knocked $25 off the outrageous cost of the "Crab feast for 2," which, as it turned out, Omaha's stomach was not going to take. Pity that. The food was fabulous and there was too much of it for two, but Omaha's illness just kept her from enjoying it.

As we walked around the pier, we noticed that it was prom night. Lots of beautiful young women in prom dresses, all accompanied by young monkeys. Omaha said, "They are not monkeys!"

"Sure they are," I said. "All boys go through this. There's this period after puberty where they're beautiful young men, then they go through this monkey stage, and then they're handsome full-grown men. It's just kinda sad that there's this ritual we force on them where they have to wear a tacky tuxedo right when most of them are at the most ridiculous stage of monkeyhood. I'm pretty sure I looked just as monkeyish at my prom as they do now."

Omaha commented that one guy in an old pickup was staring at me and my kilt. She put her arm protectively around me and said, "I wish I'd thought to say something when he was looking. Like 'He's mine, you can't have him!'"

We went to the Cinerama to watch Iron Man (review later), and got home around 2. Considering that I had to be up at 8 to get the kids, we both went straight to bed.

Tags: life
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Iron Man OST, Extra Dry, Extra Olives

So, Friday I wandered up to Capitol Hill for my monthly haircut. While I was heading up there, I got an SMS from FallenPegasus asking me if where I was and if I wanted a ride down to my house. We hadn't had a Friday dinner together in a long time with the family. I told him my status and agreed to meet him at the salon at 5:15.

It was 5:00 when Lancer finished, so I wandered up Capitol Hill to find Body Circles. The bead had fallen out of my earring, and after three days of wandering around with a chunk of pencil eraser as an emergency fillin, it was time to get it fixed. Body Circles was gone but Laughing Buddha across the street was open, so I went there. They were really professional; the dude who did the bead refit put on gloves and a sterilized pair of pliers, and only charged me for the bead.

I caught up with FallenPegasus and he drove me back to the house. I appreciated the lift (you won't, though; there's another 1,000 words of Jake and Jinme lost to time). Omaha called and told us that she was out of hamburger meat, so we stopped at the grocery on the way home.

The house was nicely cleaned when I got there. I complimented Omaha and getting the girls to pick up all of their toys and stuff from the living room. While we started making dinner, Omaha told me that she had misjudged how many frozen fries ("chips" to the UK and Aussie types) we had and could I please go to the store and get more? "You have plenty of time," she said. "You can walk." She knows I like walking to the store.

So I walked to the store, then walked home... right into a surprise birthday party. Okay, lessee... a friend who used to visit often but now rarely does shows up to offer me a ride home, the house is suspiciously clean, my wife and daughters have been having huddled and hushed conversations ever since Wednesday, which was my birthday, and now she's trying to get me out of the house for a moment.

Just how clueless can I be?

Anyway, it was a lovely birthday party. The beautiful desirae showed up, as did kaelisinger and her adorable family. We sat, drank good wine, chatted. Omaha and the girls laid out a wonderful buffet of chips, watermelon and grapes, as well as a home-made carrot cake (yay!) and blissfully few presents.

It's a good thing, too, that not too many people showed up because we had to be in bed early. We're parents, after all.

Tags: life
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Filter, Hey Man, Nice Shot

Okay, I try not to do this twice a day, but if I don't do it now, by tomorrow you will have seen this in a thousand different places. Ever seen the fabulous WW2 film The Bunker? This is hilarious, violates Godwin's Law, and rated NSFW for adult language. Hillary's Downfall:

Tags: sighting
Current Mood: hysterical
Current Music: SweetS, Grow Into Shining Stars

Earlier this week I got on the bus to head home and sat in the back on one of the side benches. The back of the bus is a U-shaped compartment with five seats across the back, and three seats on each side above the wheel wells. Across from me are two pretty high-school girls sharing an I-pod. Next to me is a typical ponytailed software geek. He's reading a book on COBOL. On the back seat scrunched into the corner is a single woman, heavyset, mid-twenties, scowl.

Another office worker gets on, late 20s, lanky guy with reddish-blond hair and beard. Kinda cute, in my opinion. He sits on the back seat, leaving two empty seats between him and the woman with the scowl.

"What the Hell are you doing, sitting next to me!?" she shouts at him. "Don't touch me! Don't you fucking get near me!"

He startles, understandably-- I think we all did. He gets up and sits on the seat across from me, giving the rest of the room a nervous grin and swallow. The woman continues, "Yeah, you wanna sit next to the underage girls, doncha! Probably like it. You look at 'em and see all that skin! You're probably a rapist, aren't you? Goddamn, the world is full of perverts like you! Can't go anywhere without running into perverts like you!"

Holy Shiznit, this went on for the entire ten minutes it took for the bus to reach downtown Seattle.

This morning, when I went to get onto the bus, the woman behind me was drinking from a Starbucks cup. After I got on, the driver takes a look at her and says, "Ma'am, you can't get on the bus with that."

The woman, understandably, protests. Of course she can. The driver, to everyone's discomfort, immediately turns her volume to eleven: "You can't bring that drink on my bus! The rules say you can't! No, Ma'am, the rules are clear! You aren't bringing that drink on my bus!"

I'm looking at the rules for Metro Transit. They're posted right over the driver's head. Rules five and six read: "No eating, smoking or littering," and "No alcoholic beverages." This would seem to imply, pretty strongly, that non-alcoholic beverages like, uh, Seattle-brand Starbucks, are kosher.

The poor woman eventually dumped her coffee on the sidewalk before boarding.

Grief, is everyone dropping meth this week?

Tags: life
Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Kepa Junkera, Lurkoi