heroism everywhere

the dad: "tonight i went for a walk. you know how they have that wild mustang rescue?"

me: "yeah...?"

the dad: "well, i did some earthworm rescue of my own. i saved 'em from being squashed and i took 'em home for my compost bin. i'd imagine pretty soon we'll become a 501(c)(3) and start soliciting donations for our work."

options to help japan

with links to charity navigator pages for each organization so that you can read about how they spend money.

americares (four star charity navigator rating)

doctors without borders (four star charity navigator rating)

save the children (four star charity navigator rating)

world vision (four star charity navigator rating)

global giving (three star charity navigator rating)

the international medical corps (three star charity navigator rating)

operation usa (three star charity navigator rating)

oxfam (three star charity navigator rating)

peace winds japan (affiliated with mercy corps [three star charity navigator rating]; not evaluated by charity navigator itself; here is the organization's own financial statement)

the red cross (three star charity navigator rating)

second harvest japan (no charity navigator rating)

shelterbox (three star charity navigator rating)


also of interest:

google's personfinder tool
google's crisis response page


with love to japan.

equal marriage rights: not just an abstract question

courage campaign institute: ed watson and derence kernek on the importance of lifting the prop. 8 stay

california's prop 8, which took away the right of gay people to get married in the state of california, was a crushing political defeat for people who believe in equal rights. the california state supreme court is considering a challenge to prop 8, but not until after they take a six month summer vacation—sorry, for judges it's apparently called a summer recess—and in that time, some people have gotten the idea that the ban on marriages while the court case is being settled should be lifted.

and here's one example of why. ed and derence have been together for forty years, but ed has alzheimer's disease and it's progressing quickly. he and derence want to get married before ed's health deteriorates further. note that this video might make you cry.

but i think it's really important to consider that forbidding gay marriages is impacting the lives of real people. it's not just a fascinating legal matter with vast social and political implications. depriving people of equal rights harms them and our society. and it's categorically the wrong thing to do.

more stories and the opportunity to submit your own here.

if i lived in japan, i'd watch entirely too much television.

kittens in bowls!

(and don't forget this!)

i'm sure we can all agree.

if you can't park it, you sure as hell shouldn't be driving it.

quiz time!

sometimes the internet gives us mysterious gifts. like this picture. or this quiz. i don't know who made this, but i like their grasp on current events.

what a fun sixth birthday!

angry birds birthday cake

how did you get in here?

it’s always interesting to see the search results that lead people to c.w.a.j.a.?., and when i remember, i take a look. the overwhelming winner of this particular popularity contest, every single time, is a post about pincurls that i dashed off nearly five years ago that the internet seems to love. so there are lots of pincurl-related searches, like “bobby pin curls,” “how to sleep in pin curls,” “pincurls for long hair,” “pincurls long hair,” “pincurling long hair,” and “pin curls with curling hair” (and about a million other permutations of this search.)

but sometimes they’re way funnier. like “Don’t worry The internet is here,” which has come up more than once, “Land Before Time porn,” which makes me feel kind of weird, “all kinds of bears,” which i would also like to see, and “grafting paw paws techinique,” which i know i’m totally unqualified to comment upon. oh, and “don’t like that.” i understand. sometimes i don’t like that either.

dan deacon show=summer camp for grownups

last night i went to a dan deacon show. i was tired. i am tired. lately, i have been tired. last night was no exception. there were some openers, so by the time it was dan's turn i was pretty tired and also tired of being stepped on and pushed by people way taller than me.

but then his set started, and it was really...fun. i've been to a lot of shows in my life, i think, and i like live music, but rarely have i had so much fun at a concert. a nice time, a good time, even a great time, but a fun time?

every now and then he'd give us directions (creating, for example, a dance contest where my side of the room had to "dance like jurassic park" and the opposite side was to "dance like what you wish the movie avatar was actually about.") and just about everyone enthusiastically went along with it (even when the activities involved kneeling on the beer-soaked floor.)

it was during the song where everyone was supposed to dance under the bridge made by the arms of a few volunteers, then emerge from the other side to add their own arms to the bridge that i really noticed it. i was outside, watching strangers dance beneath me when i had the strong urge to compliment them. and just as i was feeling pretty amused by that, someone said, "great job! thank you for being so strong for me!"

and all the dancing and activities and silliness really made me think of summer camp, and the many times that i've seen junior highers or high school kids who were too cool for everything forget about that and just have uncomplicated, unself-conscious fun.

it was great.

you know what i like?

liberated billboards.

oh freecycle, you make me so curious sometimes.

"I need some mesh bags, the kind used for onions and oranges. Color unimportant. The larger the better. Can pick up."

"We are looking for a small porcelaine dol, not more than 10 inches toll."

"OFFER: Eb Helicon.
This Eb Helicon needs bracing work, and spring work in the second valve."

CIVILIZATION COSTS MONEY: PAVED ROADS

while there have long been people who don't think that they should have to pay taxes and who believe that there is too much government interference in the life of most americans, i am profoundly frustrated at the way that this sentiment is gaining popularity.

at least in part because of the continued presence of the teabaggers tea party in american political life, i keep reading about (and talking to) people who insist that "the government" meddles too much in their affairs and takes too much of their money.

recently i was talking to someone who had spent the last few years on unemployment, and whose spouse retired early from a federal job, receiving a substantial severance package. also, the federal retiree had always held the insurance for the entire family (they raised several children.) however, despite what seemed to me like several dramatic examples of interaction with the government being the only thing standing between them and total financial ruination, this person vehemently announced to me that the government had "no business" besides national defense, and expressed strong wishes toward a total cessation of all government activity not directly related to national defense.

and it has really gotten me thinking about this whole "no taxes, government bad" approach to policy. while few people actually enjoy paying taxes, rational grownups should be able to see that taxes are not, in fact, the result of a power-mad, bullying government stealing money from defenseless citizens, but actually a reasonable way to pay for things we want and need. markers of civilization, actually, which sounds hyperbolic at first but really isn't.

here's something that taxes pay for:
1. paved roads. i read a horrible article about a 23 year old woman in alabama who ran over a pothole and dislodged a chunk of highway that went through the windshield of the truck behind her and killed the woman in the front seat, who was riding with her husband and their two small children. no one was doing anything wrong; the first driver was cleared of any wrongdoing. she hadn't been speeding, she was driving safely, they road simply hadn't been maintained. the state says they can't afford it. now the first driver is wracked with guilt, and the husband is a widower, a single dad with two small kids. because there wasn't money for highway repairs.

so "tea party patriots," are you ready to volunteer your time for road crews? or should someone set up toll booths all over the place to fund roadwork? (followup question: should that be the government? or a private company collecting money? if a private company, will there be any oversight? how do you propose to supervise this effort without government involvement? does the mention of tolls constitute a "tax" that will get you all worked up?)

to be continued.

lack of context leads to unintentional hilarity

frequently when i'm on the telephone with the nephews' mama, she says funny things. sometimes this is on purpose (she is a pretty funny lady, and we've known each other so long that we have plenty of inside jokes and references that wouldn't mean much to anyone else but that crack us up.)

and i like it when she makes me laugh intentionally, i really do.

sometimes much funnier, though, are the times when what she says is totally reasonable for the circumstances in which she finds herself (and the nephews), but totally hilarious to people (me) without the same context.

let me demonstrate:

"you guys can play baby all you want but you're not going to be in the fridge."

of course, since i'm a good friend, i try to support her parenting by not laughing loudly while she's disciplining the children.

sometimes i fail.

sometimes certain names work better in ad campaigns than others

photographed by the ever-patient captain awesome (who never seems to mind when we're on the way somewhere and then all of the sudden i really want him to take a picture of something), and who comments: "christian cancer...is the worst kind."

dear flu,

great news! you can go now.

never let anyone try to tell you that you won't learn about cartilaginous fish in astronomy class.

tutor nick, on hammerhead sharks: "those guys can calculate distances much better than we can do because the eyes are so much further away."

i have recently had an important revelation about the future.

flying cars are a terrible idea.

i know that they're supposed to represent the awesome inventions that science has in store for us and the triumph of technology and progress...but have you ever really stopped to think about it for a minute?

i did for the first time yesterday, when i was reflecting on how bad lots of people seem to be at driving their normal, non-flying cars. i've started riding my bike just about everywhere recently; i don't really drive much anymore (and when i do it's only a non-flying car) and riding the bus isn't usually much faster than riding my bike. and it costs money. and it doesn't burn calories. and it sometimes involves standing around outside for a long time.

all this time on my bike has given me a lot of chances to interact with drivers. and many of them are awful at driving. it's really helped me to appreciate the car-free parts of the city—i love the greenways and bike paths that make it possible for me to get places without much car traffic.

but it's also made me realize that we are far from ready for flying cars. can you imagine what it would be like? it's bad enough to have to deal with cars in the same plane as you when you're riding a bike—but from now on, when i have a close call with someone i'll remember: at least they didn't have the opportunity to crowd me from above!

science, i own you an apology. i'm sorry for being disappointed in you for all these years for your failure to produce flying cars. i think you really have our best interests at heart. please don't ever make flying cars happen, ever. teleportation devices, on the other hand, are long overdue.

"heartbeats" by the knife, or covered by josé gonzález: both excellent. happy new year!

"heartbeats" the knife


"heartbeats" josé gonzález

i apologize for the inevitable ad for bp's youtube channel where you can watch lots of pr bs about how they're "making it right." do they really think we're that stupid?

free advice for bp: you "make it right" by actually making it right, not by spending millions of dollars on a media blitz in which you talk about making it right. thanks for ruining everyone's ocean.

bonus video because it is really fun and to avoid ending on a cranky note:


"heartbeats" josé gonzález and a lot of bouncy balls in san francisco.

open office has a superior sense of the absurd, or at least a very weird spellcheck matching formula.

while unpacking a box tonight i found a list i started of bizarre open office spellcheck suggestions. at one time in my life i was trying to write papers for school using open office since i didn't have a copy of word. this actually turned out to be rather difficult; classmates couldn't open my attachments, i didn't have powerpoint, formatting was nearly impossible, and there was an exciting "crash for no good reason and don't save any changes" feature.

i hear that open office has gotten a lot more stable and user friendly these days, and i realize that free software has certain tradeoffs and i should be appreciative of what was available to me, but one night i was up really late working hard on a paper and i started to feel like spellcheck was messing with me on purpose.

this was the order in which spellcheck suggested these words. and i feel i should mention that each of these words were completely unrelated to the actual word i'd misspelled (or the term with which the open office dictionary was not acquainted)—like completely unrelated. like none of the same letters, and nothing approaching the same number of letters:

suboptimal (okay, that's a reasonable word at least)
buttermilk (funny because it's random)
electroencephalographic (what?)
parallelepiped (i give up.)

wisdom from b.f.h.

i just received the following text message:

"I've learned the hard way that there is no cure for glitter herpes, all I can do is manage the outbreak."

ordinary conversations between children and their parents become funny when roles are reversed.

walking home tonight, a friend and i passed a book store display. she pointed out the box of mad libs, and then behind us we heard the following exchange:

dad: "ooh! mad libs!"
kid: "you already have those at home."
dad: "but these are on sale!"
kid: "ugh."

belated happy blogday present

so it appears that i missed c.w.a.j.a.?.'s blogday by six days. i'm a negligent blogger, sorry. but don't worry, c.w.a.j.a.?. i got you a present. i'm pretty sure this is the best picture on the internet right now.

i would like to give credit to whomever made this masterpiece of internet caption art, but since there are 250,000 search results for just watering the owl i don't think that's possible. thank you, mysterious internet caption art master. thank you all the same.

and thanks to you, dear reader, for reading and for commenting. this is still fun.

"MOST CAREERS PAY MONEY." (i love xtranormal bike videos!)

"amy and steevo discuss thanksgiving"

oddly poetic spam

it has been a long time since i really paid much attention to my spam folder, but very recently i've taken over a class right before their final (a situation somewhat akin to adopting a 17 1/2 year old) and i wanted to be sure that i didn't miss any messages from students.

so i was scrolling through all the offers for various drugs related to my manhood, and i saw this subject like: "halifax census antiquarian"

it seemed pretty enough to share with you all, but you're on your own if you're searching for v|aagr.a.

sorry.

earworm alert! or: that's really the only way to wish someone the best.

cee lo green, "forget you"


cee lo green, "f*** you"

this song is stuck in my head most of the time these days (both versions, in case you were curious.) i thought i'd share the catchiness with you too. also, as a special bonus:


gwyneth paltrow on glee, "forget you"