Facebook and the Death of Blogging

Wow. So my dear brother Sam has shamed me into posting something here, and good for him for doing so. It's been nearly a year since my last post. I could come up with all kinds of excuses (and no doubt will in the near future), but suffice it to say that two kids is a whole lot more than one more than one kid (that sentence does not contain a typo). I've even let my blogging slack off considerably at my other home. Does this mean I'll pick up the slack now? I could promise that, but it would only make me feel slightly bad when I fail to live up to it.

Anywho, it occurred to me that there might be another culprit for my lack of blogging (and others' lacks, as well) (others' lacks? Really?). Let's face it, this past year has been rife with topics for ample discussion, almost more so than the previous year, what with a Democratic congress and the anti-Christ in the Oval Office and all. And yet getting the motivation to post something here or elsewhere has been my major bar to blog-worthy productivity. But then it struck me: I joined Facebook this year.

For those of you who don't use it (good for you!), Facebook allows one to post "status messages" that are visible to a select group of people, typically one's "Facebook friends". For those that actively participate in Facebooking, these status messages represent, for many, the lifeblood of the activity. Many people simply use the status updates to give a short, trite explanation of what they're doing or how they're feeling at that exact moment: So-and-so is baking his shoes. Who's-her-face is integrating Bessel functions. Joe Somebody has a case of the Mondays. And so on, ad nauseam.

Others, however, like to be a bit more declarative and informative in their status updates. For example, this morning, I posted the following status update:


And there we have the problem. From that one post, which was politically relevant, but both pithy and snarky, I received 20 comments in one afternoon. In short, I received all the adulation (such as it is) that blogging garners me, without having to write an in-depth, well-thought-out blog post, and I know it was viewed by many of my "friends", which I can't guarantee in the blog world since such posts would be in the wild-and-woolly blogosphere rather than the nice, contained format of Facebook status updates.

And this is a bad thing, I think.

See, before Facebook, an idea would pop in my head: a witty observation, a clever turn of phrase, a silly remark, etc. With no immediate outlet, that idea would marinate in my brain for awhile, accreting to itself more heft, until the idea turned into an itch. This itch would make itself known to my fingers, who would then go and type it up on the blog. But in the Facebook era, the glimmer itself has the outlet of the status update: and thus, my ideas never get the chance to mature into full posts, remaining in their larval stage.

What is the resolution to this conundrum? I'm not sure. I think I might be verging toward New Year's Resolution territory here. Perhaps I will self-impose a ban on putting anything meaningful in my status updates, to force myself to blog more. Perhaps I'll allow myself to update my status, but only AFTER a blog about the topic. Maybe I should pimp my blog more on my facebook page. But after it's all said and done, I should probably commit something into print so as to be held accountable for my productivity, so: I hereby solemnly swear that I shall put forth some amount of effort into considering the possibility of attempting to reverse the precipitous decline in my blogging output in some manner consistent with my own personal principles, notwithstanding any foreseen or unforeseen circumstances which may or may not hinder said effort. And that's a promise you can take to the bank!

I Has A Son!

Isaac Leopoldo Thompson, born at 8:45 a.m. this very day, weighing in at 2184 drams, and measuring 5,397,000,000 angstroms in length from head to toe! Behold:

Mother and child are doing wonderfully. Father is a bit tired, but obviously alert enough to blog and convert into obscure units of measure.

Bigger News

Tonight, I purchased, at the crazy-low price of $6.99/lb (thanks, Mr. Wegman!), three live maine lobsters, and cooked 'em up and ate 'em. I wish I were a photo-food-blogger, as then I would have had the foresight to photograph them and post pictures. Turns out the key to awesomeness is to steam them in water with a highers salinity than the lobster itself, to prevent osmosis leaching the precious salty fluids from the lobsters. Fan-lobster-tastic Lobstrawesomeness (ed. -- thought of a better word after the fact) was the result! In celebration, a relevant video:



Oh, and something about having a baby boy in probably the next day or two.

I Regret To Inform You

It is with my sincere apologies that I must inform you all that, as cute as you think your own child is, mine is just that much cuter and more adorable. For proof of this claim, please observe the following:

New Things a-Brewin'!

"Last Post October 1st"? Really? That's gotta be a typo. I'll have to have a word with the Google/Blogger people about that.

But seriously, folks, I've had a rather overlong, political-funk-induced blogging drought. I hope I still have a reader or two, but if not, I'll just have to garner a bunch of new ones with unparalleled productivity and rapier wit!

OR, I can do what my dear friends and fellow bloggers over at Mazurland have done, twice now, and bring in some fresh meat new blood to stimulate the blogging atmosphere (how well's that workin' out for ya, guys? Ok, seriously, I'm gonna get my backside in gear over there too, I promise!)! And at long last, my dear, globe-trotting big brother Sam has finally relented against the neverending onslaught of my shrill whining and begging, and agreed to grace this place with his presence! So very soon, we shall see the first of what I hope are many posts from Brother Sam (and me, of course...)!

Enjoy!

Marvels of the Modern Age: Or, Adventures In Supreme Nerdery

Blogging 'round these parts has, admittedly, been weak lately. It's politics -- as in, I'm fed up with 'em, so am suffering from a bit of intellectual fatigue. Don't worry for me; I'll snap out of it soon, I'm sure.

Anywho, this past weekend, I had an interesting experience that I'd like to relate to my audience: I attended the wedding of a friend who I had never actually met. What's that, you say? How could such a thing happen?

Well, Some of my readers probably know that I am a big "gaming" nerd, of both the offline and the online varieties. The offline pursuits are largely isolated engagements, much like reading a book or going for a quiet walk. But the online games are very much social events. The one on which I spend most of my scant gaming time, The World of Warcraft (celebrity endorsements here, here, and for you Europhiles, here), is in particular notorious for this aspect (known in some circles as World of Warchat). Now, I've never been a particularly social creature, so I keep my virtual attachments even fewer than my "real life" (hereafter RL) ones.

However, through a RL good friend and coworker whom I shall call "Jeff" (and for whom I am known as The Enabler, for my tendency to sucker him into addictive pursuits such as online gaming), I met this other guy, Brad, while playing WoW. Jeff and Brad were old college buddies, a perfectly non-nerd way to know one another. Anywho, Brad, single at the time and very much a night owl, quickly surpassed both Jeff and I with his addiction to the game, and was thus on-line at all hours, available for talking and joint playing and whatnot (and by "talking", I actually mean "talking", as voice chat has long been a feature of this game, both through third-party clients and, more recently, in-game as well). And as people talk on long dungeon crawls and raids into the wee hours of the morning, people get to know each other, so that, before long, I could genuinely call Brad a friend as well.

Now, I enjoy (okay, perhaps "endure") a strained relationship with WoW. I began abusing the drug playing the game back in January of 2005 (Mrs. Red Shirt's worst-lack-of-foresight-in-a-birthday-present gift, ever), a scant 3 months or so after its initial release. I played with extreme casualness (which I would define as less than an hour per day) at first. I kept playing intermittently in this fashion through the summer of 2005, until we learned that my wife was carrying the awesomeness that would become The Wee One. Far from stopping my addiction, this served to intensify it, as Mrs. Red Shirt, in the later stages of her pregnancy, would retire around 8:00 pm, enabling me to play to my heart's content (going to bed around 1:00 AM was not terribly uncommon for me). Even after the Wee One was born, I kept playing, although considerably less so. What with frequent naps on the part of both Mrs. Red Shirt and the Wee One, I could spare time here and there.

It became too much of a juggle, however, around the summer of 2006, so that marked my first "retirement", to many fond and understanding farewells on the part of guild-mates (yes, I was in a guild), which lasted all of, say, six months or so. The makers of the game were releasing an "expansion pack", full of new content and abilities and such, so I just had to experience it all for myself. My former guild welcomed me back, and there was Brad (with whom I had uniquely (among all fellow gamers) maintained email contact during my absence), and my habit continued apace. I also note here that my wife again bought me the expansion pack for my birthday. When will she learn?!? Anywho, I continued playing for another six months, through the summer of 2007, at which point, realizing that I could not commit the time to experience what they call "end game content" (which requires hours of continuous playtime and dedication to "grinding" for the more powerful items in the game), I again "retired", having become bored with the game once again.

And like all addictions, I couldn't keep away from it for long. In the winter of this year, I discovered "pirate servers" -- free servers offered by people of varying integrity and malicious intent, often "hacked" to enable players access to free (both in the time and monetary sense) in-game items and money. Of course, these being hack jobs, they only served as methadone to my smack habit, and very soon thereafter I required "the real stuff" in the form of "retail servers" (i.e., those pay-servers officially sanctioned and run by the parent company, Blizzard Entertainment).

Being back on the sauce got me thinking about people, so I emailed Brad to see what was up with him. "I'm getting married!", he says. Mercifully, not to any of the unsightly female trolls that attempt to woo male gamers (I mean that in RL-terms, of course, rather than reference to the fact that one can play as an actual female troll in-game. It's a well-known fact that only ugly chicks play WoW, unlike all us handsome dudes that spend our time there), but to a long-time RL acquaintance of his, with whom he had recently become romantically involved.

So, fast-forwarding to last week, I attended his wedding in scenic (and powerless, thanks to Hurricane Ike) Dayton, OH. The only picture I had to go on was of him in his pasty-chubby years, and it turns out that he had gotten into shape in the intervening years and had recently gotten a tan, so the only point at which I was sure it was him who I was seeing was when the vows were actually being spoken. It's certainly odd to have a first-time face-to-face meeting with a friend at the receiving line of their wedding, but hey, those are the times we live in.

Two final notes: 1) one of his groomsmen was a fellow WoW player I had met online but not in RL. Through him we established that I was "patient zero": I encouraged Jeff to play, Jeff encouraged Brad to play, and Brad encouraged this guy to play, thus completing the delicate chain of nerd life. 2) Brad came over to chat during a respite from dancing at the reception, trying to encourage several of us to dance. I played my "no dance partner" excuse card (Mrs. Red Shirt being with the Wee One in California at the time), jokingly hinting that unless he were available, I would be a no-go, to which he responded with remarkable glibness, "That's fine, I've always thought of you as a female Night Elf priest anyhow!" (playing off the fact that I spent much of my time playing as... yes, a female Night Elf priest). Trust me. If you're a nerd, that little anecdote is high-freakin'-larious.

When Celebrities Make Good

All of us have heroes. Anyone who says he has no heroes is either lying or a very spectacular narcissist for whom his only hero is himself. And for must of us, some of those heroes happen to be "celebrities", in one way or another. Now I don't just mean "celebrity" in the rock star/hollywood sense, but in the more fundamental sense of the root word, as in someone whose very existence we collectively celebrate.

And of course, as often happens, because those celebrities are in the public eye, they often fall from grace. It might be a politician embroiled in a scandal, or an actor/musician who says/does something remarkably stupid, or sports figure who commits a crime. But what about those celebrities who we see as personal heroes, fearing all the while that we'll learn something about them we find distasteful, some sort of "deal breaker", about whom we then discover even greater things, perhaps unrelated to what made them our heroes in the first place? Such things rarely happen.

Of course, I wouldn't be writing this if it had not happened to me. One of my own personal heroes, for a variety of reasons, is Food Network host Alton Brown, of the show Good Eats. Never seen his show? If you like food, or you like science, you're missing out in a big way. The gist of it, for the uninformed, is that, in each episode, Mr. Brown takes a particular food topic -- possibly a single ingredient, possibly a certain type of dish, or even a method of cooking -- and delves not only into how to cook this particular dish, or how to perform that particular task with utmost care and precision, but also, the exact nitty-gritty science of why the methods he describes are the correct methods. I'm talking physics and chemistry here, not just vague generalizations, including prop models of molecules and chemical reactions. And he does it all with a cheesy irreverence and sense of humor that prevents the show from every being boring to even the most uninitiated viewer.

Since I am a fairly hard-core "foodie", and a big science nerd as well, you can understand how I appreciate such a program, now in its eighth-ish season (too lazy to do a check here). We (Mrs. Red Shirt and I) even own his books, I'm Just Here For The Food, its imaginatively-titled sequel, I'm Just Here for More Food, and the nigh-indispensable Gear For Kitchen. I suppose the only criticism one could level at Mr. Brown is "get a grip, man!" as he tends to be a bit over-the-top in exactitude, but it's all for his art, clearly (one is reminded of the old Phil-Hartman-portrayed "Anal Retentive Chef" SNL skit). But he occasionally adds caveats pointing this out, so all is forgiven.

Anywho. Just last night Mrs. Red Shirt and I were watching his episode on Omelettes (only 10 easy steps to the perfect omelette!). A discussion between us about nitwit celebrities came up, in the wake of the British host of the MTV VMA show the previous night begging us to vote for Barack Obama and ridiculing our "retarded cowboy president" (and you all know how much I value the American political opinions of foreign celebrities!). One of us pointed out that one thing we appreciated about Alton Brown, who happened to be a celebrity, was that he didn't foist extraneous opinions on the audience, sticking to his subject matter of expertise. I followed that up by saying something to the effect of "Yeah, I assume he's probably a liberal twit, since he's on TV. But he treats the audience with respect, so it wouldn't bother me if he was."

Of course, not knowing whether he was a genuine liberal twit or not wouldn't stand, so I hopped on that most trusted and respected source of all celebrity biographical information, Wikipedia, and pointed by browser (seriously, how did "pointing one's browser" make its way into our lexicon, anyhow? It makes no sense!) to Alton Brown's entry. In the text, under "Personal Life", what do my eyes behold?

Brown is a born-again Christian and a member of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia.

. Didst mine eyes deceive me? Fortunately, the entry contained a reference after this factoid, which led to a 2007 article in "Atlanta Magazine" featuring an interview with "AB", as he is sometimes known. Buried down at the bottom of the article, which is totally worth a read to any fan of his:

In 1992, Brown says, he found God, or maybe God found him, but he blundered away until he became a born-again Christian. "The single biggest life-changing thing for me is I just got baptized last year. Everything else pales in comparison to acceptance of Christianity. That's number one." He keeps a Bible in his dressing room now, not to show he's pious but because he needs the help. "At Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, baptism is a full-immersion thing, and we joke that the water didn't spit me back out."

Although he was on the cover of the August 2006 issue of the inspirational magazine Guideposts for a story about the connection between food and faith, Brown is not about to start a career as a celebrity proselytizer. "I keep praying I'll be able to do my job and I'll be useful," he says.

Wow. Not only is one of my biggest heroes "Christian" in some sense, but he's an authentic, born-again Christian (a Baptist, no less!), full of the newness of life in Christ. That explains why he hadn't offended my oh-so-delicate sensibilities! He's One Of Us! I was actually excited by this revelation, so much so that I even had a difficult time sleeping (well, the tea I had had right before bedtime probably contributed to that just as much, but still).

So yeah, I'm pretty jazzed about that.

Wisdom of the Ages

Jay Nordlinger posts the following quote, in response to Slow Joe Biden's execrable remark that "these times require more than a good soldier, they require a wise leader" (directed at McCain, of course), courtesy of Thucydides*:

"The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

I'm not terribly well-read in the Classics, and I consider this a major failing of my own education (the other being the lack of any "shop" type classes, although both of these are failings of modern pedagogy as a whole, I think). In fact, apart from some high school Homer and some Julius Caesar, I'm not "read" at all in that realm. But clearly there is much wisdom to be gained from such an exposure, so perhaps it's time I rectify that glaring omission in my own studies.

As for the content of what Biden said: okay, show me one genuinely wise thing Obama has done or said in his vast, expansive career. Just one! Please! That's all I'm asking...

*Update: Okay, maybe it was more recent than Thucydides. But I think my points still stand.

It's A Boy!

Mrs. Red Shirt and I just got back from her 20-week ultrasound this very morning. And the news is in: we're having a baby boy! We're very excited about it. I know my brother is upset, as he wanted to have the first boy, being the eldest himself, but the early bird gets the worm, as they say! (that was a none-too-subtle jab at you to start makin' babies, bro!).

A confession: I'm glad my first child was a girl, as I was able to get all ooey-gooey with her in completely unrestrained fashion. I have a bit of trepidation when it comes to boys, as my interests veer heavily toward "geek", away from the traditional "masculine" outlets of sports, hunting, fishing, fixin' things, etc. Thus, I am concerned that I will not be able to properly "butch up" my son in a way that I think is proper. Fortunately, my son will have no fewer than six uncles, including a couple grizzled war veterans, some stellar athletes, at least one gung-ho outdoor sportsman, and all of them great, doting uncles so far. So little Isaac Leopoldo will be the manliest super-geek you ever did see!

I provide the following snapshot as evidence of overwhelming butchness on at least the part of my brother: his gun collection, posted with his permission (it's smaller than I remember it being, but living in Commiefornia for a couple years will do that to you):

News FromThe Front

Blog posting from the airport! I doubt some other jokers I know are so awesome and jet-setting… Well, okay, you called me out. While I’m writing this from the airport, I'm not about to shell out the six bucks for two hours of wifi that the airport is “offering” me. I use that word advisedly, as a Mafioso might “offer” protection to a poor street vendor.

Anywho. As fans of My Hero Jonah Goldberg™ are probably aware, there is much reportage of the various sales, positions (both in the charts and quite physically), and availability of his first (and super-awesome) book, Liberal Fascism. A recurrent theme of said reportage is the general lack of availability, or conspicuously poor placement, of the book at typically liberal-leaning booksellers such as Barnes & Noble or Borders Books.

Well, I can now provide some similar “news from the front”: Here in Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC, the tide appears to be turning. In the most-prominently featured section of the store is the “Social Science & Politics” section of books, directly in front of the register. Most of these books are in hardcover or large-size trade paperback form. To conserve space, of course, most of these books are stacked spine-out, although a selection of books are featured cover-out, presumably to jack up sales of those titles. At any rate, the choice of which books are emphasized thus provide insight into the political bents (or lack thereof) of the bookseller. And what books do I see cover out? Well, as you’ve probably already figured out, there’s Liberal Fascism, smiling mustachioedly in all its mock-Hitlerian glory. Of course, directly above it was Richard A. Clarke’s presumably execrable new book, the overly-wordy title of which was some generic slamming indictment of the current political regime that I forgot as soon as I read it. But two rows down? Douglas Feith’s book. One row above Clarke’s book? John Bolton’s. Scanning the spine-out books, too, I discovered a fairly and remarkably well-balanced selection (Bill O’Reilly’s book was directly adjacent to Keith Olbermann’s. I felt like warning the poor sales clerk of the impending rift in the space-time continuum that might arise from such a prolonged juxtaposition of two opposing bombasts, but decided against it. The black hole would probably gain critical mass during off hours anyhow).

Finally, my eyes spied my intended objective: My Other Hero Mark Steyn™’s America Alone, in trade paperback form with new introduction and super-awesome cover blurb “Soon To Be Banned In Canada”. Spine-out, of course, but we can’t win every battle. I purchased it more for the sake of buying a book of conservative importance at an airport Borders than any other reason, although I have been wanting to read it since it first came out. I’ve only read the first paragraph of the brand-spankin’-new introduction, and already given it several hearty internal guffaws. Hopefully it’ll give me plenty to blog about, if perhaps a bit behind-the-curve.

Experimental Food Diary

Mrs. Red Shirt has been out of town along with the Little Red Shirt, visiting her family while I slave away during our busy time getting ready for a field test. Whenever the missus is out of town, I get creative in the kitchen (Mrs. Red Shirt doesn't like it when I cook not because the food isn't tasty, but because I'm a messy cook). It was from these experiments that I learned last year to cook Thai Red Curry, which is now one of my personal specialties (one the wife even lets me cook from time to time!), so it's all for the better.

Anywho, what follows is a post facto diary about my current series of experiments.

Wednesday: Pepper-crusted salmon with green beans. Best. Salmon. Ever. I take one salmon filet with the skin still on one side. I liberally coat each non-skin surface with finely ground black pepper, and a dash of kosher salt. Then, in a small non-stick pan, I heat a couple tsp. of oil on medium heat. I drop in the salmon, skin-side down, and let it just sit there for about 6-7 minutes. Then I turn, and let each of the other three sides cook for 1-2 minutes each. The pepper crusts up and seals in all the tasty flavor. I garnish with lime, which adds just the right bite to each... well, bite. I like doing this one while the wife is away because she prefers her salmon a bit more well done than I like mine, and I have a hard time getting more than one piece "just right" if the criteria are different. The green beans, with a light asian sauce, were courtesy of Wegman's. Complemented very nicely with a Pete's Wicked Strawberry Blonde (don't laugh; they're tasty!).

Thursday: Pho Bo, a Vietnamese rice-noodle soup. This was a favorite of mine when I lived in Seattle, and there's only one place in town that serves it here, where it is under-portioned and over-priced. To do it "for real" requires the boiling of beef bones for many hours to produce just the right broth. Having neither beef bones nor many hours available, I found a recipe online that called for properly-seasoned beef broth instead, and tried this. Let me just cut this little story short with two words: culinary fiasco. Actually, it was the worst thing I've ever cooked. I couldn't find completely unseasoned beef broth, so the resulting mixture did not even really approximate the desired result. Way too salty, AND I apparently ran out of hoisin sauce, which is typically served in Pho restaurants as an add-in which sweetens the typically salty broth a bit. So the result tasted pretty awful. Which makes me sad, because I was hoping to use this to provide myself with Pho on a regular basis.

Friday: Left-over stir-fry. Actually very tasty. I combined some chili-garlic paste, cilantro, and scallions as the base, and stir-fried that with some soy-sauce-marinated thin-cut sirloin, and served it over rice with a side of kimchi (I always buy kimchi, a spicy Korean fermented cabbage dish, when the wife is out of town, because she can't stand the way it smells, which is, admittedly, quite pungent). This turned out vastly better than the previous night's meal -- actually, worth preserving in recipe form. I ended up not using the cilantro the previous night (cilantro is a common Pho garnish), so it flavored the beef quite well. I only had a small amount of the chili-garlic paste left, so it didn't overpower. The scallions and cilantro were the primary flavors, which complement each other very nicely. Accompanied by Spaten Optimator (pardon my lack of umlauts), a nice dark German beer.

Saturday: Pizza and beer. Papa John's "All the Meats" and some more Optimator. (Sorry -- "guy's night in", with pizza, beer, and Settlers of Catan -- no time to cook!).

Sunday: Italian-breadcrumb-encrusted fried "fresh" mozzarella slices. I took one of those big logs of "buffalo" mozzarella (the kind you typically find as big balls floating in water), sliced off some "medallions" of cheese, coated them in Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs (using buttermilk as the binding agent -- I swear by the stuff for all my frying needs!), and fried each side in a relatively small amount of oil for maybe 30 seconds apiece. Very tasty, although I had the oil too hot, which had the two-fold effect of a) setting off my fire alarm, and b) causing the outsides to get very hot while leaving the innermost cheese still slightly cool, which was not a particularly pleasant effect. Next time I'll lower the oil temperature and let them cook longer to yield thorough heating without meltage.

Monday: Sushi! I've never tried to make sushi before, so this will be interesting. It's what I had planned the previous night, but the rice I had had gone stale, AND the sushi-vinegar was expired. Oh, and the local fishmonger was all out of sushi-grade fish. That's still a factor, but I figure, for my first attempt, I ought to take it easy, so I'll be making avocado and cucumber rolls. I'll update if all goes well.

Update: Sushi was a rousing success, and surprisingly easy. I bought a bamboo roller and some sushinori (the seaweed wrapper) (chef's note: buy the cheap, separate ones (about $2 each for the roller and a pack of a dozen or so wrappers), NOT the "sushi kit", which is a pathetic ripoff). I used some pre-made "sushi rice seasoning" that Wegman's sells over by their sushi section, which is really just rice vinegar, sugar, and salt. Anywho, I cooked the rice, about 2 cups uncooked, and spread it out in a glass dish and poured about half a cup of the vinegar mixture over the (approx) 4 cups of cooked rice and let it cool. Then I sliced up some cucumber, avocado, shrimp, and shallots and combined them in varying ways in about 5 or 6 rolls. I even made a spicy shrimp roll with a squirt of Sriracha that turned out to be very tasty. My favorite, though, was the shallot-and-avocado roll, which had a creamy and subtle flavor thanks to the avocado, with the shallot adding a nice oniony kick. A dash of soy sauce and a pinch of wasabi later, I was stuffed, with lots of leftovers.

Thus we are at an end to my temporary bachelorhood (I fly out to the field test in a couple days), and my culinary experimentation. Final score: 3 hits, one miss, and one old standard that never fails (the salmon). And pizza-and-beer.

Another Milestone of Thirty!

So almost exactly five months ago, I commented upon a milestone in my life involving the number 30. Well, 30 must be my lucky number, as today I've hit another milestone: Over the last year, I have finally reached my goal and lost (as of this morning) 30 lbs! That's right, the Only Red Shirt was formerly something of a porker, but now I'm down below even my svelte college (and subsequent wedding) weight.

I'll probably go a few more lbs. I'm going out on a field exercise for work, which means a per diem, which means eating rich food every night. So I'll need a bit of a buffer. But still, this marks the first time since college, and only the second time of my adult life, that I've been within "ideal weight" ranges by any reckoning. And since it took me a full year and an actual lifestyle change (eating smarter and getting some light exercise routinely), I can probably keep it off. And now I don't feel like such a fat white lump around my hot wife.

Next stop: the Chinese Buffet!

Light Blogging

Just to let my loyal readers know, blogging will probably be light for the next few weeks, relatively speaking. And no, not because of my other engagement, where blogging will also be light. Work and home life (moreso work) are pretty much brewing a perfect storm (not necessarily in a bad way), so something's gotta give. I'll try to stick to my at-least-once-a-week rule, though, so fear not! Feel free to browse my older posts (comin' on 3 years worth now!) and leave some comments in them. It's fun in a completely narcissistic way to go back and read what I wrote a while ago anyhow!

A True Conversation This Very Day

Here are some (almost) completely unedited snippets from a series of emails I exchanged with one of my oldest and dearest friends today, who I will call "Cliff", because that's his name:

Me:

<snip>

Oh, in other news, thanks for reminding me to tell you something: WE'RE PREGNANT AGAIN!!!

And based on <Mrs. Redshirt>'s calculations, the baby will be due at almost precisely the new year. I'll induce on Dec. 31 if I have to for tax purposes. Interestingly, that means that the baby could be born on Christmas, New Years Day, my birthday, or even your birthday, depending on how things go. Craziness.

Cliff:

Congratulations! And by the statement, "we're pregnant" I assume you mean Yoanna and not you because if you're pregnant too, then I'm really frightened.

For what it is worth, my mom still reminds me to this very day that I was due on December 26 and I cost her the 1977 tax deduction. She just won't let it go…

Me:

Well, that's a funny story involving a rare radioactive isotope... on the plus side, though, I can also shoot laser beams out of my eyeballs.

Cliff:

You need to stop hanging out in the nuclear chemistry lab…especially now that you are pregnant.

Me:

Actually, I was bitten by a radioactive female wombat. Fortunately, as a marsupial, I will carry the new child in my pouch until it turns 18. AND I can fight crime! I shall call myself Wombat(wo)man!

But seriously, please keep us in your prayers. <snip>

Cliff:

We'll be praying…

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that my friends are almost exactly as weird as I am. Funny how we gather around ourselves people of similar dispositions, whether consciously or not.

Oh, and also, I'M GONNA HAVE ME ANOTHER WEE ONE! Yeeee-HAW!!!
Only 1 more and I get my "Propagating the Species" merit badge!

Obama and Wright

I haven't said much about the whole Barack Hussein Obama/Rev. Wright thing here; others out there in the blogosphere are doing a vastly more thorough job than I could ever hope to do (just peruse The Corner, The Campaign Spot, Hugh Hewitt, or a whole host of other blogs for a small sampling). But here's the big kicker for me: as previously noted many times over, Obama has had 20 years with this pastor, and plenty of time to reject his radical preaching, and yet he has not. Currently, there are calls for him to publicly "disown" Rev. Wright in what could be the Mother of All Sister Souljah Moments. Some are saying this could be effective in repairing his downward-spiraling campaign.

But I must disagree. One of the things I have mentioned here in passing is that I have, in the past, had slight misgivings about my own pastor, who by all accounts is a fantastic and inspiring preacher (frankly, the most inspiring pastor I've ever had the privilege to listen to -- one day I'll have to post about my esteem for him). Part of this has to do with his occasional citing of questionable theologians and sources; another part is his subject matter, which is more oriented toward societal betterment through acting out Christ's teachings, rather than focusing on sin and its consequences. Now typically, many of these quotes are used not to score some theological point, but merely to illustrate a principle with anecdotal evidence. Likewise, I think it's my own background as a Southern Baptist congregant that has me missing the hellfire and dalmatians to which I was formerly so accustomed.

But my point is this: I am constantly on guard that a) my pastor, and by extension, my church, is teaching orthodox Christianity, and that b) the pastor is not using the pulpit as his own personal soapbox for advancing a political agenda that is contrary to my own views (after making sure that my own views are reconciled to Scriptural authority, of course). I filter everything I hear him say through these lenses. The minute I theoretically find that a line has been crossed, it would be my duty as the spiritual head of my household to move us to more appropriate place. I have a responsibility to ensure that the spiritual nourishment of my own family is not tainted milk, after all (Aside: I don't want to give the impression that I go to some hippie liberal church or anything. To date, my pastor has passed my scrutiny resoundingly).

Mr. Hussein-Obama has just such a responsibility with his own family, and doubly so as an aspiring, wannabe-shrewd politician. And in 20 years, either a) nothing impacted his ears that sounded so bombastic or radical as to require him to disassociate himself with such rhetoric, or b) he lacked the spiritual courage to stand up for his own personal and familial well-being upon hearing such fiery speechifyin'. And either way, that says a terrible lot about him that no "Sister Souljah Moment" can rectify.

Addendum: This is my 200th post! Not bad for 2.5 years of blogging... that's a post every 4.5 days or so, on average, just for you, my dear readers! And that doesn't even factor in my recent productivity elsewhere in the blogosphere...

This Concerns Me

Rising sea levels? I live inland. Increasing temperatures? I used to live in Texas, and now I live in Pennsylvania. Bring it on! Food scarcity? Not in this country, at least in my lifetime. Chaos in the street? My family has more guns than it could possibly need, and a remote cabin (tree farm/deer camp) with indoor plumbing in SW Arkansas. So Global Warming Alarmism, so far, hasn't scared me, even if the most worrisome jeremiads of The Goracle come true.

But overwhelming infestations of poisonous spiders? Holy freaking crap, now I'm terrified! Head for the hills! Carbon cap-and-trade! Buy a Prius! Eat more tofu! All hail our new supreme overlord Albert Gore!

Lord help me, I HATE spiders.

Update: Whew, I'm safe. New Ice Age instead! Which ought to keep me safe from everthing... except ICE SPIDERS!!!!!

Well, I Dun It

Well, yesterday was the big day in PA, so with somewhat mitigated pride I pulled the now-metaphorical level (actually, pressed the flashing red button on the fancy-shmancy e-leck-tronical DEE-vise). Despite my threats to switch parties for strategic reasons, or write in a certain other someone, I performed my democratic duty with no small portion of party loyalty and solidarity, and pressed the button for Senator John McCain, may God bless him and give him victory.

Voter turnout was surprisingly sparse at my precinct. Granted, I left work a bit early, and got there right at 5:00, but there was only one person ahead of me in line. And since a friend of mine was working the check-in table, that was pretty swift as well. While Obama signs throughout my town were plentiful, Obama support at the polling places seemed very light -- no sign-holders anywhere to be seen, and in fact local races dominated the signage. There was a crowd of Hillary demonstrators at the entrance to the neighborhood in the morning, and two sad, lonely Obama-supporting college students holding up pathetically small signs near the entrance to the University where I work, but apart from that, the rabble was not particularly roused.

Locally, the only race of any importance was the nomination for the fifth congressional district of PA. I voted for the family-values/pro-life Baptist preacher/former lawyer with 9 kids (7 adopted from troubled/abusive homes). He ended up with about half as many votes as the winner, who based on his scant biographical information smells like a career politician. The weekly email from our pastor indicated that he too voted for my choice, which made me feel a lot better about my pastor (I suppose Baptist preachers gotta stick together). He rarely mentions a pro-life message in his sermons (mostly because he likes to stay apolitical to the extreme), so the fact that he picked the guy who made it his own platform speaks well on that front. AND it indicates that my pastor is a registered Republican, since PA has a closed primary. Which also alleviates some concerns of mine, since he sometimes quotes some shaky theologians (Tony Campolo, Slick Willie's personal, and apparently wholly ineffective "spiritual counselor" while he was President, for example). So, hey, that's good.

Movin' On Up...

Big news for the Redshirt: I've been invited to become a co-blogger/peon over at Mazurland! The Brothers Mazur have decided that, once again, it's time to expand their authorship roster, and have extended the offer to me, since I like to comment there, rather copiously. That, and I work with one of the brothers. And of course, since they have like TENS more readers than I do, I accepted the offer, so as to expand my audience all that much more.

But fear not, loyal Redshirt readers! I don't intend, just yet, to forgo the proprietorship of this fine blog! As readers may recall, one of the founding principles of this blog was that of my love of sci-fi and its ilk, and I certainly intend to keep posting on that here. Similarly, all personal and family-related posts (maybe some day I'll get to do more globe-trotting-Sam-blogging!) will remain here. I'll also probably cross-post a good number of my political and social comments between the two. As for my Christian-themed posts, well, I haven't yet decided which would be the more appropriate venue yet. Mazurland is certainly not afraid of the occasional God-blogging, but as Marty's imprimatur tends to cause the place to veer Roman Catholic (not that there's anything wrong with that, and Sam, if you don't have anything nice to say in the comments, don't say anything), I may leave the more evangelical-centric comments here. Time will tell.

So again, fear not, loyal reader(s?)! This is not a departure, merely a stage of growth.

Tax Day!

Just some idle musings about taxes on this most obnoxious of days:

I'm not the first to say this, but I really wish national elections were held on April 16. Then again, PA's primaries are a week from today, and it doesn't seem to make a lick of difference about whom the parties select for November, considering our already outrageous tax burden.

When, as a people, did our collective consciousness finally become okay with the concept of a government who takes our money willy-nilly, and keeps claiming the right to more and more of our property? And why aren't we outraged at this?

The above complaint outrages me even more at the state and local level. Local jerks who up and decide that they, too, deserve a slice of our pie just mandate that we have to pay a certain percent in tribute to them. It's aggravating.

I'm also not the first to say this, but I think tax software and automatic tax withholding are bad things, despite the fact that I use both. They make the taxation process practically transparent to all but the most careful of observers, making it less likely that we'll sit down and realize just how big a slice the government is taking from our pie, and how complicated they make the procedure! We should be forced to write a check for our entire tax burden, either monthly or yearly. That way we'd know damn well just how much the government is garnishing our wages for their stupid pet projects. And itemized proportionate list of where our tax money is going, provided by the government as a receipt, would also be handy. And the tax software, God bless it, just enables the IRS to create all-the-more complicated tax rules that only computer software can handle! The more complicated the tax code, the less able we are to complain about specifics...

Despite all my complaints, tax resisters are fools at best and charlatans at worst. Going to jail for a cause can be good, but not when it's based on ridiculously flawed argument.

Also despite all my complaints, I know that I am Biblically required to pay taxes, whether the burden be just or not. So I will do so, without cheating, for the rest of my life. But I see nothing wrong with taking every legal remedy to reducing that burden!

I got a rather large "refund" this year. I did last year too, and could have increased my withholding allowances to "break even", which is supposedly the ideal way to do things. Nevertheless, I did not do so -- I like the psychological effect of receiving a large check of my money from the government. Hooray for a mortgage, a kid, and a tithe!

The logic behind "breaking even" on tax day is that you received all "your" money with each paycheck, thus being able to invest it at the time, rather than after tax day -- gaining potential interest on that income rather than allowing the government to do so. Wouldn't it be more optimal, then, to withhold NO money, and invest all the surplus (that will eventually be "harvested" on tax day) into some sort of safe investment account, only to withdraw the principle and "give it back" to the government on April 15, keeping the interest profit for yourself? Wouldn't that be something akin to a short-term, interest-free loan? Is there a flaw in this logic? Maybe a tax rule that prevents this? Because I'm thinking about it...

I take my tax refund and pay my real-estate taxes with it, which in turn reduces my tax burden for the following year. It's a vicious (and stupid) cycle. Sort of like robbing Peter to pay Paul, down at the microscopic level.

More than that, I will also use my upcoming tax "rebate" (Thanks, Dubya!) to pay down my real-estate tax burden, thus totally and completely defeating the point. Am I screwing the economy? Probably, but oh well.

We Win!

My high school, Little Rock Catholic High School for Boys, was never known for its athletic prowess, apart from sports dominated by white kids (soccer, swimming, etc.), during my tenure there. Sure, in days gone by, they had won their fair share of state football championships, but by and large they have been a latter-day dud in the "big" sports (football and basketball -- our long-time rector Msgr. George W. Tribou righteously and steadfastly refused to allow a baseball team due to missed school and Sunday games). Now it looks like the tables have turned: As of this weekend, the Catholic High Rockets are officially the 7-A (the state's highest division) Men's Basketball State Champions, after a nerve-wracking 46-44 victory over Conway! Go Rockets!

What's very interesting to me is that it's the same coach we've had for somewhere in the neighborhood of two decades, Tim Ezzi (EASE-eye) (CHS '72), so there must be something in the water for a new crop of boys to do so well.

So please indulge me in a moment of weepy sentimentality with our alma mater:

Proudly we speak your name,
Proudly wear your colors.
Friendships made within these walls
Will mellow through the years.

We in some distant day
May brush away a tear
Borne of memories as these
We hold so very dear