Get back, get back, get back to where you never were.

Holly contemplates the dual-income household:

The problem here is that I didn't make some big feminist choice to go to work; no one gave me the chance to be a housewife. I've never dated a guy who could afford to support me at home. (Actually Benny was pretty loaded, but he didn't even want to be seen with me, there's no way he'd've gone for marriage.) If I have kids I'm 90% certain I'll "have it all," not because I'm some superfeminist but because it's that or raising them in a studio apartment eating ramen. I don't think most people these days are rich enough to support an entire family on one income.

Of course to be fair, a lot of what are considered "necessities" these days were either luxuries or props in sci-fi movies back in the days of Ward and June.

This is just like that documentary with Daryl Hannah!

A study of mitochondrial DNA a few years back stated that Neanderthals probably had not mated with our H. sap. sap. forebears.

Having known quite a few H. sap. saps. in my life, I found this conclusion dubious, even in a world before the invention of beer goggles. Plus, there were all those Jean Auel books and, Shiva knows, they made a cage full of rabbits in heat look like the eunuchs' dormitory at the Topkapi on a slow weeknight.

So the link from CNN.com on Friday to this Time.com article came as not much of a surprise. Humans are generally known for trying to mate with anything they're not currently fighting or eating, and I can't see why this should have been any different in the Middle Paleolithic than it is today.

Overheard in the Hallway:

RX: "Eric Holder's on TV, with an expression on his face like he's passing kittens."

Me: "That's his default expression. What's he going on about now?"

RX: "Something about the Taliban or right-wing extremist domestic terrorism or something. Which reminds me, there's a piece on Sarah Palin in the Indy Star..."

Things and stuff.

Went grocery shopping with roomie this morning and then to lunch at Shalimar. Mmmm... Indian food.

My right knee and lower back/hip are bothering me. I think the front that came through (~40°F temperature drop in a matter of hours) got my old war wounds to hurting, which set me to limping, which in turn set the tip of my IWB Versa-Max pressing my sciatic nerve. Ow.

I'm reading Clever Girl, a biography of Elizabeth Bentley. It's interesting how the received wisdom about the McCarthy era has completely changed in my adult lifetime, what with all the revelations after the Cold War.

Void Where Prohibited.

Unintentional funny: A publisher sticks a bit o' warning boilerplate by way of a frontispiece into older books that may not "reflect the same values" as they would if they "were written today."

Among those books? A reprint of The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Confederation.

Alert the irony police.



(cf. The Matchlock Gun, Newbery winner for 1942.)

Same old story, same old song and dance.

So, as you may have heard, the Indiana GOP machine, an organization so dense that a black hole would float on it, in its infinite obtuseness has trotted out Dan Coats as its offering for Senator.

Coats, whose most challenging political task thus far has been filling Dan Quayle's 6A golf cleats as Senator from Hoosierville, is now stumping around the state to rally the faithful.

Unfortunately, nominating a guy who voted for the Brady Bill and the '94 Assault Weapons ban and then has the cheek to stand up and lie to a crowd about how he supports Second Amendment rights isn't exactly a way to rally anybody but the most blindly faithful, people who would reflexively vote for Chairman Mao if you stuck an (R) after his name, ("Hey, Mao didn't like gays and he was strong on defense! That makes him conservative, right? Besides, you wouldn't want the Democrat to get in!")

Needless to say, some people are less than amused:

There was one detractor in the audience. Kirk Freeman of Lafayette asked Coats some pointed questions about his voting record on gun control, referring to votes Coats made in the 1990s.

Coats explained why he made exceptions on two votes and said he supports Second Amendment rights.

"Why should we believe you now?" Freeman asked.

Freeman said he's a Republican but did not vote for Coats in the primary. He does not plan to support him in the fall.

Get bent, Coats, you prevaricating has-been. I wouldn't vote for you if the only other guy on the ticket was Chairman Mao; at least he doesn't lie about what he wants to do to me.

2 + 2 = 1984

Imagine a not-too-distant future, where a businessman gets jacked on taxes or some petty regulation or another. He makes some unkind comments about the government to his brother on the phone. Nothing that doesn't get said a bajillion times a day from sea to shining sea: "They oughtta hang every one of those jerks," or "I wouldn't mind if they bombed Washington, as long as they got the IRS and Congress."

But our hypothetical businessman, while a citizen, was born overseas, and makes the remarks on the phone to his brother in Jordan.

In a post-PATRIOT world where the President makes wisecracks about unmanned "Reaper" hunter-killer drones and Congress wants to broaden the powers of the government to strip Americans of their very citizenship, might we not run the risk of even bigger law enforcement whoopsies than shooting the neighborhood Deadhead's bandanna-wearing dog?

Explains rather a lot, really...

In light of our fabulous education system, run by the same people who can't get a letter across town in a timely fashion and who have turned the local DMV into a Museum of Soviet Nostalgia, the following tidbit is curiously unsurprising:

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs

According to a 2002 Columbia Law School study, nearly two-thirds of persons polled thought that this phrase came from the Constitution or might have been crafted by the Framers.

A rant of beauty is a joy for... well, for a good long while.

So, I made mention of the little TSA-related contretemps in Miami this morning.

Stingray at Atomic Nerds then picked up the ball and ran with that mutha in a rant full of so much win that my heart swelled with pride to be on the same internets with it. Go forth and read.

Random Thoughts:

• How do you throw away a trash can?
• Do you get bonus points if you die without ever reading a Twilight book? How about never seeing a Spiderman movie?
• Compared to Southerners, Hoosiers do love their car washes, which only stands to reason since they spend half the year spreading schmutz all over their cratered roads on purpose. Brushless car wash technology seems to be slow to spread north of the Ohio, however. This makes convertible owners sad.
• The Fresh Market has taken to selling all-beef franks the size of a small flashlight. I was a little giddy at the prospect until I realized that there were no correspondingly gigantic buns for sale in the store. This strikes me as something of an oversight.

Lending a whole new meaning to "Security Theater".

Security theater went from Kabuki to Punch and Judy this week in Miami, when a TSA groper-in-training got a little out of hand.

It seems that the trainee, one Rolando Negrin, was used as the demonstrator in the new see-through probulator, and the instructor made unkind remarks about the size of his junk, (or more precisely, the lack thereof,) in front of the class.

Rolando, manliness all affronted, waited for his instructor in the parking lot after class and proceeded to administer a beatdown with a PR-24.

I suppose we've gotta prosecute the guy, but thus far this has all the makings of a classic NHI incident, as far as I'm concerned.


(H/T to Unc.)

Today In History: Stuff.

On this date in:

1429: Jeanne d'Arc pulls an arrow from her own shoulder and charges back into the fighting, thereby earning promotion to Badass 1st Class.

1824: The most awesome piece of music ever is performed in public for the first time.

1832: In a move that makes sense only to Europeans, representatives of the British, French, and Russian governments meet in London and pick a seventeen year old Bavarian princeling to be King of Greece. Viewed in light of decisions like this, things like the '14-'18 War start to make a lot more sense.

1915: US passengers board a ship carrying munitions and flying the flag of a belligerent power which then sails into a war zone and gets sunk, just like the advertisements printed in the New York Times by the German embassy warned it might be. And yet people act surprised. After further escapades, we somehow wind up sucked into the aforementioned '14-'18 war, and then our crazy President helps break history. Sorry 'bout that.

1920: Marshal Józef Piłsudski, armed only with tens of thousands of soldiers and one truly fearsome mustache, takes Kiev as part of his ongoing struggle to... er... keep Ukraine Polish, or something.

Overheard in Roomie's Bedroom:

Roomie's televisor has, like it does every morning, cut on at a bajillion decibels to serve her as an alarm clock...

Morning Traffic Lady: "...and they'll be demolishing the bridge through September."

Me: "You Hoosiers have the most wonderful temporal anomalies. Imagine! A Bridge Through September! And you're destroying it?!"

RX: "Irresponsible time travel."

It lends a whole new meaning to "Hole In One".

Sometimes you don't even need to click on the headline to get all you need out of the story:



In addition to sand traps and water hazards, you get tank traps and minefield hazards!

No caddy, but your supporting fireteam may have good advice on club selection!

The rough is really rough!

The golf carts are made by Krauss-Maffei!

The eighteenth hole bleeds almost as much as the first!

Go over par on the back nine and get decapitated by Al Qaeda death squads!

Be aware of the walking dead.

Have you noticed emaciated figures shambling through your yard?

Does the stench of the crypt pervade your neighborhood?

Is your best friend suddenly acting all strange and trying to chew through your scalp?

Did you know that May is Zombie Awareness Month?

How many of the Four Rules can you break at once?

A Hamilton, OH police officer (ED: Oops! Misread story.) resident broke two and put a bullet through his groin. Maybe he was practicing Position Sul!

No word on how this will affect his contribution to future generations of bad gun handlers.



(H/T to Unc.)

Technicolor crazy in 3D with surround sound.

Apparently America's most famous self-loathing closeted gay man made his bones as a civil rights lawyer back in the day in Topeka. Huh. Who knew?

Anyhow, his estranged kid claims that his civil rights work might not have been the product of egalitarian altruism, resulting in a torrent of crazy from his sister that is just full of comedy gold:

[S]he calls her brother Nathan a "rebel of God." She says her father didn't use racist language and Nathan wouldn't have been in a position to know.

"Nathan is a tortured soul," she says. "He has no grace. God had no mercy upon him. He's hardened his heart."

Phelps-Roper says her father and family have eked out a modest living and her father's church doesn't take money from anyone.

God said the world would hate believers like her father in the last hours, she says.

Shirley, did you ever stop to think that people don't hate your father because he's a believer, but rather because he's a rude jerk with the manners of a goat?

Any volunteers?

So, Matt Lauer, morning clothes horse on NBC, is talking to some terrorism expert about the dude who tried to set off the bomb in The Only City That Matters Times Square.

The terrorism guy said that it did look, in fact, like Faisal had been recruited by the Pakistani Taliban, despite all his neighbors back in Waziristan talking about what a quiet boy he'd been.

"Recruited?!" says Matt, "I thought he volunteered! But, I mean, wouldn't there be a test or something?" at which point I blurted at the screen:

"If you really wanted to join the P.F.J., you'd have to really hate the Romans."

"I do!"

"Oh, yeah? How much?"

"A lot!"

"Right. You're in."

Ye gods and great big fishies.

I have mentioned before my weakness for stirring up a little bit of salmon salad for a snack, using honey mustard, sweet relish, mayo, and those el-cheapo pink salmon packets.

I know that humpy is looked on with revulsion by any connoisseur, but in the cracker spread I was making, it was mostly there for texture, protein, and a whiff of fishiness...

Today I mixed up a bowl using red salmon.

zomg.

It's a good thing I can't afford to do that too often, lest I turn spherical.

Irony, thy name is MSNBC.

Contessa Brewer was hoping that the Times Square "bomb" hadn't been planted by an Islamic terrorist for fear that it would fuel outdated views, prejudice, and bigotry.

She hoped it came from some illiterate Jesus-clingin' hick from flyover country instead.

Contessa apparently wouldn't know irony if it chewed her nose off.