Mister Rogers' Garden (Needs to Grow)

I have, over the past week, watched this video so many times that the song is now pretty thoroughly stuck in my head.  I have no problem with this at all.

Mister Rogers "Garden of Your Mind" remix

What I do have a bit of a problem with, now, is the apparent reality that there are not enough Mister Rogers episodes out on DVD.  Really do not understand this.  Also, I NEED FULL SEASONS.  I have no idea why they wouldn't be already out.  Surely it wouldn't be the same as with Sesame Street, where apparently they let all the song composers and such keep the rights to each bit they did, so then for DVD they have to go tracking everybody down to get a complete episode's worth of stuff.

We need more Sesame Street too, for that matter.  Have you seen many kid shows of the present day, and how they just are nowhere near the quality of these two old-school items?  Or am I just old now?

Overthinking "Dinosaur Train," part 1

A staple of Una's television viewing, the PBS cartoon Dinosaur Train (by the Jim Henson Co) annoyed me at first, but it has grown on me and now I rather like it. It won me over partly with little things, like the fact that many of the dinosaur species have accents and other personality quirks based on where they were discovered (the Iguanadon likes to do Monty Python silly walks), partly with enjoyable songs, and partly with good character development. But there are still a few nagging questions, from a world-building perspective, that I can't help wondering about.

Most obvious is the question: whence the time-travel technology? The Troodons like to brag about how smart they are, but I don't see that they've come up with many non-train-related inventions. One suspects that someone else supplied them with time-travel capability. "Aliens" might be the obvious answer, although the question then becomes "why would the aliens bother doing that?" I have another theory, though. Whom do we know of who (a) knows of time travel, (b) has a family that includes two young children, who very commonly love anything to do with dinosaurs, (c) might do any nutty-seeming thing on a whim, and (d) was last seen operating a time machine in the shape of a (flying) train?

Doc Brown, of course.

Arguing against this hypothesis is Doc Brown's usually scrupulous concern about messing up the space-time continuum. Giving dinosaurs technology would seem to be a rather large disruption. But this actually dovetails with another nagging question: why does the Dinosaur Train only travel within the Mesozoic Era (the age of dinosaurs)? Perhaps Doc Brown rationalized that as long as the dinosaurs could only travel within their own era, and not use the train to escape their ultimate fate, all would be well. Presumably he made sure to keep his explanations to the Troodons limited to practical operating instructions, without getting into actual time-travel theory. As far as we can tell, this seems to have worked.

eventful

So, our first daughter was born at the beginning of October 2008, and our second daughter is due to be born next week. It appears that the impending birth of a child to M and I has some correlation to stock market crashes and general economic turmoil. I'm not sure why we shake the world in this way, but my apologies to your investment portfolios.

since the eagles weren't in it

We all wore Steeler yellow on Sunday, although hers took the form of teeny yellow flowers, which I suspect is slightly atypical as Steeler fan-wear goes.



It is now a trend that when a new generation is born into my husband's family, the Steelers will win the following Super Bowl. It happened with him, and now with our daughter. Steeler Nation: you're welcome.

down the flume

228 to 205 to vote down the bailout. That's 433 out of 435. Not bad considering that my understanding of the daily usual in the House is a few people speaking to an empty hall, aside from the C-SPAN camera and the other few members on the list to talk that day who are still waiting their turn. A bit curious who the missing two are, although not quite curious enough to go search them out.

(Assumption that the information is available somewhere, and probably on the web. Whatever did we do before the Web? Yet it's only existed in its current expanded state for about a decade.)

Heh. The Yahoo link to the AP article is labeled "financial_meltdown". Dudes, y'all ain't seen nothin'. Even a 550+ drop in the Dow, where we are at the moment of writing, is only about 5 percent. The really big slides have been in the double digits. Although, maybe the computers kick in to prevent those happening all in one day now. Guess we'll see where we are in a week.

Interesting times, as they say. I know that's supposed to be a bad thing. I can't help finding it a bit exciting. I should really hold my excitement until I at least have a functioning vegetable garden again. Which, given imminent baby, is unlikely before, oh, ... I have no idea.

zero plus two

I confess to harboring a secret hope that she might be born on Bilbo and Frodo's birthday. I know I would have enjoyed that for myself, although I'm happy with my actual birthday which is also my dad's (and a great-grandfather's!). But still no signs so far that she's going to make it out today.

Turns out that those who care as much or more than me about such things have figured out that, due to differences between the hobbits' Shire Reckoning calendar and ours, September 22 in our calendar isn't actually their birthday anyway -- it was September 13, this year (due to this being a leap year). Oh well.

Shire Reckoning, by the way, has always seemed eminently more logical than our cobbled-together Gregorian, but the hobbits' old-school season-based holidays (Midsummer, Yule) that don't belong to any months would, I suppose, confuse too many people used to our modern three-day-shopping-weekend system.

boom de yada!

I didn't get last Friday's XKCD until I read this post from someone who'd been in the same boat, who found out what it was: a Discovery Channel commercial that is 31 flavors of awesome. watchy watchy.

Apparently there are already people making other riffs on it. Note that since I have now discovered this meme, it must be at least half over, but I will be enjoying it for a while because I like the song so much. Another interesting bit of information from that forum thread was that the tune is from a children's song called "I Like the Flowers."

I have a strong suspicion that baby will become quite familiar with this tune in some version or another.

the cake is a lie

For once, I think I may have managed to be on the early side of awareness about a Hot New Internet Catchphrase. Kung Fu Monkey gave me this awareness when he noted that it is "the perfect explanation" of the writers' strike (in the post before his extensive and excellent detailed rundown of "What's this all about then, oy?"). I googled the phrase and realized that it's from that interesting-looking game that M. was playing last week or so that I hadn't got round to trying yet -- this weekend perhaps.

T-shirts. We need T-shirts. As demonstrated above, it could apply to all sorts of situations (for antiwar protests, use one with a picture of a cake which is yellow). This is what makes me expect that it will be sweeping the nation.

Of course, since normally I only become fully aware of things as they've passed their peak, I could be wrong. But I want a T-shirt anyway.

Ghost of Halloween past

Huh. It seems to have worked after all. More police than partiers, from the sound of it.

But I agree with the people who say "OK, now let's plan better for next year." It sounds like things were getting a bit out of control in some aspects, but the solution to that is to be clever in attacking the problems, not to kill the tradition altogether.

No Halloween for you

I heard on the radio this morning that San Francisco has decided to cancel the Halloween revelry in the Castro because, in the last several years, it's been getting a bit out of control: six people shot last year (although "none seriously"). So they've been doing a local media blitz telling everyone to stay home, getting bars there to agree to close early, and promoting parties in other areas.

Understandable that they want to prevent people getting hurt. Taking action in that line = good. But.

Telling people not to do something. That they've been doing for nigh-on thirty years at least. That involves fun. In San Francisco. Yeah, okay, good luck with that.