I knew it when Son got it in his Happy Meal.  The hat that New Wave Nigel wears as a part of the American Idol series of Happy Meal toys was absolutely a direct lift from Devo's Energy Dome.

Happy to see that Jerry Casale, on behalf of the band that band that made Akron famous, is suing the McDs for trademark infringement.

From the BoingBoing item …

[Casale said] "They didn't ask us anything. Plus, we don't like McDonald's, and we don't like American Idol, so we're doubly offended."

Guilty pleasure of the 2008 summer hiatus? Baby Borrowers.

Six teen couples from around the U.S. get put in beautiful subdivision houses, given a shitpot full of baby stuff and then at least one baby, which they must care for.

My favorites? Austin and Kelly from Dunwoody GA. According to their bio:

“Kelly (18) and Austin (18) – Dunwoody, GA. An all-American “preppy” couple, Kelly and Austin have been dating for over a year and have known each other since middle school. Both Kelly and Austin feel that this social experiment will reveal to them how long they should wait before they get married. They are both currently attending Auburn University.”

Episode 1 found Kelly locked in the bathroom, crying that she didn’t want to were the pregancy belly because “it looked silly.” Hooboy, sistergirlparent, you haint even been close to looking silly until you’re in the grocery story trying to chase down a four-year-old who wants to look at the toys over on aisle six and your chasing him saying “Son, if you don’t get back here now I swear I will go and spend ALL of your college money on beer and comic books. C’mon now. I serious.”

I hopped over to the boards at blogs.nbc.com to see what the people with an opinion and onternet access had to say about the show and was floored at the high drama that was happening in just the first few posts. Offense. Painful memories. Horror. Outright aghastness that TV would stoop so low as to make commerce out of people acting poorly when placed in difficult situations in front of hidden cameras.

“Shame on you, NBC, for using children and babies on a reality show! ” writes one poster. “Shame on you” seems a little harsh to be hurling at the people who brought us Survivor. A “Tsk tsk” accompanied by a wink and nod, maybe, but not shame.

One of the greatest things about American reality TV is its ability to stir passions and energy that used to be reserved for silly stuff like protesting wars and crusading for equal rights. It’s TV, folks. With a show like this, we’re all part of the culpability equation. I watch, creating demand. Advertisers buy time. Parents volunteer their babies to be involved in the show. We’re all in on it folks, and the only power we have is to either not watch or … well, that’s about it. Tune out.

Promoting teen parenthood? Not so much. These are well-off middle-class to upper-middle-class kids who are statistically just as likely to get pregnant outside of marriage (or other established long-term loving relationship by two emotionally mature adults) as lower-income, lower-socio-economic kids.

If anything, it shows that the cute part of babyhood represents only about 6.2 percent of the whole package. Babies who don’t eat, babies who cry, babies who wake up in the middle of the night and blow liquid poo all over the newly painted pink walls in the nursery. That’s the other 93 point whatever percent of the time we spend as new parents. It’s really really really hard being a parent. Tiring. Soul-crushing even.

But for me and probably for a lot of other parents, this adversity is thrown up on to a screen of bright, blinding-white love and awe I felt for my kids the minute I saw them and have had ever since that’s so wonderous. How can anything that pushes me this far, exhausts me this completely, drains me so totally, also tap into wellsprings of love I never knew I had?

That’s the one thing this show won’t be able to duplicate is that ragged, exhausted wonderous love that manages to overcome every petty human urge to run screaming from responsibility that parents inevitably feel at some point. It happens at some point really early on when you realize and really internalize the fact that this little lump of noise and flesh and need and raw id that needs you to become a person. God drops a lump of clay from heaven. It’s up to us to help mold it into whatever the child is supposed to grow up and be.

The fact is, we tune into these shows for the same reason. We want to tune in and, as parents ourselves, feel superior to the goofs on TV. Wanna know what the real difference between them and us is? (Besides, of course, the free house, free car, free food, professional nannies, parents who will take the infants back at the end of the show, and metric barrel-load of cameras and sound equipment).

Absolutely none. Watching the first 38 minutes of this show have convinced me that these six couples are every bit as bewildered and incapable as we were when God lobbed the bassinet in our direction. Every bit of frustration, pettiness and inexperience that we experienced as 1st-time parents (married or not, couples or singles).

So sit back and enjoy, kids. It’s not the war. It’s not 4.25/gallon gas. It’s nothing even *close* to real life. It’s TVeality. And we’re buying it. On credit. At 22% APR.

Gotta go now. It’s time for Celebrity Circus. THAT show, on the other hand, boy, that’s silly. And talk about a contrived premise? Jeez. They must think we’re morons out here.

Did a long shuffle today … 7.6 miles with four or five one-minute "bursts" which helped put me over 50 miles for the entire Takin’ Out the Trash Campaign.   Note that I place "bursts" in air quotes because for me, burst is speeding up from a 15:30 minute mile to a 12:00 to 12:45 minute mile.

It was good. I did not pass out. One thing I have noticed on my walks is how disjointed the sidewalk system here in Franklin.  Basically, within the city limits, we have sidewalks which make my little challenge a bit easier than tightrope walking the white line on the road side, hoping that I’m not supposed to check out by getting hit by an SUV piloted by a douche on a cell phone.

I’m now at home, which means that I can lump out on the hammock in the backyard until the fam returns.

Son has returned from camp.  Seeing him for the first time in two weeks in the dining hall was amazing.  He looked like himself, but he looked different, too.  Grown a little, I guess.

Okay, today was a big freakin’ deal. 

First, I made the 21st red magic marker mark on my printed-off walk-to-run schedule from Nike+ .  It’s around this time in any new undertaking that I start getting a little lazy, thinking that I can skip a day.  And maybe other people can, but I can’t let myself do that. 

Second, I ran today more than I’ve run in probably the last 25 years combined.  Combined.  Two decades.  Bush I.  Gulf War I.  B-52s drop Cosmic Thing.  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.  Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Prince and the Revolution’s 1999. 

I did two miles today, in two one-mile bursts.  I won’t qualify for the Boston Marathon, but a 12-min pace is freaking amazing for me.  Never done that before.  Ever.

So, ya’ know, I got that goin’ for me.

Nike+ says I’ve logged 32 miles over 15 runs walks.  This week (2nd full one of the program), it was a little more difficult to get out the door … sort of spent a couple of days thinking "Hell, when I get home tonight it will be time to go get my walk/run thing in."

This is not unexpected.  But the fact is I’ve never followed through on anything like this past about the second week.  The next seven days will be critical in beating my own personal best which is like 17 days of keeping up with a fitness routine and then finding some reason I couldn’t do it one night and next thing you know it’s fall and I’m telling my self I really have to get on the stick and do something.

Most recent bloodwork from my GP doesn’t reflect any of the new exercise and shows my HDL at 35.  40’s the target.

Onward.

The saga continues. I did 4 miles today. Yay me.

.

I have moved beyond the blister (pictures of which I’ve chosen to not share.) (You’re welcome) and have committed to my self to do the entire Walk to Run regimen. God willin’, and if the creek don’t rise, on or around August 15, I will have successfully run a mile non-stop. That’s a big deal for me.

Barack Obama’s making his speech to supporters in Minnesota have secured the needed 2118 delegates to be the Democratic nominee for the 2008 presidential race. It’s an exciting time and if we’re lucky, the party will be able to not eat itself and instead turn the wrath of a scared, dissatisfied middle class into a major victory in November.

I’ll be interested in coming back to this page then and see if what I’ve written here is embarrassing or prescient. And it just takes one vote to tip the balance.

It all started so innocently. But then again, it always does.

Last night as I finished up some yardwork a pair of silhouettes, flew overhead, a large one and a small one shaped like this. One peeled off and flew out of sight, while the other glided across the street, flapped its wings lazily once or twice and came to a landing on top of our across-the-street neighbor’s house. I guessed that it was an owl, and after talking with Spouse (who was outside with me watering the zhynnias), went inside to get the kids and show them. By the time we got back outside, the probably-owl had flown off.

Later that evening, Mom and I talked on the phone about the owl and what kind of symbolism it carried with it. I was never a real believer in signs until two years ago. Dad died suddenly (heart-attack suddenly rather than, say, undetected cancer suddenly) two years ago tomorrow and the night that he died, a pair of barn swallows started building a nest on my folks’ porch. Dad had seen the barn swallow that afternoon, and had pulled the bird book and some binoculars to look at it. The book was open to the barn swallow page when he died.

The swallows’ nest comforted all of us, and as we researched the birds, we learned that sailors looked at them as being symbolic of homecoming and safe passage. That was the point when I began to at least give some amount of credence to the idea that there were things that we see and experience that we’re meant to see and experience at a certain, necessary time.

So with that as background, I went digging around to see what I could come up with on owls.

Numerous mesoAmerican cultures and North American First People saw the owl as being a bring or signs and a portent of death. At the same time, Western European cultures saw the owl as symbolizing power and wisdom. So I’ve got that going for me, off setting the whole death and doom thing.

Googling "owl symbol", however, will unearth a metric assload of wild, crazy and just plain edge-dwelling pages and sites. One was a link to an interview with a shaman/occultist/free spirit named Freeman. In the interview, Freeman ranges far and wide, covering such diverse topics and the Anna-Nicole/Britney connection, incorporation of Masonic symbols into corporate logos, Zionism, the World Bank, UFOs and 9/11. One of my favorite passages is excerpted below.

"I jumped on the bus and listened and talked with George Greene about the alien technology and when we took a break we went out for a smoke. I have always thought my soul’s home is in Pleiadies and this man had showed us pictures of Shemyaza and the crew of the flying saucer and well, it turns out, I look Pleiadian."

-Excerpted from the blog "Beyond the Waking Sun" Waking the Midnight Sun,

Okay, so it’s not precisely what I believe, not by a long damn shot. But as odd as this sounds, it’s no odder than owls landing on the roofs of houses in heavily developed subdivisions or birds putting down roots on my father’s porch at the same time he’s pulling his up.

"And therefore as a stranger give it welcome./There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Hamlet I.v.ll. 157-

Really not a great day for a couple of reasons. I’m two days behind Okay, so the Nike+ Coach will spit out a program for you. I chose “Walk to Run” in 12 weeks. Now the problem is that if you commit to the program, you kind of have to follow the days. Didn’t make time to walk/run on Monday and Tuesday, so while I am ahead in miles, I’m down by two days, with my virtual Coach Raddaraddaing me for missing.
Here’s the gory details of today’s slog.
Here’s the other problem and it’s a painful one. I wore wrong socks … a pair of 1st generation polypropelene sock liners. They were immediately, massively wrong, causing an excrutiating and very fast-forming blister to form on my heel, have the skin rip away and then spend the rest of the night weeping. Stupid-ass. You’d THINK that with Xteen years of hikes, etc. with Scouting that I would know how not to get a blister. You’d THINK, but you’d be wrong. Here’s a picture of what shall hereforward be called the WrongSocks™, along with a picture of the heel mentioned previously.
Dumbass.

I haven’t talked a lot about the fact that I just turned 40 because I haven’t really had anything profound or witty to say, or anything, for that matter, that hasn’t already been said a lot.

But Mom gave a gift certificate to Fleet Feet, I bought some shoes and have decided that instead of whining about getting a motorcycle, that I’d be better off whining about not ever having actually run a mile in my life.

More on all of this later. For now, I’ve pasted in the first walk/shamble from my Nike+ sport band.  Tech (yay) plus exercise (boo) hopefully equals a healthier Webslog.  I know Spouse, Son and Daughter would all appreciate it as well.

More to come.

"Whatever you want to say about the substance of what the reverend is saying, interpret as you may, if I had has a rabbi who brought that much game, I would have spent this Passover neck deep in a bacon and cheese croissandwich."

–Jon Stewart on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s comments at this past weekend’s NAACP keynote.

And to dust ye shall return.

Originally uploaded by Webslog

Just a cool photo of a rusty access hatch being taken over by creepers.

Plans

Originally uploaded by Webslog

I shot these kids at Franklin’s skatepark. While I’ve got some actual action shots, this one of the kids planning their next trick seemed to work for me.

On another note, the marked out grafitti in the bowl has caused no small amount of heartburn for the city fathers. I wonder aloud, however, if permitting the art might not be in the better interest of the City. None was obscene, nor did any of it deal with drugs, sex or any similar scourges on the populace.

What if, instead, the city allowed the painting to occur? One of the things that would most likely happen is that the art created would be an expression of the community that uses the bowl. More importantly, once a space like this is painted, it tends to become self-governing and self-maintaining. Were the city to look into the difference between grafitti and tagging (one’s art, the other is thugs pissing on trees to mark territory), we might be surprised with what we get.

I was not surprised to learn that the Heritage Church of Christ zoning variance passed last night. While I documented my support for the church long ago, I have not beat the drum in its support since. I’ll be just as impacted by the downsides and the upsides of the church as all of my neighbors will, and I believe that the power that churches in general have been granted by our elected officials is a worrying sign of how the Right continues to hijack Jesus and his flock in an effort to impose a moral code on a country that was founded on the belief that the State had no right to either establish a religion, or prohibit the practice thereof. *

And while the way that our three neighborhoods rallied around a common point of contention and made their voices heard was great, the outcome was all too predictable. The fundamentals were against the anti-Church contingent from the beginning.

1) BOMA never met a Planning Commission recommendation it didn’t like.

2) Municipal, state and federal law overwhelmingly favor the rights of landowners to sell to their best advantage

3) Federal law protects the rights of churches, even to the exclusion of individual rights

Federal regulations are overwhelmingly supportive of church building and few cities have the wherewithal to go to mat and fight the regulations. I refer interested persons to the text of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons act of 2000, the text of which can be found here.

This sprawling piece of Moral-Majority leaning religiofacism states, in part:

(3) EXCLUSIONS AND LIMITS- No government shall impose or implement a land use regulation that–

(A) totally excludes religious assemblies from a jurisdiction; or

(B) unreasonably limits religious assemblies, institutions, or structures within a jurisdiction.

The bill was supported by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a D.C.-based PAC who counts on its advisory board Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)**. Hatch was also the lead sponsor on RLUIPA when it was introduced in the Senate in 2000.

Holy crap! Lobbying groups demonstrating undue influence over the actions of our elected representatives? No way! Not here. Not in my America. To be fair, the bill was also co-sponsored by such famously Left legislators as Teddy Kennedy and Joe Lieberman, so I’m not at all implying that Churches Run Amok is purely a Red thing. It is, however, a Religiouser Than Thou thing. Our elected officials from both sides of the aisle trip over themselves to support the rights of worshippers and non-worshippers alike. It’s part of the legalist gotcha that the Framers of the Constitution were playing when they wrote the document up. And while the Constitution and accompanying amendments are often contradictory in the way that they ultimately manifest themselves, the long game of the document still stands.

We’re a country that is built around protection of the individual and the church from the state regardless of which assholes we’ve elected in to office. Unfortunately, sometimes that means that decisions get made that seem to trample one set of rights in respecting another.

Period. The end. We can talk about it more, but we’ll have to do it outside because they have to turn off the coffee pot, shut off the lights and lock up the building.

*It’s something the Prayer-In-School set seems to forget, that the 1st Amendment cuts both ways. The State can’t prohibit free expression of belief. However, it can’t impose the expression of belief either.

** It’s worth noting that Hatch also fought vigorously against the Equal Right Amendment, and has moved to create a Constitutional Amendment banning the burning of the U.S. flag.

New York Times Op-Ed contributor Adam Rogers has uncovered it. A long-rumored-to-exist document tracing the inarguable lineage between D&D creator Gary Gygax and, well, everything. iPods, the internet, Star Wars, girls, college, 30 years worth of speculative fiction, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, the church, modern-day non-denominational Christianity, l33t-speak, all of it.

How big is this? By my way of thinking, documentation tracing archeologists’ bloodlines back to Jesus and Mary of Magdala pale in comparison.

The link:

Reading in my newsreader (an aggregator of content which, in its aggregation, creates a completely new piece of content) a posting made on BoingBoing (a site that aggregates cool stuff found on the internets and in so doing creates something new.) This post updates us on “Dinosaurs and Robots,” a site launched by Mister Jalopy and Mark Frauenfelder (one of Boing Boing’s five editors) that blogs found objects belonging to the two. Today’s dinosaursandrobots.com features mixtape Friday night, wherein mix tapes (analog aggregations of favorite songs which capture a specific time in someone’s life) scrounged from thrift stores, garage sales (aggregations of physical objects whose grouping together tells us something of the family or the people who unloaded this stuff.)

Currently, I’m listing someone’s mixtape’s copy of Altered Images’ Happy Birthday streamed at 64kbps over Live365 to my laptop. The chances are better than even that the song was pulled from an ’80s retrospective compilation. Therefore, I’m estimating this some is at least 11 degrees of separation away from its creator and has been collected, re-collected, compiled, aggregated, mix-taped and digitized at least 12 times since Clare Grogan laid it down to tape in 1981.

The original work is performed in studio, mixed and released as an album (Altered Images: Happy Birthday) - 1981

The master from that song is aggregated onto a compilation album and made available on tape (Collected Images) - 1984

Songs from various tapes, including compilations were aggregated onto mix tape. (Mixed Nuts which is this tape of all these songs that were like huge when we worked up at camp) - 1988

Mix tape was given to someone (as all mix tapes are) where it was aggregated into that person’s tape collection - 1988

Recipient’s tape collection was sold/donated to Goodwill after going unplayed for about seven years (Yeah, so I’m changing over to CDs right? So I took all my tapes down to Goodwill because phonoluxe isn’t gonna buy them, right?) - 1995

After sitting unbought in the tape and vinyl bin for 2 - 3 years, it was swept (aggregated) into a bin of other cassette tapes (Dump all those in that rolling tub over there. We get a bunch of these and eventually these bin divers show up and buy them along with all this old vinyl. I don’t know what they use it for). - 1998

Bought by GenXer trying to recapture some of that junior high mojo — 2002

Mr. Jalopy or Mark Frauenfelder find the tape at Goodwill and buy it (because its a mix tape and well, you know, why not. Look at how much detail went into doing the tape sleeve in black and red Sharpie.) - 2006

They digitize the tape and throw it up onto Live365. - Jan 2008

The show and the site are blogged at BoingBoing, collected by NewsFire and dumped onto my desktop. - March 2008

I blog about it. March 8, 2008

You read it. March ninth.

So by my estimate, Happy Birthday passed through at least 12 hands before I heard it this afternoon, and was reconfigured, repurposed or re-aggregated to an 11th degree of removal from its original performer.

AP is reporting that Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax has died. He was 69.

"MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) — Gary Gygax, who co-created the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva. He was 69."

Gygax was the name of my first D&D character ever (an neutral elven thief).

Gary Gygax is dead. Long live Gary Gygax.

Fetch!

Originally uploaded by Webslog

Sort of know how this li’l fella feels … I just got promoted at work to creative director. It’s an incredible opportunity and I’ll be leading (rather, not getting in the way of) some really talented designers. Time will tell how good a leader I make, but the opportunity to do some large scale brand voice work is not to be passed up.

When memes collide… 

Hee hee.

7:32 - Vitamin Water - Even if he doesn’t say a word, Shaq should still not be allowed to be in commercials.

7:14 - So in the stately opening chords of Free Fallin’, do youthink the talent booker for the SoBe Lifewater Halftime show was thinking “Hmm. Maybe we should have sprung for the extra ten large it would have taken to get Kanye.” Tom’s cool. But Superbowl Entertainment. No.

6:48 - Pepsi - Justin Timberlake - Okay, that was funny. A girl sucking on the straw of bottle of Pepsi drags Justin Timberlake through the suburbs. “Every sip gets you closer to Justin Timberlake MP3s” The unexpected flat screen flying in to clock him in the waning seconds of the spot is classic.

6:28 - Yukon - Sisyphus. B/W animation. Big questions. Possibly maybe a Cleo award-winning spot. Wasted on selling another bloated piece of Detroit groupthink. Yeah, yeah. I know its a hybrid. But a million hybrid SUVs on the road is still a million SUVs on the road.

6:24 - SoBe/Thrillicious - Okay, the dancing lizards were funny. But…why dancing to “Thriller?” I mean, yeah, the Zombie Dance sequence from Thriller marked a watershed moment in pop culture, video production and gang dancing. But still… Also, there were a couple of real disconnects … other than the celeb value, I don’t know what the purpose of Rhianna dancing is. And toward the end of the spot, when one of the lizards flashes us a ruby and diamond-encrusted grill. Funny, but anachronistic and as such, not as funny.

6:16 - Budweiser - Clydesdale training montage - Actually, I don’t think I’ve really liked a beer commercial since Miller Lite’s Man Law series.

6:12 - I just watched the GoDaddy online spot, joining millions of other 35+ men sitting across the room from their wives hoping not to get busted. It’s quite a feat to blend titillation, funny and domain name registrars in a way that Joe Lunchpail and his nerd counterpart can get a kick out of. And they manage to use the word “beaver” in the spot. Kudos.

6:06 - Tide Stain-Out Pain - My Talking Stain. Simple, funny, to the point and resonates emotionally. Who hasn’t managed to dump a squit of coffee on his or her shirt on the way into a job interview.

6:03 - GoDaddy - Exposure - Danica Patrick unzips. Will GoDaddy’s servers collapse? Will anyone care? I like the fact that they managed to get exposure for the spot despite the NFL’s rejections of two other breastitudenous submissions from GoDaddy.

5:58 - Bridgestone - Scream - Heh heh. Screaming animals. Tires grip and avoid running over the squirrel. Very funny though Spouse claims Bridgestone ran the ad last year. I don’t remember.

5:49 - Underarmor - Sort of a weird mash-up of The Matrix and GatorAde commercial. That said, it doesn’t make me want to exercise any more than I did before the spot ran.

5:48 - Bud Light Cheese Run - Better than 5:35’s Fire.

5:46 - Pepsi Max (Wake UP people) grabs a spoof of Will Ferrell’s and Chris Kataan’s head-bobbing Roxbury Guys. The spot works because you spend the first 20 seconds developing the spot before we get any product placement. When it comes, it’s overshadowed by the commercial’s inhabitants coming alive after a slug of the ginseng-infused rotgut.

5:36 - Audi R8 - Welcome back, Audi, after a long absence from the Super Bowl ad line up. A nice turn on the Godfather’s iconic “horsehead scene,” Moe Green wakes up to see his hand has turned into a dinosaur claw and the grill of his beloved Rolls/Maybach lies leaking oil onto Moe’s satin sheets. LED DRLs flick on as the Bahnburner rumbles away from Moe’s mansion. Nicely done, with humor balancing out the schwing appeal of the R8

5:35 - Bud Light Fire - Eh.

5:21 - Jordin Sparks just finished the National Anthem. Not as bad as it had the potential to be.

So apparently, we’ve so completely scotched the earth that scientists can’t describe it all in a simple media-friendly phrase. Instead, they decided to close out an entire geological epoch and open a new one.

“Sufficient evidence has emerged of stratigraphically significant change (both elapsed and imminent) for recognition of the Anthropocene — currently a vivid yet informal metaphor of global environmental change — as a new geological epoch to be considered for formalization by international discussion,” Zalasiewicz’s team writes.”

Wow.

So with the change in epoch, do we set our clocks forward by an hour? Or back?

Photo and link filched from Reuters. Thanks!