An important phrase every child must know

Last night, Kouryou-chan learned a most important phrase. "It's not fair! I want to stay up like Yamaarashi!" Trying to explain to a three-and-a-half year-old that she needs more sleep than her sister, that it's only a half-hour difference, and that if I put them to bed at the same time they'll just talk and keep each other up, didn't work. Because it was so late and she was so tired, she managed to wind herself up into a big kicking and screaming tantrum that wouldn't stop.

Omaha made it home about twenty minutes into this and helped calm her down enough that we convinced her to go to sleep, but only by letting her fall asleep in her parent's bed, with me. By the time Omaha finally went to bed, I was asleep and so must have been Kouryou-chan because when I awoke later that evening, Kouryou-chan was already moved to her bed.

Yamaarashi-chan, in contrast, went to bed with a hug and a kiss and without a complaint.

About three in the morning, though, I get awakened by the sound of monsters. There's this horrible screeching, moaning sound going on out side my window. I live in a relatively quiet neighborhood, but there is an access road for the airport about a quarter mile from the house. The county was repaving it. The screaming came from a depaver, which tears up the old layers of road and roughens the surface, getting it ready for a new layer of asphalt. The windows are nicely soundproofed, though, and although the day had been a scorcher temperatures had fallen into the low 60's so closing them was not a problem.

Newsies...

Hey, technoshaman, check out The Language Police, a new book about how school textbooks are authorized and written in the United States. Various textbook approval committees have banned stereotypes such as "whites living in affluent neighborhoods," or "boys expressing anger"; others have forbidden "snowman" and "forefather" on the grounds that they're sexist. One parent successfully got her daughter's grade overturned on the grounds that, since she lived in Chicago, she was unfairly disadvantaged by a writing assignment that asked her to imagine life on the ocean.

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Ugh. Someone tell me that multiculturalism deserves a snowflakes's lifespan in a cyclotron after they read this.

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Bwahahaha. Al Qaeda tells the boys back home, "Yeah, we caused the U.S. blackout. Don't pay attention to the news from the U.S. There was looting in the streets. New York now looks like Bagdhad."

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The Baptist Press is reporting that Alan Keyes has spoken in defense of Roy Moore's Ten Commandments Monument, claiming that the First Amendment clause, as it is written, applies only to the Federal Government and not the states, and that states are free to implement whatever religious oaths and tests that they deem acceptable, to authorize state churches, and to make religious statements.

Someone remind Keyes of the following very important words:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

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A Norwegian man who discovered his friends were throwing him a surprise party decided to turn the tables and surprise them by lighting off his shotgun into the air. But he tripped and shot six of his friends instead. A likely excuse.

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The Lord works in mysterious ways. At least, that's what's being said about the death of Hitoshi Nikaidoh, who was decaptitated in a freak elevator accident at St. Joseph Hospital in Texas just days before he was due to be sent to Africa as part of a Christian Mission.

Silliness

So, I'm reading through the daily news as it's coming down the wires and I stumble upon an article in some New York weekly about a Christian Youth Rally called "Kingdom Bound." Even the title was a little too much for me: I was swept with a wave of memory for five years ago when a science-fiction convention I attended somehow ended up sharing space with a Christian Youth rally and kids as young as six were running around with t-shirt's reading "A Servant Of The Kingdom." To us, it's oh-so-hip to play with monarchist language, but these people wouldn't know irony if it chomped its ivory-white and razor-sharp teeth through their genitals with 4000 foot-pounds of febric seziure-induced force.

I know of what author Matt Tabbai speaks when he mentions the red-stained t-shirts reading "Jesus: the original blood donor" (shit, does that mean that because I got my Red Cross gallon badge once upon a time I'm now qualified to save souls?) and "Satan is a nerd" (hey, Christbot, in some corners that's a compliment). He listens to third-rate teen actor Kirk Cameron of Growing Pains talk about how the whole "God brings peace" story is a bad sell and what we should really concentrate on is the whole fire and brimstone and fear part of the tale. (Funny, but Mary-Kate and Ashley went on to have careers...)

But what got my attention was the end piece, in which a woman named Pam Stenzel ranted onstage about abstinence and sex and the consequences of bad sex and about how she was perfectly willing to let her own daughter roast in Hell if that's what she chose. Tabbai asks: "Exactly how much do you need to hate yourself to be attracted by a message like that? How crippled do you have to be as a person to feel soothed by that kind of emotional ass-whipping?"

Well, look at Pam's biography, and you will see one seriously fucked-up life in the making. And if I read between the lines right (note that the "support" page gives a 404 error), these people are federally funded, "faith-based," and delivering a message that has no real evidence demonstrating its long-term efficacy.

And in case anyone thinks this is somewhat irrelevant to our little neighborhood, consider this: She's going to be in Moses Lake, talking to six different schools, this November, hosted by "Warriors, Arise and Restore!"

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My LiveJournal Sitcom
Elfs And Weasel (UPN, 1:00): elfs (Jude Law) eats j5nn5r (Jack Nicholson)'s raspberry cheesecake. Meanwhile, kyriani (Sela Ward) causes problems at work when a file from jenkitty (Linda Blair) has a virus. Later that day, kendaer (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) thinks adminninja (Buddy Ebsen) has a Brooklyn accent. Upstairs, johno (Bebe Neuwirth) can't open norikos_author (Tiffani-Amber Thiessen)'s jar of pickles. Also, yaoifangirl (Anjelica Huston) and _pollox (John Wayne) kiss at the beach. Craziness ensues.
What's Your LiveJournal Sitcom? (by rfreebern)

Hmm... DStar as Tiffani-Amber. And I could see Jack Nicholson playing Jenner. Jude Law? Moi?

Rockin'.