Yuletime Giftlist

So, here's what I'm interested in finding this Yuletime in no particular order:

• A reliable usenet server.
• A reliable web service that supports Python scripts.
• Half-Life 2, Special Edition (the one that has Half-Life 1 recompiled for the HL2 engine)
• A men's grooming kit, Zhir or similar brand.
• A good kitchen thermometer.
• An audio connector for my car, to replace the one that bastard stole.
• A membership at a health club
• A bigger laptop. 6GB drive and 128MB of RAM just don't cut it.
• Ghost in the Shell: Innocence on DVD.
• Pajamas.

I was thinking about other completely absurd things, like a midlife crisis, complete with motorcycle. Knowing me, though, it would have to be some terribly pratical motorbike, like a Vespa or that ugly Honda two-person city bike they put out a couple of years back.

I would love to show you pictures...

I'd love to show you pictures, But I don't have access to the repository on my personal webserver, so you'll just have to imagine the Christmas tree we've set up. It's a monster, fully eight feet high. It's got lots of lights, although only the skirt set blink at the moment. It's covered in glass ball ornament, glass icicle ornaments with gold leaf ribbon, candy canes and ornamentas knick-knacks given to us by family over the years. Including a minature Starfleet Voyage, floating through the greenery.

We bought this monster at a u-cut lot down in southeeastern King County. After tramping through the planted forest to find just the right tree, the girls picked this huge bush of a tree. I cut it with the saw provided and Omaha held it steady. We carted it back to the barn, where the farmhands baled it for us. The girls were thrilled, both to be outdoors on a sunny but blustery day and to be picking a tree.

When we got home, we had to cut both the top and the base down just so it would fit in the house, and we had to vacuum repeatedly because the tree was crawling with spiders. But we eventually got it under control, and the girls had a wonderful time installing the hooks onto the ornaments and then hanging them. Omaha and I did the top of the tree.

Because we had had Kouryou-chan's choice, pizza, the night before, tonight we made Yamaarashi-chan's choice of tacos. That was fun. (Taco seasoning: 1/2 cup onion flakes, 3 tbsp ground cumin, 1 1/2 tsps chili powder, cayenne pepper up to 1/2 tsp, and 1/2 tsp garlic flakes. We skip the cayenne pepper for the girls; they're not spicy food kids. Use 2 to 3 tbsp per pound of meat and 1/2 cup water per pound of meat. Brown meat first, then simmer for 10 minutes in water and seasoning.)

Setting up the tree took so long that we ate late, and I had to put the girls to bed immediately afterwards. Yamaarashi-chan read from her dinosaur book, Maia, and Kouryou-chan from Charlotte's Web.

The Exotic made mundane

One of the things that comes up a lot in The Journal Entries, especially as the series goes on, is the way human beings deal with otherness or its lack. David Brin once entitled a collection of short stories he wrote with that title, but most of his stuff involved gee-whiz alienness. I think human beings by themselves, even in the absence of aliens, need otherness, something against which they compare themselves. In the universe where much of humanity's difference could have been smeared out into a this layer of common values and general tolerance, there will always be a group that seeks to define itself as not part of that layer for no other reason than because they believe that "something better," often an ill-defined something, can only be achieved through the adoption of values that are often distinctly different.

I was reminded of this when I came upon an article for Miss Artifical Beauty, a beauty pageant organized in response to one woman being expelled from the Miss China contest because she had had plastic surgery. The idea here was that plastic surgeons could show off the best examples of their work.

The winner caught my eye simply because one of her traits was that she had had her eyes and nose westernized. Apparently, the slightly softer nose and eyes with an epicanthic fold are very popular options over there. I think Feng Qian is a pretty woman, after four surgeries, but she looks odd. She looks like she's bought into the notion that exotic is pretty, and has modified herself to be exotic. For her, exotica is western.

When everyone looks the same, the desire is to be different. Wider eyes and bigger lips are 'in' this year in China. Well, at least they don't come out looking like this (warning, this image not safe for work).

Democrats!

Urgh. I hate the knight in shining armor routine. But I do it anyway. At 7:45 this morning tygereclipse wakes me up and begs me for a ride to work. On Sunday!. I so wanted to sleep in. She had overslept and missed her bus, and now Omaha has sworn that the next time she hears that young lady yakking on her phone seven hours before she has to catch a bus, Omaha's going to take her phone away and unscrew her light bulb and bonk her over the head if necessary.

So I drove her all the way up to work, then turned around and headed home. Since I was already on the road, I went on a quest for doughnuts. The first place I passed was closed (what the?) on Sunday, the second place didn't take plastic, and the third was three miles in the wrong direction, but I knew the girls liked that brand and so I went. The proprietor is a nice fellow but never remembers me. I suppose once a month isn't often enough to make a real impression.

Omaha and I sat around, and I did some filing and other personal stuff. I was cleaning out my filing cabinets when I came upon some studio nudes of Omaha when she was 22. I forgot just how much she's always been a beautiful woman. She was hotness at 22, and she's hotness now. I adore her completely.

Then we went out to the 33rd Democratic District Party Officials Christmas Party. It was held at Shay Schual-Burke's home; she's the state representative for out district. I learned two things about Democrats: they don't drink nearly as much Republicans, and the only Milton Friedman they know is his quote about the moral instincts of corporations. I actually talked to one of those intellectual dinosaurs who believes that the Vietnamese people were better off "down on the farms" then they were in an industrialized nation. We had dinner there, a potluck, and same of the people there were much less strident, although I swear there was one guy there who had stepped right out of a Thomas Nast cartoon, at least in appearance.

We got home and I finished up most of my filing. I have more to do, and a lot more sorting, but I'm slowly getting my life in order. We fed the girls a bit of late supper because we had such an early dinner, and we used up some leftovers: pizza, sandwiches, some macaroni and cheese. Then we did Yamaarashi-chan's eye therapy.