My kids are just cool.

Kouryou-chan was watching a TV show on fractals, and after the show was over she sat down with a sheet of paper and drew the first four iterations of a Koch snowflake. And it wasn't just a copy; she was actually going through the process, eyeballing the midpoint of each line and trying to find the midpoints between the midpoints and drawing a new triangle. It was very cool.

It almost makes up for the horrible, snotty way she's been in the past three days as Omaha and I have slowly been pulling her sleep schedule back to 7am after letting her stay up late New Years' Eve.

Casualties of the Economy

Six months ago

Yesterday

Six months ago, a former drug store that had stood closed and shuttered for the year prior re-opened as an Office Depot. Last night, as I drove home from a quick trip into the city, I passed by the store and saw big signs that read "20%-40% Off!" and "Store Closing!" and "All Inventory Must Go!"

There is still material scattered about the store left over from the opening. Excuse me, the "Grand Opening!" I want to find a sense of irony in that, but people are losing their jobs, and I can't help but think that for them life must suck right now. I asked one of the people cleaning up a corner where someone had scattered dry erase markers, "Didn't you guys just open?"

"Just recently, yeah." He sounded depressed. I don't blame him.

---

Another casulaty: Koma Bean

Another casualty of our rapidly failing economy: Koma Bean, a vegetarian Asian food stand at the new section of Southcenter Mall, was gone when I went to the mall yesterday, leaving only an empty kiosk, the menu still up but the cooking aisle empty. I'd never eaten there, but I did see folks at the register all the time. Sad, but inevitable. I wonder when we're going to start seeing store shutter down inside the mall.

The United States currently has 20.2 square feet of retail space per person. Compare that to Sweden with 3.3 square feet, or the UK 2.5, France with 2.3, and Italy with 1.1, all countries with economies doing better than our own.

I wonder what the numbers will look like when the bloodbath is over.

But I Is A Consumer

After a lovely New Year's Eve where I sat around with Omaha, Lisakit, and Yamaraashi-chan to watch movies (Kouryou-chan was at a friend's house, having a New Year's Eve game night), I spent most of January 1st sitting around doing very little. The 2nd, on the other hand, I shopped hard.

I bought Yamaraashi-chan her other Christmas gift, a starter guitar which she has promptly forgotten despite begging me for months for it. We got more pyjamas for her after triapsing all up and down the mall. I replaced my shaving soap (Col. Conk's Bayrum, which I love for its quality and the smell). I fed them at the food court. That kind of stuff.

Yamaraashi-chan is becoming a real girly girl. She wants to shop. She didn't want to leave the mall until "we at least stop at Hot Topic!" Okay. She drooled at all the Twilight stuff, and I observed that Stephanie Meyer is going to be a very rich woman when this is all over.

We were in Radio Shack buying something when Yamaraashi-chan observed, "I used to hate coming to the mall."

"Yeah, like I do!" Kouryou-chan said. She does hate the whole process of shopping, and begged and wheedled with both me and Omaha to be allowed to stay home and not have to go "boring shopping" with her Dad and her sister.

"But now I don't mind it so much," Yamaraashi-chan continued. "In fact, I kinda like it."

I said, "You know, kid, in four or five years, you and your friends will come on the weekends to the mall, buy Starbucks and Jamba Juice, and just hang out, look at pretty things you want and can't afford, and spend all day here."

"Really?"

"Yes, and you know why guys will come here?"

"To shop?"

"No, to look at you and your friends."

"No way!" Her eyes were wide with disbelief.

The woman behind the counter, who had to be in her mid-20s, laughed and said, "Your dad is absolutely right. You should listen to him." It's nice to be backed up by complete strangers. I think it frustrates her that her parents are paying attention. We're not supposed to do that.

Reading manga, getting depressed

The other day I found a delightful dickgirl hentai manga entitled Your Name Gets Me Off in which not only were the traditional roles of seme and uke completely ignored, but the male character actually went down on the futanari character and did not get raped for it by the end of the story. Sadly, it usually is the case in futanari stories that a man/futanari pairing almost always results in the futanari on bottom and a woman/futanari pairing always results in the woman on the bottom-- the "most male" character "wins," and a male character eager to go down on dick-- even dickgirl dick-- is almost surely going to be nonconsensually and brutally victimized by the end of the story. Pleasantly, in this case the futanari was simply the delicious center of a threesome with no ill-will among any of the characters. Yay!

This was a wonderful surprise, given how much crap there is out there. This season, the theme for victims has been mostly wuxia heroines being punished for being female. Which really sucks because I happen to like wuxia, too.