Make cleaning a manly art, and more men will do it!

Man toy

It never ceases to amaze me what I, as an American, can buy without regulation. This is a 2700 PSI power washer. It'll take off fingers if I'm not careful. It has a gasoline motor that is probably the most reliable I've ever had the pleasure of owning, with the possible exception of the Fuji Heavy Industries four-cylinder in my car. It's a four-stroke, so none of this mixing gas and oil to make it go. I've blasted clean our sidewalks and the secondary driveway. The driveway has a nasty slope, and was becoming covered in Seattle's most native vegetation, moss, making it dangerously slippery on wet Autumn days.

In-process washing

The biggest task was cleaning off the deck chairs from last year. (The deck is next, and it's probably going to be more work.) It took about an hour to clean all four of them. I didn't know they were actually white underneath it all; I'd always assumed they were a grungy grey-green color, and the spots were just a strange sort of camoflage. I thought maybe the previous owners had been militia types, we have bunches of those out here.

When it involves gasoline and danger, men will do anything. Even clean up around the house.

Bachmann goes all in for the cultural conservatives.

Michelle Bachmann has signed The Marriage Vow, a statement of her values and what she would do as president of the United States.

Among the charming details are these statements: "Homosexuality is a choice and ... a public health risk." Also, "sex is better after marriage."

Bachmann pledges to "ban all pornography," "outlaw homosexuality," and "oppose any modification to marriage, whether by the courts, bureaucracy, or statute, that recognizes unions that are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, or same-sex." It then, without blinking an eye, "bans Sharia law."

Only by imposing it.

One has to wonder about this tidbit, though:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born in to slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African- American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.

So... what? "Freedom, not as good for blacks as slavery. Especially not since we elected one of them to the Presidency"?

When you support Intelligent Design, you're supporting Sharia Law!

Remember, when you support Intelligent Design, you're supporting Sharia Law:

With the rise of the Ash'arites, the ethos in the Islamic world was increasingly opposed to original scholarship and any scientific inquiry that did not directly aid in religious regulation of private and public life. While the Mu'tazilites had contended that the Koran was created and so God's purpose for man must be interpreted through reason, the Ash'arites believed the Koran to be coeval with God — and therefore unchallengeable. At the heart of Ash'ari metaphysics is the idea of occasionalism, a doctrine that denies natural causality. Put simply, it suggests natural necessity cannot exist because God's will is completely free. [Intelligent Design proponents] believe that God is the only cause, so that the world is a series of discrete physical events each willed by God.

[Emphasis mine, natch.]

Giving up soda pop has led to mental docoherence

I am not entirely sure what to make of my new mental states, now that I've given up soda pop.

When I was drinking pop until 5pm or 6pm, I was much more mentally alert around 8pm than I am nowadays. I would have trouble getting to sleep, but not too badly. Heck, when it was cola-based caffeine, I could sleep shortly after downing a large amount. I'd sleep fine, just quickly. I'd be mentally alert and capable until about bedtime.

Theophylline, on the other hand, makes it impossible for me to get to sleep. I used to order iced teas at dinner, mistakenly believing that the caffeine content was less. Theophylline is more powerful than kola or coffee-based trimethylxanthine and has a longer half-life. Lesson for me: don't drink black teas at night.

But now I'm down to two or three cups of coffee a day and, having given up all caffeinated products after 12pm, come 8pm I'm wiped. My eyes are heavy, my body is tired. This is true whether or not I get a full eight hours of sleep. It's sorta frustrating. It makes me think that maybe I should figure out when my last cup of coffee should be in the late afternoon, and enjoy it.