I couldn't bounce any higher.

I just got one of the nicest compliments I ever recieved from an animator I respect greatly:

So I'm looking through the Space animation contest entries on the FTP page and I stumble upon one with a spaceman on the moon and a giant Shaggy. And I knew, immediately and with no hint from the gallery page that displays the artist' names, that [Squelch] made this clip. That's a great piece [Squelch], it's really cool you've gotten to the point people can look at your stuff and know it's you.

The piece in question is here (Quicktime 5 or later required, 4 MB, 1:05).

Lunar Lopes are tough.

I really hate George W. Bush's policies, and I'm not a big fan of the man, either.

But, darn it, I want to walk on the moon.

It musta been the tacos.

A minor setback is enough to make me give up all hope for the future. What is wrong with me? Maybe I'm bipolar...

I'm still here.

But mostly I'm here. I suppose this destroys my vaunted pseudonymity, but I worry less about readers of Rooster Spice finding out who I am than people who know who I am finding Rooster Spice.

The dirty little secret is that I don't yet know whether our team has been accepted. Shhh...

Daredevil.

Giant holes where the actors ought to be.

Blind fucking rage about nothing. Was that a Seinfeld blind rage? When I look back, will my life be a blind rage?

"All I know is
What I want most of all
Is to know what I want."
-- Into the Woods

It all comes down to one fucking choice. Except, of course, it doesn't, not really; because one choice is so inextricably bound up in the person you are (and were), and that choice, even if it were different, would have been cancelled out and rendered moot by all the other choices, and the result would have been virtually the same.

Unless, I suppose, one talks about the choice of one's parents to conceive and the choice of the chromosomes to stick together in just the specific way that created you. That's a choice that could have made a difference.

Why should we care? Seriously.

Motherfucking dickhead Christ-on-a-stick asshole bunghole Izusuhole crap shit moron. Go back to the Shadows.

Just fucking bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Leave me alone. Short people got no reason to live.

Fortunately, I don't own a copy of Mein Kampf.

My one-year-old daughter loves to read books, and she oftentimes grabs grown-up books just to leaf through them. The other day she grabbed my Little Red Book, and started calling my name: "Da, da, da, da..."

"Yes, honey?"

"Da, da, da, da--dialectical materialism!"

Bizarre phone conversations: a new sub-genre.

What's the proper response to "Hello, do you have a wife who's Oriental and drives a station wagon?"

All I could come up with was, "Uh, no."

In retrospect I probably should have said, "I have a wife who's Caucasian and takes public transit."

Upon watching The Two Towers, Diarrhea Edition.

I finally got it! I was wondering where the heck I had seen this performer before. Of course! I didn't even know he was an actor!

Marvelous, Holmes, marvelous!

"If you find a small portion of your front yard is wet, you may reasonably conclude that your neighbor's sprinkler was poorly adjusted. However, should you find that your trash can, car, and driveway are wet, you must not infer that your neighbor ran throughout your property with his or her garden hose; rather, you must conclude that it has rained."

I voted.

The person for whom I voted shall remain a secret, at least until I get bored. I urge anyone from the Super Tuesday states who can vote to do so.

It seemed like an exercise in faith-based voting this year, with those shiny Diebold screens blinking at me and assuring "Your vote has been recorded" while offering no solid evidence that it had been. I want a printout, damn it.

I think it might be time to quit blogging again.

Tears.

There are two reasons I don't have the heart to write about Edwards. The first, as I've already mentioned, is my son's stomach virus (from which I'm still recovering). The second is that an acquaintance of ours died Friday night.

I say "acquaintance," but he was the brother of one of our best friends, so the word doesn't really do him justice. K and I shared an apartment with D--- (the best friend) when we first moved to Maryland, and his brother actually lived on our couch for a few months. So we knew him well. He had a little boy who is now ten or so.

The funeral was yesterday, and it was my first since my great-grandmother died in 1988 or so. D--- and his mother looked to be strong. But I suppose that's how everyone tries to look.

He was in his early thirties, and died of pneumonia.

An uncle--my father's twin brother, in fact--died last month. My father is sixty-five years old. I thought that was too young, too. It's sad to say, but D---'s brother's death actually affected me more. I have no memory whatsoever of my uncle; one half of the family didn't speak to him, and I never found a reason to get in touch.

After all, life is too short to talk to people you barely know.

Sort of as promised.

I know I said I would write about the John Edwards rally I went to last week. I intended to, really I did. Now, I can only say that the event was standing-room only, and that seemingly everyone in the room was interviewed but me, even though I was carrying my "cherubic" (so said someone wearing a Dean button) son and daughter along as eye candy. And, oh yes, I forgot my Dean sticker. Alas.

He was a great speaker. I still hope I can get to hear Kerry in person before Super Tuesday. I didn't make it when Dean came to speak at U. Maryland a few months back--a great regret.

I still don't know for whom I'll vote. I'm leaning toward Edwards, if only to keep the Kerry juggernaut from rolling him over. I could, I suppose, vote for Dean to ensure his delegates will have clout at the convention; but I doubt he'd hit the 15% needed to get delegates from Maryland.

Of course, according to the specimen ballot we got in the mail last week, I can actually vote both for a candidate and for the delegates themselves, three of whom are committed to Dean. So maybe I'll split my ticket, so to speak.

How can Cheney look his daughter in the face?

Words cannot express how angry I am at the President's endorsement of the Hate Amendment. Mostly, they can't because the words I said to my wife this morning are a federal offense.

Frankly, I find it extremely unlikely that the Constitution will be amended to enshrine bigotry. It is a difficult process, after all, as it should be.

But (to paraphrase what someone else said in a long-ago debate about the Second Amendment) if the Constitution is amended to state that same-sex marriages are unconstitutional, then I will work, for the rest of my life if neccessary, to make interracial marriages unconstitutional. Then I will work to make divorce unconstitutional. And finally, I will work to make pre-marital sex unconstitutional. Then I will move to Canada.

The sad thing is, there are probably some wing nuts out there who would applaud me for doing all this--except maybe the "move to Canada" part.

Today is Grey Tuesday.

EMI Records, which owns the recording to the Beatles' White Album, is seeking to ban DJ Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, a hip-hop remix which combines the White Album and Jay-Z's The Black Album. EMI has ordered the very few record stores which were stocking The Grey Album to destroy their copies, and has sent cease-and-desist letters to web sites which offered the songs for download.

I do not have the space to host the songs, so instead, I am joining in the protest by "going grey" for the day.

This is not neccessarily a protest against EMI asserting their copy right (and yes, I mean that to be two words), although I think their position is ridiculous, especially since they could have asked DJ Danger Mouse to pay royalties. Rather, the current copyright system is broken. It protects corporate rights for ridiculous amounts of time, and supresses new works like The Grey Album. Does anyone seriously believe that downloading this new work will discourage purchase of arguably one of the greatest rock and roll albums ever recorded?

For more information, visit GreyTuesday.org.

To download the songs, I recommend visiting Brian Flemming, to whom I am grateful for bringing this to my attention. (Incidentally, as someone who loves the Beatles and dislikes most hip-hop, I can say that this work is actually quite good.)

Today is also my sister's 21st birthday. Have a beer, A--!

Yesterday I was with my son at the emergency room 'til 4 A.M., so no Edwards report until I recover. (He's okay, just dehydration from a stomach virus.)

Talk that funky accent, white boy.

John Edwards is coming to Largo, MD this afternoon, and I plan to be there, although I'll be wearing a Dean sticker (thanks, Medley!). Watch this space for further details.

"Madam, they may have cancelled it, but BLEEEARGH" all over her evening gown.

Well, I complained in another place that I had missed the first 20 minutes of yesterday's Angel episode (I had set the VCR to the wrong channel). And so along comes the miracle of BitTorrent, wherein the episode is already available in VCD format!

I guess that means I'm a major criminal now, huh? But hey, straw man, how is this different from lending a VHS copy to a friend?

Serious thanks to Godfrey for the heads-up.

Hell with it.

Maybe you know, maybe you care, maybe you don't either one, but my son has some autistic tendencies. No one knows what to do about this, least of all me.

In general, he seems like a normal, if somewhat eccentric, kid; he is somewhat delayed developmentally, but in my admittedly subjective opinion, it's not incredibly worrisome--he's just behind the curve, but progressing along at the same rate as everyone else.

I suppose I'm trying to compensate for my own fears and parenting failures when I say this, but is it possible that all the worries about "social etiquette" and "developmental delays" are just fear of deviation from the norm? Isn't it okay for D. to be a little different from the kids around him?

He certainly seems all right with it.

Of course, at his age, and in his school, there really aren't any bullies yet. I suspect he'll be teased mercilessly when they appear. The only thing he may have going for him is that he's all-American-looking, unlike yours truly; I think I read somewhere that blond-eyed, blue-haired kids don't get teased as much. (If not, well, I just posted it on the Internet and that makes it true.)

When do bullies appear, anyway? I remember they were in full bloom at kindergarten, but I don't remember being made fun of in nursery school. What's the trigger? When do these kids get the Mean Gene?

Does anyone else feel like that kid who got pushed around and beaten up all the time? Or, conversely, if you were the kid who beat other people up, HOW CAN YOU LIVE WITH YOURSELF, YOU SICK FUCK, AND I HOPE ALL THE PAIN YOU CAUSED ME FROM MIDDLE SCHOOL TO NINTH GRADE IS VISITED ON YOU THROUGH THE END OF YOUR PATHETIC LIFE, YEAH, I'M TALKING TO YOU, BILLY--ahem. Sorry. Got carried away there, but gosh, it felt good.

I used to imagine that at the very least they would have menial jobs and I could meet them later on and say, "Could you look under the Lexus' hood for me, Troy?" But, as has been well-documented in this space, I never had a career I was proud of even before I left the work force. So, so much for that.

Besides, maybe not all the high-school jerks, but certainly all the college jerks were jerks because they were rich and well-connected; so they're the ones with the Lexuses now. And probably the connections to the current administration, too (all the jerks were Republicans, though not all the Republicans were jerks).

I don't even want a Lexus, but it's the principle of the thing.

(Does anyone else think this blog has gotten boring since I went pseudonymous and stopped blogging about the bad times?)

(And why, even when I try to explore my feelings about my children, am I such a narcissist that I wind up whining about myself?)