Fareed…at last

Fareed “Big Z” Zakaria from cnn.com:

Nobody in their right mind can doubt where America stands in this struggle — we have not had relations with the Iranian regime for 30 years — but inserting America into the fight will help the regime, not the people.

Obama’s critics are senators and columnists; they can grandstand. He has to govern. They want to make a point; he wants to make a difference.

 

 

 

Preach!  I’ve grown increasingly tired of the critics calling for “harsher rhetoric” towards our buddy Mahmoud.  First off, what have we really accomplished through rhetoric?  Secondly, note how Ahmadinejad responded when the rhetoric was kicked up a notch.  Leave it to Fareed to bring it (and bonus points for not mentioning Michael Jackson).

 

 

 

 

The rest of the interview isn’t particularly interesting, but you can read it here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got a kick out of you!

Aw ye-ah!  Well Baby K, you finally did it.  After weeks of demonstrating your karate kicks exclusively on Mommy (despite my Asian contribution to your gene pool) you finally let my hand feel your happy feet.  It happened at 9:05 pm at a bed and breakfast in Cambria, CA.  

That was a fun father-daughter sparring session!  I might need to get me some of those padded things that trainers put on their hands.  

Just don’t be too rough on Mommy, okay?  That woman is going to go through enough pain during the delivery so you may have to simmer down.  You also must know that kicking parents becomes exponentially less adorable once you leave the womb.  Just a heads up.

Well, enough lecturing for now.  Instead, more riffs on Sinatra lyrics!  What a girl, what a life, I’m in love!

Why don’t you let nobody turn you ’round?

Our baby girl wasn’t too cooperative today for the ultrasound, so we only got a distorted head view and a view of her footprint.  However, she did move quite a bit, notably kicking back when the ultrasound thingamabob pressed against her.  Hmm…uncooperative and kicky.  Hopefully, not a sign of things to come.

Of course we are still superduperhappy that she is healthy.  Pics below:

If I ran Iran

Four hours of NPR listening on the road to Lodi yielded the following thoughts:

Silly Iran.  If you are going to rig an election, you have got to do it the right way.  Now, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I know you hate the west and all, but you could have learned a few things from what went down in 2000.  

First of all, let’s talk about those percentages.  63% to 34%?  That’s basically two votes for you to every one of Mousavi’s.  Never mind that pre-election polling had the race being much tighter.  I know it sounds crazy, but some people do actually follow those doggone polls.   And this two-thirds to one-third thing.  You need to mix it up a little bit.  In America, we would not buy the fact that two-thirds of Utah voters voted in the exact same manner as two-thirds of Hawaiian voters.  Unless there was an Asian Mormon on American Idol.  

I mean, you didn’t even vary the numbers in Mousavi’s hometown.  I know, I know, Al Gore didn’t get Tennessee in 2000 either, but it was close.  And there was at least the plausible excuse of the redneck vote.  You just don’t have that in East Azerbaijan.  That’s just being lazy, Mahmoud, and there’s nothing worse than half-assed corruption.  Two-thirds to one-third?  Do you realize that’s what God got against Lucifer?  God!

Another thing we need to talk about is the timing.  What’s with announcing the election results a few hours afterwards?  Are we supposed to believe that your nuclear program has been all about making some super high-powered voting machines?  You need to learn how to   d  r  a  g     i  t     o u  t.  You know, call the guy to say you have conceded only to call back and say you haven’t before taking him to the Supreme Court under the guise that they will actually be fair about it.  Something like that.

Finally, let’s talk about what you could have done to avoid all this mess.  Now, shutting down Facebook before the election was a good idea because Mousavi was clearly getting more friend requests than you.  Also, your list of 20 facts about yourself was just not up to par.  Everybody knows you think the Holocaust didn’t happen.  Tell people something they didn’t know.  However, even your Facebook lift was clearly not enough.  You really need to work on disenfranchising beforehand.  But again, that takes work.  It might involve the placement of really bad voting machines and baffling ballots in a key locale that your brother happens to be the boss of.  It helps if a lot of the people who live there are really old.  Did you even think of that, Mahmoud?  

The sad thing is that your country’s voter turnout was like 85%.  So proportionally, you screwed over a lot more people than anybody has ever done here.  You could have at least given them a rigged election to believe in.  

Nevertheless, you did it.  It was sloppy, but you got your rig on.  So here’s to you, Mahmoud.  Just try to do better next time.

Dirt Hurts

At my previous school, there was a second grader who used to say “God made dirt, and dirt don’t hurt!” It was her quaint though grammatically incorrect way of justifying the 5-second rule.  

At the time I thought it rather funny, but if I were to encounter that 2nd grader today, I would go all Henry Rollins and say “You’re a LIAR!”  Because to be truthful, dirt does hurt–or perhaps more specifically hauling uberloads of topsoil hurts.

My colleague had the idea of saving us teachers some money (imagine that, teachers needing to pinch pennies) by getting free delivery on some organic topsoil.  Problem was, we needed 10 cubic yards of it.  We divvied it up among four of us.  I took 2.  This may not seem like a lot, but my spasming back responds with an au contraire (which is the only French it knows).  

That’s because after my colleague and I shoveled, leveled, unloaded, and wheelbarrowed my two yards, we repeated this process with her two yards (sans wheelbarrow as we just dumped the stuff in her driveway).  In between these two trips, we helped my principal load up another cubic yard.  Here are some of the numbers from our day:

cubic yards moved: 5

truckloads: 8

wheelbarrow loads: 32 

hours spent: 6

amount of topsoil in hair, shoes, teeth, etc: approximately 1 cubic yard

ibuprofen popped: 6

Of course it was all worth it, because Sara and Mini K get a nice garden box full of lovely nutritious topsoil to make lovely nutritious vegetables pop out.

Speaking of lovely, I documented my experience using Photobooth (what a difference shirt color makes).

 

After a busy day, my goals for tomorrow are modest:

Goal 1: Movement

Goal 2: Begin sentences with words other than “Ow”

Goal 3: Be able to use kleenex without turning it brown