Author: Muttrox

Last weekend, the Muttrox family went to the Providence Children’s Museum. If you click to that picture, you will see there is a hundred foot dragon that lies atop the building. Our boy couldn’t stop talking about it days later. You would ask him if he went potty in his pants, or if he wants more banana, and the answer would be “Dragon! Big tall nice dragon!” That has nothing to do with anything, I just think it’s pretty neat. Providence is home to a disproportiate number of large animal sculptures, the most famous being the Big Blue Bug (featured in Dumb & Dumber). I was just reading about it here, interesting history. It’s name is “Nibbles”. Nibbles.

Anyhow, one of the exhibits at the museum is something called “Littlewoods“. Basically a big plastic forest type place for toddlers to go wild in. And of course some pamphlets for the parents. Including one on paper vs. plastic. Which (FINALLY) brings me to the point of this post. Paper vs. Plastic bags. The eternal debate, at least as far as mediocre comedians are concerned. This pamphlet was strongly in favor of paper, for many environmental reasons. And the further I read, the more I realized something important.

I don’t care about the environment. I just want to get my foodhome easily.

I hate plastic, but not because of the environment. I just hate those plastic bags. They are awful.

Consider:
1) They are hard to get off the rack. I often see the bagger fumbling to get the front of the bag opened up and still on the hooks so items can actually be put in it. No problems with paper bags, just grab one of the stack and ffwwipp it.
2) They don’t hold anything. This almost deserves a separate post it gets me so mad. For example, I buy a gallon of milk, some ice cream bars, and a bag of chips. (For example.) And how do they bag it? I end up with three bags, one for each item. No, no, that defeats the point of having a bag! The bag serves two purposes: To give you an affordance to grip, and to put multiple items in a bag so that you carry less things. Putting three items in three bags completely defeats the point. For godsake, the milk even has it’s own handle, why the hell would I need a bag for that? 12 items or less results in dozens of these f’in plastic bags! Even when they do pack them up, they hold only three or four items a piece. Paper can hold 15-20.
3) They don’t stay organized, if they ever were. You put them in the back of the car. What happens? They instantly spill all over the place. You dcan’t pack the car, you just end up with a big heap of food. It’s just like your shopping cart was, only now there are plastic bags in random spots to add color. Paper bags don’t do that, they line up in a nice grid and stay that way.
4) So when you get home, you have to repack the plastic bags, to get all the food items back in. And they are hard to hold. Ever have nine bags in the back seat and you spend a full minute trying to arrange them one by one on your hand so you can carry enough of them at once? Kind of a pain, isn’t it? No problems with paper bags, especially since they often come with handles nowadays.

Times have changed. I speak from inside knowledge. I worked for three years as a cashier/bagger at Stop & Shop. On day one, we were trained how to pack bags. It’s not hard. Heavy on bottom, light on top, fill to the rim but no higher. Pretty simple, right? When I ask for paper nowadays, I get a look of bewilderment, as if the bagger has just been asked to solve a particularly tricky calculus problem.

(BTW, the environmental question is open. The children’s museum wanted you to use paper, but if you google around, there’s just as many ecological arguments to use plastic instead. I don’t really care, I just want to get my groceries home easily.)

War of the Worlds is a well-made movie of astupid book. The special effects are cool, the acting is good. Better than expected all around. The biggest problem it has is that the plot is essentially ridiculous. When War of the Worlds was first published in 1898, the suprise ending made sense. I trust that as I am writing this 107 years later, no one will be too offended if I give away that surprise ending. The Martians, having easily overwhelmed all of man’s military might, essentially catch colds and die. The bacteria get ’em. Ha ha, what a trick. In 1898, that was clever and plausible, at least plausible enough for science fiction. Nowadays, it is absurd.

We are expected to believe that these Martians are incredibly intelligent. The opening of the movie, narrated by Morgan Freeman (all movies narration must be by Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones, it’s in the SAG bylaws), specifically states how smart they are. But not smart enough to have figured out germ theory! Smart enough to have created weapons of war that smash our puny tanks like so much kleenex, but not smart enough to make their vehicles airtight.

Now the Martians didn’t just truck on over to ol’ Terra to invade. No, Morgan tells us that they waited one million years underground, waiting and waiting for the right time to launch their attack. That’s right, one million years. Think about that. One million years ago, Homo Erectus was barely more than an animal. Their defenses consisted of sticks of varying sizes. Nowadays, we have missiles, tanks, guns, nuclear weapons, etc. If they’d given us another 100, we would have beat the pants off them. What kind of strategy are they employing? What were they waiting for? And in that entire million years, they never figured out the first thing about germ theory or bacteria. That’s a higher intelligence for you.

Anyhow, in the movie they managed to avoid a lot of this ridiculousnessosisty by just ignoring the aliens. Most of the movie (and the book) is not so much about the aliens, but about how our protagonist deals with all the change going on around him, which is mostly the fellow humans. Those were the good parts. Whenever the aliens came on screen, you had to force yourself to ooh and aah over the awesome lasers, and not think about how much easier it would be to invade Earth if you had the merest sliver of a brain. (If there ever is such thing as a war of this kind, there is one sure tactic. Bombardment. With gravity on your side, move asteriods into orbit around Earth and let them fall. A city-sized one likely killed the dinosaurs and most other terran life 65 million years ago, it would be childs play to wipe us all current lifeforms the same way.)

(On a sidenote, I am stunned by the hatred directed at Tom Cruise by friends of mine. He was a dipstick who made good movies his whole career, now he’s a dipstick who makes good movies. Whatever. Scientology is nuts, if it takes Tom Cruise to make you realize that, great, but the man’s got a right to be nuts. Who cares?)

Does anyone have anything good to say to say about Bolton? I realize that my information comes mostly through liberal sources, but no one seems to think this appointment is a good thing. Here’s a sampling of letters from the NY Times. Even the 2 out of 6 who are pro-Bolton have nothing good to say about the UN. Their argument is that the UN is so bad that it doesn’t matter who we send or if he’s a big jerk also.

Bush’s reasoning for a recess apointment makes no sense. He carps about up or down votes, but won’t take the measures needed to get them. Like releasing the relevant docs, required by law, that were asked as part of Bolton’s hearings. Given the history, keeping executive privilege is clearly more important to this administration that anything (except making the rich richer I suppose).

Overall, I don’t know a lot about Bolton. I don’t mind if he’s an asshole frankly. What I mind is that he is being appointed to a post he is probably unqualified for, by appointment process, temprement, and past history. I like this post and this one by The Poorman, who seems to a know a sliver more than myself.

My latest fave rave musician is Josh Rouse. It’s not the kind of music that hits you over the head with it’s incredibleness the first time you hear it, but I find myself playing his stuff over and over. Simple lyrics have a way of hitting home. Here’s a link to his terrible homepage. Doesn’t anyone know how to design a webpage that people actually want to use?

Here’s three tracks. The first one is pretty energetic (and was on Seventh Heaven or one of those interchangable teenage angst shows), the other two are more typical.

Directions
1972
The White Trash Period of my Life (Look it up and buy it)

Update: I took down some links because it was sucking up too much bandwidth. I’m also through with Josh Rouse. I went to see him live and he was incredibly boring. He has a lot of so-so and good songs but after a while none of them were all that memorable.

Looking for a book to read? Here are five with the Muttrox seal of approval.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr — Kind of a Sherlock Holmes Jack the Ripper kind of feel. Great book. Everyone in my family has read it and liked it, and it was a huge bestseller. “The Alienist” is a professor of abnormal psychology, but it is set before such a science really exists. So
he is pioneering it while being scorned by most of society (even though he’s completely right), and gets wrapped in a mystery about a mysterious figure. Told from the point of
view of one his admirers (a la the Sherlock Holmes). You can’t go wrong with this one. It even has Theodore Roosevelt! Bully!

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver — Well known book, mostly relegated to hickbook status. Roughly. it’s about a very very zealous missionary who picks up his southern belle wife and 4 daughters to move them to the Congo. They have no idea what they’re getting into at any level. Won many prizes, and probably deserved them all. Advantage for men in relationships: You will get bonus points from your better half for reading this.

Cryptmonicon by Neal Stephenson – It’s categorized as SF, but it’s not. Not sure what it is really except terrific. It’s almost 1000 pages, and they just keep getting better. It’s awesome. I took it home over winter break in 2000, stayed up late every night reading it, and continually blew off my in-laws so I could read another few chapters. Just could not put it down. Yes it’s long, but it’s worth it. (OK, you want some plot? There are two parralel stories. One is in current day about a hacker type who is trying to start a business forming a data haven. The other is set in WWII, and is mostly about a marine and a code-breaker whose paths cross. And lots of stuff happens, and you begin to find out it really is just one story…)

How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker — Interested in what makes you tick? This book explains so much about how humans reason, think, and feel it’s scary. The main thesis is that our mind (if there is such a thing) is rooted in the brain. The brain is a result of an evolution. A glorious kludged together heterogenous device. It blew my brain up every 5 pages or so with something that was so obviously true about humans and human life that I had never noticed before. Also very readable, and very funny (some good 3 Stooges references made their way in there.)

Steel Beach by John Varley — Warning: Science Fiction. I liked it a lot, and I think it’s very readable without being complete brain candy. One of my brothers read it and called me a jackass, so opinions are split. I think he’s a jackass, so who ya gonna believe?

These are listed more or less in order of accessibility. Everyone will appreciate the first two, the odds get longer after that.

Media editorials are still lining up behind their own. Judith Miller went to jail (and Cooper almost did) to protect the confidentiality of her source in the Valerie Plame case, right? Nay, twas to protect the very fabric of journalism! Forsooth, for if a precedent be set, then verily the cessation of confidential information would shake the heavens, and the gods would laugh at the slow death of investigative journalism! (Apologies for that terrible Thor impression.)

But this makes no sense. The only way the government can compel a reporter to reveal their source is if (1) A crime has been comitted, and (2) there is no other way to get to that information. In other words, the only sources who would be burned by this precedent are criminals, who are committing crimes by leaking information. What’s so bad about that precedent being set?

I bought a pair of boxcutters yesterday. I had bought two before, and neither of them have worked. Fancy ones, with “blade replacement systems” and such. Hell, with it, I’m getting the same one my Dad had for his whole life. Simple, to the point. I am my father.

The ultimate sports fan.

The Downing Street Memo. Just in case you want to see the actual document.

Dr. Doom reviews The Fantastic Four movie. In character.

Today, during work, I started a sentence with the phrase, “Prudence dictates…” I immediately wanted to kill myself. Good god I get pretentious.

So, what has to actually happen before we can say this is Watergate II, or worse? Where’s the point at which it is acceptable in mainstream politics to point out how this administration operates? Do we actually have to catch Bush with the still beating heart of Al Franken being brought to his mouth before we’re allowed to say anything?

Watch the video. Read the transcript. The press grows some hair, and finally confronts McClellan on the whole Rove/Plame connection. Lying through his teeth through the whole thing, and finally caught at it.

God, I can’t wait for The Daily Show tonight. It’s gonna be a great one.

Good pizza is hard to find. Not gourmet cusine pizza – just plain ol’ good pizza. I was inspired by this paragraph from the Sports Guy

The well-done 14-inch cheese pizza at either the Larchmont Village Pizzeria (West Hollywood) or Pino’s Pizzeria (Brookline, Mass.).
Here’s what I want from my cheese pizza: I want the cheese to be brown and a little bubbly. I want a thin-crust that isn’t too doughy. I want just enough sauce that the roof of my mouth burns. And I don’t want to feel like I need a bypass after I eat it. Only two pizza places have ever accomplished this for me, and they’re 3,000 miles apart. Go figure. It’s harder to find a white punt returner than a good pizza place, isn’t it?

I have slightly different standards. Tomato sauce is divine. Cheese is great, but don’t overdo it. If you can’t take a bite without strings hanging out of your mouth, you’ve gone too far. If it’s dripping over the sides, you’ve gone too far. The cheese is a topping, not some amorphous semi-cooked blob of dairy putrescence.

Sports Guy mention of Pino’s, where I wiled away many happy lunches, got me salivating. Since I moved to Georgia, it’s hard to find good pizza. Here are the best pizza places I know:

• Marios
• Ninos
• Papa Ginos (in the old days)
• Unos/Duos/Ginos
• Brother Brunos

None of those are in Georgia. Notice they all end in “o’s”? That has become my new Pizza Postulate.

Pizza Postulate: For top quality pizza, the vendor must have a name ending in "o".

In Georgia, there are two pretty good pizza places. Interestingly, both end in a vowel, but not the letter o.

• Fellini’s
• The Pizzeria

More examples are needed to flesh out this pizza paradigm! Submissions welcome!

Child car seats are a strange industry. Can you think of another product, that is designed to save lives, that is required by law, that 80-98% of people can’t install correctly (depending what source you believe)? The government requires me to buy one of these, requires me to leave my child in it all times, but has no requirements about making the product clear enough to use that it does any good. Seems a little insane, no? I like to think I am well above the average citizen when it comes to this sort of thing, but I really don’t know. Maybe I’m part of the huge majority on this, and I am setting up Muttrox Jr. for a quick exit from this world.

Some day there will be a massive class action suit about this. The legal situation is already crazy. When we took Muttrox Jr. home from the hospital for the first time, we were of course terrified that we had installed it wrong. We asked the nurses to look it over. They refused. They are not legally allowed to give advice or help. Presumably if they did that and there was an incident the hospital would be liable. Strangely though, they can just refuse to hand over the infant because the car seat is unsafe. So you can start pulling straps at random until the refusal is lifted. Bizzare. We had a similar experience when we rented a car, and the seat wasn’t like any model we had ever seen before. The folks at the counter didn’t know anything and weren’t allowed to tell us if they did. They also had no instruction manual, and were even missing the locking clip that all seats have. Stay the hell away from Dollar Rent-a-car!

Then there is the civil liberty aspect to this. I believe every state has laws prescribing car seat usage at a very young age, up to 2 years. Some have a lot more. In Georgia, you need to use various devices until they are six. (Take a look at the link. Looks like it was designed by someone who sends conspiracy spam in their spare time. These are my tax dollars at work?)

The issue here is the role of parents to make their own choices for themselves and their family, versus the common safety. It’s a give-and-take. Our society leans these days towards the common safety. Without going off on another rant, it’s thinks like this that make so many people identify themselves as libetarian, regardless of how they vote. Anyhow — the point is that since seat belts save enough lives, the safety issue overrides the parental role. With car seats, the logic is the same. But I don’t believe it. I never have. I’ve never believed that a child over a few years old derives all that much benefit from car seats. More than that, I just don’t like it. I don’t like talking to my son in the back seat. Many of my best memories from my own childhood are driving with my father and talking with him, in the front seat. DeborahTannen claims that men communicate about big issues best in setting like a car, where they are together but not directly facing each other, and based on my own experience I believe it. It saddens me to know how old my boy will be before I can put him up front.

And where’s the evidence? Steven Leavitt, of Freakonomics fame, has an article in the NY Times today, and a follow-up blog entry. It fits right into my pet peeve. Clearly, his conclusions are not warranted from his statistical evidence, but it also points to the need for more research. If car seats are empirically shown not to significantly help older children, where is the justification for these laws?