Atomic Nerds

Happy Valentine’s/Single’s Awareness/Transactional Model of Sex day. Have some chocolate and mind the sticky stuff.

Valentine’s Day is a commercially created money generator for the candy, greeting card, flower, restaurant, and jewelry industry that locks singles and people in anything approaching a nontraditional relationship out in the cold and generally starts giving people bad memories sometime around grade school, but still. If you’re not screaming at the jewelry commercials (Men! Bribe her for sex and affection! Women! Test his memory and credit card limit!) or finding a single friend to watch anything but romantic comedies with, I genuinely wish you a fun time. As stupid and trainwrecked as the whole thing is, it’s nice to have an excuse for some close, warm time and to make your partner first priority of the day. (I kind of wish there were a Besties day for similar reason, but I kind of suspect this is actually what birthdays are for.)

We’re putting ours off, but we’ll get round to it. Not a good day for us and if we’re going to put in the effort, it’s going to be on a better day.

XKCD and Oglaf (NSFW!) summed it up pretty well. Try to avoid listening to the love skull or stapling your body parts to any other body parts, unless that’s part of a great evening for you.

Noah Brand of No Seriously, What About Teh Menz has a kitty. His kitty has a tumor in her sinuses that, if left there, will kill her. Unlike the vast majority of such tumors in that location, it is operable and treatable, with money, which Noah Brand does not have.

I have never met the man, and have no connection to him other than approving of NSWATM enough to link to it and read it regularly. I did, however, have a kitty with a tumor in his sinuses that no earthly power could have treated, that I miss very much.

There’s actually not a lot left needed. Many small donations have added up. Just a few more of similar size would do it. The donation system is nice and painless- if I ever find myself in need of it (let’s hope not), I would use it myself.

ETA: Goal reached, with padding. Go Team Internet!

Or at least, that seems to be the real title of this article about the military looking at expanding its mess hall options and including more vegetables, whole grains, lean meat, and lower-fat options.

Now, stripping away the political-tribe warpaint and chest-beating, this is an entirely sensible thing for the military to do. There’s a massive amount of difference in the calorie and nutrient profile needs of a 20 year old in infantry training and a 50 year old driving a desk (or for that matter a destroyer), and this isn’t *replacing* the high-octane fuel those soldiers under intense physical demand need, it’s *widening the available options*, to which the only drawback will be the expense during a time when the military is rather strapped for cash.

But oh man does the first lady manage to make it annoying.

The first lady toured a gleaming cafeteria line, then announced the program in a dining hall filled with service members whose plates were overflowing with salad greens, broccoli and whole grains.

“You all look really good, really fit,” she told the airmen. “Thank you for eating your vegetables. We need you strong.”

She encouraged healthy habits during a visit with individual airmen at their tables.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be a vegetable guy soon,” she reassured one airman.

She stressed that it’s not just about giving members of the armed services a more svelte profile: There are big national security and budget implications.

Eat your vegetables like a good little boy! You half expect her to pick up a spoon and make fighter-jet noises as it heads toward someone’s mouth. After all, we’re paying for your ass!

I like vegetables, genuinely and truly, and this makes me want to have a tub of deep-fried popcorn in butter and lard sauce with bacon bits for dinner. (In actuality it will be tri-tip roast and turnips sauteed in butter and herbs, but the preparation of dinner began before I found this article.) There’s just something about having someone come along and congratulate you for making a choice as though you were a seven year old who’d spontaneously taken her plate to the sink after dinner that grits the teeth and inspires spite.

As a side comment from the “vegetable guy yet” remark, there is also a very weird sort of gender war going on in a lot of the comments I’ve read on other articles/posts talking about this story. Apparently this is somehow emasculating, and or we have to have fruit and green leafy things because we have female soldiers now and they require salad to survive.

OK, look. Men need meat and fat and protein to build and maintain their physical base, including bone and muscle mass. Women need meat and fat and protein to build and maintain their physical base because they also possess muscles and bones, and additionally to maintain the ability to become pregnant and sustain it. Children of both genders need meat and fat and protein because they are growing. Men and women and children need fruit and vegetables because they need the vitamins and possess lower digestive tracts. There is absolutely nothing biological about food types as gender signaling, it’s a very bizarre kabuki dance that sometimes involves people getting way more or way less of what they need* and occasionally produces the specter of diminished masculinity via imposed cruciate vegetables. Real hunter-gatherers (usually) have division of labor, not division of food**.

*Ladies, if your diet involves losing basic reproductive function, IT IS BAD FOR YOU.

**There are exceptions to this, but it’s usually in societies with a deep misogynistic/patriarchal streak. Their fecundity outcomes tend to be a lot worse as a result.

First, watch the video.

Then, sit back and allow for reaction time. If you are like me you will have many questions. Like:

Why is Purity Bear’s voice so deep? He’s two feet tall at most.

Is it just me or does he seem more sexually jealous than morally sanctioning? Is the dude in the video supposed to be saving himself for marriage or saving himself for Purity Bear?

Is the dude a plushophile? Is cuddling a euphemism? That’s the only thing that makes sense, given you’re not supposed to be saving your cuddles for matrimony.

Is Purity Bear God? Is God cuddly?

Where are they at the end? Is that a church? Where are the other people? Even if you elope you can’t get married without a minister or a justice of the peace.

Oh god, is that his basement? Did the scary guy who thinks a plush God Bear talks to him and cuddles with him take that poor girl to Uncle Bruin’s Chastity Dungeon?

Is this whole thing taking place in the guy’s head, girl included? Does he regularly imagine getting on-hand life advice from stuffed animals when making difficult decisions? Is there an Honesty Giraffe or a Temperance Gorilla?

If Purity Bear isn’t God, is he a different kind of bear? Is this actually a short story about a closeted, tormented youth and his unwitting girlfriend? It would explain why Purity Bear seems more jealous than anything else, and I’m pretty sure that kind of bear is, in fact, cuddly.

At what point did hands flexing become a metaphor for sexual arousal? Is this film code for “Go home and masturbate instead”? Do I need to be careful about shaking out my hand after a long session on a gun with a heavy trigger pull lest I inadvertently proposition everyone else on the line?

Two different of my friends that are significantly to the left of me have asked what the fuck is up with the Republican primaries, so what the hell, it’s postfodder. Most of y’all are on the inside perspective on this but thanks to this blog being rampantly eclectic (or completely unfocused, pick one) I know there’s a fair chunk that aren’t, too.

It is not, whatever it may look like from the outside, that the Republican party can’t make up its mind or is sharply divided on the subject of which candidate is awesome. That’s not the case at all. It’s that with some small minority exceptions it’s made up its mind long ago that all of them are awful, and it’s now a hair-pulling fight which one of them is least awful and/or the best queasy alternative to a second Obama term. Conservative pundits are torn between tearing down one of the three, defending them on “he’s not THAT bad… Obama/his competitors are worse” terms, or fantasizing about a late entrant into the race even though we’re way too far down the primaries for that to be even remotely realistic.

Since my liberal friends seem to have no difficulties whatsoever figuring out what the hell Ron Paul is doing here and why he’s still in the race, we’re going to stick to Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney. If you are a Democrat or a leans-blue and you remember the 2004 primaries, it basically breaks down like this: Mitt Romney is John Kerry, Newt Gingrich is John Edwards, Rick Santorum is Howard Dean, and Ron Paul is Wesley Clark. (Actually, nobody but Ron Paul is Ron Paul, but they’re both controversial dark-horse candidates, so.) None of my liberal friends seem confused about why Paul is in the race and why he’s doing better than logic says he should, so we’ll concentrate on the other three.

Mitt Romney is in the race because he’s paid his dues, he’s white, he’s managed not to publically fuck any dogs or little boys, he had a more or less successful term as a governor of some state or another (he’d like Republican voters to forget which one and what he did while he was there), and It Is His Turn, Dammit. His major drawback is that he doesn’t have any clear principles or beliefs at all beyond really wanting to be President, and thus comes across as a political weathervane whose governing policy is essentially for sale. This leads to conservatives thinking he’s basically Obama and liberals thinking he’s basically Bush and political junkies who’ve been following him long enough to be really curious if there is even a personality under there or just iron public discipline, good hair, and tooth whitener. His major selling point is that thanks to that iron discipline, he doesn’t suffer any mortal political wounds either. This means that outside of immediate family and the sort of Mormon that thinks of politics as a team sport, all other Republicans break down into Team Anybody But Mitt and Team Oh God Look At The Alternatives.

Newt Gingrich is in the race because he’s an egomaniac who quite rightly recognizes the field for its incredible weakness and dearth of strong leadership. Gingrich’s major positive is a very strong background in running the political game for the Republican party, which is also a pretty major drawback as most voters are heartily sick of lifelong Washington insiders. He’s also good at debate, which pretty much no one aside from political wonks cares about unless someone is really *terrible*. His major negatives are that he’s essentially a technocrat with red pinstripes rather than blue, that he spent most of the Clinton years irritating moderates, and also that he has less charisma than an albino ferret with distemper. Among Team Anybody But Mitt, Gingrich is largely preferred by conservative policy wonks who think character is irrelevant and good debating skills speak to good leadership skills.

Rick Santorum is the only candidate in the race whose beliefs and policies appear to be clear, consistent, and based on principle. The major problem with him is that his principles appear to be based on deep tribalism and disgust with anyone who is not white, male (or female with deeply internalized patriarchal values), middle to upper class, straight, conservative, and strongly fundamentalist Christian*. To that end, his plans for America appear to involve a sweaty grip of For Your Own Good, which puts off conservatives with libertarian leanings, everybody with a frank view of their own inner sinner, and just about anyone else who is not of his in-group, which is most people. He also has the charisma problem, though he brings to mind more of an unpleasant dog who licks your hand before biting your ankle. Of Team Anybody But Mitt, traditionally right-wing social conservatives who fit within his demographics are the most likely to support him.

So there you have it. None of them has particularly large pools of voters who actually LIKE them, but depending on said voter’s views overall there’s a lot of diversity in who is hated most or least. And we’ll probably wind up with Romney by default, and it will probably go exactly like Kerry did.

Clearer?

*I had identified him as Protestant, turns out he’s Catholic and I had him in the wrong conservative-Christian-patriarchal box. Thanks to Chris Byrne in comments for correcting me.

So in today’s mail came one of the catalogs most of us wind up with from some retailer along the lines of cheaper-than-surplus-depot-America-ammo-quartermaster. Leafing through it on the way back inside from the mailbox, I discovered they were selling Emergency Survival(TM)(C)(R) toilets. The fact that this was two pages after the MRE sales I will leave as too easy and cheap a shot.

Well, I have a shovel so that’s not really an item I need. But there was a bit that stood out- because they designed it to stand out.

In one of the nice bright yellow “This is a major selling feature!” breakout star-thingies (some ad pro will have to tell me the proper name of those stupid little eye-catchers), it advertised, and this is verbatim, “Supports 300 pounds!”

I am of two minds on this.

Option one: if the capacity is 300 lbs, then someone in your own personal wasteland has not received the orders from local chief colander-wearer that the khazi should be emptied before reaching a certain point.

Option two: Someone is anticipating 300lbs dogs of war in the wasteland, in which case said should either be the sort of livestock entering those “World’s Strongest Man” competitions on ESPN 12 they run on new years, or should not have need of a 300 lb supporting shitter because they are already marinating in teriyaki sauce and just require cooking and/or curing.

One way or the other, dealing with 300 lbs in the wasteland will either be a self-solving problem, or will be a description of remaining machinery.

Via Overlawyered, confirmation that, at one time, New Mexico came very close to having the following enacted into state law:

When a psychologist or psychiatrist testifies during a defendant’s competency hearing, the psychologist or psychiatrist shall wear a cone-shaped hat that is not less than two feet tall. The surface of the hat shall be imprinted with stars and lightning bolts. Additionally, a psychologist or psychiatrist shall be required to don a white beard that is not less than 18 inches in length, and shall punctuate crucial elements of his testimony by stabbing the air with a wand. Whenever a psychologist or psychiatrist provides expert testimony regarding a defendant’s competency, the bailiff shall contemporaneously dim the courtroom lights and administer two strikes to a Chinese gong…

Evidently it was a protest amendment introduced by a bill by state senator Duncan Scott, who felt there was an excess of psychological expert witnesses testifying at competency hearings about whether a given defendant was dotty or merely dodgy. As a blatant protest amendment/satire, it was excised before it reached the House despite being unanimously passed.

Y’know, I can easily see why we can’t actually do this without destroying due process, but I wouldn’t mind this being a much more widely enacted and applied law.

Crisis mode at work because we always have to have one of those at the end of the week, preparing for guests, running around in little circles babbling to ourselves. So yeah.

As everybody who grew up in a certain era now has a certain PSA stuck in their heads*, allow me to elaborate. The fine legal beagles over at Popehat have a bit of a tradition of pointing out that when you outsource your advertising, you outsource your reputation.

As it turns out, dental practices are not exempt from this rule. On yesterday’s post, we received a comment from either Luigi Fulk, or one Dr. Smith, depending on which portion of the comment you choose to believe, advertising the Westwood Dental Clinic, and more specifically apparently the services of Dr. Thomas Nyvold. Being a bit due for a checkup, I called the clinc. Certainly any Colorado doctor who feels strongly enough to reach out to a New Mexican blogger must be worth my time after all.

Alas, it seems that Dr. Thomas Nyvold and the Westwood Dental Clinic have no employees or practitioners by the name of either Luigi Fulk, or Dr. Smith. Crushingly disappointed that I won’t be able to schedule a clea — wait just a tic. They’d never heard of this doctor! And no idea where the comment came from! It was a total mystery to them how I wound up with their information!

The comment was left by SumDood!

Good grief! I can’t believe I almost scheduled a cleaning with Westwood Dental when they are clearly associates with the nefarious knifer of innocent boys drinking milk on the porch, stealer of pants, brawler, extortionist, thief, liar, pedophile, racketeer, and general all around antithesis of good SumDood! I shudder to think what the results might have been.

“Hey, how was your trip to Westwood Dental Clinic with Dr. Nyvold?”
“While I was there, SumDood stole my wallet and ripped the gold out of my teeth!”
“You mean Dr. Nyvold of the Westwood Dental clinc performed gross malpractice on you?”
“I absolutely do not mean that! SumDood did it! SumDood is totally in tight with Westwood Dental Clinic!”
“That’s awful!”
“Yeah, and while I was there, SumDood keyed profanity into my car’s paint!”
“Thanks for letting me know about SumDood’s affiliation with Dr. Nyvold and Westood Dental!”
“Any time, my friend. Take my word for it, never trust your teeth to a group that works with SumDood.”

Another though occurs. A mysterious Dr. Smith nobody quite recognizes or knows the origin of? Could it be? I think it IS! It’s AGENT Smith! Grown tired of his futile attempts to destroy Neo, and human thought in general, the body-morphing sociopath has taken up dentistry with Dr. Nyvold and the Westwood Dental Clinic! It’s perfect! How better to destroy all of humanity than a small Colorado dentist’s office? And reaching out through the internet to nearby states follows as well. I mean if you’re going to be a bullet-dodging construct of hate? Why not gas people so they’ll stop shooting at you! And then drill their teeth! I knew it! Dr. Nyvold is a evil computer program who misinterpreted a human metaphor, and is trying to literally de-fang us for the coming invasion! You want proof? Doctor Nyvold is an anagram for Corny Odd Volt! STOP THE ROBOT MADNESS!

Either that or Dr. Nyvold hired a sleazeball web marketing guy and we should point at him and call him names. I still think it’s one of the first two though.

*And in the same tradition, our stash of scribblings are about as well matched and useful a set as Jr’s there compared to the uncut hard shit dad no doubt had, here played by Ken, Patrick, and the rest of the behatted crew. Parallels aboud!