Creature Report

Hello.

Here are some things I have been thinking about lately.

Octonauts. K has been watching this show on Disney. It's about a bunch of animals (plus some "vegimals," including a talking turnip, radish, and eggplant) who explore the sea and learn about different sea creatures in their octopus-shaped submarine. At the end of each segment there is a "creature report" with an infernally catchy song that has been stuck in my head for days now.

The Republican presidential candidates. Mitt Romney is smug and out of touch. Newt Gingrich wants to repeal child labor laws. Rick Santorum's name is synonymous in my mind with "animal sex." Ron Paul thinks Martin Luther King, Jr. Day should be renamed "Hate Whitey Day." Rick Perry... it's hard to believe that this ad is even real. (Recap: What kind of country do we live in where gays can serve openly in the military, but our children don't pray in public school because Barack Obama hates Christmas? I am not even exaggerating.) These people are running for PRESIDENT. Can't they find anybody remotely suitable?

The Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster. Mainly because this is all over the news, but also because I keep thinking about the recording of the phone call where the Italian Coast Guard keeps yelling at the captain to get back on board and see who needs to be rescued, and the captain just stammers and sounds confused. Then the captain said he diverted his route and went closer to shore to salute a retired admiral who he had been talking to on the phone at the time of the crash, and then he changed his story and said that it was because one of his waiters had grown up on that island. And then today he claimed he didn't abandon the ship, he FELL out of it. Much like the Republican presidential candidates, it keeps getting crazier.

Jorts. I lamented the ever-widening hole in the knee of my favorite jeans. JW suggested I turn them into cut-offs. "Do people still wear cut-offs?" I asked. "Sure," he said. "I think so. Yeah, people must still wear jean shorts. Jorts." "Jorts? That's not a real thing." "It is!" So we googled it (because that is how you settle a modern argument) and found an entire website, jorts.com, dedicated to making fun of people who wear jean shorts. Also, the Urban Dictionary's definition of "jorts" includes the following: "Jean shorts. Worn mostly by children and douchebags. Jorts are perhaps the easiest way to recognize people you will not like." So I will not be cutting off my jeans.

My Kindle (and the books I have been reading on it). It is amazing how much I've been reading since getting the Kindle. Recently I've also been emailing long-form articles to my Kindle so I can read them when I have time. I read the Democracy 21 report on Super PACs and how the existing ones are basically illegal. I read a This American Life transcript about how homosexuality was redefined in the DSM in the 1970s so it was no longer classified as a pathology. I've been buying way more books than usual, too. I used to buy a book maybe once every few months. I'm a library person. But now books seem so bulky. I have to lug them around with me and remember what page I was on and put something on top of  them to keep them open when I'm trying to read and do something else at the same time. I wasn't sure I would like an e-reader, but I'm a reluctant convert. (Reluctant because I'm not crazy about being tied to Amazon, and I dislike the DRM restrictions on the books I buy.)

The end.